Extract from The Guardian
The emissions pledges are in and the world’s leaders are in town –
but there is a risk that progress will be smothered by old sticking
points
World leaders meet at COP21 in Paris. The stakes are high and the bar has been set low for what can be called a success.
Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media
At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 world leaders arrived at the
end and could not save it from failure. In Paris, 150 leaders came at
the beginning and were confident of success.
That is partly because the negotiators have reset what qualifies as a success – and not just to allow the leaders to pat themselves on the back. They decided that, counter-intuitively, they might achieve more by demanding less. But the new plan comes with a risk.
For more than 20 years, the world has been struggling to tackle climate change, worried about the cost of acting but always knowing it would cost unthinkably more to leave the problem unattended.
Now – in a deal to decide how far emissions are cut until 2030 – rather than horse-trading during the negotiations over what carbon cuts each country will offer, countries were allowed to pledge what they feel is a reasonable contribution to the accepted goal of limiting global warming to 2C.
Those pledges are in. That in itself is a remarkable achievement and the job of the leaders in Paris was to give some momentum to the negotiations on the deal that will surround them.
Leader after leader took to that task with passion in two simultaneous sessions on Monday that continued into the night to fit them all in.The US president, Barack Obama, came with a message of hope and urgency, saying climate change would “define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other”. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, set out the big steps his country had taken since its intransigent stance in 2009. Canada’s new premier, Justin Trudeau, declared that his country was “back”, in clear contrast to the less helpful attitude of his predecessor Stephen Harper.
The leaders of small island states pleaded, as they always do, for the world to think about what it felt like to face inundation. The Paris attacks were used as a rallying point. “Through our presence here today we show we are stronger than the terrorists,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared. Global leaders delivered the familiar warnings. “A political moment like this may not come again,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
But even though the mood was optimistic and the words were full of purpose, the attention of the 40,000 assembled officials and media drifted a bit when each leader got down to the details of exactly what their country was actually doing – even at the beginning when there were still plenty of them watching. And that’s the danger.
The pledges made so far will still result in global warming of at least 2.7 degrees, even if they are all met – much better than the 5C rise we might expect without action but still short of the 2C goal. Experience suggests there is a very big “if”, and negotiators have virtually given up on the idea that the pledges should be legally binding. Shirkers will face no real sanction, other than international opprobrium. And that means a system to check and report what each country does is critical.
But the rules for monitoring remain unfinished. The plans to regularly review and ratchet up the pledges to contain global warming to 2C or lower are not finalised either and will be critical. Developing countries argue they still need more finance. Those details matter.
Once the leaders are on their jets back home, sorting out the details will be the job of the same negotiators who have been talking about them for the past 21 years at scores and scores of these conferences.
The same things will divide. The developed world will demand verifiable commitments from developing countries like China, India and Brazil – who over decades of talking have become, or are becoming, the world’s major emitters. And the developing world will demand money to help deal with the climate crisis.
A weak agreement could still be hailed a success in two weeks’ time because the bar has been lowered and much of the work has already been done. But the real measure of success will be whether countries stick to and strengthen their commitments.
Only then will any deal match all the leaders’ first day rhetoric about really doing something this time.
That is partly because the negotiators have reset what qualifies as a success – and not just to allow the leaders to pat themselves on the back. They decided that, counter-intuitively, they might achieve more by demanding less. But the new plan comes with a risk.
For more than 20 years, the world has been struggling to tackle climate change, worried about the cost of acting but always knowing it would cost unthinkably more to leave the problem unattended.
Now – in a deal to decide how far emissions are cut until 2030 – rather than horse-trading during the negotiations over what carbon cuts each country will offer, countries were allowed to pledge what they feel is a reasonable contribution to the accepted goal of limiting global warming to 2C.
Those pledges are in. That in itself is a remarkable achievement and the job of the leaders in Paris was to give some momentum to the negotiations on the deal that will surround them.
Leader after leader took to that task with passion in two simultaneous sessions on Monday that continued into the night to fit them all in.The US president, Barack Obama, came with a message of hope and urgency, saying climate change would “define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other”. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, set out the big steps his country had taken since its intransigent stance in 2009. Canada’s new premier, Justin Trudeau, declared that his country was “back”, in clear contrast to the less helpful attitude of his predecessor Stephen Harper.
The leaders of small island states pleaded, as they always do, for the world to think about what it felt like to face inundation. The Paris attacks were used as a rallying point. “Through our presence here today we show we are stronger than the terrorists,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared. Global leaders delivered the familiar warnings. “A political moment like this may not come again,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
But even though the mood was optimistic and the words were full of purpose, the attention of the 40,000 assembled officials and media drifted a bit when each leader got down to the details of exactly what their country was actually doing – even at the beginning when there were still plenty of them watching. And that’s the danger.
The pledges made so far will still result in global warming of at least 2.7 degrees, even if they are all met – much better than the 5C rise we might expect without action but still short of the 2C goal. Experience suggests there is a very big “if”, and negotiators have virtually given up on the idea that the pledges should be legally binding. Shirkers will face no real sanction, other than international opprobrium. And that means a system to check and report what each country does is critical.
But the rules for monitoring remain unfinished. The plans to regularly review and ratchet up the pledges to contain global warming to 2C or lower are not finalised either and will be critical. Developing countries argue they still need more finance. Those details matter.
Once the leaders are on their jets back home, sorting out the details will be the job of the same negotiators who have been talking about them for the past 21 years at scores and scores of these conferences.
The same things will divide. The developed world will demand verifiable commitments from developing countries like China, India and Brazil – who over decades of talking have become, or are becoming, the world’s major emitters. And the developing world will demand money to help deal with the climate crisis.
A weak agreement could still be hailed a success in two weeks’ time because the bar has been lowered and much of the work has already been done. But the real measure of success will be whether countries stick to and strengthen their commitments.
Only then will any deal match all the leaders’ first day rhetoric about really doing something this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment