INDCs: Don't hold the front page

By Richard Black, ECIU Director

This post is about something fairly boring. (Yes, 'just for a change', I know... but this time, really.)

At some point in the next 48 hours, the United States will formally reveal how it plans to tackle climate change, principally by cutting carbon emissions, in the period up to 2030.

The revelation will come in something called an INDC. For anyone not fluent in the jargon of the United Nations climate convention, this stands for Intended Nationally Defined Contribution – the official emission-cutting pledges that each nation will submit to the UN convention before December’s summit in Paris, when governments are scheduled to tie up a new global climate deal.

In all honesty, the US pledge won’t be news of the ‘hold the front page’ variety.

For one thing, it won’t differ markedly from what the Obama administration said in November in its historic joint announcement with China.

We can be pretty confident that the top line in the US pledge, as it was in November, will be to cut net greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% from 2005 levels by 2025.

If you recall, China’s President Xi said at the same point that his country would peak carbon emissions by 2030 at the very latest. And the Daily Telegraph was impressed enough by the joint pledge to say that its importance ‘…cannot be overstated – a low-carbon world suddenly seems possible’.

A month after the US/China announcement, governments met in Peru for the 2014 UN climate convention summit and set down some provisions and principles for the publication of INDCs during the year ahead.

Initially, the proposal was to have all countries publish their plans by the end of March – this Tuesday, in fact.

But many developing countries said they couldn’t manage it by then – so although 31^st March is seen as a kind of deadline, it really isn’t.

So far, only Switzerland, the EU, Norway and Mexico have put their INDCs forward. Many major nations are expected to commit later in the year, including Japan, China and India – although we can be fairly sure that the Chinese pledge will also resemble closely what it announced in November.

We can also be sure that the INDCs, when added together, will not promise emission cuts strong enough to meet the internationally agreed goal of keeping global warming below 2C.

Adding up the details

Already, a small cottage industry is springing up in evaluating INDCs, from which we can expect a stream of pontification during the rest of the year.

For think-tanks, it’s an exercise in data analysis and snazzy online graphics.

For NGOs, it’s a guaranteed set of opportunities to say through the media that ‘governments aren’t doing enough’ – an open goal for quotes telling leaders of the US, Europe, Japan, Australia and the rest of the developed world that they ‘must do more’.

But you may be asking: What’s the point?

If we know roughly what a lot of the INDCs are going to say, and if we know that collectively they won’t be enough to meet the 2C target, what’s the interest in reporting and analysing and quoting to such a prolific extent?

For journalists, how interesting is the INDC story to their readers, as the commitments rack up increment by increment? For campaigners, what are they hoping to gain through issuing what’s likely to be a steady stream of negative commentary, if they insist on tallying up the pledges against what’s needed for 2C, in the run-up to the Paris climate summit?

Inside and outside the UN ‘bubble'

By far the most important point about the INDCs is that they exist.

For a year after the abortive Copenhagen summit of 2009, the entire UN climate process seemed likely to die off as an effective entity.

It was resuscitated a year later in Mexico, and re-invigorated in 2011 in South Africa as governments agreed that they did want a new global climate pact after all. But few, at the end of 2009, would have bet serious money on its continued health and relevance.

Just over five years on, the scientific evidence for climate change risks is firmer, the economic benefits from increasing energy efficiency are clearer, the costs of renewables such as solar are falling, and many more governments are making material moves to curb emissions rather than just paying lip-service.

And their commitment to the UN process is shown by the fact that each will put in an INDC this year, rather than going its own way entirely.

But as INDCs emerge, is there any point in playing the game of pretending that each is a major step forward, or pretending that we’re surprised when they’re not ambitious enough, individually or collectively, to meet the 2C target? They won’t be; that’s not news.

Whether a new UN climate deal materialises in Paris does depend to some extent on the precise shape of the INDCs, but it depends more on events outside the UN ‘bubble’.