Nonetheless, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN framework convention on climate change (Unfccc), welcomed the pledges. “This represents an important invigoration of the UN climate talks,” he said.
At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen last year, all countries were asked to register their intentions to support the Copenhagen accord by 31 January. However, the deadline was relaxed last month when it became apparent that many of the world’s poorest countries were reluctant to sign up to the political accord without better understanding of its legal implications or stronger financial assurances. The UN now says the deadline is flexible, possibly allowing countries to submit their plans until next December.
Many senior figures around the world contacted by the Guardian believe that a legally binding deal in 2010 is now impossible.
Examination of the pledges shows that no countries have strengthened the commitments which they announced at Copenhagen, despite worldwide condemnation of the lack of ambition shown by world leaders in Denmark. Several rich countries have added clauses which could allow them to reduce emissions later.
The US, which had pledged 17% cuts on a 2005 baseline by 2020 now says it will cut “in the range of 17%, in conformity with anticipated US energy and climate legislation, recognising that the final target will be reported to the Secretariat in light of enacted legislation”. Canada, too, has amended its Copenhagen target of 17% to make it align “with the final economy-wide emissions target of the US in enacted legislation“.
Ed Miliband, UK energy and climate secretary, said the figures were “significant”. “If countries, including the EU, implement their commitments to the maximum levels we will be in striking distance of ensuring that global emissions peak by 2020. This is a crucial first step to keeping temperature rises to no more than two degrees.”
But the pledges made only guarantee the minimum carbon reductions offered by countries, with the higher cuts conditional on other nations following suit.
Leo Johnson, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner for Sustainability and Climate Change said the cuts were substantially short of what was needed to control climate change. “The Copenhagen Accord pledges are relatively unchanged from those made prior to the Copenhagen Summit. At 9.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the pledges total just under half the 20GTC02e reduction required from business as usual to stay on the low carbon pathway. There is still a big gap between the pledges and the 2 degree pathway.”
Greenpeace’s head of the Climate and Energy Campaign agreed. “Together [these cuts] amount only to an 11-19% reduction in their overall emissions. Staying well below the warming threshold requires industrialised nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and provide substantial funding to developing countries which need to reduce their projected growth in emissions by 15-30%.”
The influential South Centre, a Geneva-based intergovernmental thinktank funded by developing countries, advised countries to be in no hurry to sign. It warned that the Copenhagen accord, created by a small group of countries, could become the blueprint for a new international regime that would replace the Unfccc and the Kyoto protocol, which was created with the unanimous support of all 192 nations.
“Such a regime of rights and obligations, if based on the Copenhagen accord, would have the potential to drastically curtail the development prospects of developing countries,” it said.
“To agree to associate with the accord before seeing its entire contents would be to grant a blank cheque to the proponents of the accord, by accepting a document before some of its most important components are revealed.”