The Weekend Australian
By: Steve Howard
The Copenhagen Accord has passed at least its first test
Just over a month on from agreeing to it, world leaders have passed the first milestone set out in the Copenhagen Accord.
Fifty-five countries met the UN's end-of-January deadline for submitting their climate change mitigation commitments, and since then 40 countries have followed suit.
Crucially, submissions have been received from all main emitters, including the US, China, the European Union and India.
The timeline set out at Copenhagen required developed countries to submit 2020 emission reduction targets, while developing countries had to outline the mitigation actions they intended to take over the same period.
In January the outcome had looked far from certain as the deadline was officially softened in a statement by the UN's chief climate official, Yvo de Boer.
However, by the beginning of February submissions were in from countries that account for more than 85 per cent of world gross domestic product and cover about three-quarters of global emissions -- this is now up to more than 80 per cent with subsequent submissions.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the accord's commitments are not legally binding, but political commitments, something that was lamented in much of the post-Copenhagen analysis. But, in reality, any legally binding agreement is only as solid as the tools and the will for enforcing it.
As in Australia, other countries have not gone beyond the pledges many of them made at or before Copenhagen. More important, though, no major country has stepped back from the level of ambition expressed in their earlier pledges, with China, for example, reiterating its commitment to reduce its carbon intensity by 40 per cent to 45 per cent and the US sticking to its 17 per cent emission cut from 2005 levels by 2020.
The EU and Australia have kept their emission target ranges, signalling their intent and willingness to increase their ambition, depending on what the rest of the international community does.
While these commitments are not sufficient to keep emissions at the levels scientists have recommended for avoiding dangerous temperature increases of above 2C, they offer a solid platform for increased ambition in the future.
Indeed, Copenhagen's success will be judged by the extent to which these initial commitments provide a springboard for future low carbon transformation.
There must be a concerted collaborative effort to turn these targets into concrete national policies and on-the-ground action that build additional commitment during the course of this year.
This was underlined at the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Davos by six international business leader groups, who work with more than 200 multinational organisations. The six groups involved -- The Climate Group, Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy, Carbon Markets and Investors Association, Clean Economy Network, Combat Climate Change and Copenhagen Climate Council -- urged leaders to use the Copenhagen Accord as the starting line in a race to the top for more ambitious climate action at all levels of national, state and municipal government.
This is the kind of approach needed if we are to provide the certainty necessary to drive an urgent scale-up of private sector investment in the research, jobs and clean infrastructure that will be at the heart of a new low carbon economy.
The priority should be to try to develop further confidence as quickly as possible. Once people see that climate goals are not only achievable but also improve their lives, governments will feel confident in moving up to the next level of ambition.
A good way for the main players to achieve that would be the swift and effective mobilisation of the $10 billion a year quick-start funding for developing countries agreed at Copenhagen.
This funding agreement was one of the bright spots of the conference. If we can deliver on that promise quickly, then we will have hit a second milestone for this year. That will, of course, leave some tough targets still to aim at: a win in Washington on climate and energy legislation in is one; getting to grips with a dysfunctional UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process is another, and there are certainly more besides.
However, hitting the January deadline is an important confidence builder to show that despite the tense process at Copenhagen, the accord can be the basis of progress on climate this year
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>> Steve Howard is chief executive officer of The Climate Group, and chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.