[Note: This blog post is an edited version of tweets and
notes from my stay in Paris for the COP21 climate conference December 6-12,
2015. The unedited version can be read by clicking HERE]
The Setting: Paris was a City of Christmas Lights. The Eiffel tower flashed stroboscopically
every hour – while displaying messages about climate change issues. Many of those present at COP21 expressed a
sense of being present at a world historic event. The conference center was filled with drama
throughout the week.
The drama built in
the final days: The biggest
issues were termed “differentiation, ambition, and finance” (in other words,
the obligations of developing countries, the target maximum warming level, and
who would pay). Successive draft
agreements with scores of alternative phrasings set side by side in brackets
were printed and poured over by negotiators and observers – could any one of
these wording differences sabotage an agreement?
Dramatic
Conclusion: Early afternoon on
December 12, 2015 – a day after the conference had been scheduled to end – the
proposed final version was distributed to 196 parties (country delegations). Multiple
wording choices had been eliminated in a final up-or-down version of the
document. The drama reached its peak
when the conference president, French Foreign Minister Luarent Fabius, said: “I’m
looking at the room, I see the reaction is positive, I’m hearing no objection, the
Paris climate agreement is accepted!” The conference plenary hall, where all delegations
were present, rose as one to their feet with cheers and applause. But it was a
long and difficult process to get there.
Problem of
Consensus: For years it seemed dubious that a COP forum could reach a
meaningful agreement. Consensus on formulations
involving more than one hundred countries is very unusual. What could be done for climate negotiations if
there were just a couple of holdout countries?
In a bankruptcy, a judge can compel holdout creditors to accept a
“haircut”. The UN Security Council can take action against a country that is acting
in a way to threaten the peace or the security of populations (particularly genocide).
Plausibly, in an extreme scenario,
action for global climate protection could become a Security Council matter. Should
complete consensus determine global climate agreements? But consensus has been the COP rule and
somehow had to be worked with.
The Role of
Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs): In the agreed framework
- a key difference from the earlier Kyoto Protocol - each country submits an INDC
with its greenhouse gas mitigation, climate adaptation commitments and how it will
achieve them. It is new to this agreement that every country – developing as
well as developed - will present their plan to the world and update it at least
once every five years with the condition that each country’s new plan is strengthened.
Also, the INDC process gave a recognized
forum for countries that want to take a lead to continue to do so, being able
to point to agreements of other countries, even if not binding.
Role of Agreements
among Subsets of Countries: In addition
to the individual country INDCs in the COP negotiation process, key groups usually
involved big-emitters of greenhouse gases (rather than regional groupings as in
recent trade agreements). As the World
Resources Institute reports, China is by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas
emitter, accounting for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gases. But the US share is
over 14% - more than double China on a per capita basis. Add
European Union emissions to those of the US and China and half of greenhouse emissions
are accounted for. Adding India, Russia, Japan, and Brazil, accounts for over
two-thirds of all emissions. From the
viewpoint of reaching agreements these seven actors are relatively few compared
with the 196 countries that were parties at the COP21 meetings.
Small numbers
agreements can provide a big start: Probably most important was September’s US-China
agreement announced during Xi Jingping’s White House visit, that China ensures
its carbon pollution peaks by 2030, while US emissions fall at least 26% by 2025
(from 2005 levels). It is clear that this
and other pre-COP21 joint statements of agreement mattered. Such bilateral or small-group agreements were
complemented by larger-coalition formation that evolved during the process of
COP21 itself, notably including the “High Ambition Coalition,” which grew to
include the US and more than 100 other developed and developing countries.
High Ambition
Coalition: While prior declarations have emphasized a goal of keeping
temperature increases to now “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels, this Coalition pushed for explicit recognition of a new
aspirational target: a promise to “pursue efforts” to contain increase to less
than 1.5 degrees Celsius. By the way,
the weakened “pursue efforts” language seems to have been in part a compromise
with Saudi Arabia which wanted no mention of a 1.5-degree aspiration because it
implies the need for relatively rapid phase out of fossil fuel use. And apparently China disliked the High
Ambition 1.5-degree proposal also, calling it a kind of performance (i.e. a
publicity stunt). But the very fact of making 1.5C a reference
point may have real effects.
Central Role of
Market Mechanisms and Technological Progress: The agreement commits countries to transition
to non-carbon based economies by the end of the century. This is credible in part because of the
central role of market mechanisms; parts of the agreement – perhaps even its
signals - facilitate and incentivize private capital flows into renewable
energy and other climate-benefiting investments. Private initiatives also spur
complementary green energy investments, as seen from the fanfare accorded to
the Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Coalition (dubbed the 30-billionaires
club).
Importance of
Agriculture: Attention is needed also to agriculture, which causes
almost 25% of greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement features a prominent role of preserving and
reestablishing nature in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a cost effective
way - that also supports the nearly half of humanity that depends on natural
resource based livelihoods. It
appropriately stresses better planning of human land use, but also highlights
the value of preservation of intact ecosystems and biodiversity in nature. Incentives are to play a key role.
The UN Remains
Centrally Important: It is not
obvious, but simply agreeing to state shared aspirations could lead to real
change. Today, individual countries
provide substance, and agreements move up toward multinational agreements as
different groups of countries reach accords, which was critical to the
culmination of COP21. But the UN is
providing real leadership, through a framework for setting goals and targets
that reflect scientific knowledge; basic behavioral economics suggests that
reference point setting can make a real difference. Smaller sets of countries can build up
agreements that result in movement toward these goals.
Role of Local Communities:
Local governments and other state actors, environmental campaigners, and
corporations in various sectors can build on the 1.5C degree goal as a
framework for pushing policy and philanthropic goals, or taking corporate
actions that create good will (and even may end up saving money). For example, an often-seen protest sign read
“Keep it in the Ground” – apparently some estimates suggest that ¾ of all
fossil fuel reserves will have to be left un-mined or undrilled to prevent greater
than 1.5C warming. Talking with a few of
these campaigners (some of them students active in the divestiture movement), and
sensing their fervor, my guess is that this movement grows quickly.
Higher Aspirations
as Global Insurance: Among other
things, having such a 1.5 C-degree aspiration provides more insurance: 2
degrees C might be the best available estimate of a threshold for unacceptable
damage, but this estimate might be too high.
Extra insurance always costs more, but it can be worth it to reduce the
risk of catastrophe. And in general,
targets often get missed by a little bit in relation to a publicized visible
reference point: so better to overshoot 1.5 degrees by half a degree than to
overshoot 2 degrees by a similar amount. Another reason to seek more stringency is
because technical evaluations have suggested the INDCs submitted so far – even
assuming they will be fully realized in practice – still result in much higher
expected warming (about 2.6 degrees C).
Country Insurance: The insurance theme was sounded in various
ways. As expected, progress and problems
of providing rainfall insurance to farmers was discussed. My interactions at the conference clarified
and stressed the need of developing countries for country-level climate
insurance, living as they do with increasing risk and uncertainty. While that point is clear, I hadn’t
appreciated the scope of substantial activities already implemented. Two groupings of countries, one in the
Caribbean and the other in Africa, have been willing to pay into such funds
despite their limitations, making this a more commercially viable
strategy. Payouts to participating
countries have already been made. But so
far, these insurance systems have important limitations. Participants agreed that there were
significant opportunities for improvement; including risk that measurements
will be wrong or indeed that the wrong kinds of data measurement will be prioritized. Likely, there may be some related incentive
issues to be resolved.
Some final notes: Going forward, there are plenty of
opportunities for important research projects.
Some address questions about climate insurance. Others will address unsolved problems in
mechanisms for mobilizing and allocating funds for climate adaptation in least
developed and vulnerable countries. Generally,
there is a need for more integration between the setting of targets and
economic analysis of costs and benefits of alternative strategies to achieve
them. Much research, policy analysis,
and political balancing remains to be done.
But this month, in the City of Light there was also Enlightenment.
Enough at least to remind us that the world is not yet covered in
darkness.
Mr. Stephen Smith, Ph.D.
Director. Institute for International Economic Policy, and
Professor of Economics and International Affairs, GWU;
Friend of FACS.
