We are so close: let’s not waste time, let’s not risk lives, let’s not burn billions

Let’s be clear: Copenhagen can still deliver what we need, and it really should deliver without any further delay. This is a critical moment that the world has been working towards for two years. Wasting the momentum and the opportunity would be a terrible mistake.

In December 2007 some 190 nations agreed in Bali that they wanted to embark on a negotiation process which would result in a new global treaty in 2009: this December, in Copenhagen. Most countries have taken it very seriously and worked hard to get there.

First it was all about process discussions in the UN climate talks.

Then – at their meetings in places like Bonn, Bangkok or Barcelona over the past 12 months – delegates from North and South have been working on the legal language of the pending agreement.

It’s almost ready now.

We need action!

The missing ingredient is political will to make the final calls and turn the draft legal language into treaty text. Instead of public statements expressing their political will, however, leaders give us pessimistic interviews full of weak excuses.

We don’t need delay and softened targets that would not even be binding.

We need a binding agreement that captures the important progress the UN climate talks have made to date and creates a clear, fast path towards finalization of whatever cannot be sorted out in Copenhagen.

After all this is about climate change, one of the biggest threats facing humanity and the entire planet.

Just another political declaration won’t be sufficient to protect people and nature from danger. This time we need more, a real solution we can trust, not a placebo to calm the crowds.

WWF, like so many others, never really expected that every single detail would be done in Copenhagen. But we expect that negotiators write a legally binding text, and that they agree targets and funding at the necessary scale.

According to polls that’s also what voters expect, because it would be in their best interest, and these interests should guide the leaders in Copenhagen. If they agree a framework that’s strong enough to justify hope, we can work out the details later in a good spirit of cooperation.

A bit of history…

When the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, it still lacked a lot of the detail when negotiators left the old Japanese capital. The detail was filled in much later, the so called Marrakesh Accords, agreed four years on in 2001.

Many countries ratified the Kyoto Protocol only after the details emerged in the Marrakesh Accords – just one example that shows how much time some things may take in the international climate negotiations. Unfortunately, time is what we don’t have.

The new climate treaty the world is scheduled to agree in Copenhagen should enter into force no later than 2012, when the so called first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends, a four year time window from 2008 to 2012 that mandates emission cuts in industrialized countries.

In order to have the new global deal enter into force by 2012, we need a breakthrough in Copenhagen, and sort out the details quickly in 2010. That would leave countries two to three years to ratify the new treaty, so that it will enter into force timely.

When you hear some politicians talk about delaying the decisions beyond Copenhagen, it sounds like it wouldn’t be a big deal. But in reality delay is about lives, and about billions of dollars.

Let’s not risk them when we can still save them.