Trying to get nearly 200 countries to agree to a global deal to cut carbon emissions has been like herding cats for the past 20 years, as international negotiators have discovered.
Take China and India, which refused to make carbon cuts at 2009 United Nations negotiations in Copenhagen because they said doing so would keep millions of their residents in poverty. Or oil revenue-dependent Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, which actively obstructed the process. Or even Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation northeast of Australia, that was the first to object to the Copenhagen plan because it said the pact didn’t adequately protect due process rights for smaller nations.
Mitigating the confusion and chaos that has permeated the talks will be critical when the nations head to Paris next year in the latest round of negotiations, said Yvo de Boer, the Dutch diplomat who led the failed Copenhagen negotiations.
“Paris is still more than a year away. I think that the public and political momentum before Copenhagen was massive, but unguided,” he told a small group of reporters in Washington. “And it was wasted. And I don’t think we have a second opportunity to waste public opinion again.”
Renewed efforts will start with outlining specific objectives following a December draft session in Lima, Peru, de Boer said. And it must end with nations understanding and selling the idea that the Paris meeting can be successful even without a deal to avoid a 2 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by century’s end, which many climate scientists say is necessary to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming.
“We’re in a world where we will fail to achieve the set goal,” said de Boer, who now leads the Global Green Growth Institute, which works with developing nations to build environmental considerations into economic growth plans. “That should be an encouragement to achieve the set goal as soon as possible.”
Negotiators aren’t likely to snag enough greenhouse gas-cutting commitments at the Paris talks alone, said de Boer, a man whose uncanny ability to string together metaphors to describe calamitous situations no doubt aided him in the frustrating, deflating Copenhagen round.
That doesn’t mean the Paris talks are doomed, he said.
Any deal that emerges, de Boer said, should contain four elements to keep nations honest: Ensuring each nation lays out an emissions target; that those commitments are written into national law; that nations must provide updates in a formal setting; and that financial aid to developing countries is regularly reviewed.
The draft text that comes out of Lima must, he said, specifically outline the political objectives of the formal negotiations in Paris. De Boer said the lack of political direction and tangible results for which elected officials could be held accountable allowed Copenhagen to spiral out of control.
Much of the onus will be on China and the United States, which de Boer said aren’t “being very clear” about what they want out of the negotiations.
“Politically, at the end of the day, success is defined by what the United States and China define success to be,” de Boer said.
That makes some sense, since those nations are the top two emitters of the greenhouse gases scientists blame for stoking climate change. The United States has led the rhetorical charge on climate. China also now appears ready to participate in the negotiating process after years of obstructionism, a development that partly reflects domestic air quality concerns resulting from a massive move into coal-fired power plants.
But the United States will find complications securing the type of agreement, or framework, that de Boer described as necessary to keep nations committed to climate efforts well into the future. President Obama will be hard-pressed to secure a legally binding international treaty that would require 67 votes in the Senate.
Other nations might act belligerently. Russia, for example, has often felt “ignored” during the negotiations, de Boer said. Its president, Vladimir Putin, hasn’t exactly been on a global good will tour lately, and his nation’s economy relies on oil and natural gas revenues that provide half its budget.
Still, unanimity on an accord isn’t the objective, de Boer said. Having a major country such as Russia stand in the way would be tough to surmount, but not impossible, provided whatever deal comes out of Paris allows countries to air future grievances.
“You need to be a very brave country to raise an objection” to an accord with due process and which has vast agreement, de Boer said.
“I don’t think that the whole of humanity should be held back because of one or two countries,” he added.
That’s the idealistic side of de Boer. But he dealt with plenty of realism in Copenhagen, too, and he is aware of the difficulties that lie ahead in Paris.
“Trying to manage the climate process is a lot like going whitewater rafting in the back of the canoe without a paddle,” he said.
