Big Data, Big Stakes: a Stocktake of COP21
The MIT ESD.S30 class has been hard at work sifting through massive amounts of information from Twitter, live streams, news articles, and first-person accounts from our colleagues to gauge the progress of COP21 over the past two weeks. I think what many of us have realized is that it’s difficult to tell what progress has been made when delegates are in the process of negotiations.
As many of us at MIT make sense of the world through numbers, I’ll provide a few data points to help sum up part of what’s going on over the past few weeks.
The Story of COP21 in Numbers
1332 to 48: On November 10, 2015, nearly three weeks before the climate negotiations began, the draft document for the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) included 1332 instances of brackets. Brackets indicate areas of the text that delegates are still negotiating. As of December 10, 2015, the ADP draft agreement included only 48 instances of brackets.
20 minutes: The amount of time that early warning systems can provide in the event of extreme weather (such as in the case of the Joplin, Missouri, F5 tornado in 2011). Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have launched an initiative called CREWS, Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems. CREWS brings together the resources of countries and the expertise of weather and risk prevention organizations such as the World Meteorological Organization. Its goal is to finance projects that build weather stations and radar systems to help provide early warning of extreme weather in developing countries. Early warning systems developed by CREWS can also help providing information to develop insurance policies for climate resilience according to Ingrid Hoven, Director General of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development in Germany.
5 years: On Monday, December 7, 2015, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for “regular 5 year cycles beginning before 2020 for governments to review and strengthen their commitments according to what science tells us” in his High-Level Segment Address on provisions that the COP21 agreement must have. One purpose of the review cycles would be to check whether parties to the agreement are meeting their pledges to mitigate carbon emissions.
$10 billion to $100 billion: The difference between early November 2015 pledges to the Green Climate Fund and the fund’s yearly goal amount. The Green Climate Fund finances low carbon technology in developing countries, as well as sustainable development projects. Updates on pledges to the fund have been unclear throughout COP21.
1.5°C: Many countries (such as those represented by the Alliance of Small Island States, AoSIS) have been pushing for a more ambitious temperature rise goal because they say that 2°C will not be enough to curb extreme impacts of climate change. The 1.5°C goal has been included in the latest draft of the Paris agreement from December 10, 2015, and the agreement “invites” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to produce a report on the climate change impacts resulting from this new temperature rise goal.
The Unquantifiable
Among the many things that can’t be quantified at COP21 are the ups and downs of the negotiations and the extreme hard work of delegates to reach a climate agreement. Each day, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin has reported on what’s been happening “In the Corridors” at COP21.
From meeting mid-conference deadlines— “Tensions ran high in the ADP contact group as the Saturday, 5 December deadline loomed for the ADP to transmit text to the COP.”
To feelings of hope — “Saturday [December 5] kicked off in what many called an ‘unexpectedly harmonious mood’”
To a sense of accomplishment despite the hard work ahead — “While there seemed to be a never-ending stream of groups’ and parties’ concerns with the text, their overwhelming general acceptance of the text [on December 9] as the basis for further work represented to some a collective sigh of relief.”
The “In the Corridors” daily report is a reminder that despite the cynicism over a global agreement on climate change and the challenge presented by creating a document that communicates the voices of so many different countries, delegates are working extremely hard to reach consensus. As today’s “In the Corridor” ENB report puts it, “Nevertheless, as the meeting turned nocturnal, after a long day of waiting and with a long night of negotiation ahead, another delegate reminded the weary, ‘there is just too much at stake to fail.’”
