Posted by tracy -
18 December 2009 at 7:11pm -
While
we're waiting to hear the announcements from Copenhagen - here's a blow
by blow account of what's happened at the Summit so far - written by
Martin Lloyd, our climate communications manager:
With thousands of negotiators and hundreds of points to agree it may
be impossible to come up with a comprehensive account of what happened.
But I'll try and list some of the highlights.
At the start of the year the game-plan for success when it came to
getting a fair, ambitious and binding agreement looked like this.
1. Rich countries needed to show they were serious by offering
significant and guaranteed funds to support action by the developing
world.
2. The developing world would then have the confidence to commit to action
3. Which would let Rich nations commit to stronger action
4. The handful of holdout nations would then face a world united for climate action
As the talks started, despite two years of negotiations there was
almost no progress to report. Only a series of commitments from the
developing world, all conditional on the rich countries coming up with
the money.
So, what happened?