Forget Copenhagen. The next target for international climate change activism is Wellington. This week’s protests in the capital are just a warm-up for the big event in March

The largely abortive United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen produced one step forward in the battle to counter global warming: an agreement by 20 member nations to form a Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Emissions.

Billed locally as a New Zealand sponsored initiative, the formation of the research alliance was actually announced in Copenhagen by the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak and, in the United States, his Department of Agriculture pumped out the news under the headline: “United States Announces Global Research Alliance to Combat Climate Change”.

New Zealnd’s negotiating minister Tim Groser attempted to head the Americans off at the pass with a pre-announcement announcement of his own, hinting to media that New Zealand would be unveiling more details of its global alliance to cut greenhouse gases, and hoping that the formal announcement later in the day would be “spectacular”.

His effort at pre-emption gained little traction outside our shores – and our small step for mankind was largely lost in the chaotic and inconclusive effort to produce a formal declaration on greenhouse gas emission reduction goals that would see participating nations at Copenhagen make some binding, checkable commitments to ensure global warming does not exceed another two degrees Celsius.

The best the Copenhagen conference could do was sign an accord to “recognize the scientific view” that the increase in global temperature needed to be “below two degrees” to prevent dangerous interference with the global climate system and to agree to enhance the long term effort to combat climate change “on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development” – whatever that means.

Our forestry industry has been left to wonder just what is happening to the New Zealand effort to change the Kyoto convention land use change and forestry rules so no liabilities are incurred when an area of forest planted before 1990 is cropped and replaced by new planting elsewhere, and they recognize that the carbon contained in timber is not immediately released into the atmosphere on harvesting.

The New Zealand forestry proposals ran into stiff resistance from developing countries who saw them as either a cunning plan by developed nations to diminish their commitment to emission reduction, or a threat to their prospects of gain from incentives for the retention or expansion of their own forests.

So, that brings us back to the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Emissions. At this point, the most tangible gain we have from Copenhagen is that delegates from 20 to 30 nations will gather in Wellington next March to flesh out the structure and the programme that will harness international science to the task of reducing the most natural greenhouse gas emissions of them all.

How that is going to run in a land that largely loves free-ranging animals and abhors the genetic engineering of broccoli – and how much difference it will make in a world where agriculture only accounts for 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions – remains to be seen

According to global negotiator Groser, "I wouldn't be surprised if it's the next big event in the climate change calendar.”

Neither would I, especially after the events that occurred in Wellington at the beginning of this week.

On Monday, 50 climate change activists blocked the entrance to the NZX building in the central city and scaled the walls of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to mount a roof-top protest. Nine protesters were arrested at the stock exchange premises and two more were served with trespass notices and banned from being inside or outside the MFAT building for two years. They were all released without charge.

Speaking for the protesters, Gary Cranston told reporters: “We are kickstarting a movement on climate change justice in New Zealand. We can’t rely on governments to solve the problems.”

The protest plan had been agreed at a six day climate action camp in Moonshine Park, Upper Hutt, in workshops attended by some 250 people. Cranston says their actions were linked to a global movement which had seen 19 other climate camps held around the world.

According to the Climate Camp Aotearoa website, the camp offered “an incredible combination” of sustainable living, education, movement building, and direct action “to address the real causes of climate change and build a people's movement that can and will stop disastrous climate change.

When was the last time you felt you really made a difference at the ballot box?” the website asks.

“NVDA (non-violent direct action) gives you the chance to challenge and change that… Yes, it might mean breaking the law. But the law says war is fine.  The law says that making all natural resources a market commodity, is fine, that GM crops are fine, or that mining more coal and increasing our climate changing emissions is fine. And the same law says peaceful protest is no longer a democratic right. If you're waiting for a legal solution to the world's problems, you better be able to hold your breath for a very, very long time. Do we have that long?”

The Climate Camp site also identified a series of “targets” for direct action in Wellington: NZX, MFAT, the Ministry of Economic Development, Genesis Energy, Meridian Energy, the Major Electricity Users Group, the business-oriented Greenhouse Policy Coalition, the Shell and BP buildings, oil tanks, the Terrace Tunnel, the Mount Victoria tunnel.

It’s odds on that the happy campers will be back in March.