Draft climate agreement leaked

Britain’s Guardian newspaper has published a draft agreement on action against climate change, believed to have been written by Denmark, the hosts of the UN Climate Change Summit.

The newspaper also claimed that developing countries are deeply unhappy with the proposed agreement.

The draft on The Guardian’s website is headlined “The Copenhagen Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”.

According to the proposal, 2020 is the year when global emissions should peak. The text also specifies that emissions from developed nations should be reduced by 80% by the middle of this century compared to 1990 levels. It also suggests that an interim reduction target is set for the developed world, but this is not given.

A critical issue is whether developing countries are required to undertake reduction commitments. Presently they are not but the industrialised world says this is not feasible in the future. On this issue the Danish text says that the least developed can contribute “at their own discretion”.

Developing countries are said to be angry at this distinction between the “least developed” and other developing nations as well as plans to transfer enforcement over to the World Bank. This move could indirectly shift more control over to the industrialised world.