Talks at the climate change summit in Copenhagen have continued despite growing opposition from a group of developing nations over a leaked document that apparently details a pre-arranged agreement on climate change.
Climate change minister Penny Wong arrived at the summit overnight but said she was disappointed at the reaction of the developing nation bloc, led by the Pacific nation Tuvalu.
“Some of the language that has been reported is disappointing, some of it’s unhelpful,” Wong said, referring to the outbursts from developing nations against the allegedly leaked document.
The document outlines a plan for keeping temperatures to just two degrees over their current rates, but would allow richer nations to produce more emissions than developing countries. Many nations within the G77 feel this is giving richer nations no legal obligation to reduce their emissions.
“If we are going to make this work we have to move away from blame-shifting and finger-pointing. What we have to work towards is unprecedented levels of cooperation, because if we don’t get those we won’t get the agreement the world needs.”
A new dispute has emerged between Tuvalu and a number of larger countries, including China, India and several in the Middle East. While Tuvalu’s delegates wanted to host a high-level meeting to discuss the legally binding nature of an agreement at the summit, many larger nations resisted.
Tuvalu’s agreement would see global warming limited to just 1.5 degrees above pre-industrialised levels. Tuvalu negotiator Ian Fry said the country would only accept an agreement for a new legally binding structure resulting in the reduction of emissions.
“My Prime Minister and many other heads of state have the clear intention of coming to Copenhagen to sign on to a legally binding deal,” Fry told reporters. “Tuvalu is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, and our future rests on the outcome of this meeting.”
Other nations, including Sierra Leone and Senegal, have backed Tuvalu’s position, with many comparing richer nations to the nations allying with Nazi Germany before the Second World War.
Elsewhere, the US has rejected claims from China it is not doing enough to combat its emissions, with delegate Todd Stern saying: “You can’t even think about solving this problem without China – you just have to do the math”.
A number of nations including Australia, Britain, Norway and Mexico have released a paper on how to finance the fight against climate change, while Wong has said the summit’s goal must remain to be an “immediately operational agreement”.
She also said failure to produce such a document would be “a very bad thing for all nations and a very bad thing for multilateralism”.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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