Decoding Durban: Deal or no Deal? Deal, for a Deal Later (Part 3)

What shapes the Durban outcome

In a conference held for 36 hours longer than scheduled, the round-the-clock marathon-style negotiations culminated this agreement which is somewhat amphibolous after a close examination. Interesting is that we can see a ‘swap of roles’ between developed and developing countries in carbon emissions compared with the situation in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was passed. Today, ironically the reasons for developed countries asking developing ones to accept the Durban agreement is exactly what the former US President, George W. Bush, said when he refused to ratify the Protocol in 2001. After all, what are the factors shaping the Durban Package this year?

Last year, Japanese delegates cast doubts on the main provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. There had not been much progress in both Copenhagen and Cancun. Actually what was left to the Durban conference is two-pronged - 

(1) The share of responsibilities between rich and poor countries: The “common but differentiated responsibilities” emphasised in the Kyoto Protocol became a high hurdle for the conference. As a EU official has suggested, the old mentality stressing on north-south divide where the north is subject to mandatory commitments and the south voluntary ones is outdated. China is a developing country and its emissions, responsible for 23% of the world’s total, is a lot more than the US. Developed countries consider their efforts mean a little without the collaboration of other developing ones. But developing countries accentuate that they are not in the position to take over this historic problem and insist on voluntary reductions; and

(2) Aid to developing countries: The economic engine of developed countries has powered off after the financial turmoil, especially for the pioneer of climate reforms, the EU which is now too busy with the Eurozone debt crisis. Sources suggest that the EU has raised funds worth €4.68 billion to aid developing countries adapt to climate change, but a large fraction of it is only repackaging of aids in previous systems. Since Cancun conference, developed countries pledged to raise US$100 billion for developing countries by 2020. Thus, such €4.68 billion is a drop in the bucket.

Solving these two problems completely should be a key benchmark to manifesting any ‘real’ success in the Durban summit, which is regrettably not the case this year amidst the worst financial crisis for over half a century. It is not a propitious moment to negotiate a global climate deal that touches the nerves of people desperate for growth. “The resolutions reached at dawn didn’t bring light for the public. Instead, it cast shadow on global climate cooperation”, said Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International. However, relative to the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreement, the Durban Package, coming out of an impasse overcome, is already a step closer towards a global climate treaty.

Delegates could seal a last-minute deal in Durban mainly because of three reasons: (i) A consensus on the necessity to tackle climate change has been there among the international community. Climate change is a realistic, long-standing challenge for sustainable development and international cooperation is a must; (ii) Addressing climate change is consistent with the current socio-economic transformation and the promotion of sustainability; and, the most importantly, (iii) Developing countries including BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) were willing to make compromise and be flexible in this round of negotiations.

In the conference hall these were demonstrated. First, while the Kyoto Protocol was born with defects developing countries recognise its symbolic significance and want to move the climate regime forward. That is where a general consensus to tackle the universal challenge of climate change was seen. Next, as regards initiating new legally-binding international climate negotiations (i.e. the Durban Platform) required by developed countries, developing countries made major concessions from adamant resistance to acceptance. It is where we can see their flexibility and even the sacrifice they made on the negotiation table this year.

The Durban conference, as mentioned above, did not end up with a ‘deal of numbers’ because of the limitation of the Kyoto principle. In a climate conference, the two biggest wrestlers are the US and China. On the share of responsibilities to tackle global climate change, China embraces the support of BASIC with the partnerships of G77+1 (77 developing countries + China). In February 2011, BASIC already discussed their negotiation strategies for Durban in their sixth ministerial meeting in New Delhi. On the other side, the US aligns with the European Union which was proposing a roadmap that has gained support of the AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and the poorest countries. The US’s camp inclines to “common” whereas China’s camp to “differentiated”. Although delegates agreed to seal a deal covering all countries by 2015, such insistences may still severely divide both camps in Qatar conference hall where they will really negotiate on the ‘numbers’.

The UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne, gave a comment which best explains the hindrance of such US-China divide to the conference: “A global deal covering all major economies is an absolute necessity…But if the EU alone signs up – without comparable commitments from major emitters including the US, or major emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India – then we won’t have achieved much. The EU, responsible for just 12% of the world’s emissions, would be left sitting alone in a global framework – without the rest of the globe. That will not do.”

 

In Durban, specifically, China stressed much on the “common but differentiated responsibilities” in the Kyoto Protocol with developing countries committing themselves to “voluntary emissions reduction” targets while not bound by any mandatory quantitative indicators. One of the key points of China’s “constructive proposal” is the developing countries self-setting their own targets to be included in the new treaty.

Of course, the West did not accept such emissions reduction plans in ‘voluntary’ and ‘put-on-records’ style. Their baseline was that all major economies have to shoulder the “common responsibilities” of mandatory emissions reduction with quantitative benchmarks. The EU’s roadmap, presented in Durban conference, proposed a post-2020 binding mechanism and negotiations on its quantitative indicators be completed in 2015.

Compared with China’s position two years ago when it resisted any binding commitment in Copenhagen, actually, this top emitter and leader of emerging economies is keener to propel the Durban climate talks. China’s top climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua laid out conditions under which Beijing would accept a legally-binding climate deal that would go into force after 2020, when current voluntary pledges run out. The conditions include a renewal of carbon-cutting pledges by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol, along with hundreds of billions of dollars in short- and long-term climate financing for poorer countries. The conditional acceptance China offers has in part responded to the requirement of its Western counterparts.

Dramatically, the camp of developed countries is also divided by the Kyoto Protocol to which the US, Canada, Russia and Japan had been negative before the conference started. Staying strong and united throughout the summit, the European Union, however, played a leadership role in pushing forward the negotiations in collaboration with less developed countries (LDCs) and AOSIS. It was proven to be a formidable force in the conference hall. That is why Chris Huhne called it “a great success for European diplomacy” as they have “managed to bring the major emitters like the US, India and China into a roadmap which will secure an overarching global deal.”

The United States, who has been the lion in the way in climate negotiations, was a perfect ‘quiet man’ in the conference hall. To keep his job for four more years, President Barack Obama faced a dilemma and could only lose through having a high-profile delegation. If Obama signed up any emissions reduction targets, he would be pilloried for being soft - especially if the parties to which he made concessions included China. But if he stood out against a majority of other countries trying to move forward on climate change, as happened at the Bali meeting his predecessor participated in 2007, he would risk alienating more of his supporters who reportedly are already too disillusioned to bother volunteering for his campaign again. The Conservative government of Canada, with close relations with the energy industry, which had took all the bullets after deciding to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol was already a caution to the White House. If this year China and India took the role of hardliner against mandatory emissions reduction and the Durban conference ended up in ‘Copenhagen-style chaos’, it could be another perfect occasion for America’s blame game. Such ‘quiet man’ tactic, therefore, did successfully leave the US a ‘back door’ to sneak away from this round of climate talks.

In the process of negotiations and the outcome there are no obvious losers this year. The BBC described it as producing “a rich smorgasbord of winners”. For developing countries, at least the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment of symbolic significance, which they support, survived the negotiations. For the EU and developed countries, the Durban Platform that allows all major developing countries to participate in the negotiations about binding commitments has been established as what they wished. Climate negotiations will hence change from ‘double-track’ to ‘triple-track’. For poor countries in Africa, the Green Climate Fund has been set up to their benefits. For the US, Canada, Russia and Japan which will not enter into the second commitment of the Kyoto Protocol, their requirement that developing countries should share the responsibilities of cutting emissions has also been satisfied.

‘Hard nuts’ for Qatar  

Notwithstanding the delegations not going home empty-handed, the Durban Package, as analysed in the previous section, contains a lot of questions left unanswered. The Durban conference achieved only a nominal success, but a deal to start negotiations but without much substantive contents is not able to meet the challenge of climate change in the future. It has become ‘normality’ in every climate conference that diplomats or politicians strategically ‘avoiding’ the most sensitive and controversial issues and leaving them for the next conference. This year, the ‘hard nuts’ are left for Qatar to crack in 2012.

Time goes minute by minute. Year-on-year delay means we would miss the ‘golden ten years’ to turn things around. Hard nuts have to be cracked before we can save the planet from catastrophe. If the current way of working with each other is not effective enough, does it mean we need new thinking to get the problem solved?

Negotiation is indeed not difficult, but it is how politicians persuade their people to shift to low-carbon lifestyle that is difficult. Contrary to slow-paced international climate negotiations, enterprises are promoting a green technology race much more quickly in recent years. When people are increasingly exposed to climate headlines every day, green technology products would be more effective and timely in driving people to low-carbon living and hence cutting global carbon emissions. In 2010, China invested over US$54 billion in low-carbon energy technology while the United States US$34 billion only, according to Pew Environment Group.

Another possible way out could be ‘regionalism’. The international climate negotiations over the past two decades have been a ‘bad debt’. In every climate conference, what has not changed ever is the developed countries not accepting that developing ones are not to be responsible for cutting emissions. If year-on-year negotiations do not lead us to anywhere, is a single global climate treaty still the best option? In international politics, an accordant climate framework agreement is no more than a political wrestling stage or a ‘paper tiger’, as is the way the UN handles sensitive issues, which cannot give us a silver lining. Over the past few decades, with the rise of regionalism, regional blocs such as the EU and ASEAN have been established. On climate change, can these regional blocs be a way out? The EU that transposes international treaties to regional laws or directives is a successful example. If quantitative indicators are set and followed by countries in respective regions, though not a perfect deal, politically is it more feasible than one Kyoto Protocol? Can regional deals become the Qatar deal in 2012?

Part 4 is coming soon!

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