2006/2007 Annual Report - International Institute for Sustainable ...

What will the international climate regime look like after 2012 when the first commitment period
of the Kyoto Protocol draws to a close? No one really knows. The one thing we do know is that
progress is very slow—likely due to the disproportionate focus on reaching emissions
reduction targets.
The past year has seen climate change grab media headlines like never before. Never has the public been more engaged
and concerned about the impacts of climate change: commentators are even speculating that we might be at a “tipping
There’s more to solving climate change than reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, writes John Drexhage.
point” in attitudes towards the issue. A few years ago, people were concerned about the impacts of greenhouse gas
reduction measures on economic development; today, those concerns have been supplanted by concerns about the
impacts of climate change itself—not only on economic development, but on the well-being of the planet and its
inhabitants. The February 2007 Stern Report, findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al
Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, have all worked to transform climate change from an “environmental” issue to an
issue of real and significant economic and development consequences.
That said, we are still far away from seeing real progress on the critical “post-2012” negotiations, particularly in the formal
confines of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. And most of that is
due to the highly divisive issue of reduction targets—how deep they should be and who should be taking them on. And
that is also precisely where the media are focusing most of their attention. We run a real danger of facing failure in
establishing an effective global climate regime as long as we assume that the solution only lies in another agreement among
environment ministers to reduce emissions in sectors where most ministers actually enjoy little leverage or influence.
By John Drexhage
HOW TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE CLIMATE REGIME
Much more than setting targets
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Kyoto’s major accomplishments were not so much in the area of targets—in fact, there are, as we all know, real
problems with the established targets. Significant developed countries decided not to sign on, mostly as the result of
the decision about two years prior to Kyoto to exclude all developing countries from any such commitments regime.
Some targets were much too lenient, allowing for the very misunderstood issue of “Russian hot air” to raise its ugly
head. And political maneuvering within the G8, rather than any credible economic modelling work, served as the
basis for countries’ reduction targets.
No, the real accomplishments of the Kyoto were threefold. First of all, it worked to galvanize actions at national and
regional levels, regardless of whether countries had actual reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Second, it
launched a global carbon market which, through fits and starts, will continue and strengthen its profile in the global
economy (and has already garnered the attention of corporate boards around the world—particularly in investment circles). And finally, it
established critical multilateral institutions and rules around the many complex aspects of climate change, including: registries for the accounting of
greenhouse gas emissions; monitoring, reporting and validating international offsets; and elaborating on the Protocol’s legal character and force.
But targets are on everyone’s mind and, as a result, it would probably be overly-positive to describe current progress on a post-2012 regime as glacial.
It’s not that targets don’t need to be addressed in some form or other—of course they do—but it appears that the fixation on them is affecting other
areas just as critical to a successful and effective future response to global warming. As the almost weekly scientific reports of climate change impacts
confirm, it is clear that a strong program of action on adaptation, particularly for Least Developed Countries, is required.
I had the special privilege of visiting Mozambique in April and I won’t forget the feeling of visiting a country very much on the “front lines” of the
real, current and impending climate change onslaught. Northern Mozambique suffers droughts, while its southern provinces are faced with surging