The fifteenth Conference of Parties was supposed to be a very crucial meet to commit a low carbon future. The 17000 delegates and 30000 activists gathered with a very big hope, a hope to reach a meaningful conclusion to restrict the carbon emission of the major emitters and to assure a sustainable future to the rest of the world. The Bella Centre had various groups from NGOs to youths demonstrating for a fair decision by the policy makers.

Despite big expectations, nothing substantial could be achieved in the conference. After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to leaders of few power countries to broker a political agreement. The highly controversial Copenhagen accord has removed the commitments to emission reductions as previously established by Kyoto Protocol and also, all references to 1.5 degree Celsius in past drafts were removed.

The main reason of the failure at Copenhagen was the desire of majority of nations to maintain economic development sacrificing the climatic security. The developing countries like India and China made a stand that they couldn’t handicap their rising economy by making a commitment to reduce the carbon emission and the developed countries were not ready to commit to more emission reduction as compared to the developing ones. The issue of historical debt created a lot of chaos in the conference room. The developed countries were not ready to accept this debt and the developing ones were not ready to forget the debt.

The other reason for the failure was the altercation about finance that the developed countries should offer to the developing countries to adopt sustainable technologies and maintain the economy by reducing the emission. The developed blocs didn’t offer as much as the other half demanded and majority of developing nations, mostly the African countries, were dissatisfied.

Even though the goals of Copenhagen meet were pre-defined, nothing concrete decision could be made. The cracks between the world’s economies were clearly seen well before the summit due to which many environmentalists had even predicted the failure pretty well before the Copenhagen meet. Despite this, the world leaders spent the 11 days of the summit in mere speechmaking and unreasonable discussions.

The unwillingness of American Senate to pass the climate bill, stubbornness of China and India to commit to emission reduction, and disruption of G77 due to wide differences in national interests  have been thought of as the major barriers in the path from deadlocks to dissolution at COP15. The leakage of Danish text also created a panic in Bella centre, shattering the trust of developing nations on the developed ones.

My personal say is that the greatest reason of the failure of this summit was immature preparation and lack of collective leadership. It is possible to control the amount of emission of developing countries if they receive enough technical and financial assistance from developed countries. For this, a joint and continuous effort by the international community was necessary. But there was not enough preparation. Few intercessions were there just for the sake of intercessions and the countries couldn’t come up with a condensed draft devoid of brackets before coming to Copenhagen.

However, the political commitment and sense of direction towards a low-emissions world during the Copenhagen meet are overwhelming. Now, what we need is enough meaningful and purposeful discussions before the Mexico meet for a fair, ambitious and binding deal.

YOU, yeah YOU- drive YOURSELF hard for a meaningful and purposeful COP this year.