Hey Everyone! Thanks so much for all your great comment about the 12 Days of Christmas Meal!

I’ve been slacking a bit on the food security aspect of this blog.  After all, I’m interested in everything about food; this blog reflects those interests.  Closely tied to food is the environment and climate change.  If you recall, a little over a week ago, I did a post about the UN Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

Well yesterday was the last day of the conference.

World leaders negotiate in the Bella centre in Copenhagen, from guardian.co.uk

The so-called Copenhagen Accord can be found on the UNFCCC website.  I’ve read a few mixed reviews about it so here’s a little recap of the major outcomes (essentially a summary of the Accord) in case you haven’t heard too much about it.

The Accord consists of 12 main points:

1. The nations agree that climate change is a problem and will work to combat it.

2. The nations agree that cutting global emissions is essential but “social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-emission development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development.”  This also includes a cap on global temperature rises.

3. Developed countries will provide “adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries.” Essentially funding for developing countries to reduce GHG emissions without hurting development.

4. Annex I countries (mostly developed nations but see full list here) agree to implement emission targets by 2020.

5.  Non-Annex I countries (mostly developing nations but see full list here) “will implement mitigation actions.”

6. With regard to deforestation, the nations agree to provide incentives such as REDD-plus mechanism to acquire funding in order to prevent deforestation and environmental degradation in developing countries.  I’m a little fuzzy on this one so I’ll direct you to this site I found about REDD-plus if you’re interested.

7. Nations agree to seek a variety of alternatives in reducing GHG emissions (i.e. market based approached).  Those nations with low emissions should be encouraged to maintain low emissions.

8. Nations agree to provide adequate funding to developing nations in accordance with the convention.  Funding will be prioritized to most vulnerable nations and Africa.  Developing countries agree to provide US$100 Billion per year by 2020 for developing countries to meet their climate change needs.  This money will go through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.

9. Establishment of a High Level Panel to oversee the financing toward reaching these goals

10. Establishing the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund to “an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer.”

11. Establishment of a Technology Mechanism to speed up technology development and transfer.

12. Calls for an assessment of the Accord in 2015.

Here’s the final closing press briefing.  It’s around 3 minutes:

The conference covered a lot of the topics I was curious about as mentioned in previous post, particularly the question of funding.  $100 billion per year is a ton of money!  I’m happy to see governments being firmer about this issue and taking into consideration development and developing nations.    However, there’s still a long way to go as this accord is NOT legally binding.

My next question is who will control the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund?  I haven’t really seen anything about this.  Anyone else seen anything about this?

This seems like a new power angle that could be very interesting.

Did anything stand out for you at Copenhagen?

Is the Copenhagen Accord enough?

The next meeting with be in a year in Mexico City.  Do think we’ll get something legally binding in Mexico?