Sergio Abranches

Why the Durban Platform is a political breakthrough, but a dismal outcome in the light of climate science?

The second part of the question is far easier to answer. Negotiators in Durban have agreed to review the pledges for emissions reductions in the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and Cancun Agreement by 2015 in the light of the fifth assessment report on the state of science, to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from September 2013. However, as the IPCC said on a press statement about COP17, “in its fourth assessment report published in 2007, the IPCC showed that a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius could have a damaging effect on water supplies, biodiversity, food supplies, coastal flooding and storms and health.”

Additionally, the IPCC also states that:

“The fourth assessment report shows that emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming must fall by 2050 by 50-85% globally compared to the emissions of the year 2000, and that global emissions must peak well before the year 2020, with a substantial decline after that, in order to limit the growth in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

From the standpoint of science Durban has decided on too little too late.

In the political realm, though, COP17 was a watershed. First of all, it closes a whole chapter of negotiations on commitment periods under the Kyoto Protocol. There will be only a second one, with fewer ratifiers than the first. COP18 will still have to decide whether it will end by 2017 or 2020. There has been no consensus on the end date, and the alternatives ended up within brackets. But the main point has been resolved: it will be replaced by a new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”, no later than 2020. That’s the core decision contained in the Durban Platform.

The above expression is a political breakthrough, one that has been progressively taking shape since COP15, in Copenhagen. There, for the first time ever, the United States and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) have agreed to offer quantified pledges for emission reductions under the United Nations Climate Convention (UNFCCC). They were voluntary, not legally binding, but they have been formally registered with UNFCCC”s Executive Secretariat. It was a major first step and, at the same time, a frustrating decision.

Much more was expected from the leaders of both developed, and emerging world powers. Besides, the leaders left abruptly, creating an authority gap, between the political summit and the official Conference of the Parties. A weak COP presidency and the resulting authority gap led the plenary to only “take note” of what the leaders had agreed. The Copenhagen Accord was noted as a political decision, but did not become an “official” agreement under the track of the Convention.

The second step towards the breakthrough was made in Cancun. The pledges under the Copenhagen Accord were adopted by the Cancun Agreement, that has also made official several other decisions made in Copenhagen, as well as some that were left to be finalized by COP16, in Mexico. In Cancun, the voluntary commitments became official ones, under the umbrella of the Climate Convention.

In Durban, negotiators from the United States, the BASIC group, and the European Union underlined the official nature of the Cancun Agreement, as a preparation of the groundwork for the Platform to launch the process leading to the new universal agreement with legal force applicable to all parties to the Climate Convention. In a nutshell, it was acknowledged by all relevant parties that these commitments are legal, although not binding. The difference: the Kyoto Protocol, besides being a legal instrument, explicitly states that the targets for the countries (“industrialized countries”) listed on its Annex I are mandatory. The Cancun Agreement is part and parcel of the Climate Convention, therefore it has legal status, but the commitments registered by the parties are voluntary, not mandatory.

Finally, the Durban Platform takes the decisive step: it commits all major emitters outside the Kyoto Protocol to the negotiation of a new agreement with legal force, under which all commitments will have the same legal treatment, although they could be quantitatively differentiated on the basis of each party’s capacities.

This is not an easy decision to make. Even before it is formally adopted it is likely to cause the countries to start planning domestic actions to enable them to meet the targets yet to be defined. It is unrealistic to imagine, as some environmentalists do, that a “top down approach”, by which a decision under the Climate Convention would bind countries to take actions, would ever work.

Even the Kyoto Protocol praised for its “legally binding” status has no enforcement mechanism. What enforcement mechanism could lead Canada to meet its targets for the first period of commitment next year? None at all. Even with UN officials stating that although outside the Protocol it still has the obligation, Canada will likely fail to meet its Kyoto target, and there will hardly be any consequence to its noncompliance.

Politics hardly moves ahead of the facts. It is not a proactive process. It is a responsive one. Politics responds to active interests in economy and society. It seldom reflects even the “inactive majority” or the majority of “public opinion”. Political decisions respond to “active interest groups”, to economic constraints and inducements, and to the domestic correlation of power. Countries that show greater ambition of emissions reductions also have greater active political support from domestic economic and social forces to policies aiming at coping with climate change. Their domestic policies are usually more ambitious than their multilateral commitments.

If one looks at China’s domestic policies to reduce emissions and other forms of pollution, one will easily see that they are far ahead of what Chinese lead negotiators are willing to commit to at the Climate Convention.

Politics, in this sense, consolidates what countries are ripe to commit to at the multilateral level. The approach that really counts, and leads to progress in the negotiations under the Climate Convention is the bottom up one.

What is meaningful and relevant about the Durban process is that over the last three years major developed and emerging countries have become readier to admit to the possibility of a single climate change regime encompassing them all. The US, China, India, and Brazil said that much several times during COP17, and signed into it at the end. This outcome was not guaranteed at the outset of the climate talks. It was the result of intense negotiation and consultation. Negotiators have likely had to obtain a specific mandate from their leaders, in mid-game, to go as far as they’ve gone.

What will happen next will depend on what happens inside each of these countries. The focus of pressure should be domestic politics, rather than diplomatic undertakings. Not that the COP process doesn’t matter. It does, very much. But its main function is not to shape climate change policies to be adopted domestically. It is to consolidate progress on domestic climate change policies at the multilateral level, adding cross-country constraints and global transparency to the agreed actions. This enables, for instance, a network of domestic and global civil society organizations to join forces to act as watchdogs, to ensure that policies are in line with targets. It does make a difference to have a global accounting system for greenhouse gas emissions, and to have a global registry for quantitative targets for emission reductions. These outcomes would strengthen the multilateral regulatory system, and would also give more punch to domestic pressure from civil society and opposition parties in overseeing their government’s implementation of climate change policies.

The year 2015 has become a new milestone for global climate change politics. Two crucial decisions shall be taken at COP21, if the Durban Platform is to be completed. Firstly, the review of the emission reduction commitments to seek coherence with the 2 degrees Celsius target. As pointed before, it is absolutely sure that the new IPCC report will show a serious gap between committed actions and warming trends. If parties are to take their commitments seriously, they’ll have to revise their targets upwards for the period 2015-2020. Secondly, they’ll have to decide on the new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties” to be adopted no later than 2020.

The political engine is set to move. The pace and destination it will take will depend on the evolution of domestic economic and social forces over the next three years. Another important factor will be the domestic interplay of interests, and the power of pressure and advocacy groups. Bilateral and multilateral politics do have a role, but never a dominant one. Competition and coalition among nations and groups of nations, also help in shaping decisions. They’ll help to pave the way to future outcomes. But they do so by responding to domestic interests and projecting them on the global arena.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

The documents still circulating at COP17 show notable political progress, but fall short of adequately meeting the risks already pointed out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — IPCC — fourth assessment of climate science. They are still under discussion, and final decision may still be significantly different. It is likely, however, they will keep the general thrust of the documents.

Politics is rarely moved by the science on the issues requiring policy decisions. Politics is moved by interests, interactions, power competition, alliances, and conflicts. All that play a strong role to shape the global politics of climate change. At the political level there are unprecedented moves reflected on documents not yet approved by COP17 plenary.

Perhaps the most important one is the support from the United States, China, India and Brazil of a a “process to develop a Protocol or another legal instrument applicable to all Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”. This process, says the draft document, shall “begin immediately and be conducted as a matter of urgency”, so that the new working group the plenary should create can “complete its work as early as possible but no later than 2015, in order to adopt this legal instrument” at COP21. It “shall raise levels of ambition and be informed, inter alia, by the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the outcomes of the 2013-2015 review”.

In short this means that by 2020 there should be a common legal regime on climate change encompassing all parties to the climate convention, that this legal instrument could even be a new protocol, thus legally-binding, it would have quantified mitigation targets for all major emitters. The new instrument should be ready to be adopted by 2015, at COP21. The quantitative targets should in line with the new IPCC assessment report, that should be used to guide the review of the commitments made in Copenhagen and reaffirmed on the Cancun Agreement.

The other breakthrough is the formal admission that there is a “significant gap between the aggregated effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emissions pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding warming below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

In other words the document formally notes, and with grave concern, that there is a gap between the commitments to reduce GHG emissions and the commitment to keep the chances of warming below 2°C or 1.5°C. The 2°C is the target approved under the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement. The 1.5°C is a demand from the small islands states, the African Group, and the Less Developed Countries, admitted by the Cancun Agreement.

These hard to make political steps forward are a sine qua non for a more ambitious, science-based, rule-based future global climate change policy.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

COP17 president, South African minister of Foreign Relations Maite Emily Nkoana-Mashabane has asked a small group of parties to facilitate the final negotiations towards a package deal to be delivered in Durban. It is a sign that negotiations are moving towards a close. There still are some key issues pending a compromise solution, but all negotiators indicated they’ll cooperate to get the best outcome possible.

The outcome in Durban will be a compromise solution, and the outlines of the package deal to be agreed upon begins to show on the nuances of negotiators’ new statements to the press. Bits and pieces of a coming deal can also be collected on the corridors of the Durban Convention Center.

Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, said the European Union is ready to take a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol (‘second KP’). She said the EU must be assured that others will agree on a new legally binding framework. Europe will sign into a ‘second KP’ even if other countries choose not to join. The EU is not requiring the ‘roadmap’ towards a future legal agreement to go into too many details. It should just show there is a firm decision to arrive at a new agreement, and a timeline with a few significant deadlines. Ideally the agreement should be completed by 2015, to be in force from 2020 onwards, replacing both the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement.

US lead negotiator, Todd Stern, often cited as the main opponent to the idea of a commitment to a legally-binding agreement, said his country would have no difficulty to sign into a legally-binding agreement that binds all major emitters with equal legal force. He said he wouldn’t object to agreeing on a process to lead to this agreement. The US would rather discuss the process, and let its unfolding define the legal nature of the outcome, than defining the legal form beforehand, to design a process to get to it. It seems that the EU and the US are fine-tuning their views to move towards a deal that satisfies both.

Todd Stern said he didn’t think China, India, and Brazil are ready to sign into a binding agreement that would give identical legal treatment to developed and emerging nations. No problem there, he said. Commitments  that are not legally-binding, like the ones made in Copenhagen and reaffirmed in Cancun, are politically and morally binding.

He added that the US has no quarrels with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities, and respective capacity” under a new legal agreement, provided that ‘capacity’ is also taken into account. He said the US interprets this principle as leading to a ‘continuum of responsibilities’, rather than to as a firewall separating in absolute terms all developing countries from the developed or industrialized ones. The US major concern is with the idea that the principle be applied to prevent even the larger emerging powers to have binding emissions targets. Today, they insist their pledges are voluntary, and demand that all developed countries have mandatory targets.

Chinese minister Xie Zenhua said to the plenary of Cop17 high level segment yesterday that China wants a future legally-binding agreement under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. He arrived in Durban saying that China could accept binding emissions reduction targets.

Negotiators were clearly more confident yesterday night that an agreement might be possible here in Durban. One of them said that the negotiations that started yesterday evening and would continue throughout the day today could be a “watershed”. COP17 will anyway close a chapter of the negotiations that has been opened years ago. It is the last stop before the first period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol ends. The mandate of the working group created in 2005, during COP11, and the first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to decide on other commitment periods will be completed in Durban one way or another. The Protocol will very likely be amended to have a second period to 2020.

Negotiators are clearly making every effort to prevent COP17 from failing. There is a noticeable concern to reach an outcome as significant as possible, in large part as a deference to Africa, the continent most vulnerable to climate change. They are really engaged in the efforts to ensure a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. The plea made by the Africans at the beginning of COP17 that Africa does not become the graveyard for the Protocol appears to have impressed them all. The risk of a breakdown of the Kyoto Protocol has been progressively reduced by intense negotiations.

The EU is conceding more than it seemed to be willing to concede when negotiations began. The BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), the stronger group within G77+China, is participating of all decisions. South Africa, presiding COP17, is doing its best to make this African climate summit to succeed. Brazil is among the facilitators in the talks leading to the completion of  a package deal. Brazilian negotiators will feel responsible for the package deal, as its coauthors. China arrived in Durban announcing it wants to play a game of cooperation, differently from previous COPs, when China blocked progress in several key issues. India has been striving to ensure parties and press that its position is not different from China’s. The BASIC will likely have a common positive standing on negotiations.

The president of the African Group, Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, said the Africans have a “vested interest in the success of COP17”. “It is a very important meeting for us in Africa,” he added. None of the demands of the African Group he mentioned seem too difficult to get the support from all negotiators in Durban. The African Group’s minimum expectations are to have a ratifiable second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (‘second KP’), making the Green Climate Fund fully operational, even if some issues remain to be solved later on. “We don’t want it to be an empty shell. But let’s first make sure we have the shell, an then fill it”, he argued. He also said it would be necessary to go back to the Climate Convention fundamentals, through a process that could lead to a future legally-binding deal.

In short, to Africa, the expected package deal would be: the ‘second KP’, the ‘Cancun Package’, to make the Cancun Agreement fully operational, with special reference to the Green Climate Fund, and a ‘process’ to lead to a future common legal framework binding all. Something around these lines, perhaps with a few adjustments to reach a compromise leading to consensus, is likely to be approved at the final plenary.

The Durban outcome will very likely have all the elements demanded by the African Group. There are indications that until 2020 the commitments made in Copenhagen, and built into the UNFCCC tracks by the Cancun Agreement will be considered ‘legal’ commitments, although not ‘fully binding’ commitments. The countries that would sign into the ‘second KP would make their Cancun commitments ‘fully binding’. In other words all commitments to 2020 will be politically binding under the legal framework of the Convention, a smaller portion would also be legally binding under the Kyoto Protocol.

These commitments would be reviewed in 2015, on the basis of IPCC’s fifth report to be approved in 2013-2014. The parties could then decide to raise their ambitions regarding emissions reductions to bring them closer to the findings of climate science. After 2020, a new legal framework will be put in place to regulate actions to meet the climate change challenge.

The Durban outcome is likely to be a mix of some action, and new processes leading to future action.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

COPs look all alike, regardless the sometimes radical change of their environment, from freezing streets to sunny beach promenades. Their first week, called “technical segment” looks pretty much like their second week, called the high-level segment. The difference? The second week is more crowded, and ‘politicos’, having ministerial rank, take charge of negotiations. To expedite a solution they tend to set technical considerations aside and focus on the wording of resolutions that might appear significant enough to justify calling them an “agreement”, a “roadmap”, a “plan for action”, or a “process”. 

COP17 high level segment started yesterday in Durban with a call for action from all speakers, from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to South African president, Jacob Zuma. But it seems the parties to the Climate Convention are not ready for action. They’ll choose ‘process’ over action. The final outcome will very likely be a downsized second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, covering about 15% of global emissions, and a ‘process’ to guide negotiations to a post-2020 legally-binding agreement, to cover more than 80% of global emissions. Intense negotiations by the ‘politicos’ are trying to break the many interconnected gridlocks to make this happen.

By mid-week, last week, negotiators of the so-called technical segment were hopeful they’d be able to close a package deal to make the Cancun agreements fully operational. The ‘Cancun Package’ should deliver a fully operational Green Climate Fund, with assurance from donor countries that cash deposits would be forthcoming in the first weeks of 2012; financial and  policy mechanisms to support adaptation of developing countries to climate change; put in place a Technology Center and Network ready to start operations; set up a global accounting system for greenhouse gas emissions and a mechanism for the reporting and evaluation of parties’ emissions reduction pledges. But last Friday it was clear they’d failed to close the package deal.

Intense negotiations on these ‘technical’ matters continue, while negotiators keep trying to solve the major political hurdle of this COP17. The hurdle? How to ensure a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, even though a quite lean one, and how to move on towards the dreamed goal of having a rules-based agreement binding all major emitters, developed and developing. Parties want this “second KP”, as they call it because it would keep alive the legal structure and the operational mechanisms for finance and technological cooperation that are a part of the Protocol. Its contribution to the fight against climate change, though, would be a modest one. The second round of commitments will make legally-binding the pledges to reduce emissions made in Copenhagen by the countries that are a party to it, and reaffirmed in Cancun under the track of the Climate Convention.

The future treaty should replace the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement by 2020. As anyone who browses COPs agendas will immediately see these issues are not new at all. COP 11, in Montreal, in 2005, created the “ad hoc working group” (AWG-KP) to decide on the second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. The ‘Bali Action Plan’ decided at COP 13, in 2007, to create the “ad hoc working group” (AWG-LCA) to undertake “a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012”. The decision also determined that the working group should “complete its work in 2009 and present the outcome” to the COP15, in Copenhagen. In other words, a ‘process’ was defined to lead the working group to propose the draft of a legally-binding agreement that should be approved by the parties at COP15, in Copenhagen, in 2009.

Neither group has fulfilled its mandate. COP15 failed to decide on both issues, and the mandate of the two working groups was extended for one more year, so that they could report to COP16, in Cancun. Negotiators in Cancun did little more than make the Copenhagen Accord official, by bringing its decisions into the UN negotiating tracks, and to fill in a bit more of detail on the ‘work in progress’ towards a second period of  commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, and a future binding agreement. Sure, the mandates of the two working groups were again extended until COP17, in Durban.

We are now at COP17, in Durban, and the best scenario for the outcome taking shape here would be a second period of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, with fewer parties signing into it, than those who agreed to the first one. This ‘second KP’ would cover about 15% of global emissions, down from the 26% covered by the ‘first KP’. Parties will obviously cheer the full accomplishment of the mandate given to the ‘ad hoc working group’, and praise the work done by its chairs, and co-chairs, and all the parties who ‘constructively’ contributed to the successful closing of their work. From what they’ve been saying on side events and press conferences so will a good part of the environmentalists here in Durban. On the future treaty, COP17 would likely decide on “a comprehensive process to enable” the drafting of a comprehensively legally-binding agreement to be in force no later than 2020. There level of ambitions has been significantly lowered by both governments and many environmentalist organizations. The present level of ambitions may be more realistic. This outcome is nevertheless very frustrating, and severely enlarges the gap between commitments to action and the scientific requirements to meet the climate change challenge.

Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action, has said on the official opening of the high level segment that the EU is ready to take a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. But, she added, the EU must be assured that others will agree on a new legally binding framework. Framework, not agreement, one should be reminded.

The best-case scenario has become one in which the EU and a few other countries sign into a ‘second KP’, and the other major parties agree to ‘framework’, with some comfortable deadlines.

There is a worst-case scenario, but they’ll work hard to prevent it from happening. If it nevertheless prevails, a group of parties demanding more concrete results might not be happy with just a ‘framework’, and with the looks of the ‘Cancun Package’, and would rather veto a decision. If this ‘kamikaze’ attitude is interpreted by the presidency as ‘lack of consensus or unanimity’, the ‘second KP’ might become a ‘unilateral declaration’ by parties; and the ‘future agreement’ would remain a rather fuzzy promise.

When unable to agree on a decision, negotiators use to write the clauses under brackets. If one peruses the “amalgamation document” with the views of parties on a future agreement, one will see the same brackets at the same places for about five years. There has been no major breakthrough on relevant issues.

Decisions are not forthcoming even on what has already been decided before, requiring only a few relatively simple operational details to be implemented. That’s what is holding the implementation on finance, technology, and adaptation. On the transparency regime, brackets tell us they can’t even decide whether accounting will have a ‘framework’ or a ‘system’. On the Green Climate Fund they are struggling to determine whether it will work under the ‘guidance’ or under the ‘authority’ of the COP.

How to explain this resilience of the status quo ante, COP after COP, this slow incremental progress of political decisions aiming at a global climate change governance regime? They all know the science. They all know they’re dealing with a global threat. Most of the countries that are parties to the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, have faced some hardship caused by extreme climate events. They are all implementing carbon reducing policies at home. Most know how urgent it is to achieve a level of cooperation among high emitters to act together to cut emissions. And all of them would acknowledge that on their press conferences. But they all behave conservatively in the conference rooms. They are still captured the the dominant interests of the high carbon economy. But there are other domestic forces already interested to move towards a low carbon economy. Market forces are changing, and social support to change is already a majority of public opinion in most countries. Public opinion has not turned into active political opinion yet. However, on balance, most governments have more room to change policies today than governments had ten years ago. Yet they are still resistant to change views in multilateral negotiations.

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard complained on her twitter @CHedegaardEU that “sometimes messages are more progressive at public press conferences than in negotiation rooms…”

A journalist asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday if there is something wrong about the UN process, given that the parties are dealing with the same deadlocks for years. He said there is nothing wrong with the UN process. Negotiators are dealing with difficult decisions for their countries. Sometimes member countries the political will to move forward, he argued.

There is, however, something deadly wrong about the UN process, and not only on UNFCCC. The Security Council has been criticized for not being able to adequately deal with global security issues. A thorough UN reform has been on the agenda for years to no avail. The UN has become a machine that works almost always on low gears, having enormous difficulty to deliver meaningful and prompt decisions. Its rules are end up by maintaining the status quo, rather than promoting change. Even its own reform tends to stall.

The UN decision-making process is based either on an unanimity rule, the case of the UNFCCC, or on a regime of “selective veto power”, as in the Security Council. The unanimity rule gives, in principle, a veto power to all parties, since any country’s positive vote becomes pivotal for a decision to be made. In the case of the Security Council, a few countries have veto power since the times of the Cold War. This distribution of veto power didn’t change, although global geopolitics has thoroughly changed since the 1980’s at the very least.

The United States, one of the beneficiaries of the immutable status quo in the Security Council, strongly criticizes the ‘1992 division between developed and developing countries’, arguing that domestic and global realities changed very much, and this firewall is no longer acceptable.

China, is perfectly comfortable to be treated as a full power in the Security Council and as a developing country under the UNFCCC. This means it has the same voice as the major developed powers, and benefits from a veto power several developed countries don’t have, when deciding on global security matters. But it can, at the same time, demand differentiated obligations regarding global climate security, as a member of G77+China. Washington, and most of the EU, would like China to be treated as a full power both at the Security Council and at the UNFCCC. Connie Hedegaard referred today to the “real developing” countries, meaning of course that that are countries that are no longer truly “developing”. They belong to an intermediate category of emerging powers, China on the topmost position.

We live in a changing world. There are new threats to global security, that go far beyond the nuclear threat of Cold War times. Several studies show that climate change has become a major threat to global security. Yet the UN rules ‘freeze’ the players into outdated positions. The players’ stakes in decision-making do not match their real stakes regarding present global threats. An uneven playing field and rules that multiply veto players make it extraordinarily difficult to change the status quo. They contribute to maintain the status quo, or what, in the language of climate change modeling would be called ‘business as usual’. The reference used in the  IPCC scenarios, for instance, to determine the likely consequences of no new action is ‘business as usual’, aka the status quo. Yet the rules of global climate change politics strengthen the resilience of the status quo. They favor a ‘business as usual’ attitude.

Action to meet the climate change challenge will hardly come from the UNFCCC decision-making. The Climate Convention will always reflect with some delay what countries are already doing domestically. A ‘top down’ approach is unlikely to ever meet the scientific requirements for global climate change policy, especially if countries are doing less than science tells them they would need to do. Besides, some countries resist to write into an international treaty even what they are doing domestically. This is the case of both the US and China.

China has been doing more domestically that it has pledged to do in Copenhagen. One can no longer infer China’s progress on curbing emissions and building a low-carbon economy from what Chinese negotiators do and say at the Climate Convention.  It would be no sacrifice for China to write its Copenhagen pledges, officially reaffirmed in Cancun, into a multilateral legally-binding instrument. As it would not be any harder for China to review these targets upwards by 2015.

The United States is in a more awkward situation. Brazil and China can say their Copenhagen/Cancun commitments are legally-binding domestically, because they are a part of their climate change laws. The US Congress failed to approve such a law. US negotiators impose several conditions to move forward, but offer very little as a quid pro quo. The US senate is known to be very reluctant to ratify international treaties. It has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and negotiators can do nothing to assure the other parties a new treaty would be ratified. All US negotiators can say is that their Copenhagen/Cancun commitments are “politically and morally” binding. Todd Stern, US lead negotiator said that much on his press conference today.

The structural political foundations of the UN system do not enable the parties to the Climate Convention to decide on effective and urgent action to face risks created by climate change. Why it would still be advisable to keep the UNFCCC alive and working? First of all, because it has value as a place to consolidate an institutional framework that could lay the foundations for a future regime for climate change governance. This regime will come from a bottom up process whereby increasingly more robust domestic climate change policies are incorporated into UNFCCC’s system of rules. Decisions on domestic policies will  come faster than consensus can be built at COP plenaries. Secondly, the UNFCCC provides an important environment for global political interaction, promoting tolerance towards the diversity of points of view, arguments, and cultural references. It  exposes parties to each others’ realities and  enhances solidarity.

One could say that the UNFCCC belongs to the pre-history of a cosmopolitan global democracy, supporting the global governance of several key global issues, especially climate change. This regime of governance without government will benefit from this pluralist environment with some capacity to prevent extreme positions and reduce radical polarizations that tend to cause systemic breakdowns.

Sergio Abranches

COP17 in Durban is braced to start dealing with a deadlocked agenda. Negotiators will have to find a middle ground to prevent the talks to collapse and wreck the United Nation’s architecture for climate change policy and politics.

The central focus will be the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol. Developed countries will arrive at Durban with diverging positions among themselves on this issue. U.S. negotiators simply say that Kyoto is not on their agenda because the U.S. Congress chose not to ratify the Protocol.  Some parties to the Protocol are saying they will not adhere to a second period of commitment. Their priority is a new international binding agreement that reaches all large emitters, including the U.S. and the major developing economies. According to Bloomberg’s Kim Chapman, Todd Stern, U.S.’s lead negotiator, told reporters during a Nov. 18 briefing in Arlington, Virginia that “it’s premature to decide on what the ultimate legal form [of a new international agreement] might be until you have a much better sense of what the content would be”. Stern said that any binding accord in which the U.S. participates must be “highly symmetrical” and require mandatory action from all major emitters, such as China, and not only from industrialized economies.

The European Union is open to commit to a second phase for the Kyoto Protocol, but wouldn’t risk to be alone, as the other parties maintain their decision to stay out of it. European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said that the EU won’t commit to a new set of targets under Kyoto unless countries including the U.S., China and other big emitters agree on a pathway to a new binding treaty.

There is a clear and present risk that developed countries fail to reach a consensus on a second period of commitment. In other words it is not only a divide between developed and developing countries that is preventing parties to break the logjam on the Kyoto Protocol.

This divide does exist though. Developing countries say they will not start talking about a new international deal before there is a second period of commitment. There appears to be a strong consensus among them regarding the centrality of a second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol, as a sine qua non for the continuation of the talks. All the relevant groups representing developing countries have decided on their preparatory meetings that their priority, and imperative condition, in Durban would be the approval of a second period of commitment.

But this consensus is one of the few points that hold together the sum total of developing countries. These countries under the umbrella of G77+China comprise a very heterogeneous group. Whenever the G77+China speaks for them all it will defend only a few broad points that are able to reconcile very different clusters of interests, diverse needs, a wide spectrum of financial, technical, economic, and political capabilities, and contrasting levels of vulnerability to climate change. One can expect a more coherent framing of  substantive negotiating positions, that could better represent these contrasting domestic realities, when these groups break into more compatible representations such as the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), the AOSIS (small island states), the African Union, and the LDC (least developed countries) during negotiations.

There is a growing uneasiness with the idea that developed countries are negotiating among themselves a new climate change agreement to become operational in 2020. This behind the scenes negotiation risks to create a grave crisis of confidence that could further endanger the Durban talks. It was the realization that a Copenhagen agreement was negotiated within a small group of developed countries through an initiative of Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s prime-minister at the time, that triggered a crisis of confidence that ultimately led Copenhagen to fail.

The solution to this logjam has a double path. One to take steps to ensure all parties that no deal previously closed within closed doors among a few parties will be tabled. The other to set a new roadmap having on its design both a transition period for the Kyoto Protocol and a frame of reference for a future all-encompassing binding protocol or treaty.

South Africa’s Environment Minister Edna Molewa recognized “that a comprehensive legal agreement will not be reached,” in Durban. That said, “South Africa envisages that” negotiations “pave the way for a comprehensive multilateral, rules-based climate regime.”

This is a tricky move. There already is a roadmap, drawn in Bali, which has not been completed, and it is unlikely it will ever be. A new roadmap would have to somehow be stronger, more doable, and substantive than the Bali’s work plan to gain credibility.

Two operational points could help to wrap up the new roadmap on a satisfying, though meager, package deal. Some progress on the transparency issue – monitoring, reporting, and verifying mechanisms – that has started to be negotiated in Copenhagen, was rediscussed in Cancun, but still has a long way to go. Both were an important part of the Copenhagen Agreement , and further reinforced by the Cancun Agreements. They are: the full operationalization of the Climate Technology Centre and Network, and the  Green Climate Fund. Finishing the job on both would represent an important step forward, and could help the parties to agree on a frame of reference and a time frame for a new climate change accord.

The Green Climate Fund is additionaly related to a crucial issue regarding global climate change policies: that of adaptation. Channelling public, multilateral, and private long-term financing towards developing countries for greenhouse gas emission reductions, and new clean technologies (mitigation) is not really difficult. Finance for adaptation, that is to deal with the effects present and future of climate change has been lacking. There is a permanent complaint from developing countries that negotiations have been giving far more weight to mitigation than to adaptation. And the poorer or more vulnerable countries desperately need money and technology for adaptation.

Mitigation is an issue for the big players, developed and developing. To put it simply it is an issue for the G20 or Major Economies Forum (MEF). Adaptation is a critical issue for the long-term well being of the majority of the developing countries.

The roadmap, as well as the financial and technological mechanisms, would have to be more clear and direct in addressing adaptation needs for a new deal to become possible.

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting to the Climate Change Convention in Durban is taking place in Panama, since last Saturday. Negotiators will attempt to arrive at feasible drafts to be tabled at the next session of the Climate Convention, COP17, in Durban, South Africa. The signs are that an agreement on the core issues deadlocking conversations is unlikely to happen.

A radical polarization between developed and developing countries emerged since the first preparatory meetings, early this year. This was somehow surprising. COP16, in Cancun, seemed to have restored confidence among parties, and to point towards a more cooperative dialogue. No party or observer would really imagine that a major deal was possible this year, or even next year, especially after the worsening of global economic conditions with a new turn of the financial crisis. But there was some hope that a few meaningful strides would be possible, until conditions were ripe for a final deal.

It seems unlikely that global climate negotiators will be able to solve conflicting views on the core issues that are deadlocking climate talks in this climate of sharp polarization. The present situation seems to indicate that countries have moved backwards to the old veto politics that impeded any significant global climate deal for one decade.

This persistent deadlock threatens the credibility of the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) as the multilateral instrument to negotiate a future, substantive and encompassing global climate deal. A deal that is binding to all major emitters, setting emissions reduction targets that meet the scientific consensus about the minimum levels necessary to achieve relative climate security.

The divide between developed and developing countries seems to have increased over the last months. On the one side developing countries say there will be no broader deal prior to the approval of a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol. The first period ends in 2012. Developing countries argue that they are already committed to reduction goals proportionate to their historical obligations, and commitments from developed countries are still lacking.

It is true that the aggregate commitment from developed countries is still behind scientific requirements. The goals set for the United States in Copenhagen are too low for the major developed emitter. There is little  room in most developing countries to implement emissions reduction policies without substantial financial and technological support from developed countries. But this is definitely not true for the larger emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and several others. These countries are doing less than they could and should, particularly when we take into account their future emissions, and the pace their emissions is increasing as their economies grow.

Insisting on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol seems increasingly less credible as a strategy to achieve a meaningful global climate deal. The countries that owe more on the side of further commitments to reduce their emissions are all outside it, namely the United States, China, Brazil, India, and a few other G20 members.

It is more plausible to say that their concern is not really with the future of global climate change policy, but with the immediate impact of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ending, without a decision about a second one. The focus of concern is what would happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms under the Protocol and to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that allows for investments in emissions reducing ventures in developing countries to be used as offsets by developed countries.

The negotiators for the European Union said, on a press briefing in Panama, that CDM projects would continue to be accepted as offsets within EU’s own cap and trade framework, even if Kyoto Protocol’s commitments are not renewed.

While developing countries insist on placing the Kyoto Protocol on center stage of negotiations, developed countries are playing it down. U.S. chief negotiator, Todd Stern has been clear in all his statements that his country is out of it, and has no intention to approve it in the future. The U.S. stance has not changed in Panama. The representative from Japan reiterated his country will not be a party to a second commitment period. New Zealand said that they remain prepared to take on a second commitment period only in the context of a comprehensive global agreement that contains legally-binding emission reduction targets for all major emitters. Australia’s position is more or less the same, if not a bit more direct in the sense of only accepting a successor to Kyoto that reaches all major emitters at once.

A second commitment period seems far away, unless there is enough progress on the “long-term” negotiations (AWG-LCA) aiming at a concomitant and comparable deal that encompasses all large emitters, developed and emerging, especially those outside the reach of the Kyoto Protocol.  This global deal, however, is nowhere in sight.

The Kyoto Protocol has very few virtues as far as necessary climate change mitigation is concerned. It is the only legal framework we have. It helped to create a carbon market. But, alas, in spite of being legal, it reaches about a third of  the global emissions encompassed by the pledges registered under the Copenhagen Agreement. It is legal, but it is hardly binding, because there is no enforcement mechanism in place. Its compliance instruments are either lacking or too weak to make a difference. If what counts is the moral and political constraints of being a signatory, than it does not differ too much from the Copenhagen Agreement, especially after its main elements were approved into the Climate Change Convention framework in Cancun. The carbon market has so far failed to prove itself as a working mechanism to effectively reduce emissions, and is far from becoming a global institution.

UNFCCC’s executive secretary, Christiana Figueres, reported progress on the design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Technology Executive Committee (TEC), but she raised concerns about the need for progress on monitoring, review and verification (MRV). She has also said that negotiators are for some time working against the clock under the Kyoto Protocol. On the motivational side, she said that Durban needs to address further commitments for developed countries under the Protocol and the evolution of the mitigation framework under the Convention for developed and developing countries. That is precisely the key for the deadlock.

Informally what is already under negotiation is a transition regime once the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. The major concern is what will happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms created by the Protocol and with CDM. It doesn’t seem too difficult to foresee that a legal extension of these mechanisms beyond the Protocol’s first commitment period is far more probable to happen than the approval of a meaningful second period. This transition rule and progress on the institutional design of technology cooperation and of the Green Fund seem to be the feasible goals for Durban.

The institutional rules that govern the UN’s decision-making process feeds cross-cutting vetoes and has a clear bias towards the status quo. Usually the only viable exit from a deadlocked status quo is muddling through, or accepting piecemeal, minimal changes at a time. The unanimity rule precludes substantial consensus-based decisions leading to a change of regime. This is particularly true for the global climate change regime. If unanimity is to be enforced in absolute terms, no substantive consensus would be possible in this heterogeneous assembly of 193 countries, that ranges from oil producers to small islands threatened to disappear; from giant emitters, developed and developing, to poor countries that have very low emissions. Some of the smaller emitters show nevertheless a far more consequential disposition to find a new path towards low-carbon development, than most of the fast growing large emitters.

In Copenhagen, the application of the absolute interpretation of the unanimity rule led to the collapse of a deal based on a large consensus among all relevant players. It was defeated by the veto of a handful of ideology-orientated countries, largely peripheral to global politics, and to global climate policy. In Cancun, a more relativistic interpretation of the unanimity rule allowed the waiver of a small minority’s whimsical veto, and the approval of the Cancun Agreements.

If negotiators fail to find a way to solve the gridlock within the next few years, the UNFCCC risks loosing its credibility and legitimacy. It will come to be seen as an irrelevant segment of climate politics, one dominated by diplomatic fencing. The sustainability of the Climate Convention will be in jeopardy. But, much worse, if the logjam extends beyond 2012 the danger increases of the world loosing the possibility of maintaing unavoidable climate change within relatively safe boundaries.

Major climate talks in South Africa at year-end will be unlikely to strike agreement on a new pact, but will be important in determining the shape of long-term efforts to tackle climate change, a senior U.N. climate official said on Tuesday.

The future of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. binding framework which imposes targets for greenhouse gas emissions cuts to about 40 industrialized nations until 2012, is widely seen as under threat. Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not extend it, while the United States never signed up to it and will never do, as the White House top climate change negotiator, Todd Stern has stated in more than one occasion.

“It’s too early to call the Durban result, expectations are not high at the moment,” said Adrian Macey, chair of U.N. Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP) negotiations, referring to the Nov 28 to Dec 9 talks in South Africa. Macey has also been New Zealand climate change ambassador since 2002.

“Whatever happens, I don’t see all 191 parties under the U.N. abandoning efforts” to develop a comprehensive accord “in the longer term for climate change action,” Macey told a climate conference in Wellington, New Zealand.

There would be a gap after the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period expires at the end of 2012, Macey said, with a number of issues remaining outstanding.

“It’s become clear that what we might be looking at in Durban is a transition to a more viable long-term architecture,” Macey said.

Last week, New Zealand’s Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser told Reuters the global community was accepting the reality that there would be no deal in Durban but there has been and there will be some progress, and a global deal is still within reach.

Global negotiations have faltered because of a gulf between developed and developing countries about who should shoulder the burden of reducing emissions blamed for stoking global warming.

Kyoto does not oblige developing nations to take on binding emissions cuts and these countries now produce more than half of mankind’s greenhouse gas pollution. The problem lies on emerging, not developing countries. China is the world’s top emitter, followed by the United States and India. Brasil, Mexico, and Indonesia also have significant emissions and a large potential of future emissions. Smaller economies among developing countries present no threat of major growth of GHG emissions now or in the future.

Intractable issues in international negotiations ahead of Durban include aviation and maritime emissions and how to manage carbon markets in developing countries, Macey said.

“It’s not going to be the final answer and it will be very difficult to get anything like a treaty,” Macey said, referring to the Durban talks.

Source: Reuters

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting before COP17, in Durban, South Africa, has started yesterday in Bonn pointing to more problems than solutions. Christiana Figueres, top UN climate official, warned the parties about the risk of inaction, but realistically acknowledged that there will likely be very few substantial decisions in Durban. She finally admitted that there is not enough time left to approve the text for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. A regulatory gap is already unavoidable.

Warning statements by the top climate official always precede the final preparatory meetings. Yvo de Boer used to do that before Figueres. It is also on the script to voice some realistic assessments about what is possible to accomplish. Realism helps to manage expectations.

“We are putting ourselves in a scenario where we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere,” said Figueres. “We are getting into very risky territory,” she concluded to stress that time was running out.

She has also sided with the less developed countries and the small island-states observing that the target agreed upon in Copenhagen to limit global warming to around 2C is unsustainable. She supported the small countries’s plea that the world targets 1.5C instead. In Cancun, there was an agreement that at some point the 1.5C target will be considered.

“In my book, there is no way we can stick to the goal [2C] that we know is completely unacceptable to the most exposed [countries],” Figueres said, according to the Guardian.

By pushing for the 1.5C goal Figueres may get a broad majority support among the parties, but runs the risk of creating an unresolvable polarization between the smaller countries, the U.S., China, India, and Brazil. A polarization that may lead to a deadlock in negotiations. Besides, several climate scientists have told me that this is an unrealistic target given the level of GHG already accumulated in the atmosphere and the present path of emissions. Some of them think we’ve already passed even the point where the 2C limit would be feasible. Based on their opinion it seems that either 2C or 1.5C would only be achievable if we have better technology to capture GHG from the atmosphere, as Figueres suggested.

On the side of realistic statements, Figueres has finally acknowledged that an agreement is unlikely in Durban on the second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol. “Even if they were able to agree on a legal text”, she said, as Reuters reports, “that requires an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, it requires legislative ratifications on the part of three-quarters of the parties, so we would assume that there’s no time to do that between Durban and the end of 2012.” A post-2012 regulatory gap is already unavoidable, and may further destabilize the already fragile carbon market. There is a broad perception among climate negotiators that no binding agreement to replace Kyoto is likely to be agreed upon before 2015.

Negotiators are even more skeptical about getting any relevant outcome from Durban because of the attitude of the South African presidency. Critics say the presidency lacks initiative. No informal meeting has been organized so far to consult the parties on a viable set of decisions that could prevent COP17 from being a total failure.

Asked about this absentee presidency, Figueres said that “South Africa has been very carefully listening, trying to understand where there are commonalities and where the weaknesses are.” It seems too little given the amount of negotiations still required to reach a consensus on a few points.

Less developed countries are very concerned about the mitigation and adaptation fund. In spite of a commitment made in Copenhagen to implement the fund, and the decision made in Cancun to put it in place, there has been no institutionalization of the fund or disbursement of money. Finding a way to make the fund real could be a fair outcome for the Durban climate talks.

A qualified and active presidency is key to prevent failure of climate talks. The transparent and pluralistic informal meetings convened by the Mexican presidency of COP16 were decisive to get the Cancun Agreements. Prime Minister Rasmussen’s attitude in the presidency of COP15 has contributed in no small amount to the crisis of confidence among parties that led the Copenhagen final session to the well-known dismal ending.

Another critical factor at climate negotiations is some degree of understanding among countries that have a leading role in the different groups among which the Parties are organized: the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China); AOSIS (small island states); African Union; and Less Developed Countries. The three BASIC big players, the U.S., and the European  Union are always decisive players. If they reach some understanding with opinion makers among the other groups, and are able to take these countries’ major interests into account, some progress could be achieved. It is the COP presidency that has the political and institutional means to propitiate situations where this preliminary understanding could be pursued. Apparently this is not happening at all.

Years of deadlocks, paralysis, and muddling-through outcomes, if and when there is some progress, have led several analysts to propose that the UNFCCC ceases to be the main forum for global climate policy-making. Some of them defend the creation of an agency similar to the World Trade Organization to become the global climate change regulatory agency. Others think that sectoral agreements and bilateral deals could pave the way to a multilateral agreement encompassing all major carbon emitters. This deal could be done within G20, and be more effective and binding than any UN-sponsored agreement.

I agree that the UNFCCC is unlikely to yield a broad and bold binding agreement in any foreseeable future. Climate change challenges us to do the maximum possible under the present technological and social conditions, as well as to keep searching for stronger technological means, short of geoengineering. The UN rules could only lead to consensus around an acceptable minimum. But , its weaknesses notwithstanding, the UNFCCC still has an important role to play.

It creates an environment where the key actors of the global society can interact and learn the ways towards global democratic governance. Government officials, NGOs, scientists, business, and the media get together to debate all topics relevant to climate change. This continuous interactions create connections, networks, allowing  all players in this complex and decisive global political game to be exposed to each others’ views and values. It is an exercise fundamental to the future of democratic and pluralistic global governance without government. An important environment to test everyone’s capabilities to become a part of this cosmopolity, of this global poliarchy. Perhaps it is not the appropriate mechanism to provide us with a strong and binding legal framework for global action on climate change, but is is a necessary piece of this machinery, in itself a work in progress.

Sergio Abranches

The Cancun Agreements were a continuation of the Copenhagen Accord, and an additional important step forward. COP16 meant more progress in the right direction. But we are still far from a new binding agreement on climate change.

It may seem paradoxical to say that COP16 was a continuation of the Copenhagen Accord. But it has finished a job that was not concluded in Copenhagen. The Cancun Agreements have formalized the essential provisions of the Copenhagen Accord, including the emission reduction pledges registered on its annexes. The core of the Accord has now been adopted as an official UN document. In Copenhagen there was considerable progress in negotiations on central issues related to a future binding deal, but they stopped short of getting a final vote. These negotiations were resumed and finalized in Cancun. Definitions regarding the emission reduction pledges, the Green Fund, the transparency mechanism to monitor the implementation of the pledges, all designed as pieces of the Copenhagen Accord are now formal decisions under the Cancun Agreements.

Intense negotiations were able to prevent the collapse by default of the Kyoto Protocol. The formal veto to a second period of commitment by Annex I countries – Japan, Russia, New Zealand and Australia – would in practice amount to renouncing the Protocol. It would become inapplicable from 2012 onwards. I’ve been arguing for some time that we should abandon the Kyoto Protocol. It is less representative of global emissions than the Copenhagen Accord. But its collapse rather than its formal replacement by a more encompassing and representative binding agreement could lead to a dangerous legal void. This sudden abandonment of the sole negotiation track that already has a legal instrument could put in jeopardy the whole multilateral framework for global climate policy formation. The decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol should be by supersession. Its provisions that have already proved to work should be transferred to a new and more encompassing legal instrument, having new provisions especially regarding its enforcement. This evolution would be more than just reforming the Kyoto Protocol and adding more countries to its Annex I. The world needs a brand new climate treaty that builds upon the Kyoto Protocol’s few strengths and moves beyond its several limitations.

Every country now is aware that in the future there will be only one binding instrument regulating mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. It could happen in Durban, South Africa, next year, during COP17. But is doesn’t seem likely.

The Cancun Agreements did, however, more than formally adopting the central provisions of the Copenhagen Accord. They have solved some critical deadlocks preventing a final solution on issues that were negotiated in Copenhagen but fell short of being adopted. The most important concerned REDD+, adaptation, finance and transparency (monitoring, reporting and  verification). The guidelines for REDD+ were satisfactorily approved. Delegations have clarified governance problems regarding the Adaptation Fund, and made decisions that might eventually lead to a final solution. They’ve formulated an working framework for global adaptation policies. An international institution to deal with loss and damage and an Adaptation Council will be created. Parties have also decided to create a Technology Executive Council and a Climate Technology Center and Network to support technology transfer. There was agreement on the specification of the ICA – International Consultation and Analysis as a transparency mechanism, negotiated between president Obama and premier Wen Jiabao in a BASIC meeting in Copenhagen, with the supporting mediation of India and Brazil.

Cancun was a clear continuation of the endeavors that have begun in Copenhagen. The results achieved by COP16 depended on the political shift made at COP15. Copenhagen represented a paradigm shift in global climate politics. It marked the transition of a politics of negation to a politics of cooperation. In Copenhagen, the U.S., China, Brazil, and India have stopped blocking any progress towards a new binding climate change agreement. They’ve admitted for the first time ever to register emissions reduction pledges under an international agreement. It wasn’t foreseen that the Copenhagen Accord would not be adopted by the plenary of COP15. The expectations of the chiefs of government was that it would become an official accord adopted by the Climate Convention. They viewed it as an important building-block for a binding agreement. An inept and confused Chair prevented it from being adopted. In Copenhagen, an unassertive president has lost control of the plenary, and provoked a dismal decision. In Cancun, a firm presidency has led the plenary to a legitimate and successful outcome.

The failure of the Danish presidency transferred to Cancun the task to officially adopt the core elements of the Copenhagen Accord, as the foundation for the negotiation of a fully binding agreement in the future. Most of the core issues necessary to design a new treaty were fully negotiated in Copenhagen, but the climate of distrust and conflict prevented them from being adopted. The strategy adopted by the Mexican presidency made a crucial difference. It started to be designed by president Felipe Calderón during the hot final moments of COP15 in an otherwise freezing Copenhagen. It was aptly implemented by Patricia Espinosa, the president of COP16, with a firm hand and a careful approach. With cautious but unwavering leadership Espinosa ensured the necessary prerequisite to achieving a good final result in Cancun: to restore confidence and to regenerate the commitment of all to the multilateral regime for global climate policy.

Her caution helped to eliminate the lack of confidence and the misgivings that still prevailed by ensuring full transparency and representativeness to every move in the negotiations. “An open doors policy”, as she herself defined it. To respond to the fear of hidden texts and secret documents that poisoned the Copenhagen environment, she devised a process of informal negotiations, that should produce no written documents, only “informal notes” and spoken reports by the Chairs at informal stock-taking plenaries. There were drafting groups, but no draft documents to circulate. The only documents to be ever tabled were written at the end of the negotiations, under the supervision of the presidency. They were made available only in the evening of Friday, last day of the Convention.

Confidence building along the several days of intense informal negotiations, and full transparency have created a very cooperative climate and a degree of conviviality that increased the propensity to compromise of almost all players. This strategy was not without risks. Taking informal negotiations up to the last hours of the summit left almost no room for the production of formal documents. A plenary without formal documents upon which to deliberate would be a plenary without substance. But the determination with Espinosa managed each step of this long series of informal meetings and the drafting of the final documents maintained COP16 out of this danger zone.

Her resolve prevented Cancun from having the deplorable end Copenhagen had. At the final plenary of COP15, a handful of countries vetoed an agreement supported by more than 100 countries, among them the larger emitters, and the large majority of the most vulnerable to extreme climate events. When Bolivia objected to the adoption of the documents for lack of consensus, Patricia Espinosa has made perhaps the most important decision of a whole generation of COPs: she argued that consensus does not mean unanimity; consensus is not giving one country or a very few countries the right to veto the decision of a large majority. She did not use an argument of plurality, not even one of qualified majorities. She used an argument of common sense, of large numbers: if everybody but a few want a decision, and that decision harm no one, it has to be adopted as a consensual rule. It is a fair and legitimate definition of consensus. It combines a high level of agreement (large numbers against a few), a high degree of representativeness (all major emitters, all countries with financial and technical means to support the decisions on finance and technology, all most vulnerable countries but one favored the adoption of the documents), and a clause of no harm done (no one could say persuasively that one would be worse-off with the decision than without it). The first two elements are political. The third is a moral one. The three provided a sound technical and legal basis to determine the limits of both consensus and legitimate veto power.

That’s how politics works: step by step, eliminating vetoes, clarifying arguments and giving transparency to stakes and interests involved, creating partial consensus in search of overall consensus. Political decisions at the multilateral or multiparty level tend to begin by  asserting general principles, while there still is disagreement over more concrete issues, and over policy operationalization and implementation. A policy that can be enforced and fully implemented requires that conditions are ripe for its adoption. This usually takes a succession of negotiating steps towards the final outcome. It can take more time than climate science says we have. Let’s hope not. It is moving slower than the pace of observed signs of climate change. That can help to accelerate the political process. Each new step depends on previous domestic decisions and change. The multilateral process of negotiation can be an important driver of domestic change and help countries to move forward on domestic climate policy-making.

COP17, in Durban, South Arica will be the third stage of this new phase of global climate politics. As Cancun’s achievements depended on the results achieved in Copenhagen, and improved upon them, Durban will benefit from progress made in Copenhagen and Cancun. Can Durban be the final stop on this long and difficult journey towards an encompassing, effective, and binding climate agreement? Yes it can. But it is not likely. Particularly if the present economic crisis in Europe and the U.S. persists. It becomes even less likely if inflationary pressure and exchange rate imbalances also negatively affect the Chinese economy. But it will almost certainly make a significant step forward in the right direction. The parties will hardly lose track in Durban. They’ll probably move faster towards the desired goal, now that confidence has been restored, the multilateral process revitalized and several core issues have been appropriately resolved.

Sergio Abranches

How the physical environment is segregating the key players of global climate politics, and decisively influencing the way negotiations take place at COP16.

The physical environment is clearly having a significant impact on the climate and dynamics of the negotiations here in Cancun. The set-up isolates negotiators and observers from the NGO’s, and makes the access of the media to the delegations far more difficult than it was in Copenhagen, for instance. It also makes contact between the media and NGO’s discontinuous and far more demanding. The distances involved are a major factor as well as the overall poor logistics for COP16.

The physical set-up of a meeting has a clear impact on behavior. The relationship between physical environments and behavior has already been widely documented by anthropological, sociological, socio-psychological, and political research.

The ExpoCenter at the Moon Palace, where the delegations meet officially, and press briefings are held, lacks a  media center. The media center is on another building of the Moon Palace, and one can only move from “lobby to lobby” through minibuses. This morning I had to wait 18 minutes to get one of those minibuses. One can easily waste half an hour just moving from within the huge and labyrinthine resort housing the official proceedings of COP16. You waste time. To meet the schedules requires leaving to places earlier. The lack of appropriate housing for the media closer to where the meetings and press briefings occur reduces the capability for real time reporting.

I am writing from an empty media center. There are only nine journalists here. I can see a meeting of the Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol on the screen, but the phones won’t broadcast what the delegates are saying. This empty media center, overlooking the caribbean sea, with a mute TV screen showing delegates discussing one of the key issues of this global meeting on climate change is an eloquent portrait of the present climate.

Unsurprisingly small-groups informal meetings and informal consultations dominate COP16. Delegates complain about the lack of official drafts, there are no texts for them to discuss and negotiate formally. Brazilian chief climate change negotiator ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo referred yesterday to this bias towards informality as an “intensification of informal consultations” on all the dimensions of the negotiations. He sees this process as one that could lead to more objective formal negotiations latter on. However, he also sees some risks if these informal consultations are used to go too far on the details of each issue, loosing the overall, systemic view of the process.

Other negotiators think that informal consultations lack transparency and representativeness. As a political analyst, I understand the need for informally tackling the harder issues paving the way to smoother formal negotiations. I also understand why diplomats have a bias towards small-group talks. However, when they become the dominant activity in a meeting that requires formal procedures, they can easily become a way to delay decisions.

NGO’s are a victim of this isolationism. The cannot either mobilize or advocate efficiently through all the barriers imposed to their participation. The whole meeting becomes tribal. Delegations talk only to delegations, and tend to follow the lines of elective affinities. NGO’s end up by talking basically to environmentalists and experts they already know well on side-events. They are segregated from the main events.

On one of her witty press briefings secretary Christiana Figueres invited the media to go to the “climate change village”, she described in strong colors as a wonderful place the Mexican government has built for the NOG’s. “The climate change village is where things happen. So stop looking for where things happen. Just go there”. She was referring to night life obviously. But the fact is that the “climate change village” is a sort of NGO zoo set up to separate the environmentalists from the place where the things that really matter happen.

Christiana Figueres is has a powerful personality. Her eyes glitter with intelligence, but as a diplomat’s eyes they’re opaque to her sentiments. They won’t tell you whether she is sincere or not. Today she strongly defended the participation of stakeholders. She also said the participation of NGO’s and stakeholders is very welcome. She also said NGOs were fully participating “following electronically” what the delegations are doing confined in the Moon Palace. The fact is that while at the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) delegates are discussing how to create official tracks for stakeholders (NGOs included) participation, this participation was drastically curtailed on Cancun. A large part of this spatial confinement is the responsibility of the Mexican government on the presidency of COP16. Mexican president Felipe Calderón was probably negatively impressed by the democratic environment inside the Bella Center, in Copenhagen, where he started planning what to do about Cancun’s COP. But Figueres is also responsible for deciding not to insist on a more inclusive and transparent meeting.

In Copenhagen, it was very difficult to reach the Bella Center. But, once inside, the environment was an open one, very democratic, where everybody had an opportunity to see and talk to everybody else. In Cancun, on the contrary, COP16 has become a “closed-doors” event, on a “palace”, that has an architecture and a decor of doubtful taste, and a space organization that makes very easy to implement an isolationist organization.

Global climate politics is not only about governments, observers and official delegations. It has three key actors: governments, global civil society and the globalized press, including news oriented and scientific blogs, and social media groups. The separation of these actors is not a productive way to look for good working results. Watchdogs and advocates are crucial not only in the quest for effective solutions, but also in ensuring effective implementation. Cancun may still yield good results. But transparency is gone.