Before Paris – A Wild West

There are a raft of reasons why getting countries to agree on climate change measures has been such a difficult task in the past. These reasons range from the global differences in the economic commitments and the seriousness spurred by climate change. The reluctance of the fossil fuel energy-dependent industrialization leaders to shift from the fossil fuels to green energy made it more difficult to initiate conversations on the climate change issue. Besides, from an economic standpoint, the world was acutely divided on which issues to first address, as there was a raft division between the developing and developed nations with each having various considerations. For instance, India had serious reservations ahead of the Paris Climate agreement on setting serious caps for the developing nations. On the other hand, individual nations make their energy decisions based on the resource availability and its popularity.. For example, while Germany under Angela Markel in 2012 abandoned the use of nuclear power despite it powering 20% of its nuclear source, there was objection to shift from the use of fossil fuels particularly coal by the Poland president who sited that Poland had the largest coal deposits and hence climate change was not a core priority.  

In addition, the issue of climate change has been politically instigated with the pioneer nations which are the core emitters, such as China and the United States taking an evasive position on the climate change discourse. Further, the past commitments were based on the concept of voluntarism, with nations committing to collectively taking action while underscoring the significance of any effective measures. While the Kyoto Protocol for instance was ratified in 1997, there was no significant financial commitments made on how to run the climate change discourse. Apparently, the overall decisions and speed of implementation was left at the hands of individual nations. This created a variability to the extent of the implementation process with various nations, and regions considering their individual speeds. For instance, the European Union in 1997 adopted the Emission Trading System, a market based intervention to meet carbon caps and to do trading within the companies as a way of meeting their obligations for emissions. The resulting impact of such a system was that it had a market driven approach which made it vulnerable to global shocks such as the 2008 financial depression which brought down the price of carbon offsetting per ton from $30 to around $14 which led to lax carbon commitments.

The Intrigue of Paris Agreement – Global Climate Diplomacy

The Paris Agreement had a general consensus from the two lead nations, the United States and China on the issue. The leadership of the US and China as the two core economies and the largest emitters of GHGs is key to offsetting the impacts of climate change. Besides, as the two leading economies have a significant diplomatic swing over other nations, their leadership served as a core advantage to the adaption of the Paris Agreement. The events leading to the adaption of the accord show that there was a deliberate political goodwill for the Paris Agreement to come to fruition. Notably, the presidents of the two nations, had a series of negotiations and meetings which lobbied for common positions. As the concept of the agreement was complex and navigated the waters of political bureaucracy within the two nations, there was careful structuring of the agreement to show terms and commitments without compelling for legislative approval – in the case of the US. In Secretary of State’s intervention to shift the wordings from ‘should’ to ‘shall’ in last minute politico-diplomacy maneuvers in wading the political bureaucracy of Washington. These political considerations were all in line with making sure that the recommendations made by Paris Agreement would be adopted by all parties – especially the major world economies.

In addition, the core divisive issue which had separated the approach and rationale used by the various global players – including India, Brazil, and South Africa created an international consensus for discussion of financing models. Thus, the issue of climate financing was considered and included which provided a great incentive for a majority of the developing nations to consider their plight within the climate change framework. Apparently, rather than simply focusing on the GHG targets such as lowering them to 2 degrees Celsius of the pre-industrial levels, and the timelines such as 2030, the various players considered capturing mitigation and adaptation strategies for countries vastly affected by climate change such as India and African countries.

Further, the establishment of political goodwill included a deliberate consideration of the past issues that have plagued the world including economic development based terms which were for a long time underscored. The economic transition of the minority countries through a sensitive action plan toward green energy adaption showed this commitment. Besides, as there was a need to offer every country its autonomy to make its decisions and plans while being accountable to the rest. These plans consider the degree to which the climate situation is, and establish targets for which the countries or regions should strive to achieve. Arguably, this is a conscious approach to ease nation based transitions. For example, in the case of China where the transition from emission based vehicles to clean energy vehicles, the progress is determined by its capacity. Meanwhile, the European Union which had set structures in place can have a faster transition compared to the US or China. These are core variabilities that were noted. In addition, there was an acknowledgement of the economic issue or question which is the facilitation of the climate financing model.

Climate Clubs in Fixing Misses of Voluntarism and NDCs

The first move by Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Accord portrayed a benign sense of political voluntarism and its recursive impact on the climate change conversation. Emphatically, the move by Trump to exit from the Paris Climate agreement shows that the use of political goodwill is not sustainable as it leaves the entire performance and efficiency of the agreement based on political whims. In a post-analytical article of what seemed to be the climate diplomacy apocalypse Paris isn't burning: why the climate Agreement will survive Trump, Brian Deese, firmly stated that there is need to pursue binding agreements that cannot be eroded by the wishes of single politicians or parties. In this regard, the issue ought to be adapted by the high level units of the UN such as the United Nations Security Council. The essence of making such a step is to show the significance of the issue, and the global security that it portends to the world. In addition, it means that the use of several layers of well-defined agreements are embedded to the extent of offering punitive measures on those who default on the UN obligations including establishing carbon taxes, tariffs and other obligatory fines that compel the parties to honor their climate obligations.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change will hence have to work on the suggestions of compelling the members into a Climate Club model as suggested by the Nobel for Economics Prize awardee William Nordhaus in his work; The climate club: how to fix a failing global effort. It is also apparent that issues such as free riding arise in an environment where the various political parties and nations determine which priorities are critical and which ones are irrelevant. The use of a compelling economic and financial structure shall ensure that the international trade system functions effectively in aligning all the expectations with common standards that afford both benefits for the members, and disadvantages for being a non-member. As Nordhaus argues, the most useful concept in ensuring that there is a guaranteed element of both performance and commitment to the established goals is by structural evaluation of all climate economic resources, and capitals. The emerging system shall be an international system whereby no party can walk away from its climate financing commitments, or GHG goals without facing the economic catastrophe of being excluded or suffering the associated sanctions for non-participating.

Further, the UNCCC has to set clear measures of reporting or targets for each nation, which compels the various nations to work on their targets – this will create an impulse to the various governments to put long term systems to meet their goals. This shift from NDCs to a collectively determined goals will lead to higher accountability in the global GHG goals. As such, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change will compel the nations to take certain measures and establish significant oversights rather than simply anticipating that the nations will simply comply. The use of the 5-year reporting regime is ineffective and does not offer a binding agreement to all the member states. There is a need to shift from the ratification of the climate resolutions on signing common accords, to a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly to make binding terms for all parties. This should consequently shift the resolutions made during the Conference of Parties to be analytical and based on common reporting standards, rather than merely meetings aimed at making propositions or for which the various countries give varying reports based on Nationally Determined Contributions. For it occurs that the Nationally Determined Contributions are not binding and are susceptible to the political whims of the parties in power as indicated by the move by Trump’s administration to leave the Paris Accord.

Written by Meshack Nzioka and Ezekiel Maundu

Meshack Nzioka is Founder of Waka Africa

Ezekiel Maundu is a Climate Policy Expert and Consultant