Journal Articles

The Making and Unmaking of the Copenhagen Accord

Lavanya Rajamani

International and Comparative Law Quarterly,

July 8, 2010

The Copenhagen Accord was reached among 28 Parties to the FCCC, including all major emitters and economies, as well as those representing the most vulnerable andleast developed. As deliberations remained deadlocked well into the second week of COP-15 when heads of state and government began to arrive, the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in a bid to salvage the floundering conference, organized a high-level negotiation, in parallel with the official negotiations, to agree on the elements of a political deal. Earlier attempts by the Danish presidency to obtain COP authorization, explicit or implicit, to convene a select ‘Friends of the Chair’ group to negotiate a deal, had been scuttled by some developing States that soughtpolitical and ideological representation rather than regional and coalition-based as is customary. The high-level negotiations, given the many twists and turns they reportedly took, did not link back to the official negotiations. The COP, therefore, had neither authorized the formation of a group to negotiate the Accord, nor was it kept abreast of the negotiations as they evolved.

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