The Guardian broke a story at lunchtime yesterday suggesting a draft Danish text proposing a final political agreement had been prepared in secret for signing at the end of the summit. The story alleged that the text had divided the developed and developing world.
Yet here in Copenhagen, delegates don’t appear to be rattled, indeed I've not heard a word about it in any official meeting. The vigorous security arrangements are causing more grief – the Chinese spent a good fifteen minutes in today’s Conference of the Parties meeting complaining about the difficulty in getting into the Bella Centre (and the excepted 110 heads of state haven’t even arrived yet!!).
The fact is that the existence of the Danish text is well known among delegates. It was discussed when governments gathered in Barcelona and Bangkok earlier this year. Indeed, it is widely known that China, Brazil and Mexico are also preparing their own rival text. Rumours are that a further two are being developed. Experienced delegates say there is nothing unusual about this – it is merely to try and give some structure to Minister’s discussion late next week.
With much of the real negotiations occurring now behind closed doors, the media are seizing on whatever they can get. Yesterday the Financial Times ran a story that the European Commission had withdrawn its offer to increase its bloc-wide emissions reduction target to 30% by 2020 because the offers made by other nations in recent months was inadequate. Yet (unsurprisingly) senior EU officials later denied this.
But if a weak, political agreement of the nature that the Danish has prepared is the final outcome here, the Commission would surely be forced to withdraw its offer. As it stands it simply doesn’t offer the comparability of commitment across the world that must be a pre-requisite of any decision to increase targets.