More
hot air- UNFCCC and Lima Outcomes
R.
RAMACHANDRAN
If the
outcome of the Lima climate summit is any indication, in all likelihood the
Paris agreement in December
2015 will be a weak and seriously compromised one that will lead to a 3° C
temperature rise by the turn
of the century, with developing countries bearing the brunt of the effects of
severe climate change. By
R. RAMACHANDRAN
THE 20th
Conference of the Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held during
December 1-12, 2014, in the Peruvian capital of Lima, not unexpectedly
delivered precious little in terms of safeguarding the world from
the disastrous consequences of severe climate change. The Lima climate summit
was expected to come out with the basic architecture
for a globally binding agreement to tackle climate change to be arrived at COP
21 in December 2015 in Paris. The main aim
of this agreement —which will be a “protocol, another legal instrument or
an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention
applicable to all Parties”, to quote the strange phraseology used by the
decision of COP 17 (2011) in Durban—is to limit carbon
emissions from all countries so as to prevent the globe from breaching the
guardrail temperature increase of 2° Celsius by the
turn of the
century, a limit arrived at in the Cancun summit in 2010. If there was any
misplaced hope at all that Lima would come up with a
satisfactory legal structure to achieve this goal, it was belied. According to
the mandate of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the
Durban
Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), which is entrusted with the task of arriving
at the new agreement, the Paris Accord will enter into
force in 2020.
The phrase
“another legal instrument” (italicised above) is a reference to the only
binding international treaty that has hitherto been in place, that
is, the Kyoto Protocol. It was formulated in 1997 and it entered into force in
2005, and its architecture is based firmly on the fundamental
tenets of the UNFCCC, namely: “The largest
share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases [GHGs] has
originated in developed countries, that
per capita
emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share
of global emissions originating in developing countries
will grow to meet their social and development needs” (in the preamble); and “The Parties
should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future
generations of humankind, on the basis of equity
and in
accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities (CBDR-RC). Accordingly, the developed country
Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse
effects thereof.” (Article 3.1)
Accordingly,
the Kyoto Protocol divided member states into Annex 1 (developed) and non-Annex
1 (developing) countries, with the former
required to take on binding carbon emission reduction commitments with respect
to 1990 emission levels. The first commitment
period ran up to 2012, but many countries failed to meet their respective
targets except for those in the European Union (E.U.), which
probably overachieved its target. COP 18 in 2012 recommended a second
commitment period up to 2020 (the so-called Doha
Amendment), which imposed a second round of binding reduction targets on 37
countries. The second commitment period was to ensure
emission pathways in the pre-2020 phase before the Paris agreement came into
force so that the 2° C goal could be attained.
However, with
the United States, a major carbon emitter which has consistently rejected
legally binding commitments and was never a party to the
Kyoto Protocol, and several other developed countries now unwilling to ratify
these new commitments, the protocol framework
stands virtually dismantled. In essence, developed countries do not wish to
accept their historical responsibility of being the major cause of the present
global warming and are against this differentiated emission reduction targets
mandated by the protocol. That is, they
would prefer a framework that focusses on limiting present carbon “flows” in an
undifferentiated manner and ignores the carbon
“stock” in the atmosphere for which they are responsible.
New
phraseology
Therefore,
for all practical purposes, the parallel exercise at climate summits to arrive
at further commitments for Annex 1 countries has lost all
its meaning. At Lima, too, there was not much headway on this front, and the
protocol hangs in limbo today. To date, only 23
countries,
none of them developed, have ratified the Doha Amendment; a total of 144
ratifications are required for it to enter into force. In effect, developed
countries’ rejection of the Kyoto Protocol means that the differentiating
firewall between developed and developing countries is
slowly being knocked down and the concept of equity is being given the go by,
thereby eroding the fundamental principles of the
UNFCCC. Indeed, some new phraseology that is not in the UNFCCC text found its
way into the final outcome document at Lima, which is
indicative of developed countries’ growing attempt to dilute the ethical
principles that form the cornerstones of the convention. Since the
insidious introduction of this phraseology by the U.S. into the UNFCCC process
at COP 15 in 2009 in Copenhagen—a
watershed in
climate negotiations which steered the talks (thanks to the U.S.’ back-room
manoeuvres) towards the currently evident rapid
downward slide—a bottom-up “pledge and review” approach to mitigation
commitments, based on voluntary emission reduction
pledges put
on the table by countries, has totally displaced the top-down legally mandated
approach a la the Kyoto Protocol, which was based on the
principles of the convention and on what science says about emission pathways
that the world needs to adopt to avoid
exceeding the
2° C temperature rise limit. In fact, it has become the centrepiece of climate
talks today, and there is now a new phrase for it in the
negotiations glossary. It is known as “intended nationally determined
contributions (INDCs)”, a term that was adopted in
2013 at COP
19 in Warsaw, with the Kyoto process being left to die slowly.
The INDCs
form the core mitigation element in the draft text for the Paris negotiations
too and the final 2015 agreement is likely to be largely
INDC-centric. It is not at all clear how the principles of equity and CBDR can
be built into a pledges-centric and a bottom-upapproach-
driven
agreement. As has become the norm since Copenhagen, in Lima, too, the final
conference outcome document, which is essentially
the final draft text for the Paris agreement, came about 40 hours beyond the
conference’s scheduled closing date. There was
the usual
share of acrimonious debates and high drama, which only resulted in a weak
compromise document. At 1 a.m. on December 14, COP 20
adopted the five-page “Lima Call for Climate Action” appended with a 38-page
draft text as its annex that is under
negotiation. This final
document was the result of several iterations of a draft before the Parties
gave their consent. The December 12 version of the draft—which
was prepared by the ADP co-chairs, Artur Runge-Metzger (of the E.U.) and Kishan
Kumarsingh (of Trinidad and
Tobago),
under the guidance of COP 20 president Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian
Minister of Environment—was rejected outright by several
developing countries. They said that it was unbalanced and did not incorporate
their views and that there still were
unresolved
issues on which the Parties had serious differences. Among the key issues that
were missing from the draft was the aspect of
differentiation and equity as enshrined in the UNFCCC. Other
contentious issues that had remained unaddressed were the issue of financing
for the post-2020 period; disagreement over the scope of
INDCs; failure to include the issue of the “international mechanism for loss
and damage” to poor and vulnerable countries due to climate
change, which was mandated by a decision at COP 19; and very weak pre-2020
climate action commitments. The draft text was viewed as
being biased towards developed countries’ positions. While developed countries
wanted the co-chairs’ text to be approved,
developing countries sought the intervention of the president to restore
balance to the text and to ensure it reflected the views they
had expressed during the negotiations. Pulgar-Vidal held several closed-door
consultations with country groups through December 13
to find out what the red lines were and what elements were acceptable to
developing countries. All along,
developed countries wanted the scope of INDCs to be restricted to mitigation.
Developing countries, on the other hand, wanted the
INDCs to include the related elements of financial contributions and technology
transfer to assist them in their mitigation and
adaptation actions in the post-2020 period. The Warsaw COP had only called for
all the Parties to communicate their INDCs well in advance of
COP 21 without prescribing the scope or nature of the “contributions”, whether
these related to mitigation, adaptation, finance,
technology transfer or capacity building. Developing countries argued that by
focussing only on mitigation, developed countries were
pre-judging the nature of the 2015 agreement in a bid to make it
mitigation-centric. In a similar
vein, developed countries also proposed a system for an ex ante assessment
and review of the INDCs by mid-2015 to see whether the
mitigation contributions added up would limit the temperature rise to below 2°
C. For instance, in its submission on elements of
mitigation in the 2015 agreement, the E.U. had proposed that a process be
evolved before COP 21 that was designed to ensure that
the collective level of ambition (all the INDCs together) brought the world
closer to the below 2° C goal. The E.U. also wanted the
2015 agreement to have a mechanism that allowed a revisit of the collective
mitigation potential. But these
proposals were rejected by developing countries. They argued that an ex ante
assessment ahead of Paris was beyond the Warsaw
Mandate and also that such a system would be prejudicial to the negotiations
for the 2015 agreement, especially with regard to the
agreement’s mitigation component and to how the principle of CBDR and equity
would be applied to all elements of the Paris agreement,
including that relating to the individual INDCs. It was argued that such an
assessment might result in the developing countries
being brought under pressure to enhance their commitments, whereas there was no
assessment or even information on the financial and
technological support that developed countries needed to provide. They argued
that that their mitigation potential was linked to
financing and technology transfer, which remained unclear in a
mitigation-centric INDC approach.
Following
these meetings of the COP president, a plenary was convened at midnight on
December 13-14, when Pulgar-Vidal gavelled the decision
that passed without any objection. The final document was seen as being more
balanced, the CBDR principle was restored,
a reference
to “loss and damage” was included, and the INDCs were no longer
mitigation-centric, with climate action plans of countries including
elements of adaptation, financing and technology transfer. The principles of
equity and CBDR now find their place in the
preamble to
the Lima document and in paragraph 3 of the decision.
Contentious
paragraphs
While there
is general acceptance on the draft text’s broad elements, there is no universal
agreement yet on its finer details, and the wordings of
many of the paragraphs remain contentious, with as many as three alternatives
given for virtually every paragraph. Much
of the
negotiation on thrashing out a consensual text has been left for the coming
months before it is finalised in May 2015 to be placed for
consideration/adoption in Paris.
The core
elements included in the adopted text seem to have satisfied all the Parties,
both developed and developing. That may appear to be a
remarkable achievement given that at one point it had seemed that the summit
might collapse. For instance, India’s Minister of
Environment
and Forests, Prakash Javadekar, who attended the Lima summit, was quoted as
saying: “All our concerns have been addressed….We
have got what we wanted.”
But this
claimed victory may not be actually real if one looks at it carefully. Take for
instance the issue of CBDR itself, the restoration of which the
developing countries saw as a big victory. The principle has been incorporated
in several places in the text with an
extraneous
phrase that was not there in the UNFCCC. For example, Decision 3 states: The
COP “…Underscores its commitment to reaching an
ambitious agreement in 2015 that reflects the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities,
in light of different national circumstances” (emphasis added).
The
italicised phrase leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and developed
countries could cite it to their advantage, resulting in actions that are not
commensurate with their differentiated responsibilities as developed countries.
And this phrase is repeated in a number of places in the
draft text and the alternatives the developed countries suggested.
Interestingly, this expression has been taken straight out of the
text of the U.S.-China agreement on mitigation actions announced in November
2014 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Beijing.
It is also
fairly clear that while the emerging agreement is going to be centred on the
INDCs (which, in the main, would include emission-reduction
pledges), the Lima summit did not succeed in evolving an appropriate review
mechanism for them. Those Parties who are “in a
position to do so” are urged to submit their INDCs by the first quarter of 2015
(as required by the Warsaw Mandate) and others are
requested to submit them as early as possible before October 1, 2015. The
UNFCCC, in turn, will make public a synthesis report of the
INDC submissions by November 1, 2015. An analysis of that will reveal whether
the combined efforts will suffice to limit the
temperature increase to below 2° C. But as of now, only a structure for the
pledge part of the “pledge and review” is being evolved. Of course,
developing countries did have a point in rejecting the ex ante assessment
and review process suggested by some Parties. But this has a
flip side to it. Having tacitly accepted the move towards an INDC-centric
global legal regime, developing countries will now be faced with a
conundrum. If all the INDCs do not add up adequately and developed nations do
not do enough to meet their historical responsibility,
there is no mechanism to address that and enforce a correction.
The Lima
summit was also expected to see some ambitious pledges of INDCs from the
Parties, developed countries in particular, but that too was
not to be. It was generally believed that the summit, coming against the
backdrop of the much hyped U.S.-China
declaration,
would infuse some much-needed momentum to the ongoing pre-COP negotiations and
trigger other countries, too, to make similar
announcements on their intended domestic mitigation actions. But, perhaps, the
initial hullabaloo gave way to the realisation that the
U.S.-China agreement did not amount to much in terms of absolute emission
reductions as required by science, in particular the Fifth
Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC).
Largest
carbon emitters
The
respective announcements of these two largest carbon emitters of the world, who
account for nearly 44 per cent of global carbon emissions
(China 27 per cent, the U.S. 17 percent), in fact, amount to only marginal
improvements over their earlier stated positions,
which will
not have any substantive impact on the long-term prognosis of climate change.
China announced that its absolute carbon emissions
would “peak” around 2030 and that it would attempt to cap emissions even
earlier. It also announced that it would achieve a
20 per cent
share of its energy basket through renewable sources by that year. The U.S., on
the other hand, declared that it would cut its emissions
by 26-28 per cent by 2025 relative to 2005, which is more than what it declared
in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Cancun in
2010. This is based
on what was legislated by the Congress through the Waxman-Markey provision in
the U.S. Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,
which was emissions reduction by 17 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005. It has
also stated that this could form the
basis for an
80 per cent cut by 2050 compared with 2005 levels. The U.S. had also indicated
that these revised targets would be its INDCs, which
it would submit to the UNFCCC by March 2015. Similarly, China had announced an
emissions intensity (ratio of emissions to
gross domestic product) reduction—not a cut in absolute emissions—by 40-45 per
cent by 2020 from 2005 levels. A little
reflection, however, would tell one that the proposed U.S. cut is not any
significantly deeper than its earlier target. Assuming a linear rate
of emission cuts, a 17 per cent cut by 2020 would amount to about a 25 per cent
cut by 2025 in any case. Although the U.S. is not party
to the Kyoto Protocol, the protocol had required a cut its emissions by 5.6 per
cent by 2008 compared with 1990 levels.
However,
during this period U.S. emissions actually increased by 14 per cent. So
compared with 1990 levels, the Waxman-Markey reductions
effectively only amounted to 3 per cent and that too 12 years later. The
current proposal actually means a 12-14 per cent
reduction by
2025 compared with 1990 as the base year, which actually is woefully less than
the 40 per cent cut by developed countries by
2020 called for by the IPCC and other climate change research groups. This is
also significantly less than the target of 30 per cent
reduction by 2020 from the 1990 levels set by the 28-member E.U.
China’s
declaration of a peak year, to which it had been steadfastly opposed until a
few years ago, is new. However, according to a 2011 study by the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), it is not a great improvement
over business as usual, which itself would
have resulted
in a peaking between 2030 and 2035. Several Chinese studies, too, have
suggested in the past that a peaking year of 2030 should
be feasible but a target peaking year of 2020-2025 would be a much more
ambitious goal and a significant one to achieve.
More
pertinently, the rate of increase towards the peak, when the decline would
start, and the rate of decline have not been indicated. Already, the
current per capita GHG emission level for China is about 6.5 tonnes of CO
equivalent (compared with 17.6 tonnes for the
U.S.), and
according to estimates, it will be around 12-14 tonnes by the peaking year in
2030. The U.S. per capita emission around then will be
similar, which is way above the two-tonne limit required to limit the average
temperature increase to 2° C. The Chinese
declaration
does indicate a possible earlier peaking year, and one has to wait until China
announces its INDCs to see whether they are more
ambitious than indicated in the bilateral deal.
Given its
track record, one can expect the E.U.’s declaration of its INDCs, which is also
likely to happen by March 2015, to be reasonable.
The indications from other countries such as Japan (whose emissions are likely
to significantly increase because of Fukushima),
Australia and Canada, whose target is aligned with the 17 per cent reduction
target of the U.S., are, however, hardly encouraging.
India, too, has stated that it is working on appropriate INDCs, which it will
submit to the UNFCCC sometime this year, and there are reports that India may
also make a bilateral announcement with the U.S. during President Barack
Obama’s forthcoming visit.
Only symbolic
success
In the
ultimate analysis, however, the apparent success of the Lima summit from
developing countries’ perspective is only symbolic. What they
have achieved is to get the original draft text improved only in form but not
in substance. While they may pat themselves on
the back for
having managed to restore the principles of CBDR and equity in the draft text,
they must be faulted for not coming up with a
well-studied proposal or system to operationalise these principles under an
agreement that is based solely on unilaterally announced pledges. In
this, countries such as India and China have failed to lead from the front. As such the
agreement that is likely to emerge will lack the structure to enforce climate
actions, particularly by developed countries. If the Lima
summit is any indication, unless something dramatic happens in December 2015,
in all likelihood the Paris agreement will be a weak and
seriously compromised one that will lead to a 3° C temperature rise by the turn
of the century. Developing countries, particularly
the poor and vulnerable ones among them who are already facing the impacts of
the 0.85° C increase since industrialisation began, will
bear the brunt of the disastrous effects of severe climate change.
(Published in
Frontline.in)
