A Lesson on How Climate Policy Collapses

The following is a tale of international policy, belief systems, colonialism, and denial. If a person?jumped from the orbit of the International Space Station at 254 miles in orbit, traveling at 4.67 miles per second, the person would be an impossible unbelievable shockwave. Falling in a terminal orbit at supersonic speed would make the World seem infinite in the eye of the terminal jumper. Even though the end is near, it is too far away to see until the end. The Ground will eventually meet the jumper- our civilization. While significant technological, social, and institutional progress occurred since 2009, it is maybe too little and too late. We can only hope for our better selves in Glasgow 2021 and the World.

The 2009 Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

In December 2009, the United Nations Summit on Climate Change convened in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-15) continued a two-year process of negotiations known as the Bali Action (Bodansky, 2010). The Bali Action Plan was meant to develop a plan to combat climate change beyond the 2012 end of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol. The COP-15 convened with the representation of over 100 world leaders attending and resulted in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord (Bodansky, 2010).

Negotiations during the conference depended on the ability of nations to leverage their economic, security, and environmental issues along with their foreign policy issues and concerns. Leaders and negotiators faced the economic and climate divide between the Northern and Southern hemispheres (Carrington, 2010). The global North is generally more economically developed and industrialized, and the global South consists of emerging and developing nations and their emerging allies in the North (Carrington, 2010). During the conference, alliances were split along these social and economic lines.

The global South Coalition, known as the BASIC countries, led by Brazil, South Africa, India, and China to lead the global South Coalition, was known as the BASIC countries (Carrington, 2010). The negotiating strength of this block was seen when the Africa group threatened to boycott the COP-15 if the North was not serious about making meaningful commitments (Carrington, 2010). The United States led the global North coalition with its allies in the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (Carrington, 2010). The US sought to deepen its negotiating strength through direct and indirect negotiations before and during the COP-15 with Brazil, France, China, Japan, Russia, and Mexico (Sindico, 2010).

Failure From Mutual Greed

During the period, the results of the COP-15 negotiations were a failure. The interests of the United States to have limited carbon reduction compared to other nations in the global North and South was an issue of much contention (Dimitrov, 2010). The BASIC countries were able to use their position to play the interests of the United States and European Union against each other to fulfill their short-term goals. While the BASIC countries have very diverse national and global affairs, they could effectively out-maneuver the global North (Carrington, 2010). The third-party actors at the end of the process opposed the resulting Accord. For the Copenhagen Accord to become binding under UN rules, there had to be unanimous consent.

Bolivia, Cuba, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela broke the global consensus (Bodansky, 2010). The block of third-party actors proved to be a powerful force where they believed their interests endangered and a belief that the Accord was not fair to them, and the global North was not giving up enough in the Accord. This block saw the resulting document as a policy created by the global North to dictate terms to the global South (Bodansky, 2010).

Other failures came from the complexity of the process and the multiple levels of negotiation, which went from high-level civil servants to government ministers to heads of state (Winkler & Beaumont, 2010). The participation of the world leaders added another level of tension that Denmark, which was hosting the COP, could not handle. Interpersonal factors such as the initiatives of lower-level negotiators from all sides also lead to a very tense conference (Winkler & Beaumont, 2010).

In the end, the Copenhagen Accord was developed. The non-binding document was hailed by the US as a success as it paved the way for future negotiations. It allowed the recognition of climate change’s dangers and allowed individual countries to set their carbon targets (Sindico, 2010). The COP-15 cannot be seen as a complete failure. The impetus was given to civil society, non-governmental organizations, local and national governments were to act locally to achieve global outcomes (Sindico, 2010).

Lessons Learned and Failed

The COP-21 Paris Agreement took the lessons learned from the COP-15. Managing who can come from each country and their level of authority was vital in its success as well as a greater global representation (Phillips, 2015). The Paris Agreement also does not place a specific target that each country must meet by a specific date, but through a stronger inter-party agreement, strong civil and national actions have made the goals and acceptance of the Paris Agreement more acceptable than its predecessor. The Paris Agreement also gave a more significant voice to the global South and addressed many of their concerns, such as sustainable economic development, trade, global transparency, and flexibility. (Phillips, 2015).

If it were not for the hard lessons from the COP-15 and the Copenhagen Agenda, the World would not have started to develop local and national actions and private sector interventions. The global North recognized that it cannot always dictate agreement terms led to a more inclusive agreement. A mixture of local and national actions, private sector actions, and international cooperation effectively combat climate change.

References

Bodansky, D. (2010). The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference: A Postmortem.?The American Journal of International Law,?104(2), 230. doi: 10.5305/amerjintelaw.104.2.0230

Carrington, D. (2010, December 3). US goes to Basics over Copenhagen accord tactics. Retrieved from?https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/03/us-basics-copenhagen-accord-tactics.

Dimitrov, R. S. (2010). Inside UN Climate Change Negotiations: The Copenhagen Conference.?Review of Policy Research,?27(6), 795–821. doi: 10.1111/j.1541–1338.2010.00472.x

Phillips, S. (2015, December 13). Cheers as World adopts historic Paris climate deal. Retrieved from?https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-12/world-adopts-climate-deal-at-paris-talks/7023712.

Sindico, F. (2010). The Copenhagen Accord and the future of the international climate change regime.?Revista Catalana De Dret Ambiental,?1(1). doi: 10.17345/rcda1036

Winkler, H., & Beaumont, J. (2010). Fair and effective multilateralism in the post-Copenhagen climate negotiations.?Climate Policy,?10(6), 638–654. doi: 10.3763/cpol.2010.0130