China and India have informally agreed to join the Copenhagen Accord, says the New York Times.

This is big news for the Accord, which has received lukewarm reviews and sporadic endorsement since President Obama flew over to the COP15 conference to try and put together a deal to save the UN meeting. China and India are the last two major economies to sign up. Of course, the world is still waiting on the U.S. to sign up for Kyoto…

To refresh: The Copenhagen Accord is 3 pages long and non-binding. 200 countries have signed on now, which makes most of ht world. The basic idea is that everyone who signs on agrees that:

1)   the world needs to limit global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees celsius beyond pre-industrial levels, and

2)    the world needs to spend up to $100 billion per year helping emerging countries adapt to climate change.

At the Copenhagen Conference, the countries in attendance voted to “take note” of the Accord.

The inclusion of China and India has only a minor practical effect but will provide a boost for the agreement’s credibility.

“After careful consideration, India has agreed to such a listing. We believe that our decision to be listed reflects the role India played in giving shape to the Copenhagen Accord. This will strengthen our negotiating position on climate change,” Reuters quoted India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh.

Ok.

It seems India is doing it as a strategic maneuver.  

What about China?

The NY Times writes: “China’s chief climate change negotiator, Su Wei, submitted a single-sentence letter saying that the United Nations ‘can proceed to include China in the list of parties’ signed up under the accord.”

They also report that Todd Stern, who leads the American climate change negotiating team, wrote in an email.: “The accord is a significant step forward, including important provisions on mitigation, funding, transparency, technology, forests and adaptation. More than 100 countries have agreed to be among the list of countries, and that number is growing. Moreover, all of the world’s major economies, representing over 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, have submitted pledges to limit or reduce their emissions under the accord.”

This is all well and good, and I’m glad to see everyone signing up on the same page, even if it is a non-binding agreement that wasn’t approved but taken note of. Quote unquote.

But the caveat is that no one is seeing much of a push to make something substantial happen this year at a Mexico City conference that will attempt much of the same work. Most comments right now are saying that there is little hope of a deal this year. Yves de Boer resigned and the IPCC is under fire for discrepancies in statistics in its report. Climate change science and the push to do something about it doesn’t have a whole lot of momentum right now.

Maybe it will be like a WWE match, where the guy looking like he is going to lose for sure is really the guy who will come back and win in the end?

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks (via Flickr under CCL)