Small group, big impact: how AILAC helped shape the Paris Agreement

Abstract

What role can one group of small and medium-sized countries play in breaking the long-standing impasse on climate change? What explains the formation of such a group and how can we assess its impact on outcomes such as the 2015 Paris Agreement? This article assesses the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (La Asociación Independiente de América Latina y el Caribe – AILAC) and its contribution towards cutting the Gordian Knot of climate interests and the building of a universal global regime on the issue. We review the origins and evolution of AILAC as well as its contributions to the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 on five key issues. We conclude with an assessment on the group’s future prospects and challenges.

Policy relevance

Understanding AILAC’s origins, evolution, and contributions to the Paris Agreement has important implications for analysing the future possibilities and direction of global climate policy. AILAC represents a unique example of a group of small and medium-sized countries that succeeded in having an impact upon the pivotal 2015 Paris negotiations. Rather than originating from national leaders, the formation of the group was orchestrated organically by country negotiators, as they looked to increase their countries’ visibility and influence at the negotiations. The article discusses the areas of the Paris Agreement where the group had an impact: differentiation between developed and developing country obligations, the legal architecture of the agreement, the format and review of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), climate finance, and adaptation to climate impacts. Beyond the 21st Conference of the Parties, AILAC faces two crucial tests. First, whether the group’s high ambition rhetoric at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can be matched by national policy advances on climate change and the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions. Second, can the group successfully consolidate its positions at the UNFCCC and overcome institutional challenges, while taking on new members? The AILAC case offers a significant example of norms and ideas effectively spreading between countries at the UNFCCC, while contributing to enhanced global and national action on climate change.

Keywords:

• AILAC
• COP21
• G77
• Latin America
• Paris Agreement
• UNFCCC

Acknowledgements

We thank Paula Caballero, Monica Araya, Andres Pirazzoli, Alexa Kleysteuber, Irene Suarez, Alejandro Rivera, Gilberto Arias, and Jose Alberto Garibaldi for discussing AILAC with us. All errors remain our own. The research was primarily conducted at Brown University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Some AILAC members are also part of the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations.

2. World Resources Institute CAIT Equity Explorer (CAIT.WRI.org, 2012 data accessed 22 August 2016). When land-use change is included, all AILAC members were below the global average except Paraguay.

3. Authors’ personal communication with Sarah Thacker, formerly of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, February 2013

4. Authors’ personal communication with John Ashton, former Special Representative for Climate Change at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, January2013

5. Authors’ personal communication with the author Mark Lynas, December 2011

6. Paraguay is a member of Mercosur, which is considered less open to free trade than the Pacific Alliance.

7. Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica also made voluntary pledges. Panama, Paraguay, and Guatemala did not formally submit pledges to the Copenhagen Accord.

8. Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América.

9. Authors’ personal communication with Paula Caballero, former Director for Economic, Social, and Environmental Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, September 2013.

10. At the time of writing in September 2016, Peru and Panama have ratified the Paris Agreement and some other AILAC members also plan to ratify in 2016.

11. Other groups including AOSIS, LDC, and the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries have technical support units.

12. Authors’ personal communication with Alexa Kleysteuber, former member of the AILAC Support Unit, June 2015.

13. All submissions are available on the UNFCCC’s website http://unfccc.int/documentation/submissions_from_parties/items/5900.php.

14. See UNFCCC INDC database http://www4.unfccc.int/submissions/INDC/Submission%20Pages/submissions.aspx.

15. When countries ratify the Paris Agreement, they are required to submit a confirmed pledge, which is then known as an NDC (no longer just ‘intended’).