Oh Copenhagen!

"This is the generation that must stop the spread of the pollution that is lowly killing our planet... Rolling back the tide of a warming planet is a responsibility that we have to ourselves, to our children to all of those who will inherit creation long after we are gone."
- Barack Obama, April 2009.

From the 7th to the 18th of December, the officials, environment ministers and leaders of the world's most powerful nations will once again convene at Copenhagen to discuss quite literally the planet's future and how as nations a greener world can be created for this and future generations.

Naturally, with every country pulling its weight to ensure that policy decided upon at Copenhagen is suitable to their own realities, the summit has the reputation of turning into a business as usual situation more often than not ending in a deadlock (such as over the issue of funding green technology for developing nations).

After 2 meetings at Bonn, 1 at New York, another in Bangkok and yet another in Barcelona, this year alone, the lead up to Copenhagen has been dynamic to say the least. For all those who are still wondering, these are the key tasks ahead for Copenhagen not to turn into one of the biggest political failures.

1. Setting binding targets to reduce carbon emissions. So far the US, EU, India and China have all tables offers of reducing their carbon emissions. Whether these are implementable remains to be seen, as does the issue of accountability.

2. Green Funds and Technology should be established to encourage low carbon emissions in developing countries. This hotly debated issue of who picks up the bill is one of the key areas of conflict at Copenhagen.

3. Developing Countries need to take anti-deforestation actions that are associated with emissions and consequently commit to 30% lower emissions than what they are currently projecting by 2020. Once again a bone of major contention, the question remains how can these countries afford to implement greener economies when they are not at par with richer nations? Can we expect the same type of commitment to greening the planet from countries that have complicated histories (often further complexified by the effects of colonisation) and pressing issues such as civil war, starvation and hunger, conflict and other endemics, not to mention poor economic development?

4. Rich nations need to leverage more support and finance to green the planet

5. All countries must agree that global emissions must be at least 80% lower than 1990 levels by 2050.

Somehow reminiscent of an armchair revolution, these talks have been alive for the best part of the decade, and it seems that most agree on most of the points. The crucial question of HOW is yet to be answered. Perhaps the old and wise of the world woud consider third sector involvement that bypasses counter productive political nerve endings.