News | Climate Change

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China, the U.S. and the 27-nation European Union signed up to the Copenhagen Accord, giving life to the first climate-protection agreement that contains numerical goals for all the biggest greenhouse-gas emitters.

They were joined by Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Japan and India, according to national governments and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is compiling the pledges. They had until Jan. 31 to formally back the accord.
The United Nations said today it has received submissions of pledges to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020 from 55 countries. Combined, the nations account for 78 percent of global emissions from energy use, the UN said in a statement.
“The commitment to confront climate change at the highest level is beyond doubt,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, said in a statement. “Greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge. But I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion,” he said.
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the agreement is a “crucial first step” toward containing the global average temperature rise since industrialization to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and may result in emissions from richer countries peaking by 2020.
“For the first time, the world will see, collected together, strong mitigation commitments by countries representing more than 80% of global emissions,” Brown wrote in a letter to lawmakers in London. He also said there were “flaws” in the negotiations that needed to be fixed.
Sign of Progress
The U.S.’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, also praised the accord as an important sign of progress.
“We are pleased to be among 55 countries, including all of the world’s major economies, that have submitted pledges to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions under the Copenhagen Accord,” Stern said in a statement. “We urge all countries to join this broad coalition.”
The biggest emitters have limited themselves to repeating targets they had already announced before negotiating a non- binding agreement at talks in December in Copenhagen, which were beset by walkouts and squabbles between industrialized and developing nations.
“The current level of ambition in the accord is far from enough,” said Paul Cook, director of advocacy at Tearfund, a London-based development charity. “The world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries should not be expected to accept these weak developed-country pledges that threaten their very survival.”
Numerical Goals
The existing climate treaty, negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, didn’t have numerical goals for cuts expected from developing nations.
China, the biggest emitter, said it had told the UN to include a previously stated voluntary goal to cut carbon dioxide output per unit of gross domestic product by 40 percent to 45 percent from 2005 through 2020.
“Those numbers will be available for inclusion by the UNFCCC in the document they are compiling,” Chinese Climate Change Ambassador Yu Qingtai said today in a telephone interview from Beijing. “We will continue to do our best to undertake those actions and achieve our targets.”
The U.S., the biggest historical emitter, said on Jan. 28 that it wrote to the UN to sign up to the accord, including a goal to cut emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
Ensuring Survival
The EU on the same day reiterated a promise to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020 from 1990, with the potential to increase the reduction to 30 percent if other countries follow suit. Japan and Australia also submitted conditional pledges.
Some of the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction promises came from developing nations among the most vulnerable to rises in sea-level and that aren’t required to take on numerical goals. The Maldives pledged carbon-neutrality by 2020 in its letter to the UN, while the Marshall Islands said it would aim to cut greenhouse gases 40 percent from 2009 to 2020.
“The Copenhagen Accord is a step forward, but all nations must commit to the strongest possible actions, and adopt a legal treaty, if we are to ensure our survival,” Marshall Islands Foreign Minister John Silk said Jan. 28 in an e-mailed statement.