Reflections in the 11th Hour of COP21
I’ve been delaying writing this “Negotiations Update” for a few days, since it seems every time the Comité de Paris meets we come tantalyzingly closer to a new agreement/protocol/treatment/convention. But now it’s midnight, EST, on December 12 — technically past the original deadline for our Draft Paris outcome to matriculate into something greater — and in just a few hours we expect the Comité to unveil another text to the world. It’s not yet clear if this will be the COP21 deliverable, but we already have a good idea about some of what this document might contain, and we certainly know where the most controversial sticking points remain.
Thus, I’d like to reflect briefly in these waning hours of COP21 on a few of the major components of the potential text — organized by #hashtag and pithy acronym, and referencing the contents of the December 10th text.
#1o5c
Towards the end of the first week of negotiations, several major developed nations — including the EU — emerged as champions of language identifying the potential climate impacts of hitting a 1.5 deg C increase in global average temperatures. Heading in to the negotiations, I was skeptical that any temperature threshold would be codified. Even neglecting the fact that there are serious scientific concerns if a 2 deg C threshold is realistically avoidable given even the most optimistic decarbonization pathways, pinning a specific climate change mitigation metric has gross implications for any loss and damage component of the agreement. Thresholds as low as these would all but commit the developed world to assisting developing nations via “loss and damage” mechanisms, which could be why US Secretary of State John Kerry has delicately tip-toed around that issue all week.
The ambition to limit climate change to as close to 1.5 deg C as possible is laudable, but scientifically dubious and politically contentious. For however the goal might strengthen the agreement, it also has the potential to weaken the text by providing a strong disincentive for the developed world to endorse legally binding components.
#CBDRILONCWRC
It’s a bit of letter-soup, but potentially the most important concept to arise from COP21. A pillar of environmental treaties over the past several decodes has been the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. That is, not every country may have contributed to a given “Tragedy of the Commons”-esque environmental crisis, but since they affect all of us, we all share some responsibilities to address them. Those responsibilities just differ based on how much we contributed to the problem.
The heart of the COP21 agreement is a bottoms-up approach where individual nations do the best they can to reduce their own emissions. Hopefully, through a rigorous, frequent, transparent monitoring and verification system, countries will iteratively aim higher with these reductions in response to both pressure from their international peers and the inertia that comes from modifying domestic energy economies. In other word, countries will act in light of their national circumstances with respective capabilities. Hence the second half of the acronym.
A one-size-fits-all approach to reducing global carbon emissions is simply not on the table. But that’s fine; countries should be incentivized to quickly pursue the most efficient, effective decarbonization pathway they can. This notion is at the heart of the Paris agreement and the mechanism it lays out to slowly reduce global carbon emissions.
#HighAmbition
The 11th hour of the negotiations led to the developed world (including the EU and the US) building a “High Ambition Coalition” to push through a final text. Although some have dismissed the coalition as something of a farce, it is really only intended to pressure India and other nations who are holding steady with demands for high levels of external financial assistance in developing mitigation and adaptation plans (see #CBDRILONCWRC). Along with loss and damage provisions, such mechanisms have been slow to gain traction and may not appear in the final text, but the Coalition aims to build consensus backing the strengths of the existing document.
Ironically, this is critical for yielding a strong agreement. Even if the final text leaves out some of these critical holdout provisions, it will still be an important document with many positive components. For the agreement to be successful, actors need to buy in and believe in its significance. The High Ambition Coalition sets a positive political framing for moving forward in a post-COP21 world — towards whatever the next major climate action might be.
It’s now dawn in Paris. By the end of the day, it’s very possible we’ll have a final text and a foundation for a global effort to seriously tackle climate change. But even as the diplomats fly home from Paris, the true work to solve climate change is only beginning. Surely, not everyone will agree with the contents of the final agreement; it will probably leave important components, like loss and damage, out of the picture for the time being. But the new agreement is a major milestone which changes the rules of the geopolitical game that underpins climate change.
