Copenhagen 2009: Who's Who

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

The Conference has been mainly organized and hosted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Danish Government, through the following ministries: Ministry of Climate and Energy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister's Office. Originally the conference was initiated by the former Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, leader of the liberal party Vestre, and the centre-right collation Det Konservative Folkeparti. Rasmussen was replaced by the current Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen (also from Vestre, after Fogh Rasmussen's resignation in April 2009), through his minister of Climate and Energy, Connie Hedegaard.

It was the decision of the Danish Government that the Conference organization itself - not only the subject - should be focused on climate itself and how to reduce the GHG emissions. As a result of that, the Conference will be the first global Climate event to be powered by eco-friendly electricity, as organizers are working on the construction of a windmill near the Bella Centre.

It is expected that the event will gather delegates from over 170 countries, and a total number of 8,0000 people, as a government representatives, NGOs, journalists and activists. The host country will be represented at the summit by the Statsministeriet (Prime Minister's Office), as well as by the following organizations:

• Copenhagen Climate Network: A network of key persons from Danish and international businesses, whose aim is to to establish networks among businesses, individuals and organisations supporting a climate policy focusing on the environment.

• Copenhagen Climate Council: A global collaboration between business and science founded by the independent think tank Monday Morning, based in Copenhagen. Its aim is to create global awareness of the importance of the COP15 Conference.

A major player in the Conference is expected to the European Commission, which in January 2009 released a position paper prior to the summit. The paper highlights the European Union clear call for action to developing countries, since the first one is only willing to sign off for a reduction target of 30% in the context of a sufficiently ambitious and comprehensive international agreement that provides for comparable reductions by other developed countries, and appropriate actions by developing countries. The paper urges developed countries to limit the growth of their emissions from 15 to 30%, as well as to build a global market carbon by 2020, in order to promote cost-efficient emission reductions.

In the pre-Copenhagen negotiations held in Bonn, in June 2009, 38 developing countries joined on a common front to call for a separate discussions on actions of developed and developed countries under paragraphs 1(b)(i) and (b)(ii) of the Bali Action Plan . The main supporters of this call were Brazil, South Africa, India, China and Pakistan. Latin American and Caribbean countries, grouped around the Declaración de Cumana , also support this argument.

Since the Climate change negotiations started, it is expected that most of the non-industrialized countries excluded of the Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will constitute a powerful lobby de facto at the Copenhagen Conference. These countries consider that that the increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, with its disastrous consequences for life on Earth, is a problem caused by rich countries since the Industrial Revolution. Industrialized developed countries have therefore usurped the "environmental space" that would have rightfully correspond to non-industrialized nations for their own development. Rather than committing to reduce their emissions by 30% by 2020 (as proposed by the EU), developed countries included in the Annex I should repay their historical climate debt to developing nations.

Sponsors

Sponsors of COP15 include several major car manufacturers, an airline, and an air and ocean freight company. These industries are among the foremost producers of greenhouse gas emissions.

Sponsors listed on the COP15 website are:

• BMW – car manufacturer
• Cisco
• Deloitte
• DHL – air and ocean freight company
• Honda – car manufacturer
• Konica Minolta
• Lammhults
• Mercedes-Benz – car manufacturer
• Neutral
• PP Møbler
• Vangsgaard – manufacturer of "exclusive cars"
• Volvo – car manufacturer
• Inbicon
• Scandinavian Airlines – airline
• Velux

Conflict of interest?

The demographic of COP15 sponsors is strongly biased towards the aviation, automotive and freight industries. The rationale of liberal corporate sustainability advocates would suggest that businesses must be part of the solution to climate change and are not 'the problem' themselves. As Livio de Simone chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development stated in 1996, “Business used to be depicted as a primary source of the world's environmental problems. Today it is increasingly viewed as a vital contributor to solving those problems”

On the other hand, the involvement of highly polluting industries in funding a summit which hopes to achieve ambitious targets on carbon reduction can be argued to reflect a strong conflict of interest for companies whose profit is currently proportional to the carbon emissions of their products. This 'corporate capture of sustainable development' can be traced to the late 1980's, when corporations reacted to their portrayal as amoral and uncaring by environmentalists and saw the opportunity to promote a green image through the notion of 'sustainable economic growth' and corporate social responsibility, usually involving self regulation and domination of the sustainability agenda. . Antonio Gramsci - eminient Italian political theorist, describes how corporations absorb their enemies into coalitions he calls 'new historical blocs', formed to deal with a specific issue or public affairs campaign . Similarly political commentator Adil Najam notes how the use of sustainability rhetoric has wooed universities, NGO's and governments into various corporate partnerships which helped to promote business as part of the solution, as opposed to the problem . Political science academic Leslie Sklair also describes how corporate input to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development resulted in the definition of 'sustainable consumption' as addressing 'how the goods and services (including energy) required to meet people's needs can be delivered in a way that reduces the burden on the earth's carrying capacity'. The wording leaves 'needs' open to interpretation by commercial interests and advocates sustaining production and consumption levels, while reducing only waste. Others have argued that growth capitalism necessarily involves exploitation of resources, and a sustainable society must therefore minimise economic growth.

Oil and gas companies joined the sustainability bandwagon en masse in the late 1990's after the Exxon Valdez spill and the Brent Spa fiasco created a wave of bad press, and a renewables based image was deemed commercially prudent (BP's Beyond Petroleum campaign was one of the first and most notable of the reformed oil company images) . Business/government partnerships on environmental issues were also promoted by Kofi Annan at the 1999 World Economic Forum.