Concluded with a piece of “Copenhagen Accord” that is not legally binding, thirteen days of seesaw battles on Denmark’s negotiation table did not yield any substantial results. Neither did the end of another twelve days of climate change conference in Mexico a year later in 2010, marked with a "Cancun Agreement" that achieved nothing but money – the Green Climate Fund. For years, state leaders have gone home almost empty-handed. The international community, hitherto, have not accomplished the mission to complete the negotiations on the international climate change regime for periods from 2012 by late 2009 as enshrined in Bali Roadmap. Copenhagen and Cancun summits all proceeded within the UN’s framework agreed in 1992, but a comprehensive, all-encompassing and legally binding climate change deal which many activists and governments want remains out of reach for the world. Actually, is the current climate change negotiating framework outdated? To answer this question, we have to analyse briefly the outcomes of both conferences first.
Copenhagen Summit 2009
Great expectation meets with great disappointment. Copenhagen Summit is now recalled as a fiasco for its chaotic haggling among dozens of top leaders. The principal negotiations just took place amongst 30 countries. In lieu of traditional major powers, the deal was hammered out by only five countries – Brazil, South Africa, India, China and the United States, the largest emitters of greenhouse gases (“BASIC+US”). This five-nation gathering, representing a thin cross-section of the global community, provided a snapshot of the changing geopolitical map. (Karaim, 2010)
Copenhagen Accord was neither legally nor politically binding. There were no emission cuts targets and no commitment that all countries would one day sign up to a successor treaty to Kyoto Protocol. The conference just ‘took note’ of the Accord, but not adopted it in the plenary session. Countries were left to decide whether to participate in the Accord or not, which signifies a departure from its umbrella UN climate convention. The process of reaching the Copenhagen Accord can be described as a ‘UN paralysis’.
To this end, some attributed the farcical ending to the nightmarish complexity of climate negotiations (AFP, 2009), which involves issues from finance for poor countries, emissions credits and verification of pledges to reporting of national emissions and the counting of forest “sinks” ('MRV'). The summit had also been repetitively interfered with procedural objections by certain countries. While the “DNA of the nation-state itself” was blamed, most participants condemned as well the “DNA” of the UN process (i.e. the bureaucratic and awkward UN process of reaching a unanimous agreement amongst all the countries), which is doomed to failure in this context. (Harvey, 2009) This is an everlasting structural problem in the UN’s process. Negligence of it may weaken, if not paralyse, the role of the UN in future climate and other environmental negotiations. The situation is well adduced by a European official who said, “The biggest backlash from what has happened will be directed at the UN system, not on climate change”, and voiced exasperation with the negotiation architecture under the UN Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (AFP, 2009)
Copenhagen Accord is positive in that it reiterated the principles of "double-track system" and "common but differentiated responsibilities" for developed and developing countries, which in turn defended the Bali Roadmap. However, in reality, the most positive meaning of the Accord lies on the UN’s negotiation system and its ‘face’ being rescued.
Cancun Conference 2010
Some opined that in Cancun the world has moved away from the post-Copenhagen paralysis. (BBC News, 2010) In December 2010, Cancun Conference proceeded ‘quietly’ and the media found it difficult to follow. After the lesson of “Broken-hagen”, prior to the Conference, many parties had expressed that they would be “pragmatic” and “low-key” in this round of negotiations. Thus, it appeared these two words became thematic throughout the Conference. “Pragmatic” and “low-key” are actually speaking for the current crisis of international climate change negotiations.
“Cancun Agreement” established the Green Climate Fund where money would be channelled from the West to developing nations, a formal recognition that current emissions pledges need to be bolstered and a framework agreement on paying countries not to cut down their forests. All other such arrangements as deeper emission cuts, mechanisms for negotiating deeper emission cuts and deciding on the legal status of any new global agreement, which are desperately needed for countries suffering from the consequences of climate change, were missing. Same as Copenhagen Accord, Cancun Agreement was still a lot less than the comprehensive agreement which many countries desired at Copenhagen Summit in 2009 and continue to seek. Delegation chief Pablo Solon was most concerned about the commitments which would not be forged under the Kyoto Protocol and pointed out that the combined reduction in emissions negotiated in Cancun was just 13-16%, which means a global temperature rise of more than 4°C. (BBC News, 2010)
Although “Cancun Agreement” distinguished the “common but differentiated responsibilities” between developed and developing countries (i.e. all countries work together to keep global warming within 2°C and developed countries promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40% from 1990 levels by 2020), the difficult negotiations on the second commitment period of developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol are being further postponed to the climate change conference in South Africa in 2011. It has demonstrated that negotiating parties sought a few ‘common grounds’ (money and technology transfers) while tolerated lots of ‘differences’ (delaying negotiations on pledges of emissions cuts and shares of responsibilities). That is what “pragmatic” really meant and remedied the authority of UN’s systems. The “substantial achievement” in Cancun Agreement may help pave the way for a more comprehensive, if not legally binding, agreement in Durban later this year.
In fact, the high level of enthusiasm over tackling global climate change seen from developed countries in Copenhagen was no longer seen in Cancun. For instance, Japan, Russia and the United States demanded repealing the framework of Kyoto Protocol. It was considered out of date because under the Protocol only developed countries are obliged to reduce their emissions while developing countries do not. They demanded an emission-reduction framework in which all major countries, particularly China and India (being the world’s largest polluters nowadays), participate.
Summit fiascos striking UN systems
“The part-failure of Copenhagen has in fact shown the limits of an UN’s system ‘out of breath,’” commented by Le Figaro, a French newspaper. (Barluet, 2009) This viewpoint is disseminating in the West where some officials and scholars have suggested that Copenhagen summit had shown that UN-sponsored conferences were not the most effective solution to climate change problem. Some Western think tanks like the Center for American Progress who has proposed to explore other options, or at a minimum start using some alternative forums such as G20 and the Major Economies Forum. (Reuters, 2009) Apart from the West, China’s chief negotiator, Su Wei, said in Cancun “I am against bargaining over the climate change issue. Each party should be clear about its duty and try its best to handle the grave challenge to the entire mankind on the basis of its own capacity,” (China Daily, 2010), which implied his serious concerns about the current crisis of the UN’s negotiation system. A more convincing remark comes from the former UNFCCC chief, Yvo de Boer, who agreed that his agency’s process was “large, cumbersome and diverse” and “it would be far more effective to just address climate change in the G20”. (AFP, 2009)
UN system flaws
Every summit is a 194-member arena which proceeds by consensus and a sheep-and-goats division of rich and poor, which in turn leads to major repercussions for controversial issues in climate change negotiations such as commitments for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In accordance with the UNFCCC adopted in 1992 at the famous Rio Earth Summit, decisions have to be made by unanimity, between countries as different as the United States and the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu with a population of just over 12,000. (Reuters, 2009) The rules enshrined in the Convention are virtually sacrosanct. Few people could foresee, at that time, climate change would aggravate so rapidly and viciously as it is today, or that China, India and Brazil would become massive carbon polluters within two decades. In the multilateral climate change negotiations today, these rules offer almost infinite potential for foot-dragging and textual sabotage by certain countries, given the mountain of complex issues involved. For example, the then British Prime Minister and some Western media accused China of holding the Copenhagen summit “for ransom” in 2009.
The failures in Copenhagen and Cancun (though a little progress made), according to some analysts, are fundamentally attributable to the deficient DNA or fragility of the UN’s process. That unanimity rule threatened to derail the Copenhagen conference since only five nations fashioned the Copenhagen Accord outside the official UN framework and developing nations insisted any text be reviewed in a plenary session of 193 countries. Despite ceaseless negotiations and disgruntlement in the conference hall, the host country Denmark was reluctant to table it for plenary review for fears that it would take too long for the whole world to draft one text, leading to days of lost negotiation in a tense stand-off. A plenary meeting on the last night of the Conference illustrated squarely how difficult it was to reach unanimity. (Reuters, 2009) Finally, the Danish hosts and the UN muscled in on the Conference to “pass” (actually “take note of”) the Accord using administrative means, but “take note” means some provisions, including the call for setting up a Copenhagen Green Climate Fund through UN mechanisms, cannot occur without a conference decision to accept the Accord. (Karaim, 2010) The Accord being the product of a small group of leaders from five nations, the UN’s system was impinged as its efforts no longer fit in the global crisis.
Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, suggested that “The Framework Convention is actually now an obstacle to doing sensible things on climate change. Climate change is such a multi-faceted problem that we need to find sub-groups, multiple frameworks and initiatives to address it.” (Karaim, 2010) A European negotiator in Copenhagen delivered this comment: “We have seen all the limits of the system in the past two weeks, in terms of unity, the endless series of interventions and points of order.” Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists echoed that the UN is certainly not an efficient process that moves at lightning speed to address climate change. He further argued that the system’s problems lay in the lack of political dynamism. (AFP, 2009) It is essentially posing a question that whether nation-states have it in their “genes” to address a worldwide challenge when national leaders tend to defend national interests rather than the planet’s.
International climate negotiations a ‘bad debt’
In fact, twenty years of international climate change negotiations have been a ‘bad debt’. From the UNFCCC in 1992, Kyoto Protocol in 1997, to Bali Roadmap in 2007 and Copenhagen Accord in 2009, other than China and Brazil which have truly attached importance to and made efforts to mitigate climate change, the United States have been refusing most of the binding international actions. Japan and Russia have done almost nothing but sloganeering. Although the European Union undertake all the pledges in Kyoto Protocol, most of their emission reductions have been done through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in developing nations. The effectiveness of CDM in reducing global carbon emissions remains a heated issue of debates worldwide.
UN managing the crisis
Cancun Conference was in reality to ‘extend’ the UN’s system for international climate change negotiations. If there had not been any consensus on “baseline” issues in Cancun round, the UN’s negotiation system would have gone to collapse. Fortunately, Cancun Agreement at least showed some progress from the post-Copenhagen paralysis. Having sensed the crisis, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, had more than once articulated that a gap of trust exists between developed and developing world and governments must agree to make progress in the issues still unresolved, prior to the Cancun conference. Meanwhile, against the US who is believably the lion in the way, the UNFCCC chief had pronounced that “For 20 years now, the world has been waiting for the US to act on climate change. It’s not going to happen soon, so other countries should move ahead regardless [of the absence of the United States]”.
UN still the best platform -
Some developed nations should be blamed
Notwithstanding the fundamental blemishes in the UN’s systems, the developed nations are not ‘valiant’ enough to tear off the Convention and write off the current negotiation system when a better alternative for the global issue concerned about human survival is not yet available. The United Nations remain the best platform for the world to reach a binding climate change. Even though the UN’s process may be inefficient, the genuine crux of failures on negotiable tables for years is, as Meyer suggested, the developed nations’ declining political will in international cooperation and shirking off their historical responsibilities.
Compared with 1997 when Kyoto Protocol was signed, developed nations present a significant regression in maintaining the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which can be reflected from the following aspects:
· On negotiation tables developed nations attempt to combine the double-track negotiation system launched since 2005 into a single-track one, blurring the boundary between developed and developing world;
· Their emission reduction pledges are much lower than 25-40% recommended by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);
· The financial assistance for developing nations is insufficient. Based on the estimation of the EU themselves, at least US$150 billion has to be provided for developing nations annually in order to combat climate change, but the amounts that developed nations have promised during negotiations are far below the amount needed.
Apart from the declining political will of developed nations, it is evident that before and during negotiations, developed nations have been attempting to split the camp of developing nations. Many high-profile NGOs are consistent in their opinions that developed nations should be responsible for the failures in multilateral climate change negotiations. For example, Sierra Club considers that the US Senate should be held responsible as it refused to ratify President Obama’s climate bill last year though it was passed in the House of Representative as early as mid-2009.
Undoubted, the UN has been widely recognised for its leading role in the history of international climate negotiations. Nevertheless, since Kyoto Protocol which established mandatory responsibilities of emissions reduction for developed nations was reached, the West, especially the United States, began, on one hand, setting up barriers for UN’s negotiations, on the other hand, advocating the UN’s negotiation system being problematic, inefficient and difficult for decision-making, using the ‘excuse’ that major polluters are not included in the climate change regime in their capacity of developing nations. Many developed nations demand to abandon the UN’s negotiation system, but in fact are diverting the world’s attention and escaping from their vested obligations. If developed nations did not create difficulties for others on the negotiation tables, where would be the flaws in the UN’s systems? So for the last two decades the UN’s negotiation system has become an awful mess.
In the shadow of the crisis emerged in Copenhagen a year before, Cancun Conference became no more than a confidence-building exercise. Conference attendees had understood that getting entangled with core issues such as emission reduction targets and the second commitment period under Kyoto Protocol would lead the world to nowhere. Last December, the US still adopted a tough stance and was not as eager as they were in 2009 under the influence of their mid-term elections; The EU insisted in extending the Kyoto Protocol conditionally, showing a great reversion compared with a year before when they had been adamant in raising the emission reduction targets; Japan and Russia had enunciated they would not participate in the subsequent negotiations under Kyoto Protocol. With no bona fide from and difficulties created intentionally by developed nations, negotiating on core issues is doomed to failure. Ruined at the end is the common business that tackles climate change. Ruined is the UN’s negotiation system that is based upon the “common but differentiated responsibilities” principle and, in particular, the mandatory responsibility of developed nations stipulated in the Convention.
Irreplaceability of the United Nations
Under the current nation-state system, the United Nations were not perfect in the past, nor are they present and future. However, we have no better choice as they are already the best mechanism and platform we have at present. There are three major reasons for the irreplaceability of the current system.
Firstly, the UN is the bedrock in the area of combating climate change which is not easily to be substituted by any other mechanisms. The UN is the main provider of scientific information on climate change. It is the main convenor and promoter of international climate negotiations. The United Nations are also the main organiser of global climate tackling networks and partnerships.
Secondly, the United Nations are the most suitable dimensionally for dealing with climate change. Climate change is a typical global problem that warrants global solutions and hence necessitates global collaboration. Developing countries, especially the small island states, support the role of the UN vehemently because it preserves their voice and guarantees the process is less insecure on paralleling ground and the deal more legitimate. (Reuters, 2009)
Thirdly, dumping the United Nations and setting up a new system entails very high time cost, which does not favour global fight against climate change. Both the UN Framework Convention and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been building capacity since 1992 and there is not any other institution that came close to their experience on this issue. (Karaim, 2010) After 20 years of international climate change negotiations, the mechanisms and principles of global climate cooperation have been established and the international community has reached basic consensus. Building a new negotiation model would be too energy and time-consuming. As a result, the world would miss the best timing to combat global climate change.
G20 not the solution
As aforementioned, some have proposed to use G20 or the Major Economies Forum, with fewer parties on the negotiating table, as a new platform to seal a binding agreement which addresses global climate change. Their main argument is that the carbon emissions of G20 member states account for over 85% of the world’s total. “Underlying weakness” in the UN climate process demonstrated, it would be far more effective to just address climate change in the G20. (Reuters, 2009)
Proponents of the G20 substituting the UN framework may be correct from an emissions point of view, according to the former UNFCCC chief, Yvo de Boer. However, it is incorrect from an equity or an environmental point of view, because “what you don’t have around the table is the 100-odd countries that have contributed nothing to climate change, who have minuscule economies but who are on the forefront of dealing with the impacts of climate change.” It is exactly the mission of a multilateral process such as the UN’s to forge a solution to a global problem, which may impact the least politically powerful first. The rationale here “is to ensure that we address global issues like climate change equitably, taking the concerns of all into account.” (Reuters, 2009)
Both financial crisis and climate crisis are global problems, but they are of huge difference. Tackling the financial crisis is short-term action, lasting for 3 to 5 years at most. In contrast, tackling the climate crisis is rather a long-term mission, lingering for 30-50 years at least. Therefore, the scale of these two issues totally differs. Financial crisis comes in full fury and so it is time and efficiency that must count first; climate crisis is lingering, it is the fairness and legitimacy of international cooperation that count more.
Moreover, the two crises are in different dimensions. Financial crisis, from beginning to the end, requires swift reaction. But when tackling climate change, greenhouse gas emissions are everywhere already and all-encompassing and long-term solutions are required. The G20, thereby, is capable of solving financial crisis, but not climate crisis effectively.
The way forward – Streamlining of UN process
In Copenhagen, heads of state came in and crafted a climate change pact independently of the UN’s process. The role of UN may be somewhat diminishing, but there will still be many roles for the UNFCCC to fulfil. For example, the UN climate change secretariat would help monitor actions by developing nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions, one of the thorniest issues at the UN summit. The comment by Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resources Institute’s climate and energy programme, tells us some insights about the direction of UN system reform – “I don’t think it’s the end of the UN’s climate role but it’s a new model inside of it”. (Reuters, 2009)
Instead of discarding the United Nations, the world should strengthen and streamline the current UN’s process to increase the efficiency of international climate change negotiations and hence, build up the post-2012 international climate regime soon. Nobel laureate James Buchanan in the Calculus of Consent suggests three directions of organising our affairs: simple individual actions; voluntary contractual agreement; enforced collective action. (Buchanan & Tullock, 1962) In Copenhagen, mutual trust is not found among the interest-oriented countries. Failing the first and the second, philosophically, only the third one – “enforced collective action” (i.e. an international institution enforcing mandatory and monitoring mechanisms) – is the hope to avoid going into a cul-de-sac.
See the full article published in the International Journal of Green Economics, Volume 5 (No. 3). Geneva: Inderscience Publishers (Forthcoming, Nov/Dec 2011).
- AFP. (2009, December 20). Copenhagen failures strike at heart of UN system. Agence France Presse .
- Barluet, A. (2009, December 21). La «diplomatie climatique» a dessiné un nouveau monde. Le Figaro .
- BBC News. (2010, December 11). UN climate change talks in Cancun agree a deal. BBC News .
- Buchanan, J., & Tullock, G. (1962). Calculus of Consent – Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. USA: University of Michigan Press.
- China Daily. (2010, November 30). China hopes for positive outcome at Cancun conference. Europe China Daily .
- Harvey, F. (2009, December 22). UN agrees to reform climate process. Financial Times , p. 13.
- Karaim, R. (2010). Climate Change. In C. Researcher, Global Issues (2010 Edition) (pp. 420-421). Washington DC: CQ Press.
- Reuters. (2009, December 21). Weak climate deal highlights U.N. flaws . Reuters .
Email me at winstonkm.mark@googlemail.com
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