PARIS (AFP) — Less than two months after it was hastily drafted to stave off a fiasco, the Copenhagen Accord on climate change is in a bad way, and some are already saying it has no future.The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the United States and China, to avert an implosion of the UN's December 7-18 climate summit.Savaged at the time by green activists and poverty campaigners as disappointing, gutless or a betrayal, the Accord is now facing its first test in the political arena – and many views are caustic.Veterans say the document has little traction and cannot pull the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards a new global pact by year's end.Political momentum is so weak that so far only two negotiating rounds have been rostered in 2010, one among officials in Bonn in mid-year, the other in Mexico at ministerial level in December.Worse, the Accord itself already seems to have been quietly disowned by catalog printing China, India and other emerging economies just weeks after they helped write it, say these sources."Publicly, they are being bubbly and supportive about the Copenhagen Accord.
tag heuer replicaIn private, they are urinating all over it," one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.The Accord's supporters say it is the first wide-ranging deal to peg global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and gather rich and poor countries in specific pledges for curbing carbon emissions.And it promises money: $30 billion for climate-vulnerable poor countries by 2012, with as much as $100 billion annually by 2020.Critics say there is no roadmap for reaching the warming target and point out the pledges are voluntary, whereas the Kyoto Protocol – which took effect five years ago next Tuesday – has tough compliance provisions for rich polluters.Anger among small countries sidelined from the crazed huddle in Copenhagen was so fierce that the paper failed to get approval at a plenary session.That meant the Accord's credibility rating is based on what happened on January 31, a brochure printing self-described "soft" deadline set by the UNFCCC.Under it, countries would register their intended actions for tackling carbon emissions and say if they wish to be "associated" with the agreement.The roster on actions is nicely filled, but there are glaring gaps in the "association" side.China (the world's No. 1 polluter), India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as Russia among the developed countries, have all failed to make this endorsement.The US sees this as backsliding which could return negotiations to the finger-pointing and textual nitpicking that brought Copenhagen so close to disaster.Its climate pointman, Todd Stern, said last Tuesday that he believed the big four developing countries "will sign on.""The consequences of not doing so are so serious – in a word, leaving the accord stillborn, contrary to the clear assent their leaders gave to the accord in Copenhagen."The Chinese and Indian governments, questioned by AFP, declined to comment on specifics of their positions.
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