Nations trying to hammer out a draft of a climate-change agreement in Lima, Peru, have already run into problems that have derailed the talks in the past. But this time, the discussions have been “constructive” rather than abrasive.
Some familiar rifts — developing versus developed nations, climate aid, whether emissions cuts should be legally binding — have emerged in Lima. But dialogue has been “notably civil and substantive,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, which is a departure from the past.
“Wide gulfs remain, but rather than succumbing to procedural fights, parties have been putting forward and constructively debating concrete ideas for the Paris agreement,” he wrote on the think tank’s website.
Many observers say the U.N. talks have more life than the failed 2009 Copenhagen negotiations. A non-binding agreement between the U.S. and China to reduce emissions was perhaps the most significant, as China — the world’s top emitter, with the U.S. just behind it — for the first time appeared to demonstrate it was ready to participate in negotiations rather than obstruct them.
The memory of the Copenhagen debacle has negotiators approaching the current talks with more caution. Christiana Figueres, the U.N. climate chief, adopted a measured tone when she described the goal for Lima.
“It is not about knocking people over the head and saying ‘now we have to miraculously solve climate change,'” she told Reuters.
Instead, the Lima talks are designed to narrow some of the major issues, or “chapter headings,” negotiators will take into formal negotiations next year in Paris, where nations will seek a deal to govern emissions beyond 2020, said Michael Jacobs, senior adviser with New Climate Economy, a group formed from a partnership of several research organizations and institutions.
The discussions have shown there is plenty of work ahead, since most countries don’t want to give away any concessions until they’re sure of what they’ll get in return.
“In practice, these things do all come together in the end,” Jacobs, who was senior adviser to ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told the Washington Examiner. “It makes for slightly overdramatic, melodramatic conferences.”
Many of the “chapter headings” Jacobs referred have been under discussion since Copenhagen. They include the different types of contributions countries must make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, national plans to adapt to a changing climate, efforts to boost financial support for climate change, developing and accessing new technology, and rules for reporting and verifying progress.
But also critical is how every country views its responsibilities.
Developing nations are still pushing richer ones to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and to contribute more money to those efforts. Oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia and Russia need global demand for their resources. India has said its coal production will double by 2019, though a report from a business publication there said Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon could announce a climate goal with an “aspirational” target for when the world third-largest emitter would hit its peak emissions.
A report released Wednesday by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization added haste to the discussions. It said this year could be the hottest on record. Recent U.N. reports have said the world must hit a level of net-zero emissions by mid-century to avoid a 2 degree Celsius rise by 2100, and that current country commitments aren’t enough to meet that mark.
Larger questions also remain.
Countries are unsure whether they should qualify as developed, developing or somewhere in between, which would have implications for how much is expected of them. Brazil has suggested a compromise to have three categories of countries — developed, emerging and least developed — with the ability to graduate from one level to another, with new requirements being added as they move up.
In the past, developing countries have stymied negotiations because they said committing to emissions reductions would handicap economic growth. But many of those countries, such as China and India, host enormous economies. The disagreement over which countries qualify as developing or developed waylaid the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. never ratified because China and India were excluded.
Developing nations still want wealthier ones to shoulder more of the burden. A group of least-developed countries, which include low-lying island nations most susceptible to rising sea levels, said that rich countries must do “substantially more” to cut emissions.
They point to the Green Climate Fund, a climate aid program the U.N. created in 2011, that had an initial target of $100 billion by 2020. The fund has drawn just under its $10 billion three-year funding goal since it opened in the fall, but outside groups and developing countries are pressing for more.
While a U.N. report released Wednesday showed global climate aid ranged between $350 billion and $650 billion between 2011 and 2012, international aid groups said the $40 billion and $175 billion of that total that flowed from rich to poor countries wasn’t enough.
“The [U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change] report on climate finance makes one thing abundantly clear,” said Jan Kowalzig, policy adviser for Oxfam. “Only a small proportion of climate finance is flowing from developed countries to developing countries.”
Disagreements over the legal force of a global climate accord also have pitted power players gains each other. The United States doesn’t want legally enforceable emissions targets because the Senate wouldn’t ratify it. Instead, it wants a binding framework to review and reassess targets that nations would set themselves, which the administration thinks would allow it to get around Congress.The European Union, however, wants nations to set binding emissions goals.
“I don’t even know what’s going to happen in Lima, much less Paris. But we have ideas,” Todd Stern, the State Department’s lead climate negotiator, said at a recent Washington event. “This is a negotiation that is intended to produce a legal agreement in some fashion. The exact fashion wasn’t spelled out in the mandate.”
