After Copenhagen

The Copenhagen Accord, the closest thing to a deal to emerge from the climate change summit, represents a step forward in dealing with the planet’s most pressing issue but stronger action is still needed. While many of the challenges negotiators faced in Copenhagen were inevitable and expected, two problems at the heart of the disappointing outcome--the insistence on binding, internationally-agreed-upon targets, for which countries are still obviously unprepared, and the conflation of the mitigation and aid agendas, which makes reaching a binding agreement on either impractical—could have been avoided. If the global community learns from Copenhagen’s mistakes, much greater progress can be made on both of these objectives. 

The Copenhagen Accord: Achievements and Failures

Reactions to the Copenhagen Accord have ranged from the triumphant to the apocalyptic. As is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere in between, with both important achievements and significant failures coming out of the summit.

Underlining the broad consensus that exists among world leaders and civil society, and marking a big step forward from the Kyoto Protocol, the Accord placed the burden of mitigation on both developed and developing countries. It lists commitments from developing countries—most notably, China and India—for the first time, and with the United States also providing a target, it succeeded in getting non-binding commitments from three of the world’s largest emitters, all of whom are absent from mitigation commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

In addition, developed countries committed $10 billion/year through 2012 for both mitigation and adaptation in poorer countries, to be scaled up to $100 billion/year by 2020. China, Brazil and India announced intentions to fund their own efforts, and Brazil also committed to contribute to a fund. 

International measurement and verification, based largely on self-monitoring, was also agreed upon, with mitigation and adaptation projects supported by international financing subject to the most stringent requirements. In addition, an agreement on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) appears to have reached an advanced state.

However, the Accord failed to set an action plan for moving forward on those broad commitments. No date was set for establishing a new agreement and the aid commitment did not include any specific country targets or a breakdown between official and private funding sources. Not surprisingly, while the Accord includes the major emitters, the broader group of 193 countries in attendance merely “took note” of it, with several countries expressing tepid support and a few openly opposed.

Why Did Copenhagen Fail to Reach a Stronger Agreement?

While the underlying complexities that confronted negotiators at Copenhagen are well understood, they were also largely unavoidable. As discussed in recent Carnegie analyses, developed countries, emerging economies, and least developed countries arrived with widely different goals, though—with the exception of the Europeans—each shared a strong bias against ceding sovereignty on emissions, an issue inextricably linked to energy consumption and economic growth. The uncertainty still surrounding the timing, cost, and extent of climate change’s effects, as well as the fact that certain sectors and regions within countries will inevitably suffer more, only complicated the politics further.

While this set of challenges will confront any attempt to come to a deal on emissions in the future—and has confronted the 14 previousConference of the Parties) meetings since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992—two avoidable complications further undermined Copenhagen.

First, the insistence on legally-binding emission limits was unrealistic and, in the end, may have been counterproductive. More countries might have been encouraged to make commitments, and the commitments may have been more ambitious, had the fact that pledges were nonbinding been made clear from the start.

This negotiation involved 193 countries, and it is essentially impossible for so many nations at different stages of development to reach a wide-ranging, binding agreement on such a crucial question. The significant obstacles thrown into the mix by the United States (which, with no Congressional mandate, decreased incentives for other large emitters to take on commitments) and China (which, with its refusal to accept international monitoring, unnecessarily delayed negotiations) further underscore the difficulties. While the EU has been largely successful in making commitments together and ceding sovereignty, it is also connected by regional interests and other similarities that make coordination easier but that the rest of the world does not share. 

Not surprisingly, in the end, the negotiations at Copenhagen came down to a handful of parties. The Accord, which was reluctantly accepted by a majority of countries, was drafted by only five: the United States, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. With each of those large emitters able to represent its own interests, rather than those of the larger groups they often speak for, the leaders were able to strike a deal.

Second, negotiations at Copenhagen conflated two vital but separate issues: mitigation—the core of the problem—and aid/technology transfer. Though the call for aid is morally and economically justified, the countries that must take action for mitigation to effectively occur and those that require large amounts of aid are different. Any negotiations that attempt to equate them are inherently complicated not only because too many participants are brought to the table, but also because each issue arouses its own set of strong passions. The desire to link the two in a UN context is understandable as this increases the leverage of the poorest countries. However, when the result is a weak agreement, everybody loses—not least the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries whose overwhelming interest may not be aid, but rather effective curbing of emissions.

Moving Forward

Negotiators must recognize that legally-binding emission agreements are not possible at this stage. Instead, countries must be allowed and encouraged to make autonomous, but internationally-coordinated commitments at a pace and in a way that reflects their domestic political realities and stage of development. Then, negotiations can proceed along a more realistic, two-track path—with one for the major emitters and the other for the rest of the world—allowing negotiators to get past the political issues that have clouded discussions to date.

In the end, these processes will yield greater results than forcing countries into a strait-jacket of commitments that they would then fail to enact, as Kyoto illustrates. As in the case of trade reform, multilateral deals will best serve progress by consolidating and complementing autonomous processes. In addition, now that broad aid targets have been established, negotiations on mitigation must be separated from those on aid and technology transfer. This bifurcation will greatly simplify the process, allowing actual change to occur.

Making Progress on Mitigation

The countries that matter most for mitigation, which strikes at the heart of the climate change threat, must act first. As the world’s two largest emitters, the United States and China must line up their domestic constituencies and accept their obligations to lead. They must begin by negotiating a bilateral framework agreement in consultation with (but not vetoable by) other large emitters. Of course, China and the United States cannot decide for other countries, but they can agree to targets for themselves and commit to working together toward common objectives in the broader negotiation.

A second stage of mitigation negotiations should then expand on the U.S.–China framework. If the six largest emitters—the United States, China, the EU, Russia, India, and Japan, who together accounted for 70 percent of 2007 carbon emissions—reach an agreement on mitigation, significant progress will be made. Agreements to stop or reverse deforestation must also be reached under a REDD framework with Brazil and Indonesia, accounting for another 15 percent of emissions. 

Providing Aid to the Poorest Countries

Now that the Copenhagen Accord has established broad parameters and targets for aid and technology transfer, there is no need to link them to mitigation negotiations. Aid for the poorest countries—whose contribution to emissions is marginal—should be operationalized as soon as possible. The aid a country receives should be a function of the impact climate change is expected have on it, as well as the effectiveness of the adaptation and mitigation projects available to it.

However, two types of aid are exceptions to this general rule and should remain part of the broader agreements on emissions: direct assistance for preventing deforestation in large emitters, such as Brazil and Indonesia, and support (most probably in the form of technology transfer) to the large, developing country emitters—notably China and India.

A Role for Global Summits

In all large emitters, the process of setting mitigation targets has already started, but global meetings will help catalyze progress. Periodic summits to review progress on climate change can still play a useful role in raising the issue’s visibility, as well as spur research and the exchange of information. For instance, Copenhagen will help by providing some assurance in the U.S. Congress that China and India are undertaking serious obligations. The role of global summits in negotiations should be largely ceremonial, however, and they will have a greater impact if they are held infrequently.