The Paris climate change conference overcame a decade of international failure to conclude with a pledge from all 195 nations present that each would lower greenhouse gas emissions to help stave off global warming that is threatening the future of the planet. The agreement was a miracle after the collapse of the Copenhagen summit 2009 and Kyoto Protocol because, as United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon said, there was “no Plan B” if the deal fell apart. More significantly, it states that the current level of ambition is the floor, not the ceiling, and that every five years, beginning 2020, all goals and achievement will be regularly reviewed.
Feel good apart, the deal is far from solving the problem of global warming. On the basis of current pledges submitted by 187 countries, it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by only half the amount needed to curb increase in atmospheric temperatures up to the safe limit of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. By these estimates, greenhouse emissions will still lead to a rise of 2.7 degrees Celsius from Industrial Revolution levels, and thus take the planet past the danger mark resulting in sharp rise in sea levels, floods, severe droughts, widespread food and water shortages, devastating hurricanes and other storms. An underreported phenomenon is the likelihood of millions of climate refugees from countries overwhelmed by climate change.
That is why Paris’ ambitious vision of restricting emissions to a level that will keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be the key to success. Here we have to realise that the world has already reached 1 degree Celsius, so the task is truly herculean. The paradigm shift caused by Paris is that for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, there is global consensus that development cannot be at the cost of destroying the planet.
For post-Paris success, the world must nudge global financial and energy markets away from investment in coal, oil and gas as primary energy sources and move towards zero-carbon energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power. Innovations here could achieve climate goals while creating new avenues of employment and raising living standards. The choices now made by individual countries will determine whether Paris is really a turning point in world history, or another chimera.
Ultimate success depends on the provisions for mitigation, transparency, and climate finance. All is not well here. Some countries, particularly a group known as the Least Developed Countries coalition led by the Democratic Republic of Congo, wanted a legally binding provision that would compel rich countries to provide a minimum $100 billion a year to help mitigate and adapt to the ravages of climate change. This was always a sticky point in the run up to Paris, and in the final deal the goal of $100 billion is mentioned only in the preamble and not in the legally binding portion of the agreement.
The harsh truth is that the success of the Paris climate accord essentially depends on two factors outside the formal pact, viz., global peer pressure and the actions of individual countries in implementing the intended nationally defined contributions, or INDCs, which too, are not legally binding.
Given the experience of past failures, the United Nations experimented with a hybrid format at Paris. Each nation’s plans are voluntary, but there are legally binding requirements to reconvene every five years, starting in 2020, with updated plans to tighten emissions cuts and submit new national plans for reducing emissions. If this process works, the Paris Agreement could last for decades, with new emissions-cutting efforts made every five years. It is the first UN climate agreement structured in such a novel way.
Nations will also be legally required to monitor, verify and report on their emissions levels and reductions, using a universal accounting system. The idea is to build global peer pressure.
The summit wisely accepted the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” whereby developing countries are subject to weaker obligations than developed countries.
But this brings us back to the need of developing and poorer countries for access to improved technologies and funds to achieve the ambitious goals in the agreement. There must also be more funding support for global scientific research and to strengthen countries’ technical capacity to deliver. The UN’s climate science panel has warned that the world must reach net zero emissions by 2070 to avoid dangerous warming. At present reckoning, it seems a tall order.
In 2020, countries will have to come forward with new emissions-cutting plans. They will be in a position to do so only if they get the technological and financial support necessary for adaptation and mitigation efforts. But even before this, in November 2016, the next UN climate summit in Morocco will have to flesh out the provisions for transparency, review, and updating of national efforts outlined in Paris. Morocco will reveal if the Paris Agreement was truly a resolution – as Copenhagen and Kyoto were once thought to be – or if the old conflicts were only papered over and will have to be fought once again. Did the world run at Paris only to stand still or did it truly inch towards an elusive finishing line – that is the question.
Abplive.in, 14 December 2015