15—Global Climate Governance Flashcards
When was IPCC established? Why?
IPCC was established in 1988 by the UN Environment and the World Meteorological Organisation when scientific evidence on climate change reached high levels of consensus and called for action to reduce GHG emissions and adapt to the already-present climatic changes. Since then, numerous assessments have been released
What did the Kyoto Protocol provision?
—It set country-specific emission reduction targets for industrialised countries only (-5.2% CO2-equivalent on average based on 1990 levels by 2008-2012). It also had a compliance system with sanctions
—It introduced the joint implementation of projects based in industrialised countries, the clean development mechanism for projects based in developed countries (i.e. countries are also allowed to reach their goals by investing abroad and an emission trading system between governments of industrialised countries. It expired in 2012.
What are the key points and criticalities of the 2015 Paris Agreement?
Key points:
- Bottom-down approach (NDCs)
- “Fair and ambitious” NDCs
- With the CBDR principle introduction, for the first time, high-income countries recognised their major responsibilities.
Criticalities:
- The US were not part of the Protocol
- It needed eight years to enter into force. At that point, the current situation would have called for more severe measures than the ones initially designed (e.g. China)
- China’s incredibly fast economic growth and related emission increases questioned the Kyoto Proctol’s classification of Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 country
[Reflection]
What were the biggest shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol?
[Reflection]
How have the responsibilities of high-income and low-income countries changed over time?
[Reflection]
What was the problem in Copenhagen? What went wrong and how can we explain it?
- There were no concrete measures for CO2 reductions for 2020 and 2050
- India declared that it would present the results of its work at COP 16 the next year, not to prejudge alternatives to a legally binding instrument
- India, China, Brazil and South Africa agreed on a common line: not to define any exact reduction targets at Copenhagen’s COP, due to national energy politics
Reflection]
Have things changed since 2009? How and why?
- With the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries opted for bottom-down voluntarily set contributions (NDCs) rather than top-down imposed reductions target
What is the PA structure?
Hybrid: enshrines both bottom-up and top-down approaches to global climate governance. In particular:
- Domestic policy is left to governments
- International legal obligations to develop, implement, and regularly strengthen actions.
- National policies are subject to a robust international transparency system and global reviews
What were the principal positions during negotiations?
The EU, a coalition of Latin American countries (AILAC) and most island states (AOSIS) wanted:
- Mandatory and quantified national mitigation
policies
- Legal obligations to communicate them internationally upon ratification, in order to make treaty participation contingent on binding domestic action.
- Europeans also insisted on regular and synchronized policy updates every five years, to ensure that successive mitigation commitments represent a progression
beyond previous policy efforts.
The US
- against legally binding mitigation and finance
China:
- a strong legally binding character for general obligations to act but weak international transparency of national policies
- strongly against a proposal for external expert review teams with access to developing countries opposed regular policy stocktaking and wanted to delete references to a global policy review
Long-term goals:
1. The coalition of island states (AOSIS) wanted zero net global emissions by 2060–2080
2. The EU preferred science-based 80- to 95-per cent emission reductions by 2050
3. A coalition of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs, including India, China, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia) opposed quantification and wanted only weak qualitative goals
4. The US wanted a vaguer “decarbonization this century,” to signal a global transition away from fossil fuels without setting a clear deadline.
5. 106 states demanded preventing a temperature rise of 1.5°C. Northern countries preferred 2 degrees instead
What about the financial commitment and liability and compensation?
The coalition of island states (AOSIS) sought after an institutional process to address permanent loss and irreversible damage
All developed countries united against provisions that could lead to liability and compensation and blocked the creation of institutional arrangements
- Several Northern countries opposed making financial commitments and even suggested reversing previous pledges of climate finance
- In the end, they accepted a G77 demand for establishing a goal “from a floor of $100 billion dollars per year” by 2025.
What compromises were achieved?
- The LMDCs sought a continued, sharp distinction between developing and developed countries that defined previous international treaties
- India demanded financial contributions that are obligatory for developed countries and voluntary for developing ones.
- Northern countries wanted to replace simplistic ‘binary differentiation’ with a more nuanced and flexible differentiation that reflects national capabilities for both mitigation and finance.
- The Umbrella Group, the EU and Switzerland wanted an expansion of the donor base and rejected “unacceptable bifurcated proposals [by the G77] for quantified commitments for public finance by developed countries only”
- China:
Lost on:- legally binding actions in the North
- had to concede global stocktaking and stronger international transparency than they liked
Won over - the battle over differentiation in both finance and mitigation
Output: - a subtle differentiation remains between developed and “other” countries, “in light of national circumstances.”
- The US:
Lost on:
- on their mandatory and progressive evolution of national actions
- and financial differentiation
Won over:
- weakened legally-binding character of national actions - The EU:
- Lost on:
- quantitative global emission targets and restrictions on bunker fuels from international aviation and shipping
Won over:
- quantitative global emission targets and restrictions on bunker fuels from international aviation and shipping
- transparency, finance, and loss and damage
- Lost on:
- Island nations:
- Lost on:
- adaptation and loss and damage
- Won on:
- the 1.5-degree limit as an aspirational goal of the treaty.
- Lost on:
What elements were key in reaching the agreement?
Secrecy and legitimacy played a major role.
- The French Presidency managed to accommodate different interests through reciprocal trade-offs in closed-number and secret meet-ups between countries
- Other countries were not aware of these tradeoffs until the final draft was presented, making it inconvenient to publicly oppose
What are the PA’s main provisions?
- A global objective of holding the temperature increase to “well below 2 C” and to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C” (Art. 2)
- “All Parties are to undertake and communicate
ambitious efforts” (Art. 2) - an aim of reaching global peaking of emissions “as soon as possible” (Art. 4.1)
- “Each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions that it intends to achieve” (Art. 4.2), to be revised every five years, with strongly worded language throughout the text guaranteeing progression over time.
- Developed countries “should continue taking the lead” with economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets, while developing countries are under a weaker obligation and
“should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time toward economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in light of different national circumstances” (Art. 4.4) - “Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing countries” while “other Parties are encouraged” to provide such support voluntarily (Art. 9)
- The accompanying Decision includes a provision that, after entry into force, Parties shall set a new collective financial goal “from a
floor of USD 100 billion per year” (par. 54) - The PA also establishes a market-based mechanism for sustainable development and carbon trading, proposed by
Brazil and strongly supported by Japan and other developed countries, whose modalities are to be finalized later - Global stocktaking is to take place in 2023 and every five years thereafter, with comprehensive scope to reconsider mitigation, adaptation and finance policies. Compliance mechanisms are weak, with a “facilitative” committee whose work is “non-adversarial and non-punitive” (Art. 15)
What are PA’s failures?
The PA Failed:
- to address the African Group and other Least Developed Countries’ special circumstances
- to establish an international dimension for adaptation policies
- to provide possible claims for liability and compensation
- to specify the international division of labour for reducing emissions
- to establish an exact connection between national mitigation policy “contributions” and the global policy goals
What are the PA’s outcome and impact?
Outcome:
- The 2014 bilateral agreement between China
and the US
- Persuasive argumentation and social learning were key factors in persuading policymakers in other countries:
- Korea’s concept of “green growth”
- European arguments about ‘win-win’ solutions, backed by hard data and combined with ambitious unilateral policies in Europe
Impact:
- By the opening of the Paris conference, 186 governments had declared national plans covering 94 per cent of global emissions (UNFCCC 2015b)
