2 Is an international climate treaty worth fighting for?
In recent years there has been an increasing sentiment expressed that an international legally binding treaty on climate is unlikely to be agreed and therefore not worth fighting for. Several reasons are behind this pessimism. Most refer to the slow pace of the international negotiations and difficulty of reaching a consensus agreement among 197 countries as the main obstacle. Which is imaginable: we have been negotiating since 1992, and we are still not close to anything that resembles a real solution.
Others point to the current political difficulties around the issue of climate change in the United States and the fact that the conditions laid down by this country for a legally binding treaty (acceptance of a legally binding target by China and other major developing countries) are unlikely to be met. And yes, there is a huge conflict of interest amongst countries indeed.
At the same time, many hold the view that current economic circumstances make it highly unlikely that governments will be willing to take on international obligations that are seen as an expensive constraint on economic growth. It is important to ask the question if the drawn out and complex multilateral negotiations are really worth the effort. Should we not instead focus on national action and regional cooperation as a much more realistic way forward, at least in the short term? What actually is the added value of an international legally binding treaty? Should we give up on multilateralism? Should we focus on smaller groups that can deliver, for example the G20? Or should we rely on bottom-up action for now?
Here, I would like to focus on three essential questions of contemporary climate negotiations.
First: Is an international climate treaty worth fighting for?
Second: Why is the multilateral process so complex?
And third: If an international treaty is worth fighting for, what can be done to come to an agreement?
Is an international treaty worth fighting for?
Is an international treaty worth fighting for? It is, certainly for business. Probably the greatest benefit of an international treaty lies in predictability and stability. Although the costs associated with addressing climate change are seldom welcomed with open arms, many companies are far more concerned by the cost associated with lack of clarity on potential climate policy, both in terms of level of ambition and time. This is relevant from at least four perspectives.
If the nature of your business involves capital stock investments which may be written off over 30 to even 50 years, the long-term direction of the policy environment is far more relevant than where policy requirements stand today. Take the example of the European Union (EU). The EU commitment to reduce emissions in 2012 by 8 percent against 1990 levels can be achieved at relatively modest cost through energy efficiency and the deployment of existing technology.1 But European leaders have also committed to reduce emission by at least 80 percent against 1990 levels by the year 2050.2 The cost associated with achieving such goals is clearly a different story. Will European leaders stick to this commitment? What interim steps will be introduced? Which mix of policies will be deployed? Making the wrong assumptions in the absence of long-term policy clarity can result in a very expensive need to retire capital stock early.
Second, the flip side of this relates to all those entrepreneurs who hope there will be profits associated with the sale and deployment of technologies necessary to achieve ambitious goals to address climate change (both mitigation and adaptation). The absence of ambitious long-term commitments to reduce emissions almost by definition means a low cost of carbon and therefore greater difficulty for (relatively) expensive low-emission technologies to compete in the market. If technology developers could at least hold out to investors the prospect that this will change, that politicians will meet their long-term goals on time, things would change dramatically. Investments in climate-friendly technologies which appear expensive under the circumstances of today would be seen in a different light in the context of longer-term perspectives, for example, a binding commitment to remain within two degrees Celsius.
A third perspective of particular relevance to the business community is predictability and stability. All too often, elections result in (dramatic) changes in policy. Fiscal policies favoring, for example, renewable energy technology may be introduced by one government and revoked by the next. Similarly, licenses for coal-powered or nuclear electricity generation may be granted by one party only to be withdrawn by the next. Alternatively, natural disasters such as the recent earthquake effecting Japan may have political ramifications in an entirely different part of the world, as was the case when Germany abruptly decided to end its use of nuclear power.
What the three perspectives described above illustrate is that whichever side of the climate debate you may be on, national political preferences are unpredictable beacons by which to plot an investment course. Regional commitments, such as the stated goal of EU leaders to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century by at least 80 percent, may seem to provide a greater degree of predictability and stability, but certainly not anything close to certainty. “Even” in the EU, energy policy remains a national prerogative and EU policies in this area must be adopted by consensus. Similarly, the route by which to reach a long-term goal can be the subject of many years of heated debate.
A fourth perspective that is of particular relevance to the business community relates to the so-called “level playing field.” Companies often refer to a maintained level playing field as a prerequisite for (climate) action. They argue that if action is taken in only one country or region, economic activity will simply shift to a part of the world where compliance costs are lower, without there being any net benefit to the environment (also referred to as “carbon leakage”). Of course, there is no such thing as a level playing field. There are no two countries in the world where energy costs, the cost of raw materials, labor costs or taxation rates are the same. What underpins the notion of a level playing field is the concern that climate action only makes sense if it does not alter the economic status quo in such a way that economic activity is simply displaced without any benefit in terms of emission reductions.
An international treaty can help to ensure that the so-called level playing field is maintained. It provides a mechanism whereby the actions of one country or region can be measured against that of another. It can provide politicians with the means to explain to their voters that the burden of responsibility to act is beings shared reasonably. Of course what constitutes “reasonable” is actively the subject of interpretation. But at the very least the opportunity to compare effort in an international context provides a greater sense of security than making a leap of faith on one’s own, in the hope others will follow.
Recent history is littered with instances in which elections have led to a reverse in policy with negative consequences for those using fossil-fuel technology, clean(er) (energy) technology, or even both. At the same time, the unexpected will continue to lead to the unexpected: whether it is the German decision on nuclear energy described above, the consequences of the Arab Spring in terms of oil prices, or what the conflict between Russia and Ukraine meant for the European debate on energy security. In all of these areas an international treaty—and certainly an international legally binding treaty—can make a big difference. Although national elections can dramatically change the policy landscape, an international commitment is not lightly set aside. Of course an internationally agreed target does not mean all national policies agreed to achieve it are carved in stone, but having an international legally binding target does provide significantly more predictability and stability than not having one. For all its stated shortcomings, only one country has decided to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and renege on its related commitment.3
Much of the above relates to merits of international legally binding targets in terms of providing some of the predictability business needs to make climate-friendly investment decisions. Of course international treaties are about a great deal more than setting targets and enshrining them in some kind of legal form. If predictability is what business likes best, then what does it hate most? Inconsistency. Inconsistency can relate to the chopping and changing targets and the policies designed to achieve them.
There are many areas in which consistency and clarity can be provided more effectively through an international treaty than without one. To start, think of what generally comes at the end: reporting. One of the greatest frustrations of the business community relates to the myriad of reporting “requirements.” The word “requirements” has been placed between quotation marks because not all requirements are of an equal nature. There are numerous obligations companies must meet in terms of reporting on their products and production processes. These obligations are neither consistent nor uniform. In some cases deploying certain methods to accommodate interests in one part of the world may mean noncompliance with regulations in another.
Even for companies operating in a single market, reporting requirements can be taxing. For those operating in multiple markets the challenge only becomes greater. Then add to this the so-called voluntary reporting standards a company may choose to meet. Reporting may be voluntary, but the choice not to do it may have real financial implications. Being part of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index or the FTSE4GOOD may seem like a frivolous pastime, but not being part of them can seriously affect reputation, brand, and investor appetite.
An international treaty can help to bring (some) consistency into the complexity of reporting. Of course a climate treaty cannot (and should not) address reporting issues that relate to non-climate issues. But it can at least provide clarity in the climate domain. Twenty years after the Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed, we are still not able to say that “a tonne is a tonne is a tonne.” Companies are required to report their emissions in different countries in different ways. The number of activities subject to monitoring also varies. Thanks to the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the scientific community is striving to provide a consistent and increasingly comprehensive set of reporting guidelines. Without an international treaty this would be lost.
If predictability and consistency are key business interests an international climate treaty can help to provide, a third key benefit worth mentioning relates to flexibility. Although the three aspects (consistency, predictability, and flexibility) may appear to be mutually exclusive, they are not. As no two individuals or countries are the same, there are no two identical companies. While companies may value enormously the consistency and predictability provided by national and/or international policy frameworks, flexibility in terms of how a target is achieved has great value in terms of (cost) efficiency, without compromising effectiveness. One of the key components of the Kyoto Protocol is the flexibility it offers through a market-based mechanism. Emissions trading has become the key policy instrument of choice within the EU. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which provides industrialized countries the option of achieving targets through offsets in developing countries, has been a cost-effective way to achieve emission reductions at lower cost. Not only are there many relatively cheap emission reduction options available in developing countries (and many economies in transition), emissions trading and the CDM can be attractive alternatives to taking measures in company. Of course market-based mechanisms are not only possible in the context of an international treaty. Trading would happen in the EU with or without an international treaty. India has introduced a tradable energy efficiency certificate scheme, which constitutes trading in a portion of the domestic market and China plans to begin trading experiments in several provinces. But market-based mechanisms in the context of an international treaty do offer the added benefit of a much larger market within which trading can take place or where mechanisms like the CDM can be deployed. The potential significance of this was already pointed out more than a decade and a half ago by the IPCC. The IPCC estimated it would be possible to reduce global emissions by 20 to 30 percent by implementing measures that would pay themselves back through a lower electricity bill in two to three years.4 Most of these potential measures are available in developing countries and economies in transition. In other words, an international treaty which provides a global market can significantly reduce the cost (to business) of meeting climate goals. Much of the focus of business has been on the cost of mitigation. Logical, because governments generally pass significant portions of their emission reduction goals on to the companies responsible for the emissions we are trying to reduce. Ignoring the cost to business of the impacts of climate change, as well as the cost of protection against those impacts (adaptation) can be a dangerous mistake. In general, most of the cost related to climate impacts and natural disasters are borne by companies and their insurers.
Is an international treaty worth fighting for? It is, certainly for civil society. Observer organizations far outnumber government representatives at Conferences of the Parties (COPs)—environmentalists, farmers, women’s groups, youth, vegans, religions and organizations, and indigenous peoples—it is important that their voice be heard and their issues addressed. They also incentivize balance in the climate change agenda. For example, in recent years the climate negotiations have increasingly focused on adaptation. Given the international community’s failure to adequately respond to the climate challenge, there will be significant impacts of climate change, especially in developing countries. Their impacts will have consequences far beyond where they occur physically. Think, for example, of the 250 million people in Africa likely to be subject to additional water stress because of climate change as early as 2020.5 These people already live on the brink of subsistence and climate impacts are likely to push them over the edge. Will climate change directly or indirectly be a driver of mass migration? An international treaty allows for an integrated approach to the adaptation challenge. We pool knowledge to better understand challenges and pool resources to better cope with them. The Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol have created several financial instruments exclusively or partially intended to deal with the adaptation challenge. This is potentially much more effective than trying to cope with climate impacts or climate-proof future investments purely on a national or regional basis. Civil society also puts the intergovernmental process and nations under a spotlight and ensures that those “playing the game” actually play the game: negotiators actually negotiate to come to an agreement. Finally, adequacy. This is not new to civil society, but the international process offers a critical opportunity to measure the overall level of commitment against necessity (science).
Last, but certainly not least, governments will benefit from fighting for an international treaty. The impacts of climate change may be mainly environmental, but the solutions and interventions are fundamentally economic. Much of the political debate is about if others are doing their fair share. But purely national or regional approaches can have serious negative economic consequences, and an encompassing approach is vital to adequately answer the questions climate change poses. Modest steps can be taken alone, but ambitious steps must be taken together. Major steps can be taken together, for example to establish common frameworks for greenhouse gases to be included in reduction schemes and to come to common understanding on requirements for monitoring, reporting, and verification. Also, an agreement on means of implementation is key to both industrialized and developing countries. Industrialized countries can benefit from flexibility mechanisms and offsets, whereas developing nations can benefit from finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. A legally binding agreement provides governments more confidence that commitments will be met.
So, although negotiating an international treaty is obviously slow, complex, and frustrating, giving up on the process comes with clear disadvantages and missed opportunities. After the Copenhagen climate change conference, many declared the United Nations (UN) unfit for purpose in terms of the ability to facilitate an international agreement. Even several years before Copenhagen, voices were heard in favor of shifting negotiations to the G20, and the United States established the so-called Major Economies Forum as a platform to debate climate outside the UN. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has strongly advocated abandoning the top-down approach of international negotiations to focus instead on national and regional action.6
I have tried to show that although multilateral treaties are extremely difficult to negotiate, and negotiating them successfully can bring very significant advantages to governments, civil society, and, not least, to the business community. If this is correct, we should perhaps devote more time and effort to understanding why treaty negotiations are so difficult and doing something about it.
Why is negotiating an international climate treaty so difficult?
Negotiating an international climate treaty is difficult, and the complexity of the negotiating process itself is often given as the main reason. One-hundred-and-ninety-seven countries seek to reach agreement by consensus, with every conceivable (and often contradictory) view being represented. Until recently (COP17, Durban) negotiations took place in six main streams, with many smaller working groups operating in the context of each of them. This basically means that only the larger delegations are able to follow every issue under negotiation. Given that everything under negotiation seems to be linked to everything else and a great deal of horse trading takes place, progress can be extremely slow. Having all views represented also means the presence of those who would prefer to see no progress on some of the issues under negotiations. The complexity of the process offers almost countless opportunities to slow things down or block agreement. Also, climate science is work in progress. Yes, understanding of climate change has improved over years, but gaps still remain, hence making it an easy subject to criticize. In addition, climate skeptics are well organized and well financed.
Undeniably, the multilateral negotiating process is extremely frustrating. Equally undeniable is that much can be done to professionalize and streamline it. I would argue that these are investments worth making. For all their shortcomings, the climate negotiations delivered the Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Action Plan, the Cancun Agreements, and, most recently, the Durban Package. Every single COP (to the Convention and Kyoto Protocol) has involved small groups (of ministers) negotiating results on behalf of the larger community. Having everyone present does not mean everyone must be at the table and at the end of the day; consensus is not the same thing as unanimity. If there is an overwhelming majority in favor of agreement, agreement will be reached. This was demonstrated in both Kyoto and Durban.
Historic responsibility (greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for a long time) for climate change is often used by countries (and sometimes companies) as an argument why they should not be asked to act or to act less. The bulk of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere today were caused by countries which contributed very little in the past. Although the emissions of China are greater today than those of the US, the vast majority of developing countries have emissions that are insignificant on a global scale. The fossil fuel-related emissions of the entire African continent are less than 5 percent of global emissions.7 If historic responsibility is taken into account, then clearly the root cause of the climate-change problem lies with industrialized countries, not developing nations.
Some developing countries have used this to argue that developed countries should take their (historic) responsibility to act first, before developing countries are called upon to limit their emissions. They have also argued that any action they take should be conditional on financial support from rich nations, a concept which is enshrined in both the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. Especially in recent years the stark distinction between (rich) countries that have targets and (poor) countries that do not has become a growing source of conflict. Rich nations often use China’s status as the world’s largest emitter to argue that China (and other major developing countries) should also take on an emissions target. In turn, developing countries see this as moving the goal posts during the negotiations. They rightly point to the fact that the Convention, the Protocol, and the Bali Action Plan all clearly distinguish between those that should take targets and those that need not, as well as to the fact that some must provide financial support while others will receive it.
Of course the world is a very different place than when the Climate Convention was agreed in 1992. Many of the so-called “rich” countries that took targets upon themselves then are significantly poorer today than many of their developing counterparts at that time. Equally, negotiators often seem to forget that a target need not automatically mean a target to reduce. When the EU negotiated its internal burden sharing to meet Kyoto targets, Portugal was given a target of +27 percent, Greece +25 percent, Spain +15 percent, Ireland +13 percent, and Sweden +4 percent.8 Nevertheless, there is a strong feeling on the part of many developing countries that rich nations are failing to take their historic responsibility for having caused climate change, while trying to pass on the cost of action to them.
This sense of injustice is probably one of the main obstacles to a more constructive advance in the multilateral negotiations.
This situation is compounded by the perception that many obligations and commitments to provide developing countries with finance, technology, and capacity (building) remain largely unmet. Many of the Funds created under the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol remain under-resourced. There is endless haggling over what should or should not be supported financially. Developing countries often complain that the procedures applied by international financial institutions are complex, bureaucratic, and treat them as though they are inherently untrustworthy. On top of this many developing countries feel that the limited financial support being provided to them comes at the expense of shrinking rich country budgets for overseas development cooperation. In other words, that (aid) funding intended for poverty eradication is being re-labeled to pay for a climate problem poor countries have not caused. For many years, there was also a strong feeling on the part of developing countries that while climate change is an issue that has risen high up the political agenda of industrialized countries, it is not something developing nations can afford to worry about, at least in the short term. For these nations the overriding concern was and is poverty eradication. As a consequence there were frequent situations in the negotiations where some developing countries felt that they could and should hold back on agreements regarding mitigation action and commitments, until other commitments, especially in the area of finance, had been met first by rich nations.
As the impacts of climate change have become more noticeable around the world, this situation has begun to change dramatically. Whether it is the impacts of human-induced climate change, or the consequences of natural disasters, nations now recognize that failure to act on climate change will have impacts that go well beyond the natural environment. Most obviously the small island developing nations, such as Maldives and Vanuatu, have long recognized that a failure to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control threatens their very existence, given related sea-level rise. A broad range of other countries, especially those in South Asia and Africa, are also experiencing the consequences of drought, flooding, extreme weather events, and the like, with increasing frequency. This has begun to have a noticeable impact in the negotiations. The most recent agreements reached in Durban demonstrate that there is now a much broader group of countries that recognize all nations must take action to limit their emissions, while recognizing their (economic) ability to act. How this new realization is nurtured and supported through real international cooperation will determine the pace and success of international negotiations. For the time being, the overwhelming majority of developing countries does not see climate action as being their most immediate priority, and therefore make mitigation action they could take conditional on international financial support.
The sentiment that action to combat climate change runs counter to national economic interests is far from exclusive to developing nations. In many rich countries, developing climate policy has been a slow and painful process. Initially, when the climate science was not as clear as it is today, most industrialized countries were unwilling to go beyond mitigation actions that could also be justified from the perspective of (energy) cost saving. There was little or no willingness to fully price the cost of emissions related with the burning of fossil fuels, especially in light of the competitiveness concerns mentioned above.
This changed to some degree as the climate science became clearer and politicians began to see the potential advantage of mitigation action as a means to address other concerns such as energy prices and energy security. For example, in Europe concerns over dependence on Russian natural gas were a boost for the shift toward energy diversification, more renewable sources of energy, and greater energy efficiency. A number of countries, most notably China and Korea, also used their economic recovery packages at the time of the 2008 economic crisis to promote a cleaner and greener direction for economic growth.9
But this tendency has proven to be fragile. Certainly in Europe and the United States, the overriding preoccupation now is with the economic and financial crisis. Climate policy has been pushed onto the back burner as nations focus their limited resources on “bailing out” financial institutions or even whole countries. For all the stated belief in the importance of addressing climate change, the overriding political sentiment seems to be that this will have to wait until more pressing economic issues have been dealt with. The worry here of course is that the nature of economic recovery will be such that subsequently addressing climate change will become more difficult as investments lock in more “old” technology rather than new. The generally held perception that the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed, that the international negotiations are going nowhere, and that major developing countries are unwilling to make commitments, is not helping.
Basically, the core of the issue would seem to be that most nations feel it is currently not in their national interest to act significantly to address climate change. For short-term economic reasons they are unwilling or unable to fully price the cost of fossil fuels, they do not believe that the green growth model can be made to work—at least under current circum-stances—and they believe the short-term cost of mitigation action out-weighs the cost of postponing climate action while saving the economy first. Unless this changes, it is hard to imagine how we will manage to keep average global temperature increase below two degrees Celsius and avoid severe long-term impacts of climate change. Countries will not negotiate something they believe runs counter to their economic interests today.
At least part of the reason for this situation lies in how the international climate-change negotiations have been conducted and who holds responsibility for climate policy at home. Since their early days, the negotiations have been heavily dominated by representatives of environmental ministries. The ministerial segments which mark the conclusion of every COP are almost exclusively attended by ministers responsible for environmental issues. Finance and economy ministry representatives were in a distinct minority. They often saw climate change as an environmental policy issue and their main preoccupation was to minimize the impact of expensive climate-policy measures. At home the reality in most countries is that ministers responsible for environmental policy are not very high up the pecking order. The short-term costs associated with action to combat climate change must compete in national budget debates with proposed expenditures to strengthen the economy and create jobs. Under these circumstances few countries have chosen to act boldly on climate change.
Fortunately this situation is slowly beginning to change. In 2007 (in Bali) ministers responsible for the economy, trade, and finance for the first time held a meeting in parallel to the climate-change negotiations, a tradition the World Bank has sought to continue. Representatives of ministries of finance, economy, and transport are increasingly represented on national delegations. In the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, UN Secretary General Ban organized two summits specifically for heads of state and government. This helped to put climate on the highest political agendas and broaden the realization that action to combat climate change is basically in the interest of every nation. Ultimately some 80 of those heads of state and government attended the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. Beginning in Cancun in 2010 and subsequently in Durban in 2011 the responsibility of chairing the annual COP to the UNFCCC was taken on by ministers of foreign affairs, as opposed to ministers for the environment. This signified a growing realization that the climate negotiations are related to issues of significant national interest.
All of this is positive. Not only has climate-change science come of age, but so have international political efforts to deal with it. That the long-term cost of failing to address the issue is significantly higher than the short-term cost of dealing with it is now also broadly accepted. The fact remains however that there is currently very little appetite to incur cost today for the sake of significant savings tomorrow. I believe that the main reason behind this is that most people, even environmentalists, do not believe the green growth discourse deep in their hearts: the West has grown rich through dirty development, energy-intensive industries have been exported to developing countries, and there are few strong examples of willingness to change—even the EU 30 percent is conditional.
A plausible country-specific case for green growth remains to be made and the international circumstances needed to facilitate this remain elusive. Unless this changes, addressing climate change will probably be a long and arduous uphill struggle leading to too little action, too late.
If an international climate treaty is worth fighting for, what can be done to come to an agreement?
Have the negotiations delivered over the years? Yes, they have. The UNFCCC was set up, the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in two years, an extensive reporting structure was set up, market-based mechanisms were set up, the Copenhagen Principles were established, the Cancun Accord was agreed and the Durban Package was agreed. So although much criticized for their complexity and slow pace, the negotiations have made real progress in recent years. Although the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference “only” produced a political statement in the form of the Copenhagen Accord, this document was nonetheless essential in addressing some of the key outstanding political issues, including the long-term goal for action and the establishment of the Green Climate Fund. Perhaps even more significantly, at the Copenhagen Conference or in the immediate aftermath of it, all 42 industrialized countries submitted targets to reduce their emissions and some 40 developing countries submitted plans to limit the growth of their emissions.10 Together these countries account for over 80 percent of global energy related CO2 emissions; in other words near global coverage. Although these commitments are not enough to avoid a more than 2° Celsius average global temperature increase, they are a multiple of what the Kyoto Protocol achieved by way of avoided emissions.
Many of the important issues addressed in the Copenhagen Accord were formalized at the COP in Cancun in 2010. But Cancun went well beyond formalizing Copenhagen. It also provided a framework for implementation on which the 2011 conference in Durban was in turn able to build. While expectations for Durban were low, it nonetheless became a landmark event that has taken the battle to address climate change to new heights. Countries agreed to a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, made the Green Climate Fund operational, created a mechanism for matching developing country project proposals with finance, established a technology committee, put in place procedures for reporting on emissions and efforts to reduce them, decided to develop a three-year work program for the Adaptation Committee, and took a host of other significant decisions. Perhaps most significantly the Durban conference launched a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties to the Convention. A new group was established to undertake this work and complete it no later than 2015 with a view to the outcome being implemented from 2020 on. The new group prepared a work program at the Conference of Parties in Doha.
The significance of the Durban decisions many people point to lie, first, in the legal nature of the proposed outcome (a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force) and, second, in that the obligations of all countries will be discussed in a single forum. The language on the proposed outcome is clearer than the mandate provided in Bali in 2007 (an agreed outcome), but less precise than that provided in Berlin in 1995. Some would argue, and indeed have argued, that decisions of the COPs are legally binding and would therefore be in compliance with the Durban mandate. The notion of a protocol, a legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force that is applicable to all Parties is also not new. Both the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol are legal instruments that apply to all who are Party to them and that contain obligations for all Parties. A major source of contention has been that in both cases the obligations are different for different groups of countries. Consequently, there is room for interpretation on the two very issues that have been the greatest cause of contention in recent years: the legal nature of the agreed outcome and the commitments which apply to different (groups of) countries.
Here, what I see as the most important outcome of the Durban Conference will be crucial: the spirit of Durban. Durban was a sea change, opening doors to a global treaty in which all countries have commitments. Although the language of the decisions taken in Durban may be open to interpretation, the mood with which the Conference closed is not. Delegations refused to end the Durban Conference before it resulted in a significant agreement to take climate action to the next level. Countries agreed that the process needs to move to a next level with all countries taking obligations to act and to report on those actions, putting behind us a period in which targets only applied to industrialized countries and economies in transition.
The greatest challenges will be not to focus on sanctions, but on benefits, such as finance, technology transfer, capacity building, and carbon markets; and to keep the spirit of Durban alive, and ensure that the political will expressed in Durban is turned into a fully functioning, legal regime binding all countries to a level of action in line with the challenge the scientific community has made so clear.
If the key to successfully addressing the climate change challenge lies, as I believe, in successfully making the case for green growth, at least three related courses of action merit further exploration.
First and foremost the case for green growth needs to be made convincingly at the national level. Global analysis undertaken by international institutions has enormous value in deepening general understanding but will neither convince a parliament nor the people that have elected it. A convincing strategy must reflect national circumstances and set out a direction rooted in real policy options that are convincingly costed. Developing such a strategy needs to be based on a broad national consultation process involving different political interests, the NGO community, and the private sector. This is important if the strategy is to enjoy true support and survive beyond the next elections. The bulk of investments in the energy sector, in industry, and in economic activity in general are private rather than public. If this is the case at present, there is no reason to assume a green growth strategy would be any different. Therefore, the private sector must play a central role.
Second, many countries will require international assistance both to develop a strategy and to implement it. A wide array of international institutions exist that can help on both fronts. Part of the challenge is to ensure that their actions and interventions are placed in the context of nationally formulated goals and that delivery is coordinated and consistent. In that context I believe it is important that the Secretary-General of the United Nations be explicitly mandated to mobilize the UN system to support national strategy development and implementation and that through him (or her) different UN organizations are held accountable for how they deliver on national needs and priorities. Of course this means that the decisions taken (and resources mobilized) by all parts of the United Nations system (including the World Bank) must be in line with this. As a consequence, the activities undertaken by different UN agencies in the context of helping to develop and implement a particular national strategy would need to be explicitly identified under the overall responsibility of a single UN agency or institution. This can only be made to work if the governing bodies of individual organizations explicitly support such an approach. The greatest battle regarding coherence of the United Nations system needs to be fought in national capitals, not New York.
Third, a review is needed of the purpose the UN climate-change negotiations can best serve. As indicated above, the scope of the negotiations has increased dramatically over the years, making them ever more complex and interrelated. To my mind the focus needs to be twofold. First, a process is needed whereby the adequacy of national and international commitment to action is made real and measured. In Cancun (2010) countries already agreed that the long-term goal of mitigation action needs to be to limit average global temperature increase to 2° Celsius. In Durban, governments furthermore decided that this level of ambition needs to be raised, based on the outcome of the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. This goal must be translated into individual national commitments that are real, measurable, and verifiable. If climate change is a global challenge, all countries must make specific commitments in terms of how they will contribute to addressing it. This obligation is already enshrined in the Framework Convention on Climate Change. To address the issues of stability and predictability referred to above, all countries should make commitments that are legally binding. Of course not all commitments can be the same for all countries, nor can the consequences of non-compliance or the conditions under which such consequences are enacted. Especially for poorer countries, the ability to deliver on a commitment made will be partly dependent on the degree to which financial and technological support is provided. This means that not only the commitment, but also the means of implementation need to be real, measurable, and verifiable. This is where the coherent strategy support referred to above is so important.
Additionally, the UNFCCC negotiations need to provide the rules for effective implementation. This includes procedures for national reporting, as well as decisions on the use of market-based mechanisms and their supervision. In line with current practice the IPCC needs to be involved in preparing sound decision-making to the extent possible.
So, despite the complexity of the process, an international treaty is certainly worth fighting for. Business, civil society, and governments in all spheres will benefit. The process is nothing more or less than the sum total of its parts. If it works, it works because you made it work. The overriding challenge will be to ensure that multilateral negotiations are not overloaded with issues that can much more appropriately be decided at the national level, or implemented through international organizations with operational mandates. In future, the UNFCCC process needs to (1) set appropriate goals; (2) define modalities for implementation; and (3) monitor and ensure the implementation of agreements reached. At the same time, financial support, capacity building, access to market mechanisms, and technology need to spur greater ambition. In the end, an effective multilateral process and international agreement is vital to help governments, companies, and civil society to remain within our planet’s carrying capacity.
Notes
1 European Commission (2010).
2 European Commission (2011).
3 Although Russia and Japan have publicly stated that they would not join a “new” Kyoto agreement, these two countries have not formally withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, as Canada has.
4 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1995).
5 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007).
6 World Business Council for Sustainable Development (2012).
7 United Nations Statistics Division, Millennium Development Goals Indicators.
8 European Commission (2002).
9 OECD (2009).
10 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Conference of the Parties (COP) (2009).
References
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