Prospects for Paris climate deal lay ghosts of Copenhagen
Six years, a thousand kilometres and a philosophical chasm separate the two cities and their climate 'deals'
By Richard Black
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By Richard Black, ECIU Director
Over the weekend I caught up with a number of people who’d spent last week at the UN climate talks in Geneva – the first session of five this year in a process set to conclude with governments signing a new global deal on climate change in Paris in December.
I was struck by the generally sanguine mood, even among self-styled ‘Copenhagen survivors’ – those who were there through the slow build-up and rapid deflation of the seminal 2009 UN summit.
Unusually, the main business of the Geneva talks was completed three days ahead of schedule. The chairs had asked governments to put forward any and all ideas for elements that they would like to see in the Paris agreement, and this is exactly what happened.
Much has been made of the fact that the draft negotiating text ‘ballooned’ from 38 pages to 86. By my reckoning – and I’m among the ranks of the ‘Copenhagen survivors’, having reported for the BBC on the various rounds of negotiations during the entire year of 2009 – that’s small beer.
What we have isn’t a list of new ssues to consider, but lots of different options on a number of well-thumbed topics.
The most obvious, and the one that holds the key to ‘stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human) interference with the climate system’ – the overall objective of the UN climate convention – is of course the section on mitigation – what countries will collectively do to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
There are numerous ways in which a mitigation goal can logically be offered, and the smorgasbord of options in the draft agreement encompasses most of them.
A straightforward target for limiting global average temperature rise, targets for global emissions in 2050, a peaking year for emissions, a trajectory for phasing out fossil fuel use… they’re all there.
A number of the proposals envisage different trajectories for developed and developing nations, however they are to be defined now (and it’s clear that the traditional binary divide between rich and poor cannot be the entire answer).
Similar smorgasbords exist in other areas that will be critical to reaching a Paris agreement, including financial assistance from rich nations to poor, compensating the poorest for ‘loss and damage’ associated with climate impacts from historical emissions, and help with clean technology.
Pitching these ideas into the draft text, as happened last week, is obviously the easy bit. Deciding how to narrow each of them down will be much harder, and that’s the task before negotiators over the course of the year.
As the Financial Times noted, the traditional ‘deep divisions’ remain between various countries and their respective visions.
Order from chaos
Nevertheless, this feels very different from 2009.
The process then was, frankly, chaos.
As the final preparatory session of talks ended in Barcelona, a mere month before the Copenhagen summit opening, many elements of the proposed deal were floating around in a series of ‘non-papers’ – documents that are usually used as starting points for discussion early in the process.
Talks were hijacked by unhelpful lead negotiators (particularly from the G77/China bloc of developing countries). The Danish hosts, with the connivance of other developed nations, were already working on a political document that would take the place of the formal text.
In the mood music stakes, re-reading my closing report from the Barcelona session, the absence of any commitment from the US was making everyone nervous, from President Obama’s European allies to suspicious leaders of the developing world such as China and India.
Things are very different now. The mood music from China and the US is playing sweetly following their bilateral announcement last year. India’s President Modi met constructively with President Obama last month and continues to make positive noises about renewable energy. No major nation, not even diplomatically isolated Russia, is threatening to derail progress.
Process-wise, we’ve had the discursive bit – the non-papers – and now have a text that by all accounts countries feel they own. It’s only 86 pages long, and shouldn’t grow any longer – rationalisation is now the key.
The final factor is that expectations for the Paris outcome are being set at a rational level. Coming up to Copenhagen, leaders including President Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Kevin Rudd were promising the Earth – a one-off opportunity to save the planet from climate change.
No-one’s saying that now. And just as well.
The real tests for Paris
If there is a deal in Paris, it certainly won’t cut emissions enough to hit the 2C global warming target that nations agreed in 2012.
It’s very unlikely to mandate the leaving of 2/3 of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, which science says is necessary in order to give a reasonable chance of meeting the 2C target. And it’s unlikely to say much new about reducing emissions between now and 2020 – a period during which investment decisions (in high- or low-carbon infrastructure) will be crucial.
Everyone knows this – so these questions, natural as they are, cannot be used as determinants of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in Paris.
The meaningful test is whether it advances the transition that countries and businesses are making anyway – the 60% growth in both Chinese solar capacity and European registrations of electric vehicles last year are but two of the indicators – as costs of clean technologies fall and the consequences of volatile fossil fuel prices for investments, employment and economic stability become ever clearer.
The test is whether governments use the opportunity of Paris to make the transition as orderly as it can be.
Of course, the Paris summit may fail even that test. There may not be a deal at all. The French hosts could screw things up as badly as the Danes did last time.
Much is still to play for, and difficulties must be expected – of course they must, when the stakes for countries and businesses are so high.
But after last week’s talks, the process at least looks logical, the mood music positive, and expectations realistic. Copenhagen Mark 2 this most definitely is not.
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