Secretary Clinton Sees Copenhagen Climate Conference as Steppingstone

A worker in Berlin puts up a banner in preparation for the December climate change conference in Copenhagen.

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer
November 12, 2009

Washington — The U.N.-sponsored climate conference in December in Copenhagen can become the steppingstone to a full and binding legal climate agreement if it focuses on the right blend of practical approaches and principles, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says.

“The United States has taken dramatic steps in the past year to change the way we use energy at home, and we have taken our seat at the table in international climate negotiations,” Clinton said November 11 in a press conference at the foreign ministers’ meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore. Climate change was among a host of issues being discussed by the officials in the lead up to the APEC Leaders’ Summit November 14–15.

The 15th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will include representatives from 192 nations, will be held December 7–18 in Copenhagen. Any climate accord reached at the Copenhagen meeting would succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent by 2012.

“If we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen, and that would be a steppingstone toward full agreement,” Clinton said. The United States will apply a set of metrics to judge the results of Copenhagen, she said.

Any agreement has to involve immediate global action on climate change, and all nations must meet their share of the responsibilities, Clinton said. The agreement must also cover all of the major issues, including adaptation, financing, technology cooperation and forest preservation, she said.

The agreement also must help provide funding to assist developing nations, which are often the least able to implement complex agreements, she added.

“We are prepared to support a global climate fund that will support adaptation and mitigation efforts and a matching entity to help developing countries match needs with available resources,” Clinton told reporters.

“Funding through the new global climate fund and a technology mechanism will help developing countries identify what they need, where to get it, and how to finance, operate and maintain it,” she said.

Clinton stressed that the Copenhagen conference is not the end of the process, as many in the media and environmental community have suggested. She said it is part of a larger collective commitment to accountability, to transition to a global economy built on lower carbon dioxide emissions and to a cleaner and greener plant.