Failure to strike a global deal to govern greenhouse gas emissions at United Nations negotiations this December in Paris could spell the death of multilateralism, South Africa’s ex-environment minister said.
The stakes are high for the international talks, which hope to set a framework for reducing emissions to avoid 2 degree Celsius global temperature rise by 2100, said Valli Moosa, now the independent non-executive chairman of Anglo American Platinum. Another collapse akin to the 2009 Copenhagen talks would kick dealmaking up to national leaders, where it could get ensnared in political bickering.
Those pressures and the memory of Copenhagen, though, have sharpened the resolve of negotiators, Moosa said at a Thursday event hosted by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, D.C.
“They seem to have a sense of mission,” said Moosa, who co-chairs the group’s Toward 2015 effort, which brings diplomats together to discuss the negotiations. “They also know that if we fail in Paris it will be a big blow in a number of ways”
Negotiators noted the talks won’t be easy.
“I wouldn’t paint an incredibly rosy international picture,” said Jo Tyndall, the top negotiator for New Zealand. “What dealing with climate change is all about is affecting quite a significant economic transformation.”
It’s one the U.S. Congress hasn’t been too keen to accommodate. Republicans and some centrist Democrats are concerned that reducing emissions would stunt the U.S. economy. Democrats, however, contend that addressing climate change would save healthcare costs by taking dirtier coal-fired power plants offline and save businesses and communities from damages due to extreme weather linked to climate change.
Republicans have attempted to handcuff President Obama’s diplomacy on the matter through resolutions on various legislation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has implored states to avoid complying with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule to limit carbon emissions from power plants, and the rule is likely to end up in the courts. If it’s not upheld, meeting the 26 percent reduction in overall emissions by 2025 that Obama committed the U.S. to last month would be impossible.
Todd Stern, the chief negotiator for the State Department, said countries have asked in the past whether the EPA rule, which calls for lowering electricity emissions 30 percent by 2030, could withstand challenges. But he said the topic didn’t surface during meetings this week.
“The issue didn’t come up over the last two days,” Stern said at a Washington event, adding that the administration has a “fair and justified degree of confidence that we can deliver.”
But other nations are certainly paying attention to what’s happening in the U.S., said Pa Ousman Jarju, the lead negotiator for Gambia. He was concerned that Republicans moved to block additional climate aid funding to poor nations, which is a central element of negotiations to keep developing nations engaged in the process.
“It is beyond imagination that people in the United States of America and in Congress … are denying what is happening in the world,” Jarju said. “This is money that is really going toward people who are in dire need.”
Still, Jarju said he’s encouraged by the Obama administration’s go-it-alone strategy on climate, which has involved executive action in the face of Republican opposition. While the legal form of the U.N. deal has yet to be sorted out, the difficulties the U.S. and other nations would face in getting legally binding emissions cuts through their legislatures are pushing negotiators toward a model that might not require lawmakers to ratify the agreement.
“We are aware of the what the conservatives, mostly the Republicans [are doing]. We are encouraged that the U.S. could agree … through an executive order,” Jarju said. “We think if we have an agreement in Paris that is agreeable to the U.S. government it would stay and, depending on the outcome of your elections, we hope there would be no backslide from the United States because it has a responsibility as a world leader.”
That the United States, which had a poor reputation entering Copenhagen, is even in a position to lead in the international talks is a reflection of the “tipping point” nations and political leaders have faced on climate change, said Jake Werksman, the lead negotiator for the European Commission.
“Many countries covering the bulk of global emissions have crossed that tipping point and have begun to regulate greenhouse gases because they are greenhouse gases,” Werksman said.
Stern has touted a model put forth by New Zealand that would allow nations to put forward their own goals for curbing emissions and, if desired, provide aid to other countries, while setting up legally binding mechanisms to monitor, review and verify progress. The first part of that “name and shame” method is already underway, as the U.S., European Union and others have tendered their “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.”
In a nod to the difficulty of the negotiations, though, several countries missed the March 31 deadline to offer their contributions. Notably, China and Canada have yet to do so. But Gao Feng, China’s lead negotiator, said his nation has every intention to be a leader in negotiations after years of obstructing talks because it said emissions cuts would keep millions of Chinese in poverty.
“We must have all the important players come on board to be able to become a party to the new agreement, to not be left out,” Gao said. “We must have all of them on board. And to do that we must in the negotiations in Paris address the concerns of those countries.”
Gao’s comment spoke to one of the negotiations’ biggest sticking points — how much responsibility developed nations should shoulder.
Post-industrial countries are responsible for a bulk of the world’s historical emissions and are most able to provide aid to help more vulnerable and less developed nations adapt to the effects of climate change. At the same time, developing countries are expected to produce a bulk of the world’s emissions over the next several decades.
Tyndall said nations will be able to “self-differentiate” what stage of development they’re in by how rigorously they document their progress and by what they put on the table through the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Those that offer up less than what the international community deems they’re capable of will be pressured into doing more, she said.
“The other thing that we’re looking at is that in the design of the agreement of itself,” Tyndall said. “How can we put in some flexibility to recognize the spectrum of economic development that’s there?”
Gao said language in the draft text negotiators hammered out last December in Lima, Peru, that stated nations have “common but differentiated responsibility” offers some instruction.
“I believe that is a very useful kind of reference,” Gao said. “At least in the Lima decision we have already an internationally agreed kind of language to reflect how different ideas, decisions could be accommodated. Now I believe based on that I think in Paris we definitely can find ways to deal with this question.”
