Many are cynical about the annual circus of UN climate negotiations that takes place at ‘CoP’ – the Conference of the Parties to the UN’s climate convention. Summits, critics complain, are too big and bureaucratic, and they make little progress. After three decades of yearly conferences, exhaust still rises. Does the process fail?
Successes
But this criticism misses the point. Emissions grow much less than would have been the case without UN interference. In 2009, climate experts warned that the world would heat up by 6oC if countries wouldn’t reduce their emissions. Today, the UN estimates that without extra policies, the world will still heat up by approximately 2.5oC. This continuous reduction has happened because the world really is acting on climate change, otherwise than many people think. Over the past 15 years the dramatically falling costs of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, have led to an astonishing rise in their use. This year or next, renewables will generate more electricity than coal for the first time. The same fast change will take place with electric cars – now, more than one fifth of sales is electric.
According to skeptics, this is the result of technological change, not of UN conferences. But then, innovation doesn’t happen at random: it is being propelled by politics that render it affordable. Over the past 20 years, governments all over the world have mandated better fuel use, and set goals for the application of new technologies. Prices have fallen, as well – particularly from the moment onwards when China started to produce green technologies on a massive scale. The goals can be set even stricter, what will make another dent in costs. A positive feedback: policy backs innovation, and the other way around.
The silent force of the Paris agreement
That is why the UN process matters. The Paris agreement obliges each country to set stricter climate requirements, every five years. Without this internationally coordinated treaty there had been little chance that so many countries – having different political policy cycles and economic conditions – would have moved into the same direction. This world-wide agreement promotes the growth of low-carbon markets.
But then, critics say, national plans aren’t enough. Warming by 2.5oC may be better than 6oC, but it’s consequences are still catastrophic. And, true: the Parus agreement contains one fundamental (although politically necessary) flaw: it formulates and world-wide temperature limit, but then leaves it to each country to decide what they will do about it. If we add up the national promises, we still do not attain the goal of 1.5oC-2oC. The ‘emission gap’ that it shows, would seem to prove right the critics.
Too hasty
But that conclusion is too hasty. National promises, often known under the name of ‘nationally determined conditions (NDCs) are no forecasts. Faced with a legally binding agreement, countries do not want to formulate goals that cannot be met when unexpected circumstances occur. But many countries, among which China, look upon these NDCs as the basis, not as a forecast – a political agreement on a minimum obligation. Many commentators called these ‘disappointing’. But when he announced them, president Xi Jinping said in so many words that the country would try to do better than it’s set goals. And they have shown so over the past 15 years.
Another reason for optimism is that developing countries still don’t know how much support they will get. But that will become clearer over the coming few years. At CoP30, Brazil and last year’s host Azerbaijan will propose a plan called ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap’, a plan to set free US$1.3 trillion yearly to be spent on intentional climate goals. If only part of this sum would be raised, many developing countries would be able to cut their emissions faster (and in the process do more about climate change) than present plans suggest.
The summits have worked
In the end, climate action takes place increasingly outside the formal negotiations. Progress consists more of application, than of negotiations bout new rules. That’s why Brazil named CoP30 the ‘CoP of application’, with a view on the ‘real world’ of economic development, the fight against poverty, green technologies and investment financing. Probably, the conference will witness announcements of major new initiatives in the areas of (among others) protection of tropical rainforest, sustainable fuels, sustainable agriculture, carbon markets, methane emissions, control of forest fires, digital public infrastructure, taxes on air tickets and financing of intermediate measures. In their criticism of the many people attending the summits, critics tend to forget that many representatives have a stake in ths and other solutions to climate change.
Climate action enters into a new field of force. Brazil and others hope that these major climate summits will discuss such sectoral and financial initiatives, rather than negotiations on ever more detailed UN rules. And that is precisely what this international framework was designed for: for reinforcement of ever bigger ambitions, coordination and applicability.
Many problems, all at once
In 2015, the Paris agreement was all but a done deal. Climate change isn’t one problem but a complex pf intertwined opportunities – from the size of the problem to stop the Earth warming up, to the major differences in opportunities of countries to do something about it, and the growing seriousness of devastating floods, wildfires and rising sea levels. The Paris Agreement was intended to bring about cooperation – and it did. Through the UN, it brought together all 195 countries in forging a world-wide framework, a triumph of multilateralism. But then, arriving at cooperation is just the beginning, not the end of world-wide cooperation in this area.
No false complacence
We cannot be complacent. As the US start to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, its president prepares counter measures: promote fossil fuels, undermine sustainable sources. World-wide climate policy has become an arena of competing visions on the future of energy and industry; a fight that now starts to be waged within national governments and corporate administrations, and in the corridors of the UN.
There is no doubt that the clean energy transition is really going on. But the speed – and accordingly, the question t what extent the Earth’s heating can be delayed – is dependent upon the trust of companies that the process will go on. Undermining that trust by calling useless the UN conferences, threatens to slow down that process. Governments should stick to their climate goals, for green investments and innovations will stay profitable.
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