Global polocy shifts, like the Paris Agreement, are best assessed after the heat and dust of the negotiations have settled.
The agreement marks the emergence of a new form of multilateralism where state and non-state actors will together support a global transformation. It also shifts the global concern away from the sole focus of the climate convention on emissions’ reductions, which is really the symptom of the problem, to dealing with its causes, like the human activities of the urban transition.
Cities are already home to half the world’s population, and account for more than 80% of global economic output and 75% of global energy use and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions; by 2050 two-thirds of the global population will be urban. Consequently, the vision of international cooperation has moved away from regulating production patterns to exchanging data, information and analysis that will influence public opinion to modify consumption patterns, which now constitute the major component of gross domestic product (GDP) and increasing share emissions as growth in global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry ceased in the past two years.
The success of the agreement will depend on three related but distinct factors. First, how soon the United States (US), European Union (EU) and other countries whose emissions have peaked, but per capita emissions continue to be well above those of the others, achieve zero-emission levels. Second, how China, India and other developing countries define their urban future and are supported by the lead taken by the countries where three-quarter of the population had moved to cities in the 1970s. Third, a common understanding in the “stocktaking” whether technological changes alone will suffice and whether those changes will come quickly enough to meet the world’s huge and growing need for energy, transportation, food, buildings and goods within a reframed urban transition, informing the policy debate how the world’s carbon budget is being expended and translating findings into possible routes to transformational change.
Sharing Responsibility
The urban transition is at the heart of the current use and distribution of natural resources. Clearly a focus on scarcity, historical responsibility, burden sharing and the polluter pays principle under international environmental law cannot meet the challenges of the global transformation. “Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities in light of national circumstances” is now to be reflected in implementation with consideration of sustainable development and eradication of poverty elevated to the level of principles, for sharing responsibility and prosperity.
The defining feature of the Paris Agreement is the interplay between the responses of old and new emitters to global change. The US has been able to dilute the postcolonial legal differentiation between countries while stressing equitable reductions of future emissions, leaving the related issue of equity undefined. China and India have successfully begun to reframe climate change around climate justice as they seek to redefine equity away from historical responsibility to sharing prosperity. The underlying policy goal of all countries is to continue raising per capita incomes of their citizens within global ecological limits. New ideas emerging from how China adopts “ecological civilisation” and India implements “climate justice” will impact on the continuing global debate.
At COP21 negotiations on what the long-term goal should be and how to achieve it continued beyond the deadline for the negotiations. Despite the Latin America and Caribbean Group and the Alliance of Small Island States splitting away from the Asian and African Group to support the US and EU, because of the geopolitical shift to Asia the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) were able to bring about a reframing from the earlier sole focus on the environment to sustainable development.
First, with respect to national actions, for the US and the EU the mitigation contribution was different from adaptation, finance, and technology transfer and capacity-building. They argued that a “one size fits all” approach will not be compatible with an ambitious agreement, which should require only nationally determined mitigation contributions (NDMC) linked to the global stocktake. The LMDC, Arab and Africa Group argued that if the agreement was “mitigation-centric it affects development space” and would be unacceptable. They pointed out that there is already an agreement on “an adaptation and means of implementation component” and these elements have to be included in “nationally determined contributions” (NDC) linked to progression and the global stocktake. The outcome has been that adaptation is now treated at par with mitigation.
Second, with respect to the long-term goal, for the US decarbonisation did not mean the end of the use of carbon, but “controlling carbon through technologies.” For China the context to the long-term goal was important. India called for equitable distribution of the carbon budget as countries need policy space to develop. Brazil argued that any long-term goal should be considered in the context of poverty eradication and sustainable development to consider the circumstances on how to reach the goal.
In the agreement, national contributions include emissions reduction, adaptation and international support. Technology, finance and science have a more strengthened role than in the climate convention, moving the common understanding to supporting a global transformation.
Tough Choices
As countries will continue to interpret the compromises to suit national interests, tough choices still need to be made on what is to be reported and acted upon, parameters of reviews of national contributions and scope of the aggregate assessment in the global stocktaking. These are the three legally binding elements to frame international cooperation as well as what each country will do and by when.
Immediately, how to meet the “emissions gap” will be taken up in the “facilitative dialogue” in 2018, as the pledges have in the aggregate to be doubled. The unresolved issue is the relative impact on the trajectory of global emissions of early peaking in large economies, like India, or achieving zero emissions early in countries with high per capita emissions, like the US. These negotiations will be as contested as the one at Paris, now in the context of sustainable development.