Background ,Context and Goals

CAN’s member-driven policies are directed by the common goal of preventing “dangerous climate interference with the climate system” (as enshrined in the Article 2 of the    UNFCCC) while at the same time promoting sustainable development under the overarching principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities”.  Further, CAN already shares a broad understanding of what this will entail: The industrialized nations must take the lead to reduce both their own and global greenhouse-gas emissions, and they must do so in ways that are substantially based upon differentiated but comparable efforts that take due account of wealth, capacity to act and present and historic atmospheric greenhouse gas loading, both absolutely and on a per-capita base.

In all of this, equity is the critical factor. The climate crisis will not be successfully resolved unless stringent and immediate actions are taken by countries, actions that ensure an effective climate solution, according to principles of capacity to act and issues of equity and justice. Obviously, this is not a matter of piecemeal and incremental change. Yet at the same time, practicality and realism are critical necessities.  Resolving the tensions here will not be easy, which is why the CAN General Assembly has decided to take the extraordinary step of organizing an international conference.

The intergovernmental climate negotiations do not take place in a political vacuum, but in a world of power games and changing hegemonies. Volatile energy and commodity prices; a major food crisis; an historic financial crisis, terrorism and security concerns, and the failure of the Doha round of trade negotiations are all additional issues that are shaping international relations and politics today.

 Bitter resentment and a well-justified lack of trust between and amongst developing and developed countries form the backdrop to the UNFCCC process and cannot be left out of the big picture.  Understanding the historical, economic, social and political antecedents of this picture is essential to understanding climate politics. A key example: The EU is not only negotiating a climate regime with G77 countries, but trade agreements as well.  The same is true for China and the US. These things can't be overlooked when talking about equity. 

The Kyoto Protocol was critical in its time, but it’s time is passing.  It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from (most) industrialized countries by 5% relative to 1990 levels by 2012, but the IPCC says that these countries need to reduce their emissions by 80 to 95% by 2050.  It divides the nation of the worlds in two frozen categories – Annex 1 and Non-Annex 1 – that cannot possibly encompass the range of national circumstances or the nuances of responsibility, capacity, and differentiation that any viable global accord will have to account for.  It is effectively silent on the issue of adaptation. Meanwhile, the Millennium Development Goals aim to halve global poverty by 2015, a level that, even if achieved, would still leave more than a billion people surviving with less than 2 dollar/day.  In this context, it is necessary to be blunt. 

 Before the developing countries join the Herculean mitigation effort that the science now tells us is necessary, two conditions must be met.  First, the post-2012 regime must enable greater climate resilience, and adaptation on the necessary scale.  Second, it must be designed so that, at the very least, it does nothing to push the critical goals of human development and poverty alleviation further from realization. 

 Against this backdrop, CAN-International is gearing-up to influence the inter-governmental negotiations leading up to an historic decision point (COP 15 in Copenhagen, December 2009).  As CAN develops its ideal outcomes and strategies in the run-up to Copenhagen, it needs to step back and reflect on how an unprecedented transformation to a low carbon future can come about in a world still plagued by shocking levels of poverty, exclusion and growing inequality.  Its success in influencing the future climate regime may well hinge on its response to the present plight of the world’s majority. 

 Thus, it is essential that we forge from the complexities and ambiguities of “the equity debate” a shared understanding that’s concrete enough to guide us, not only in our evolution as a network but also in our engagement with the UN negotiations.  At the minimum, we must define a list of essential elements that, taken together, can stand for our common understanding of equity and its demands, and which we see as essential to the success of the Copenhagen process.  

The Equity Summit

Thus purpose of the summit is to assist CAN in moving to a broader strategic vision and thus enhance its ability and the ability of its members to bring about the far reaching changes necessary in society and to bring about the large global agreements needed. For CAN, clearly, should be advocating a grand bargain in the negotiations, and should engage the negotiations in a strategic as well as tactical manner.  Doing so, however, will require a more effective and inclusive structure.  Thus, this summit will be part of a broad process, the aim of which is to create a common vision and guiding principles for CAN.

The starting point of the dialogue is the acknowledgement that moving on (from the Berlin Mandate, through the Kyoto Protocol, to the Bali Road Map) necessitates new strategies, deeply grounded in the problem of developmental equity in a climate-constrained world, and that the NGO community needs to really think this through, to the point where it has a broad and widely shared sense of a way forward, one that is specific and concrete enough to serve as a useful guide to action.  This “rethink” can only come about if CAN’s activists – a diverse and globally far-flung community – can be provided with some real autonomous space, rather than only getting together in deadline-oriented venues focused on the COPs and their constituent texts.

This space creation is particularly important now that a number of new groups have joined CAN. If they are to see CAN as theirs, they must experience it as a ‘Melting Pot’ in which their interests and opinions are taken seriously. At the same time CAN needs to insure its continued relevance to its existing members and to becoming clearer about the “glue” – the overall equity dimension – that can hold the climate movement as a whole together in the battle to define a common strategy capable of holding the warming below the crucial 2oC threshold.