The World Economic Forum's Dominic Waughray, Senior Director, Head of Environmental Initiatives is at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and blogs his impressions.

I was going to take a few moments to spell out where countries now stand at the beginning of the negotiations, but we had some excitement Tuesday with the leaking of the so called “Danish Document”. Let me come onto that, as well as perhaps the even more intriguing event in the US on Monday with the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) declaration that greenhouse gases are threatening to human health.

First, the starting positions. In a nutshell, the target to aim for is a 25-40% reduction by 2020 against 1990 levels by developed countries. This matches a reductions trajectory to 2050 of 50% overall (but up to 89% for developed countries). And this long term target is science based: it gives us a 4 in 5 chance of keeping average climate warming below about 2 degrees Celsius. 2 degrees Celsius is the line the scientific community have provided policy makers with, above which climate change starts to become dangerous. An easy but compelling book that sets out what a world of more than 2 degrees Celsius would mean is called Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas. Well worth a look.

So, the opening commitments to get us en route to a 2 degree world by 2020 are:

From rich countries:
• The EU 27 offer a 20% reduction against 1990 levels or 30% if other countries make big cuts too
• Japan offers 25% reduction against 1990 levels
• Russia pledges to match Japan if other countries also do the same
• US offers 17% reduction against 2005 levels (the figure in the Waxman Markey bill), which equates to about 4% against 1990 levels.
• Canada and Australia are offering less that then the US.
• The best in class is Norway with a 40% reduction target against 1990 levels
• On average, this gives us about a 15% reduction against 1990 levels for developed countries

From fast growing developing countries
• China offers a 40-45% cut in the carbon intensity of its economy (tonnes of carbon /unit of GDP) by 2020
• India offers up to a 25% cut in the carbon intensity of its economy by 2020
• Brazil has offered to curb emissions 38-42% from business as usual by 2020, including a reduction in deforestation by 80% by 2020
• South Korea has promised 30% by the same measure (equivalent to a 4% reduction against 2005 levels); Indonesia 26%
• Only South Africa is yet to provide some sort of target.

Keep a note of these opening scorecards. We shall track and see how they develop over the next 10 days.

Overall, it’s worth saying that if this were a pledging event, the opening commitments are welcome but move the needle perhaps a half to two thirds towards where we need to be by 2020. Can more be squeezed out? The coming days will tell.

Now, to the news of the day. We had heard comments a couple of weeks ago from excellent sources that a draft paper for a potential agreement was quite possibly being worked upon in parallel to the all-inclusive UNFCCC process. It was this rumour that had encouraged the so called BASIC group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) to create their own draft text as a counterpoint and to threaten to walk out as one if the so called Danish text took hold during the COP discussions. Well, today it seems a UK newspaper got the scoop on the Danish text. Here’s the link to the leaked paper http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-change if you want to read it directly yourself.

Does this matter? Well, the UK Guardian newspaper has certainly created a dramatic story from it. But in reality, while it is an unhelpful distraction, it is still early days in the talks. Lots of texts and working papers and non papers and ideas for this and that will be floating around. And some commentators think that aspects of the Danish paper – on finance for example – seem pretty good. So there is plenty of time to weave things together. And as Yvo de Boer the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC said today “the only formal texts in the UN process are the ones tabled by the Chairs of this Copenhagen conference at the behest of the parties." Some sensible early discipline to keep everyone in line.

But despite the noise, for my money here’s the angle in all this to really watch. The BASIC group and other developing countries would like the new agreement to be framed under the Kyoto Protocol, perhaps as a second commitment period. They would like to retain the protocol because of the measures it contains on financial assistance and technology transfer, because it is the only legally binding treaty in existence that makes countries reduce emissions and because the onus is squarely on developed countries to make quantifiable and absolute emissions reductions. Whereas, countries that never ratified the Kyoto Protocol such as the US would like these negotiations to develop a new agreement, perhaps different in structure from Kyoto and with potentially some different or new mechanisms. The EU27 are also sympathetic to this position. Herein lies the real challenge: what if it becomes apparent that parties are working towards two different sorts of agreement and that it becomes increasingly difficult to bring them together. Can two become one?

And underneath all this is another development, probably the most meaningful movement of all in the last 24 hours: and it happened in Washington DC not Copenhagen. It is the news that the US EPA announced greenhouse gas emissions as being dangerous to human health. This paves the way for the US EPA to enact direct regulation to curb greenhouse gas emissions within the US. This is an intriguing possibility, corroborating to some extent the corridor chat here over coffee, where well informed people are saying it may be very difficult indeed to get an effective Cap and Trade system into place in the US.

Quite some excitement for day 2. Let’s see what day 3 brings us.

I will try next to give you some of the key personalities involved