Climate Action 2011-2012

climate Policy, Governance & Finance
climate negotiations
Advancing the climate regime:
pathways forward from
Copenhagen
While it is possible to imagine technically how progress can
be achieved, the political dynamics are more than tricky.
56 climateactionprogramme.org
© Martin Pettitt
How can we close the ‘gigaton gap’?
By Jennifer Morgan, Director, Climate and Energy
Program, World Resources Institute (WRI)
The 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (COP)
has gone down in history with a range of views on
whether it was a complete disaster or a great success. The
‘truth’ is probably somewhere in the middle – progress
was made on a number of topics, but the opportunity
provided by Copenhagen’s heads-of-state engagement
was certainly not grasped to its fullest. Immediately
after Copenhagen, time and momentum were lost,
distrust dominated, and progress was hard to come by.
The 2010 Cancun meeting helped improve on some of
those factors. Decisions were taken to operationalise
the Copenhagen Accord and elements of the Bali Action
Plan. A good amount of trust was restored among the
parties. The UNFCCC showed that it remains central to
the international climate change debate, the forum where
obligations are negotiated. We are still, however, far from
what is needed to seriously address the risk of climate
change and adapt to its impacts.
Countries have vastly different visions for what role the
UNFCCC should play in tackling the climate change
problem. Should it shift to a more ‘bottom up’ approach
where countries drive action in an international framework,
or is a more legally binding treaty the driver of action? What
types of commitments, legally binding or not, should major
players like China take on? COP17 in Durban presents an
opportunity to bank on what Cancun delivered, but also to
bring renewed urgency and clarity into the process, so that
the goal of holding the temperature increase to 1.5-2 º C, as
well as appropriately comprehensive, ambitious, and legally
binding commitments, do not move beyond our reach.
Key issues to watch
GettinG clarity on tarGets and
actions
In Copenhagen many countries put forward ‘pledges’ to
reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or take specific
actions to address climate change. (WRI has kept track of
these pledges over time; see Website 1 listed below at the
end of this article.) These pledges were formally included
in the Cancun Agreements in December 2010 and cover a
wide range of targets and actions. Developed countries put
forward national absolute targets while developing countries
put forward various types of actions such as climate intensity
targets, energy intensity targets, sectoral actions, and climate
neutrality goals (see Website 2 below).
Many would note that one of Copenhagen’s major
outcomes was this series of pledges, something widely
thought impossible just two years before. Others, however,
were dismayed by two factors: first, that the pledges were not
jointly negotiated but rather were put forward independently
by each country stating what it could ‘commit to’; and
second, according to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, the
pledges are not ambitious enough to keep global average
temperature increase below 2 º C compared to pre-industrial
levels, the long-term goal decided upon by the parties in the
Cancun Agreements. In fact, according to the report the
shortfall is rather large – a factor of 5 gigatons if the pledges
are fully implemented – the so-called ‘gigaton gap’.
The pledges remain, however, the core of the GHG
mitigation debate in the negotiations. One key issue is
the call by many for further clarity on what each pledge
contains, as there is currently little information available on
many of the underlying assumptions (see Website 3 below).
In response, proposals have been put forward to create
templates for reporting pledges in a consistent fashion so
that they can be clearly understood and updated regularly to
capture any changes.
A second key issue is how the pledges can be strengthened
over time to close the ‘gigaton gap’. Within the UNFCCC
there are some discussions about adding new gases,
increasing the sectors covered (for instance, aviation and
maritime), and creating robust accounting rules to avoid
double counting. Some countries, such as the European
Union, have an active debate of increasing its pledge from a
20 per cent to a 30 per cent reduction below 1990 by 2020.
Australia also has put forward a range.