After the First World War, armed with a ‘progressive’ fourteen-point plan that called for, among other things, the formation of a ‘general association of nations’, United States President Woodrow Wilson landed in Europe and was able to convince the relevant world that such a body (the forerunner of the United Nations) would be a useful international tool. Unfortunately, on his return home he was unable to persuade his own congress, which refused ratification and officially kept the US out of the League of Nations.
Perhaps seeking to avoid a similar fate for the just concluded Paris climate agreement, given the US Republicans’ stance on the climate change issue and the closeness of the presidential elections, negotiators designed the current agreement to allow the president and not congress to be the ratifying power. Of course, the downside of this is that the stability of the agreement is less certain, particularly when one considers that it was a Republican presidency that withdrew the US from the Kyoto protocol.
Furthermore, the political nature and structure of these negotiations are bound to lead to compromises that appear to some to detract from the very foundation of what is intended. What negotiators try to achieve is the most positive outcome between what is ideally required and national and international political realities. It is doubtful that there has ever been an important international agreement that has met all the expectations of its various stakeholders.
Therefore, what the above suggests is that in negotiating and packaging important and large international agreements, care is usually taken to surmount the likely institutional obstacles and to assuage major influences. In this context, generally and specifically for the Caribbean, the Paris climate agreement represents something of a success.
By most estimates, even a 2ºC warming will result in large parts of the earth becoming less habitable. People of these regions will face worse droughts, floods and storms, rainforests will retreat, deserts spread and rivers will fail. Seas will acidify and a melting Arctic will lead to the collapse of entire marine food chains and many islands and coastal districts may well disappear under the sea.
More specifically, it has been estimated by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre and others that if the Caribbean region is not able to hold climate change at 1.5ºC or lower, the number of warm days and nights will increase significantly and hurricanes more devastating than Ivan, which the Caribbean Development Bank estimates caused some US$3bn damage across the region in 2004, and Dean which caused some US$1.6bn, can be expected. As the region’s vulnerabilities expand, outdoor workers, asthma sufferers, the elderly and the young, as well as those physically challenged, will all face increasing challenges.
These are dire predictions and thus the major goals for Guyana, Caricom and other small island and low lying states was to get an agreement which contain commitments to hold global end-of- century temperature rise to 1.5ºC or lower; a strong regime to deal with loss and damage and a framework to ensure long term compliance.
In one form or another, all of these objectives are contained in the Paris agreement and getting the Paris summit to agree to a 1.5ºC or lower limit should be viewed as something of a victory for the region. But this is only a necessary first stage; the next important question is whether this goal is set in an operational framework that will make it achievable. Many have argued that it is not!
As was seen in last week’s column, many of the commitments contained in the agreement are stated in unspecific terms and some crucial issues are almost totally excluded. For example, while there is a general commitment to holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C, how this is to be achieved is stated in best-endeavour terms.
‘In order to achieve the long-term temperature goal set out in Article 2, Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases (net zero emissions) in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.’
Fossil fuels contribute over 50% of global greenhouse emissions and this column has argued that for the Paris agreement to be considered a success and reach the goal of 1.5ºC or even 2ºC, there must be zero greenhouse gas emissions by about 2170 and so the agreement would have to contain practical steps to challenge the fossil fuels industry.
Not surprising then, before the ink was even dry on the agreement, writing in the London Guardian newspaper, George Monbiot could claim that “Mass extinction is likely to be the hallmark of our era.’ While governments ‘talk of not burdening future generations with debt they have just agreed to burden our successors with a far more dangerous legacy: the carbon dioxide produced by the continued burning of fossil fuels, and the long-running impacts this will exert on the global climate (means that) ….’ (http://www. theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot)
Yet there is another school of thought which, although recognising the major shortcomings of the agreement, sees it in more positive light. The Economist Intelligence Unit claimed that ‘The strength of the agreement … is that it facilitates a framework where countries will be encouraged, on the basis of ongoing review, to deliver on meeting emissions-reduction targets that are expected to become more ambitious over time.’
We noted last week that the agreement contains a five-year review process and the Economist article suggests that in the current global policy environment, where the emphasis is upon greater intervention to reduce emissions by promoting lower-carbon sources of energy and the implementation of carbon pricing, it would be very difficult for states to backslide without consequences.
As matters now stand, the Paris agreement is what we have and throwing in the towel is not an option. At this stage, given its influence, dealing more pointedly with the fossil fuel industry, for example, may have made a global agreement near impossible. The question now is how are relevant stakeholders to utilise its implementation framework and other avenues to propel states to improve upon and fulfill their commitments in a manner that will allow us to reach the global climate goals we have set ourselves.
———————————————
