Advocates of a United Nations climate change treaty said the goals laid out by world leaders missed an opportunity. They hoped the leaders would address concerns about securing funding to help developing nations adjust to a warming planet.
The Group of Seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) agreed to strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent average global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Those nations’ leaders, meeting at Schloss Elmau in Germany, also said they would end their economies’ use of fossil fuels, known as decarbonization, by 2100.
But supporters of a global climate deal that nations hope to produce during U.N. talks that begin late November in Paris said the G7 agreement was a missed opportunity financially, even if it did include crowd-pleasers such as decarbonization.
Emissions in G7 countries are dropping. But those countries have political clout and money, especially when it comes to prodding institutional lenders.
“On climate finance, the declaration is not as aggressive or forward-thinking in terms of basically increasing the level of finance from G7 countries as we were hoping,” Heather Coleman, climate change manager with anti-poverty group Oxfam International, told the Washington Examiner. “They’re actually not pointing to any specific quantified step up on public finance.”
“We would have liked the G7 to have provided certainty on finance as it is key to getting an agreement in Paris in December,” added Samantha Smith, leader of the World Wildlife Fund’s global climate and energy initiative.
The G7 announcement came as negotiators 400 miles away in Bonn entered their second week of talks, one of the last major meetings before the Paris negotiations. The goal in Bonn is to reduce a draft text from 90 pages to less than 20 as nations strive to create a framework in Paris for governing emission reductions beyond 2020.
The job at Bonn is harder than it sounds. Experts contend the draft text, which was agreed to in December in Lima, Peru, is essentially a placeholder stuffed with the political wills and realities of regions and nations that are often at odds with each other. Reconciling those differences, as well as agreeing on the amounts and deadlines for items such as climate funding and technology transfer, will not be easy.
“From the lowest level ambition to the highest level ambition, that is the language that’s in that text,” Coleman said.
Money is perhaps the biggest divide plaguing the U.N. negotiations. Developing nations say rich ones that have contributed a bulk of the world’s emissions should pay for the effects climate change is having across the world.
Complicating matters is the fact that some countries that perform well in some economic metrics, such as China, are also eligible for aid funding they might not necessarily need, but would be loathe to forfeit. Countries have also indicated emissions cuts they can make without aid and others for which they would need international assistance. The gap between commitments and what is needed to keep temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius will be vast.
“The donors are going to look at what’s the minimum we have to give to have a deal and what’s the minimum to avoid getting hammered [by climate change],” Durwood Zaelke, founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, told the Examiner.
While the G7 noted climate aid to developing nations must increase, they didn’t lay out specific steps for doing more. Smith noted that rich nations have pledged just $10 billion of the $100 billion they said they would raise by 2020 through the Green Climate Fund, a U.N.-established bank for climate adaptation projects.
Many veterans of the climate negotiations have urged outside groups and developing nations against focusing on that figure, as they said the number was never based in reality.
A dimming economic outlook for the European Union and a tepid recovery in the U.S. have reduced the political will of their respective legislatures to give more. House Republicans, for example, didn’t include any money in their fiscal 2016 State Department budget for President Obama’s $3 billion pledge through the Green Climate Fund. Obama had requested $500 million this year as part of the three-year commitment.
Weaker economies also have tempered some countries’ ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Notably, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a G7 member, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose economies rely heavily on fossil fuel production and export, have taken heat in Bonn for commitments that experts contend are weak.
“When the economy is down, the environment usually suffers. Unfortunately it’s that short term thinking that stokes global warming,” Deborah Gordon, director of the climate and energy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Examiner.
Money will continue to be tight. Instead, Zaelke said countries should focus on technology sharing for zero-emissions energy technology to encourage wider adoption in developing countries.
Zaelke added that international governance groups such as the World Bank should step up, though he advised against “reshuffling” funds from other priorities. He also said nations should lean more heavily on climate finance, such as bonds for clean energy development and loan guarantees, rather than direct grants.
“This is the bond market,” he said. “There’s no reason that green bonds shouldn’t be able to finance the world’s expansion of solar. People are learning how to make money on this.”
