The deadlock at Copenhagen climate summit was broken on Friday night when US President Barack Obama told a select group of world leaders that the agreement would be “political in nature” and “legally non-binding”. Chetan Chauhan reports.
The deadlock at Copenhagen climate summit was broken on Friday night when US President Barack Obama told a select group of world leaders that the agreement would be “political in nature” and “legally non-binding”.
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India was first to react.
It called backed Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to return back to Bella Center from on his way to airport.
At 9.30 p.m. here (1 a.m. India time), half an hour after Obama’s statement, Singh met leaders from China, Brazil and South Africa (Basic countries) to discuss the nature of the Copenhagen accord.
As the discussions were on, the US President walked in with his climate negotiators with the draft of the Copenhagen accord, drafted by rich countries.
Then started hard deliberations, as an Indian negotiator described, on the language that generate “consensus”.
Once through, close to midnight, Obama and leaders of the basic countries headed to the office of the European office.
“Tough negotiations started with French President Nicolas Sarkosy and UK Prime Minister Gordan Brown talking hard,” said the Indian negotiator, who participated in the process till it was completed.
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“There was also spat between (Sarkosy and Brown) them over US emission targets but it was eventually resolved with Obama’s assurance that America will meet its commitment”.
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“There was also spat between (Sarkosy and Brown) them over US emission targets but it was eventually resolved with Obama’s assurance that America will meet its commitment”.
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Well past midnight, the leaders of 26 countries headed to the office of Danish Prime Minister Lors Lokke Rasmussen at Bella Center.
Within minutes, Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh, first leader to do so, announced that a “legally non-binding accord has been agreed”.
“US has got a deal done is done with major countries,” Obama announced in a crowded press conference at 2 a.m., before returning back home. Singh had left for India about an hour earlier.
That was just start of the drama that continued till late Saturday afternoon. Sudanese diplomat and spokesperson of G-77 plus China Lumumba Di-Aping walked into the media center and an announced: “We don’t agree with the accord. It is accord of rich countries…Poor countries have got peanuts…Obama should be conscious of what he has done”.
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Minutes later, Ramesh said, the deal is yet to be done as Indian negotiators rushed for another round of deliberations to bring the least developed nations on board.
In the meantime, the plenary of all nations started in which Bolivia and Venezuela rejected it. “Blood flows from my body seeing this accord,” said a Venezuelan diplomat, showing her finger laced with blood, emphasizing what country’s President Hugo Chavez had said earlier.
“We walk out of the conference hijacked by United States,” said agitated Chavez.
Nicaragua came with an alternative proposal for the conference to adopt, resulting in suspension of the meeting. After discussion with UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, Nicaragua agreed not to push its proposal.
Minutes later, the star nation of the conference — the small pacific island country, Tuvalu — rejected the accord.
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Further deliberations started on early Saturday morning with a declaration by Moon that the non-binding agreement has been done.
Names of the countries about 185 of total 193 would be listed in the accord. It was 1.30 local time (5 p.m. India time), 16 hours after Obama got negotiators on a track for a deal.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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