Participants in the Major Economies Forum (MEF) on Energy and Climate at this year’s G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy are already congratulating themselves on an historic agreement on global climate change, one that would, should everything go according to plan, “substantially” reduce global emissions within a generation. (Ideally, developed nations would commit to an 80 per cent reduction of their emissions by 2050, in tandem with a global reduction of 50 per cent.) But many of the details remain unclear, especially the sticks and carrots that will be used to entice the developing world, which now produces half of the world’s greenhouse gases, to go along with the plan.
The forum’s declaration boldly promises national and international efforts to “reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emissions by forests, including providing enhanced support to developing countries for such purposes.” Also included is a long overdue recognition that “not only are [the poorest and most vulnerable people] most affected but they have contributed the least to the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” Consequently, the wealthier nations have agreed, in principle, to “develop, disseminate, and transfer, as appropriate, technologies that advance adaptation” to the effects of climate change, to countries that need them most.
It is important to note that the so-called ‘major economies’ at this forum include not only the G8 nations, but major developing countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) as well as Australia, the EU, Indonesia and South Korea. These resolutions are therefore likely to dominate the global forum on climate change scheduled for December in Copenhagen. With that in mind, what the agreement leaves out becomes almost as significant as what it contains. There is, for example, the problem of reconciling the wildly different estimates of ‘appropriate’ cuts to which developed and developing nations are willing to commit. A few hours after the agreement in L’Aquila, the Canadian environment minister described the goal of reducing emissions by 80 per cent as “aspirational” – and more or less conceded that Canada would fail to meet the target. It is unlikely to be the only defaulter.
The agreement was reportedly reached only after long arguments between the developed and developing nations over what constituted a reasonable compromise. Developed economies wanted reduction targets by 2050, or a commitment to limit the global temperature increase to under two degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) this century. Developing countries wanted much more aggressive targets, a 40 per cent cut by 2020 (relative to 1990 emission levels) but could only get a fraction of this – the US was only willing to commit to a 17 per cent cut, relative to 2005 levels. So, despite its rousing mention of “transparent nationally appropriate mitigation actions, subject to applicable measurement, reporting, and verification” the agreement says nothing about what the penalties will be for those countries that fail to deliver. The phrase ‘nationally appropriate’ will undoubtedly produce widely varying estimates of what can be done. So although the agreement acknowledges that both developing and developed economies have a significant role to play, it dodges the all-important issue of how the targets will be determined and how, once agreed upon, these targets will be enforced.
On paper, countries like Guyana seem to be heavily favoured by the terms of the MEF agreement. But the moment that political realities which have been left out of the text – in the interest of arriving at a consensus position – are reintroduced, this prospect rapidly fades. Unless and until these high-sounding promises are followed up with firm, enforceable commitments that both industrial and developing economies are prepared to stand behind, this historic agreement cannot be seen as anything more than a belated first step in a long and complicated process. Estimates vary, but there is a general agreement among scientists that the window of opportunity to tackle man-made climate change is fast disappearing. (In a widely reported lecture, Prince Charles recently warned that the world may only have 96 months left to make a difference.) If so, historic agreements that lead only to further promises and negotiations won’t be worth the paper they are written on.
