This time last year, negotiators from around the world were dealing with the bitter cold of December in Denmark, and the bitterness of climate negotiations that were going nowhere. Fast forward a year, and while negotiators are no longer basking in the warm Cancun sun, they are at least briefly reveling in the warm glow from the Cancun agreements.
The two weeks of negotiations at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16) began with the lowest expectations and questions of whether they could still get people to show up and resulted in an official agreement. It was a surprisingly positive result, especially when contrasted with the acrimony of the previous COP in Copenhagen and the sometimes tumultuous talks leading up to Cancun in Bonn, Germany and Tianjin, China. The outcome of Cancun did not emerge out of the blue, however. Copenhagen, despite the well-documented chaos and disagreements, helped build the foundation for headway at Cancun. Parties made notable progress on almost all aspects in the Copenhagen Accord, including financing through the Green Fund, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV), REDD+, adaptation, and technology.
Additionally, the Mexican hosts took their role as conveners very seriously, to the benefit of the process. Due to its position as a developing country under the UNFCCC, but as a developed country in the OECD and other international structures, the Mexican delegation, under the capable leadership of Foreign Minister (and COP President) Patricia Espinosa, was able to help bridge some of the gaps between the developed countries like the US and the EU and developing countries like China and India.
Furthermore, the Mexicans made a concerted effort over the course of the entire year (not just the weeks leading up to Cancun) to engage all the parties and make them feel like their concerns were being heard. Finally, the Mexicans prioritized transparency throughout the negotiations, teaming developed and developing countries in small working groups to work on specific issues and holding open consultations through the negotiations. The result of their efforts is clear in the surprising progress made over the conference and sets a high bar that the South Africans should try to clear in the lead up to COP 17 in Durban. There are hopefully many lessons that South Africa can learn from Mexico’s successful experience.
Now what does all this mean for international climate action in the future? There are a number of important implications that will play out of the next year and beyond. Lynann laid out some of the nitty-gritty details in her post, so I’ll add some of additional issues looking toward Durban:
The Once and Future Process: There was a fair amount of discussion in the halls of the official venues over the past two weeks that Cancun could be a bit of a Waterloo for the UNFCCC. If sufficient progress wasn’t made, parties would lose faith in the process and potentially look for alternative avenues to address action on climate change. The success of the Cancun negotiations, however, appears to have reinvigorated enthusiasm for pursuing climate goals within the confines of the UNFCCC, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
One clear obstacle is simply the fragility of the process. Unhappy parties can easily throw a wrench in the system, as was shown in Copenhagen when five nations (Bolivia, Cuba, Sudan, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) blocked the official adoption of the Accord. Bolivia made a similar move this year by opposing the Agreements reached in Cancun, though this time it did so alone. In an unprecedented move, Espinosa moved to adopt the agreement despite Bolivia’s protestations, saying that consensus does not give a single country veto power over the other 193 nations. It is a refreshing evolution of the UNFCCC process, but there are no guarantees that such bold moves in the name of progress will happen in the future. Overruling one is much easier than overruling a few, so by rallying a couple more countries to its side, Bolivia could still torpedo the process in the future.
Despite the positive advancements on many fronts, there was little movement on mitigation actions, which have often served as the Achilles heel in these proceedings. The successes of Cancun will likely again ratchet up the pressure to tighten mitigation actions in Durban. In the same vein, nations officially recognized not only the need to keep long-term increases of global average temperature below 2° C, but also that their current commitments will not do the job. The call for more emissions cuts will grow throughout the year leading up to Durban, but there’s very little evidence that the UNFCCC process can actually get lower reductions. Countries are going to submit what is economically and politically feasible, not necessarily what is best to ensure a less that 2° C increase. The world may have to look to other mechanisms for more aggressive emission reductions.
Kyoto is Dead, Long Live Kyoto: The Kyoto Protocol (KP) used to be the world’s best chance to slow climate change. These days, it represents one of the biggest obstacles to a global agreement on emission reductions. Japan started COP 16 by dropping the KP bomb, saying it has no interest in continuing as a party after the first phase expires in 2012. Canada, Russia, and Australia were happy to let the Japanese take the heat, and they lined up right behind them in refusing to continue the KP. That leaves only the EU and a couple outlying countries like Norway still willing to extend the KP, meaning that about 18% of global emissions will be covered in the second phase. Despite the clear ineffectiveness of the KP, developing countries will not let it die because it 1) legally binds developed countries to make set emissions cuts and 2) gives them a revenue stream from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
In Cancun, negotiators did what they often do with tough problems - they agreed to talk about it later. So while the KP issue did not sabotage this COP, it’s sure to be an issue in South Africa. The developing world has said they will not accept anything less than a continuation of the KP, and much of the developed world is digging in against it.
The fact is that the KP is not longer a useful mechanism for international action. It is a top-down system that commands parties to meet binding, inflexible targets, and most developed nations, dealing with shaky economies and shifting political dynamics, have no stomach for such an inflexible system. They also are not willing to self-inflict pain in the name of emission reductions while growing emitters like India and China lack similar constraints. A bottom-up approach, where countries make pledges based on their economic and political realities, as was set up in the Copenhagen Accord, is the way forward on future climate agreements. The KP debate will likely cause a few blow-ups in the next year, and while it may stumble forward into some form of a second phase, it’s on its last legs.
My Mind on Money, Money on my Mind: If you were looking for a contentious issue going in to Cancun, discussions around climate finance looked like a safe bet. That turned out to be far from the case. As I noted earlier, finance conversations moved along well and the final agreement included a number of useful actions, including the establishment of a Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF, which will provide funds for mitigation and adaptation action to developing countries, will be governed by a 24 member board with equal representation from developed and developing countries, and administered by a trustee, which for its first three years, will be the World Bank. The structure represents concessions to both developing country demands (equal representation on the governing board) and developed country concerns (the World Bank as the interim trustee).
Now that the fund is set up, how does it get financed? This is now one of the key questions, and it does not look like an easy one to answer. The report released by the high-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Finance (AGF) before Cancun contends that developed countries can scrape together the $100 billion which will feed the GCF annually as promised in Copenhagen, but it’s going to be a challenge without widespread, functional cap-and-trade markets.
Plus, there is always that elephant in the room, the political situation in the United States. When you have four Senators greet the start of the COP by calling for the end of ‘climate bailouts,’ it’s hard to imagine a more hostile atmosphere for action on climate change or meeting overseas funding commitments. Whether the U.S. can squeeze climate funds out of a miserly Congress over the next year will set the stage for climate financing conversations next December.
Danny Morris is a Center Fellow at Resources for the Future.
