CONNIE HEDEGAARD, the EU’s climate chief, has been hailed the heroine of the Durban meeting that reached an unexpectedly solid outcome in the early hours of yesterday.
“She is very, very good and we are very lucky to have her,” says Chris Huhne, the UK energy and climate change secretary. “She held everything together in a very impressive manner – a class act.”
Ms Hedegaard, once the youngest person elected to the Danish parliament, was the architect of the EU plan to gather developed and developing economies together for the first time in a legally-binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In striking the deal, Ms Hedegaard saved the UN process of negotiations, which without a deal at Durban would have fallen apart.
Her manoeuvring also forced China to acknowledge that it will take on commitments on an equal legal footing to developed countries. “You could hear the shifting of tectonic plates,” said one diplomat. “This is hugely important not just for the climate talks but in geopolitical terms.”
Key to her success was the hardline attitude Ms Hedegaard adopted. Developing countries, including China, have long insisted that the 1997 Kyoto protocol should be extended when its current targets run out in 2012.
EU member states are virtually the only countries willing to do so. But while some member states wanted to offer the extension as a matter of course, Ms Hedegaard had other ideas – it would only be agreed if developing countries also signed up to her road map.
That would entail committing to curb emissions on the same legally-binding footing as the rich world, as an acknowledgement that the distinctions between developed and emerging economies have changed since 1997.
Up to the last moment, negotiators for other countries were briefing that the EU would concede an agreement was not possible. But in the final minutes, the EU agreed a phrase that it said would ensure future commitments were binding. – (Guardian service)