A disaster from the perspective of aggressively tackling emissions, some positive developments can be gleaned from the climate summit.
There are two narratives emerging from the recently completed Durban climate conference. The first is from UN climate-change officials and insiders to the negotiation process who have heralded the result as a promising way forward to a future binding international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
The second narrative is from long-time observers of international environmental negotiations and NGOs who see obfuscation (if not outright lies by major emitters), an agreement to do essentially nothing in the short term, and the putting off of serious commitments until later, when it will make little difference for the climate.
Both narratives are right – and that’s terrible news for the climate, and for the millions of people who will suffer the consequences of climate change. This is not to suggest there is no value in maintaining the multilateral process, which, at the very least, preserves the momentum behind innovations and initiatives that have emerged outside the UN negotiations. But if success continues to be equated with keeping the process going rather than with making tough decisions, the multilateral negotiations will never succeed in producing an effective global response to climate change.
Here is what happened at the conference:
- 194 countries agreed, in the Durban Platform, “to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties.” These negotiations will begin in 2012, and are mandated to produce an agreement by 2015, which will come into force in 2020.
- It was established that the Cancun Agreements will continue to govern climate change in the interim, as countries are still obligated to work towards the (limited) emissions-reductions goals that they pledged in Cancun.
- Governments approved and operationalized the Green Climate Fund, which is designed to facilitate the flow of billions of dollars (up to $100 billion per year by 2020) to the most vulnerable countries to aid their adaptation to climate change.
- And, in what can only be characterized as a Pyrrhic victory, countries agreed to a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, to run from 2013 to 2017. The United States was never a party to the protocol, so this does not apply to it. The agreement also doesn’t apply to China and India, which had no emission-reduction obligations under the protocol. Russia and Japan signaled well before the Durban meetings that they had no intention of signing on to a second commitment period. Canada confirmed what everyone already knew would happen by officially withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on Dec. 12 (after destroying what was left of its international reputation on issues of climate change by trashing the protocol and telegraphing its impending withdrawal during the negotiations). That leaves the Europeans as the only major emitters committed to further legally binding reductions in the near term.
From the perspective of the low expectations now typical of 21st-century-style multilateralism, these outcomes do reflect positive takeaways. For one thing, the prospect of a legally binding global treaty is still on the table, when it seemed far-fetched even two weeks ago. It is also a breakthrough that India and China agreed for the first time, in principle, to negotiate emissions reductions comparable to developed countries. This was enough to bring the United States on board.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The gulf is large between agreeing to launch negotiations toward a relatively ambiguous end and accomplishing an effective, legally binding treaty that will move the world towards decarbonization. Launching new negotiations –essentially from scratch – does not make the politics that have hindered progress for 20 years any easier. Pledges to negotiate future agreements – as we saw with the 2007 “Bali Road Map” – have gone spectacularly unfulfilled in the past.
Moreover, while nations agreed, in principle, to ramp up their commitments in the coming negotiations, for now, the pledge-and-review mode of climate governance enshrined at Cancun will remain operative through 2020. This is what causes such outrage from those committed to aggressive action on climate change.
We are already committed to significant warming, and there is growing consensus that global emissions must peak in the 2015-2020 range if we are to have a chance of restricting warming to two degrees and avoiding some of the more serious threshold effects (melting tundra, disappearing ice caps, eco-system shifts) and climate catastrophes that scientists warn await us in a warming world. The Cancun pledges are utterly inadequate to meet the goal of peaking emissions by 2020, and it is a great unknown whether the size and speed of emissions reductions that remain to be pledged under the Durban Platform will be sufficient to aggressively confront climate change. Pessimism abounds in many corners because it will take startling political shifts from key players from as-of-yet unclear sources to change the fundamental dynamics of the climate negotiations and actually achieve the tough measures that are necessary.
Is it possible to see the global response to climate change as more than the band playing on while the ship takes on water? If there is room for optimism, we must look to how 21st-century multilateralism has catalyzed, and can continue to catalyze, substantive action beyond the formal international treaties that have been so disappointing. Mobilizing for action on climate change can be, and is being, accomplished through multiple channels in multiple locations even absent a co-ordinated international response. The best-case scenario is that the tentative steps forward at Durban provide encouragement and incentives for global city networks, regional emissions trading systems, corporate-NGO alliances, community activities, and more to redouble their efforts at decarbonizing the energy system and economy. Those activities may be our only hope for catalyzing significant climate action and the kind of political momentum and coalition-building that are necessary to make it possible to actually agree on an effective treaty by 2015. But, make no mistake, the complexity and scope of the problem are enormous, and we desperately need 21st-century multilateralism to do more than play the same old tune.
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Source: the Mark
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