Distrust among G7 & G77 nations was the prime reason for failure of COP 15. This is Part I of a 10 part COP failure analysis report and review of the OBAMA BASIC alternate deal.

1. WHY COP15 Danish Accord FAILED? The devil was in the details.
PART 1 DISTRUST
Comparing the DANISH ACCORD with the OBAMA BASIC Deal
MANIPULATING THE FOREST DEAL.
WHERE THE LOBBIES ARE THE SPONSORS
On arrival at the Copenhagen’s airport, the first sign the 17000 delegates and
the 30,000 activists saw was a giant billboard put up by none other than
Shell the oil monolith stating "What the world needs is a low carbon future"
Similar hoardings have welcomed COP conference delegates in every
conference over the last 15 years. Yes climate change conferences have
been traditionally sponsored by those very forces who are behind the carbon
emissions, the ecological devastation of forests and the mining operations.
The lobbies who supposedly sponsor the Climate Change Conferences also
manipulate the Climate change texts, taking advantage of their proximity to
the politicians and negotiators of both the G7 & G 77. We had anticipated the
pre- planned disruption by the lobbies in our 5 th December presentation
“COP 15 : Deal Sabotage at Copenhagen” http://bit.ly/XUrUd prior to the
Conference. Let us our see how and why it actually happened in practice,
because the seeds of such a sabotage were sown much before those wasted
weeks at Copenhagen.
In the coming weeks, we will be analysing each of the 10 reasons why the
Copenhagen Accord failed. Our analysis in the “Distrust” section shows that
the failure was solely due to the recurrent manipulation of the text by the
Danish hosts and several other influential political leaders. This was often at
the behest of the logging and fossil fuel lobby who were manipulating the
weighty politicians not only of the G7 but also of the G77. This has been the
common practice in the past 15 COP conferences, the reason why the climate
talks have become a farce in which the common man has lost faith,
We also back our thinking with proof and source references that the COP 15
Danish draft was a rigged document. Its failure was a boon in disguise, as far
greater damage would have occurred had the Danish Draft been adopted. We
try to give the proof of this sabotage now, by exposing the context of the
Danish Text and comparing it to the far superior OBAMA-BASIC deal enacted
at the last minute to salvage the semblance of a climate pact .

2. THE RIGGING OF THE FOREST DEAL AT BANGKOK
Two months before in Bangkok, a British negotiator deliberately removed
language from a proposed forest agreement that would have specifically
protected intact natural forests. Rumours circulated that the EU delegates had
been bought by the loggers and large payoffs made. It also seemed strange
that even when over 20 big nations like Brazil, Mexico, India and Norway
protested in writing, the EU still declined to put the words back in.
The doctoring in the forestry text by the British Delegate could remove the
difference between commercial loggers and local indigenous population. The
global logging industry being subsidized by governments to continue clear-
felling Africa and Indonesia, could claim the benefits for the communities
being left to live in strongly protected forests. Such text manipulations had
created a deep suspicion and distrust and negotiators from G77 who started
going through each line of the voluminous treaty with a toothcomb, even as
the G7 started pumping in new texts at the last minute. So the proceedings
crawled down to snails pace and ultimately resulted in its failure.
NORWAY BREAKS RANKS TO FORCE THE EU APOLOGY
However after being accused of wrongdoing by an European state Norway
who clearly had broken ranks with EU on emission reduction earlier by
voluntarily upping its emission cut targets , the EU buckled under pressure. A
clearly embarrassed Swedish spokesman of EU was forced to acknowledge
that the British negotiator had blundered. "It was an unfortunate mishap," he
said. "Sometimes negotiators think of tactical moves. In this case, he wanted
to wait until the Barcelona talks next month to reinstate” reported the British
daily The Guardian quoting the EU spokesman.
John Vidal the respected environmental columnist of The Guardian U.K.
reported the event in his column as early as 9th of October almost 2 months
before the Copenhagen conference started. He said “Eventually, the EU
admitted a mistake had been made, said the official had been "slapped" on
the face and it was promised the safeguards would be reinstated.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/09/british-logging-eu-apology
But forty days later, and with just a day left before the end of the last talks
before Copenhagen, the words were still not put back in the Danish Text
….and the status has not changed since.

3. EU’s TEXT MANIPULATION WOULD LEAD LOGGERS TO SEIZE
ADAPTATION BENEFITS MEANT FOR THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION
If the EU was able to force its way, the COP 15 draft would be permanently
scarred as the difference between the “Natural forests “ and man made
plantations would be permanently erased in the Climate Change Accords. The
benefits of adaptation would also pass from the poor indigenous population
struggling with the effects of climate change, to the loggers who supposedly
do logging called “Sustainable Forest Management SFM,” another
misleading terminology in the UNFCCC Vocabulary inserted previously by the
lobby ” In a cleverly devised booby trap the lobby had inserted this similar
sounding name to “Sustainable Management of Forests SMF” so that it could
be flipped with convenience at an appropriate time. The time had come for the
loggers had been caught cheating and faced prosecution and penalties.
It is well known that several big time loggers in Indonesia , Congo Basin and
South America have been caught in the act of destroying natural rainforests
and replanting those fertile lands with palm oil plantations or fast growing and
commercially remunerative species like eucalyptus , only to profit on carbon
offsets worth billions from the EU-ETS. The EU delegates were merely
ensuring that the text changes in the Copenhagen Accord helped them in
getting future offsets directly from the climate fund , so that the loot could be
evenly shared amongst the politicians, the EU administration, the verifier and
the industry.
THE LOGGERS HAVE THE LAST WORD IN THE DANISH ACCORD
The Doctoring in the forestry text by the British Delegate could make the
difference between the global logging industry being subsidized by
governments to continue clear-felling Africa and Indonesia, and communities
being left to live in strongly protected forests. However as it would be needed
to evade legal action against some big loggers who had claimed billions of
dollars of carbon credit by falsehood and deceit. These loggers had illegally
felled natural forests in Indonesia and Congo and planted palm oil plantations
and other fast growing varieties claiming billions of dollars in carbon credits
and were keen that the text changes stay to avoid penalties and prosecution.
They ultimately ensured that their was no accord at Copenhagen and the
changes in the text wrongly done by the British negotiator stayed.

4. Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has been lambasted by the
world’s media after the disappointing results of the COP15 climate summit,
but the initial Australian draft and the EU delegates continued attempts at
manipulating the accord are equally to blame. However it was not only the
forest draft which had been rigged, that sowed the seeds of distrust. Few
other issues will be discussed subsequently during out next articles of this
series, in a couple of days. Here we would now put forward what the what the
OBAMA BASIC deal has to offer on the forests as a comparison.
THE COMPARITIVE :
OBAMA BASIC TEXT OF THE FOREST DEAL.
This is the excerpt from the advanced unedited text of the Copenhagen
OBAMA BASIC deal issued and circulated by the WWF
"It is not very detailed and ambitious but apparently transparent and
attempting to address both the issue of REDD as well as of adaptation.”
“Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding as well as
improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance
with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support
enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to reduce
emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD-plus), adaptation,
technology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced
implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed
countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and
investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for
the period 2010 to 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and
mitigation. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable
developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island
developing States and Africa. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions
and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of
mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs
of developing countries.”

5. THIS IS THE FIRST OF A TEN PART ARTICLE ON COP 15 FAILURE
ANALYSIS AND THE RELEVANCE OF THE OBAMA BASIC ACCORD
THE SECTIONS WILL BE PUT UP BI WEEKLY IN POPULAR WEBSITES
WORLD WIDE FOR SUCH DOCUMENTATIONS. THE 10 PARTS ARE :
1) DISTRUST, 2) EQUITY, 3) TRANSPERANCY, 4) DEFORESTATION,
5) ADAPTATION, 6) FINANCE, 7) CLIMATE FUND, 8) KYOTO &
ANNEXURE I, 9) TECHNOLOGY RE-ASSESMENT,10) FUNDAMENTAL
DIRECTIONAL CHANGE
Our other presentations on COP15 http://tinyurl.com/luzxss , http://bit.ly/4kzzIz ,
http://bit.ly/XUrUd , http://bit.ly/79wmG4 , http://bit.ly/55yAsZ, http://bit.ly/5pPfBT etc.
For any Queries, Objections or Source confirmation of data please contact the
author Sandip Sen at sen.sandip@gmail.com