D day. This has been a tough day. I have waited until just gone midnight CET for a clear outcome before posting this. Here is how the day unfolded.
With hopes raised for a stronger outcome yesterday evening, a draft text was prepared during the night. President Obama landed in Copenhagen just after 09.00 CET.
However, about the same time it was becoming clear that the first draft agreement had been rejected by developing countries, due to its lack of perceived ambition.
This meant that leaders had to work ad hoc on negotiating a text during the day, building a new version of an agreement as the day progressed.
On hearing the news of the first rejection, President Obama did not go to the Bella Centre for his press conference as planned, but instead went directly to the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel to meet with several heads of state to see what could be fashioned with the material at hand. Present were representatives from Australia, UK, Brazil, France, Denmark, Germany, EU, Japan, Bangladesh,Russia, South Africa, India, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Norway, Colombia, and Ethiopia (representing China).
Delegates in the conference centre, however, waited for the President. And waited.
For the next hour or so President Lula, Prime Minister Rasmussen, UN Secretary General and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao each spoke in the plenary hall at the Congress Centre. Premier Wen called on richer countries to honour their financial commitments. But there were no new positions put forward.
Effectively, the world was waiting for President Obama to speak. And at about 12.30 CET he eventually arrived and addressed the plenary. Watch CNN’s stream of the Presidents speech here
President Obama’s main thrust was that mitigation, transparency, finance are the key to a new accord. But critically, his speech contained no new announcements.
If you watch this, you will share in the mood of the congress hall: hopes were high at the start for a new development and hopes fell by the end of his address when it was clear there were none. Note the warm applause close to the start of his speech when hopes were high, and the much more polite applause at the end.
From around the NGO communities and among several delegations, there was disappointment expressed about the President’s speech.
13.30 through 14.30 it then seemed that President Obama and Premier Wen were in a long bilateral meeting somewhere in the Bella Centre. Sources tell me that the President’s reference in his speech to the US being the world’s largest economy and the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases (i.e. reminding the room that China is now the largest emitting nation), did not go down well with Premier Wen.
15.20 and there was still no movement. Nicolas Sarkozy gives Reuters a great quote: “The discussions lasted all night without interruption. The good news is that they're continuing, the bad news is they haven't reached a conclusion."
By 16.00 rumours were starting to swirl as to what was going on. Second and third versions of a Copenhagen Accord start to appear on various websites as they quickly got leaked and then emailed and forwarded all around the world.
President Obama is said to have met Premier Wen once more around 19.00 CET. By 21.45 or so it seemed that an agreement had been crafted between the US, China, India and South Africa.
This could be the agreement, or there may be one more iteration to go.
The very first reactions of commentators and analysts have been to welcome the fact there is a deal, but to acknowledge that’s it’s a modest document in its ambition and level of detail. Others are saying it’s a deal between the US, Brazil. China, India and South Africa and many other delegations have not yet even seen the document. And others say it is not clear what Brazil and the EU think about it.
Let me stop here for tonight. Within 15 hours I will have a link to the correct document for you and I will be able to report back a detailed analysis on it from a lead UK negotiator.
I want to leave you with a thought, however. A thought about a possible historic precedent for the kind of fast and major international breakthrough it seems we still need post Copenhagen, a precedent which involved multiple governments and business leaders to make it work.
• It was an initiative that engaged in a large scale and rapid four year process of focused aid to multiple recipient countries, channeled through a series of regional independent structures.
• It mobilised about US$180 billion cornerstone funding in today’s money
• About 60% of the aid used as equity to leverage private capital into regional infrastructure investment funds, which were then managed by private sector.
• The lead Government provided inconvertibility coverage to these funds, the first time this was ever done.
• The recipient countries agreed to undertake economic policy reforms to support private sector investors
• Trade barriers were removed between the recipient countries to create a larger market for the flow of the new goods and services
• If one province, country or region did not make full use of the funds available, others were able to
• The US Congress, especially the Republican Party, was originally unwilling to support the initiative; they were weary of too much public spending and cautioned against investing in the infrastructure of future competitors.
• The Plan was approved only when the perception arose of a clear, material security threat to the US and US interests abroad unless it was implemented.
• Once implemented, the plan created jobs and growth, engendering 35% growth in the regions it invested in. Ever since, it has widely been seen as a great success for overseas aid, but it has been less well recognized as a major public-private initiative – a public finance innovation that crowded in the private sector for rapid and widespread infrastructure rebuild
• The threat that caused the US Senate to approve the plan? The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, February 1948
• The plan? The Marshall Plan, which lasted 1948-1952. Perhaps the world’s first and most successful “quick-start” initiative.
If you think there may be echoes in history to draw upon here, then I leave you with this link. It is to an image of an original 1948 US public awareness poster about the importance of the Marshall Plan. Check out the slogan; it is eerily prescient.
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