PARIS – Nearly 200 countries have come together here to overcome stark differences and agree on a landmark international climate change agreement that for the first time includes efforts by all nations to cut greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and outlines a framework for progressively strengthening countries' GHG targets.
The Paris Agreement, as it is known, creates a framework for cooperative international climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, and could ultimately drive much stricter climate policies in multiple sectors in the United States and other countries.
The agreement was gaveled into force by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius shortly before 7:30 p.m. Paris time on Dec. 12, following a short plenary meeting of countries' representatives.
Fabius shortly afterward joined with French President Francois Hollande and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who had earlier given strong speeches urging countries to approve the deal.
“We have come to a defining moment on a long journey,” Ban told the delegates. “The document with which you have just been presented is historic. It promises to set the world on a new path to a low-emissions, climate resilient future.”
But many sources note that while the Paris agreement is historic, there remains much work to be done to implement key provisions in the deal, which aims to provide a broad international approach to post-2020 climate efforts and has been in the works for years.
While Paris “puts a marker down” for when emissions will start being reduced, “more work is going to need to be done,” Nathaniel Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund's (EDF) vice president for global climate, told reporters on the sidelines of the conference here Dec. 12
The deal – approved at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – was approved by consensus, as is required under U.N. procedure, after two weeks of tough negotiations at the summit.
The Obama administration sought to play a leading role in the deal, with Secretary of State John Kerry present all week – one of his longest commitments, one source says.
The U.S. effort drew praise from many groups. Tim Gore of Oxfam said the U.S. displayed a “sea change” in its leadership efforts from the “dark days” when it was not seriously engaged. He also had high praise for the leadership of island nations, the Philippines, Columbia and Peru for showing ambition in their own pledges and setting the tone in seeking high ambition.
However, he criticized the U.S. and the European Union for not living up to is responsibilities, in particular on finance.
The final deal aims to balance the interests of a variety of countries on the deal's long-term temperature goal, a process to boost the ambition of countries' targets every five years, climate finance for developing countries, climate-related “loss and damage,” and monitoring and reporting provisions of GHG reductions, known as transparency.
Also, key to the Obama administration is that the deal was crafted in a way that will allow it to avoid Senate ratification. Further, there is strong language on the use of emission trading markets.
Carefully Crafted
The final deal appears to include all of the major issues that countries across the development spectrum said they had to have in a deal, though the language was carefully crafted to win wide approval.
“The tension between each of the elements held the whole thing together,” said Thomas Spencer, of the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development & International Relations, during a Dec. 12 press briefing. He added that the deal is “far above a lowest common denominator agreement.”
EDF's Keohane said that the final text contains “artful language,” including that its long-term goal is “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.”
He called that a “wonky way of expressing emission neutrality” in order to garner broad agreement, such as addressing India's overarching concerns that it be able to continue with planned coal plant development along with boosting renewables in order to bring electricity to 300 million residents, as it emerged in a new role as a leader of developing nations.
The long-term goal also coincides with previously released language aiming to limit pre-industrial global temperature increases to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, while “making efforts” to limit such increases to 1.5 degrees.
One source notes that the reference to the stricter goal – a key demand from poor, vulnerable countries – will result in periodic reports showing the “gap” between efforts and both temperature goals, which could provide added pressure on governments and business to boost their efforts. Samantha Smith of World Wildlife Fund said the 1.5-degree language marks a “critical threshold” for the Arctic, coral reefs, tropical forests and island dwellers.
On the crucial issue of finance, the deal explicitly says developed parties will finance developing countries. Also, “Other parties are encouraged to provide, or continue to provide such support voluntarily.” Further, the deal sets a $100 billion floor for post-2020 commitments from developed nations, though that is in included in a separate “decision document” that is not legally binding, and it says a new floor will be determined by 2025 – something environmentalists said was disappointing.
Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, tells InsideEPA/climate that the agreement "provides the broad foundation for meaningful progress on climate change, and represents a dramatic departure from the Kyoto Protocol and 20 years of climate negotiations. This is only a foundation for progress, of course, but is a sufficiently broad foundation to make increased ambition over time potentially feasible for the first time.”
Even so, Stavins warns that it will take 10 to 20 years to know if the Paris Agreement is “truly successful.”
'High-Ambition' Group
One key turning point during the two-week talks was the announcement of a “high-ambition coalition” that brought together wealthy countries such as the United States and EU, as well as poorer developing nations such as small island states. The group continued to attract members in the closing days, including medium-sized countries such as Mexico, Chile and Canada. On the final day of negotiations, it even gained Brazil as a member, which was seen as a key political coup to pressure China and India to accept a deal.
The coalition served “to exert pressure on the major emerging economies from both developed countries and vulnerable developing countries,” said Elliot Diringer of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). “The small island countries have very different interests than China, and pressure from them on China helps deliver a deal.”
As the group continued to press for a strong deal, large developing countries such as China and South Africa, which are not members, were forced to state publicly that they were also for “ambition” in the deal.
A critical component of that ambition is a tool to require countries to “take stock” of their progress toward meeting long-term temperature goals, and to subsequently revise their GHG mitigation targets. Keohane also called language on the issue “artful” because it sought to overcome Chinese resistance to an early initial review after it submitted a 10-year plan, through 2030.
Now, the language says all parties “shall” reconvene in five years, but does not require the goals to be ratcheted up in 2020, though it does say the plans “will represent a progression.” Keohane says that “creates a very strong expectation to come back in five years to address ambition.”
The decision document released alongside the agreement would require a “stock take” of progress in 2018, followed by future cycles each five years. Michael Jacobs of the New Climate Economy Project said that the language on the reviews is slightly stronger than previous drafts of the deal. “This is an incredibly strong architecture of legally binding rules to require every country to do this in successive five year cycles,” he said.
And Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council praised language for requiring expert-level and multi-lateral progress reviews.
Non-Binding Targets
As expected, the deal does not make countries' GHG reduction targets binding at an international level. Instead, targets will be “nationally determined” and based on policies that are domestically binding. The EU had pushed for binding targets, but conceded early in the talks that such a demand would cross a “red line” for the United States.
Observers widely agreed that including binding targets in the deal would require the pact to be sent to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, and the GOP-controlled chamber almost certainly would not approve the deal.
Language in the final deal says that countries “shall pursue domestic mitigation measures with the aim of achieving the objectives of” their targets, with observers saying the “aim of achieving” phrase makes the sentence fall just short of a legally binding requirement.
Daniel Bodansky of C2ES says that phrase is key because it mirrors language in the original UNFCCC, which the Obama administration has argued is the framework for this deal.
Also, the language in the financing section saying that “Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention,” also directly refers to the original convention that was ratified by the Senate.
Given the U.S. position on the issue, Jacobs said, “That is about as strong a legal basis as can be found.”
But Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group that opposes the deal and is seeking Senate ratification, told InsideEPA/climate Dec. 9 that his group will argue that the agreement “is in fact a treaty that requires ratification. [U.S. climate envoy] Todd Stern is looking for the magic words to make it not a treaty.”
However, he did acknowledge that the Senate is unlikely to break a precedent of not exercising its constitutional authority on not offering advise and consent unless asked, even in the current harsh partisan atmosphere. “I'm not sure there will be a vote about Paris,” he said. “But there will be a ratcheting down of the EPA budget” as a result of Paris.
The deal also includes a robust section on trading markets, allowing countries to using “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” to implement their targets. It also would create a “mechanism” to promote GHG mitigation efforts that could be used to create credits. It also says countries shall use “robust rules” to ensure there is no “double counting” of emission cuts.
“We're pleased to see the [deal] enhanced cooperation through market approaches,” says Dirk Forrister of the International Emissions Trading Association. “It also includes a mechanism for sustainable development, open for all who want to use it. Crucially, these are both underpinned by robust accounting provisions.”
Transparency, Liability
Another critical item, at least for the United States, is that the transparency language moves to a single system but does not use the words “common” or “unified,” as it had sought. Instead, it sets up a framework to move toward a single system with flexibility recognizing countries differing abilities, and imposes a 2018 deadline for that process to be determined. Diringer said the key term will be whether “flexibility” means bifurcated or not.
And while there is a stand-alone article on loss and damage, recognizing that climate impacts will occur even under robust mitigation and adaptation efforts – something that the United States initially opposed – Stavins notes that the decision text explicitly says there is no liability or compensation triggered. “That decision was absolutely essential from the perspective of the largest emitters,” he says.
Also, environmentalists noted that the first-time loss-and-damage article will be accompanied by new litigation efforts, with Oxfam's Gore noting this is “not the end of the fight around liability.”
Moreover, sources say the administration's push for a nuanced approach to differentiation – reflecting developed and developing countries' roles in addressing climate change – was ultimately aimed at getting a “foot in the door” toward finally removing a binary treatment of the two groups of countries that was enshrined in the 1992 UNFCCC.
That effort was first reflected in a document approved at 2014 U.N. talks in Lima. That document reiterated the long-standing notion that countries have “common but differentiated responsibilities,” but also added the phrase, “in light of different national circumstances.”
The new “in light of” phrase, which is also included in the final Paris deal, aims to reflect that some developing countries are becoming industrialized and growing increasingly wealthy, and as such should start to contribute to international climate efforts.
That more nuanced treatment is reflected in several portions of the deal, however, the United States' position for a larger role for developing countries in several areas was watered down to reach agreement.
Mainstream environmental groups offered strong praise for the Paris deal. Ned Helme of the Center for Clean Air Policy tells InsideEPA/climate Dec. 12 that he is “optimistic that Paris will start a race to the top. The challenge now before us is to achieve concrete action in every nation.”
Additionally, Ray Kopp of Resources for the Future tells InsideEPA/climate that the Paris process “has resulted in a complete re-boot of the manner in which the world will deal with the climate change. The new, bottom-up process of pledge and review guarantees for the first time all nations agree to take voluntary actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This stands in sharp contrast to the previous top-down Kyoto process where only developed countries were expected to act and where little was accomplished in terms of global emission reductions. Time will tell how effective the new regime will be.”
Groups that tend to push for stricter policies, however, said the deal was too weak for those most at risk. Those two types of groups had appeared fractured just ahead of the announcement. – Lee Logan (llogan@iwpnews.com) & Dawn Reeves (dreeves@iwpnews.com)
