The UN Copenhagen Climate Conference provided a sober look at the process the world faces to achieve enhanced global governance for sustainability. This piece looks at some of the positive dimensions that began to take shape, set against the deep divides that emerged between large and small emitters, the most powerful and the most vulnerable nations.

Three issues dominated the Copenhagen Climate Conference: emission reductions, funds, and forest preservation. In terms of principles, the Copenhagen Accord includes a measure of success on the latter two.

Funds: A Copenhagen Green Climate Fund was agreed upon.

Funds are essential to achieving a new global compact. Though many nations have not been part of “the climate problem,” all can be part of the solution – given adequate funds to purchase new technologies and manufacture them.

While $10 billion annually for the next three years is grossly insufficient, the principle of a fund has been agreed upon. While there is currently talk of separate funds for adaptation, mitigation (climate stabilization)/clean technology transfer, and forest preservation, there is an opening to develop one Climate Fund with multiple “windows” for each purpose. Moreover, since the talks ended, Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, called for combining funds for climate and development, setting the stage for a larger focus.

Though much, much more money is needed – the International Energy Agency estimates that $500 billion a year for two decades is needed for the clean energy transformation alone – there is now a platform for ratcheting up the amount (rapidly, we can hope, as nations and organizations maintain pressure). The Accord includes the U.S. goal of working with other nations to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. This, though too far off, is a promising start to addressing the magnitude of funds needed.

The question to follow is: How best to raise this fund from international sources and not tax already-strained national budgets? A global cap-and-trade accord is far from certain, and too far off to meet immediate needs, and a carbon tax (that would put aside the difficult issue of caps on emissions) is not near being accepted. The amount, sources, and allocation procedures will be on the docket for the 2010-11 discussions, many can play a role in advancing alternative measures for de-nationalizing sources for international funds for climate and development.

Forests: Second, the principles for a framework have been put forward for the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD).

Monitoring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) changes will be especially difficult in regards to forests, as will compliance and penalties – and all these measures are needed for emission reductions as well. But funds are needed immediately for REDD – for avoided deforestation, reforestation and afforestation (diverse forests planted in new areas).

There was progress behind the scenes toward protecting the wood-gathering rights of indigenous peoples while reining in the main deforesters: large timber, ranching, agriculture, and mining interests. Measures to preserve temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere are also needed, as they hold large stores of carbon and methane in the trees, soils, and peat. And compensation for measures in rich countries will have to be assessed differently from those in tropical nations. Meanwhile, threats of further deforestation – for crops for biofuels and the use of trees-cum-wood pellets as sources for large-scale bioenergy power plants – loom large, especially for Northeast U.S. forests, scheduled for swaths of clear-cutting to supply U.S. and European biomass power plants.

But REDD provides a necessary first step toward a larger project: re-greening the earth to draw down billions of tons of CO₂ in the coming decades, an idea proposed by ecologist Thomas Lovejoy, President of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, and reinforced by George Woodwell of the Woods Hole Research Center.

We cannot afford any further clear-cutting of forests, for healthy, intact forests are essential for the human project to succeed.

In general, all energy solutions must be screened through the health, environmental, and adaptation lens, to avoid unintended consequences, rendering measures unsustainable (for additional information see Healthy Solutions
for the Low Carbon Economy).

As for carbon emission targets – the most difficult issue – that was essentially tabled. China and India’s use of a carbon intensity target – carbon emissions per GDP output – may offer an equitable way forward for many nations – if efficiency targets are rapidly scaled up each year (for additional information see Toward A Real Kyoto Protocol). Creative thinking to involve a mixture of goals is needed for a resolution for the first several years post the expiration of Kyoto in 2012. Meanwhile, to achieve progress within nations, two of the main governmental financial instruments – subsidies and tax structures – must be repurposed to catapult progress in all nations. Incentives must be aligned and perverse incentives removed.

Editorial note: This is a tall order, but in the U.S., President Obama must employ the full strength of his administrative and regulatory powers, given Congressional intransigence. The struggle against the special interests continues: Will a populist Obama emerge as lobbyist-dominated laws fall short of what is needed?

The most disturbing aspect of the Copenhagen Climate Conference was the bitter feelings of most parting participants. The reality of many from the NGOs blocked out in the cold on week 2 was magnified by the last-minute agreement forged by five nations. Not only were developing nations left out, so was the EU, and on December 21, 2009 the price of carbon took a dive in Europe, a measure of the reaction in industry, deprived of a clear market signal; a development that will retard investments into clean energy. It is doubtful that new emission targets will be put on the table by January 31, 2010, the date designated by the UN.

Moreover, the UN must now re-examine the entire process of the climate negotiations, and small groups are likely to parallel the open preparations for the next two Conferences of the Parties (Bonn in June 2010 and Mexico City in Dec 2010). In all regards, the contents of a treaty must be vetted by the community of nations, if an equitable, acceptable, global agreement is to be achieved.

Global governance is in its infancy. To endure the coming climate, achieve the clean energy transformation and preserve the world’s forests, international agreements must ultimately re-align the rules of trade and commerce, financial incentives and international financial institutions. We can learn from the first foray into governance – the EU, consisting of 27 nations – as to which powers to centralize and which to leave to sovereign nations. But the 2009 UN Copenhagen Climate Conference marks a juncture – halting, lurching, for sure – toward setting out the principles and measures for the enhanced global governance needed to achieve a sustainable form of development and a habitable planet.