Copenhagen Climate Summit (2009): COP15 and Its Accord

The Copenhagen Climate Summit, formally the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, met in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 7 to 19 December 2009. It was expected to agree a new global treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto Protocol. Instead, it ended with the short, non-binding Copenhagen Accord, and many observers saw it as a failure.

Background

The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at the time of the Earth Summit in Rio, set the goal of preventing dangerous human interference with the climate. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 required developed countries to reduce emissions, but the United States never ratified it, and large developing economies such as China and India had no binding targets.

The first Kyoto commitment period ran from 2008 to 2012. At Bali in 2007, countries agreed a two-year “roadmap” to negotiate what would come next, with Copenhagen as the deadline. Expectations rose further after Barack Obama became US president in 2009, promising action on climate change, and after the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 warned of serious risks from warming.

The conference

Around 115 heads of state and government and tens of thousands of delegates, journalists and campaigners came to the Bella Center in Copenhagen. Far more people registered than the venue could hold, and long queues formed outside in the December cold. On 12 December a large demonstration marched through the city calling for strong action.

Negotiations were troubled from the start. A leaked Danish draft text angered many developing countries, which suspected the hosts of favouring rich nations. On 14 December African countries, supported by the wider Group of 77, briefly suspended their participation in protest at fears that the Kyoto Protocol would be abandoned. In the final week, Connie Hedegaard resigned as conference president and Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen took over the chair. Disputes over procedure, transparency and whose texts should form the basis of talks consumed valuable time.

The core issues were hard. Developed countries wanted major emerging economies, especially China, to commit to limits and to allow outside checking of their emissions. Developing countries insisted that rich nations bore historic responsibility, should make deeper cuts and must provide money to help poorer countries adapt.

The Copenhagen Accord

On the evening of 18 December, Obama met the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa, a group known as BASIC. Together with other leaders, including European ones, they produced the Copenhagen Accord, a document of about three pages.

The accord recognised the scientific view that the rise in global temperature should be kept below 2 °C. Developed countries promised “new and additional” resources of close to 30 billion US dollars for 2010–2012 and a goal of jointly mobilising 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for developing countries. Countries were invited to submit their own emissions targets or actions, rather than having targets negotiated for them.

When the accord was presented to the full conference in the early hours of 19 December, several countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Sudan, strongly objected that it had been agreed by a small group behind closed doors. Because UN climate decisions require consensus, the conference did not adopt the accord but only “took note” of it.

Reaction

Many environmental groups and commentators called the outcome a failure, because it contained no binding targets and no date for a legal treaty. Some leaders presented it as a meaningful first step that brought the United States and major developing countries into the same framework for the first time.

In the following months, more than 100 countries associated themselves with the accord, and many submitted national pledges. Shortly before the summit, the hacking and publication of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, dubbed “Climategate”, had also fuelled public controversy, although later inquiries found no scientific misconduct.

Timeline

• 2007, December: The Bali conference sets Copenhagen as the deadline for a new climate deal.
• 2009, 7 December: COP15 opens at the Bella Center in Copenhagen.
• 2009, 12 December: A large climate march takes place in Copenhagen.
• 2009, 16 December: Lars Løkke Rasmussen takes over as conference president.
• 2009, 18 December: Obama and BASIC leaders agree the Copenhagen Accord.
• 2009, 19 December: The plenary “takes note” of the accord and the conference closes.
• 2010, December: The Cancún Agreements formalise key elements of the accord.

Legacy

Copenhagen exposed the limits of trying to negotiate binding, top-down targets for all countries. The approach that emerged from it, in which each country sets its own pledges and reports on progress, was formalised at Cancún in 2010 and became the foundation of the Paris Agreement of 2015. The 2 °C goal and the 100-billion-dollar finance pledge also remained central to climate diplomacy for years.

Why it matters

The Copenhagen summit was a turning point in climate politics. Its disappointment led negotiators to abandon hopes of a single binding treaty with fixed targets, opening the way for the more flexible system that underpins global climate action today.