NGOs disappointed with climate deal

Climate activists around the world had high expectations ahead of the Copenhagen summit [EPA]

The so-called Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding pact that will provide a framework for future climate talks, has been  heavily criticised by African nations and many of the non-governmental organisations that travelled to Denmark to lobby for decisive action.

Al Jazeera spoke to representatives of various non-governmental organisations to get their views on the deal.

“I think it’s a massive disappointment. We had two years building up to this summit in Copenhagen. Two years of raised expectations.

“We were hoping to see something really significant from world leaders. Frankly, they failed … we ended up with a fudged political deal that just isn’t binding.

“What we saw was a real failure of leadership on behalf of the world’s richest, most powerful countries.

“These are the countries that have pumped most of these emissions into the atmosphere in the first place, that are causing all these problems, hitting the poor countries first and hardest.”

“We particularly worry about the fact that the money that has been put in the document, it’s not clear that it’s additional to development aid budgets so it could be a sort of repackaging of finances already promised to developing countries, now under the name of climate change finance.

“It’s not all about money, it’s about closing the tap, about deciding to bring down the exhaust of greenhouse gases.

“I’m not sure that representatives from developing countries would be happy if they were to go home, bringing some money to deal with consequences of a problem they haven’t caused in the first place.”

“If you look at the speeches all the Western leaders were giving [in the summit], they were brilliant.

“They said it [climate change] was the biggest challenge of the planet. The only problem was, they didn’t come up with much in terms of action.

“The question is, are the rich people in the rich countries in the world going to be concerned about their impacts on the parts of the world … so far, they haven’t shown a great deal of inclination towards doing that.