Immediate reaction to the outcome of the United Nations climate
negotiations in Durban was decidedly mixed. Some commentators
acclaimed the conference for having achieved what more than a
decade of climate change negotiations had never done before. Others
slated it as an abject failure, accusing world governments of
turning their backs on the stark realities of climate science.
A month on, with the spin on both sides having died down, what
does a sober look at the facts tell us about what actually happened
in Durban and what the implications might be?
The Durban Platform
The most notable outcome of the Durban summit was the "Durban
Platform for Enhanced Action." This commits governments to
developing "a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed
outcome with legal force," under the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change, that would be "applicable to all parties", be
agreed "no later than 2015" and "be implemented by 2020."
This agreement would be comprehensive in scope and include
commitments on climate "mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology
development and transfer, transparency of action, and support and
capacity-building."
The ground breaking element of the Durban Platform is that it
promises to lead to an agreement that involves action by all
countries, not just the developed ones, as is the case under the
Kyoto Protocol. With China now the world's largest emitter and
other emerging economies close behind, this change now undeniably
makes sense.
The other positive element of this decision is that it commits
countries to reaching an agreement that will be binding, not just a
set of voluntary commitments. Although some have claimed the
precise language around legality may leave governments with some
wriggle room, this represents a significant shift for countries
such as China and India, which in summit after summit, year after
year, had resisted calls to be part of a legally binding agreement
of any kind.
However, the major flaw of the Durban Platform is that it only
commits governments to trying to reach agreement on a new treaty by
2015 that will only take effect in 2020. The first problem with
this is that we have been here before and have been disappointed.
In Bali back in 2007, governments agreed to reach a global
agreement two years later, at the summit that took place in
Copenhagen in 2009. Famously, they failed to do so. Governments can
promise to reach deals, but if they don't, the only sanction that
can be applied is by the court of public opinion, and on this
issue, that cannot be counted on, especially in times of economic
hardship.
Secondly, as anyone familiar with the science of climate change
will know, to stand a reasonable chance of keeping global
temperature rise to less than 2°C (the widely acknowledged
threshold for avoiding dangerous climate change), global emissions
need to peak and decline by the middle of this decade. An agreement
that only comes into force at the end of the decade won't help with
that - a substantial limitation on what anyone can claim about
Durban.
Nor does the agreement reached in Durban give us any clue as to
how ambitious any action governments are promising to agree to by
2015 and begin implementing in 2020 will be. Once again, the hard
task of negotiating actual numbers for emissions cuts or
limitations has been postponed - with no guarantee what the outcome
will be.
The future of Kyoto
On the Kyoto Protocol, the Durban negotiations achieved a
largely symbolic success. The first commitment period of the Kyoto
Protocol containing emissions reduction targets for developed
countries (excluding the US) is due to expire this year. Developing
countries have led the call for a second commitment period to be
agreed, with a new round of targets for the developed world.
The Durban summit did reach agreement that there will be a
second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, beginning in 2013
and ending in either 2017 or 2020.
However, the only group of countries to commit to targets under
it were in Europe - with the EU listing its existing pledge to
reduce emissions by 20-30% by 2020, Norway by 30-40%, Switzerland
by 20-30% and the Ukraine by 20%. Most of the other major developed
countries - the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia - announced
that they would not take part. Indeed, as soon as the conference
ended, Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol entirely. That means
that by 2013, Kyoto will only cover about 15% of global emissions
and even then will include no new commitments.
Climate finance and other issues
One of the other major items on the agenda of the Durban summit
was the future of the "Green Climate Fund" agreed at Copenhagen. On
this, some technical progress was made in Durban, mainly in
relation to decisions approving its governance structure, with the
World Bank being appointed as its interim trustee. However, no
progress was made in coming close to agreeing how it will be funded
(to the tune of $100 billion per year by 2020).
Durban also made some progress on adaptation issues,
capacity-building and accounting, as well as reaching agreement on
rules for including Carbon Capture and Storage projects under the
Clean Development Mechanism. But it made less progress on reducing
emissions from deforestation, and none at all on the issue of
agreeing a long-term vision, with neither a long-term goal for 2050
nor a timetable for the peaking of global emissions being
agreed.
Where this leaves us
The Durban summit saw a welcome change in the global politics of
climate change. It saw the breakdown in the barrier between
developed and developing countries within the architecture of the
UN climate regime and the emergence of a new coalition of countries
pushing for more ambition - with pressure emerging from the most
vulnerable developing countries on the big beasts of the developing
world, like India and China, to do more.
But in the end, it is essentially an agreement to carry on
talking with the hope of reaching a deal that will only lead to
action a whole decade away. It is clearly better for governments to
carry on talking than not to, and the fact that the major emitters
demonstrated that they did not want to walk away is clearly better
than the alternative. But if you subscribe to the science and
believe a legally binding global agreement is important for driving
action now, it would be difficult to see Durban as a great
success.
However, it has at least removed any ambiguity over the reality
that for the rest of this decade, another approach will be needed
if the world is to decarbonise in time to prevent dangerous climate
change.
Country by country, company by company, the case will have to be
made, arguments won, policies put in place and support provided to
drive change. And on that score, the world isn't doing too badly,
with a growing number of countries and companies committing to
action. Of course, much more is needed, but at least we know at
what level to direct most of our efforts - think global, yes, but
act local.