Ambassador: Turkey can also be a key player in climate change

Mikkelsen, in an exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman, evaluated Turkey’s position regarding climate change and Denmark’s preparations to host the largest and most important United Nations climate change conference in history, which started this week with the participation of civil society organizations and government officials from 192 countries.

The two-week conference, which is described as “last call” by Mikkelsen, convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by developed and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, but with major issues yet to be resolved, namely reaching an agreement on finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects of climate change.

Negotiations have dragged on for two years, but as Mikkelsen pointed out, signs of breakthroughs emerged recently, such as new commitments from the United States, China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The first week of the conference will focus on refining the complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival of environment ministers and the heads of state next week in the final days of the conference, which ends on Dec. 18. Turkey will be represented at the conference by President Abdullah Gül.

“I am very happy to see that Turkey will be represented at highest level. It is a good sign. Turkey, as an emerging economy, ratified Kyoto protocol and this is not an easy process. I think Turkey has shown a very good example,” he said.

According to him, Turkey has an important role on the global stage and especially after having seen what Turkish diplomacy can achieve in the region, it can play a similar key role for the climate change, too.

“It can be an example for the other emerging countries and the countries in the region. I have seen what Turkey has done in the region. Some kind of active diplomacy can be helpful for reaching a consensus in a very difficult international global process,” Mikkelsen underlined.

According to him, although the world has started to realize that the climate change summit is the last chance for the planet, since it takes so much time to organize these summits and since the Kyoto Protocol is expiring, if there is no action taken now, no commitments will be made in the future.

Mikkelsen also indicated that it might not be easy to arrive at politically binding commitments, but people are realizing that action must be taken.

“The basic issue is how developing countries can be assisted; they have to increase their industry, economic activity and also have to reduce their emissions. They don’t make the same kinds of mistakes that we did. New technologies are available and you can run your societies in a much more energy efficient way. Of course, agreeing on politically binding legislation for your future is also a challenge; all nations need to make commitments. But the people are realizing that if the Copenhagen summit fails it will take long time to prepare a new summit with the participation of more than 100 heads of state,” he says.

But according to him, it is a good sign that all these heads of state have decided to participate in the summit, indicating that they are ready to make commitments.

Mikkelsen underlined that the summit has been organized of the UN and Copenhagen is the venue of this historic and very important summit.

“For us it is an opportunity since we have a history of being very much focused on energy and the environment. For us it is an opportunity to show the world what we did for energy efficiency. For example, we have combined power and heating plants. In Copenhagen we burn all our trash and use it to produce energy and electricity, we can also learn from the experience of other countries,” he said.

He underlined that Denmark places great importance on energy efficiency and clean energy sources; it has a minister of climate change, the former minister, Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard is the president of the conference and is the most likely candidate to be appointed the EU’s next commissioner responsible for climate change.

But Mikkelsen underlined that they learned the hard way when they were hit by the oil crisis in 1973 and when they were obligated to ban to driving cars on Sundays and were shivering in the cold. “We were totally dependant on the fossil energy resources. But we were hit very badly by the oil crisis. At that point everybody realized that we had to do something and this triggered a fundamental shift in public policy. We realized that we had to change our energy resources. Since then we have become the main producers of the wind turbines,” he says.

According to Mikkelsen, there are lots of areas of cooperation between Turkey and Denmark in this field too. Turkey is a windy country and wind turbines have several sub-contractor fields, such as steel, which is another possible cooperation area.

He also underlined they are paying a great deal of attention to energy consumption in Denmark and its embassies abroad are no exceptions.

“This is a green embassy. We are using all kinds of devices to reduce energy consumption; we are paying utmost attention to not leaving our computers on when we are not using them for example,” he said.

Mikkelsen also underlined that Danish diplomacy was working very hard to have a successful summit and that they considered it a global task, adding, “It is a great responsibility for all of us, our children will ask us why the international community did not handle it in the Copenhagen summit.”