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ABSTRACT
The authors, who have all held senior positions in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, take critical stock of what has been achieved since the negotiations were launched 30 years ago in December 1990. The assessment is made against seven functions or roles of multilateral processes (e.g. developing international law, setting goals, and supporting developing countries), and based on clear-eyed expectations of what multilateralism can and cannot do in a world of sovereign states and powerful economic interests. The authors point to some important successes, but also serious shortcomings, particularly in terms of failure of governments to deliver on agreed goals, and inadequate action and coordination within the UN system. The authors conclude that continuing at the pace of the last 30 years is unthinkable.
Key policy insights
The international climate change negotiations have successfully delivered three landmark treaties, providing the basis for a coherent international response to the climate crisis, but their impact is constrained by the realities of the multilateral system.
Particular successes include the climate treaties’ goals – especially the UNFCCC’s ultimate objective and Paris Agreement’s temperature rise thresholds and ‘global net zero’ target – systems for data sharing and transparency and growing engagement of stakeholders.
The principal shortcoming is failure by governments to fully implement treaty obligations, exacerbated by the still inadequate response of the business community. The rate of global emission growth over the 30-year period testifies to this failure, with the levels of support to developing countries also falling short of what is required.
The principal role of the multilateral climate change negotiations must now be to promote full implementation of agreed commitments and ensuing national actions. Maximum use should be made of every mandated deadline. International agreement on clear and precise targets for 2030 and 2050 will be important, but only if accompanied by strong and specific policies.
‘Business as usual’ in climate change negotiations will mean failure to avoid dangerous climate change. Fuller engagement by leaders is crucial to ensuring an all-of-government approach. The UNFCCC process should address its unwieldiness and act in line with the urgency of the issue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Climate change had been an issue of growing scientific analysis and discussion with the intensity of work increasing over the preceding two decades. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) had hosted two major ‘world climate conferences’ in 1979 and 1990. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 by the WMO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), had issued its first assessment of scientific knowledge in 1990. Numerous other conferences, increasingly political and ministerial in character, had taken place through the 1980s as the climate change issue grew in prominence. Also in 1988, Malta put the subject on the agenda of the General Assembly whose resolution that year recognized climate change as a ‘common concern of mankind’. For more on the early history of the climate change regime, see Bodansky (Citation1993) and Mintzer and Leonard (Citation1994).
2 The consideration that climate change was an ‘economic’ or ‘development’ issue rather than an ‘environmental’ one was behind the determination of key governments to place negotiations on the issue under the UN General Assembly, and with an independent secretariat, rather than to use the services of UNEP as, for example, was the case for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the treaties to combat stratospheric ozone depletion.
3 These emission targets were not determined based on any global top-down process, but were decided by the respective individual developed countries. The ‘at least 5%’ overall emission reduction below 1990 levels stated in Article 3.1 is the arithmetical sum of the different developed country targets, which the Chair of the negotiations wanted to include in the Protocol for credibility purposes.
4 The Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol (2012) will enter into force on the last day of the Protocol’s second commitment period, that is, 31 December 2020, an amazing demonstration of the UNFCCC tradition of last minute delivery. There will, however, be no ‘third commitment period’ of the Kyoto Protocol, which will cease to have any practical effect as focus shifts to the Paris Agreement.
5 We draw, in particular, on work by Obergassel et al. (Citation2020) and Young and Levy (Citation1999).
6 UNFCCC negotiations: February 1991–May 1992, to enable the agreement to be open for signature at the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (the ‘Earth Summit’, June 1992) – 15 months. Kyoto Protocol negotiations: launched April 1995 to be concluded at the third session of the COP (December 1997) – 2.5 years. Paris Agreement negotiations: launched 2011 to be concluded by 2015 (COP 21) – 4 years.
7 The Kyoto flexibility, or market, mechanisms were designed to provide flexibility in implementation of commitments through the international transfer of greenhouse gas credits. They were composed of ‘joint implementation’ (Article 6), the CDM (Article 12), and emissions trading (Article 17). Article 6 of the Paris Agreement builds on them, now with a greater focus on achieving sustainable development benefits.
8 The latter understanding was one result of the critically-important high-level collaboration between the US and China in the lead up to, and at, COP 21.
9 The most striking examples include the wording of Article 4.2 (a) and (b) of the Convention, the framing of large sections of the Kyoto Protocol (especially the inclusion of carbon markets and other elements of flexibility), and the use of ‘shall’ and ‘should’ in the Paris Agreement.
10 Despite the pre-Copenhagen hype encapsulated in the slogan ‘Seal the deal!’, most countries had accepted before the Conference opened that a ‘deal’ would not take the form of legally binding outcomes, either under the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol (the politically-important ‘twins’ in parallel negotiating processes). Rather, it had been accepted that the best that could be achieved was a package of COP and CMP decisions on the important topics.
11 These understandings also included a funding mobilization target of USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for support to developing countries as well as a signal towards 1.5°C. Following the Accord, countries whose emissions accounted for some three quarters of the global total made national emission limitation pledges.
12 The Copenhagen experience also led to important improvements in the negotiation process to enhance openness, transparency and the legitimacy of results, which paid off handsomely in the Paris COP.
13 The movement from the informal Copenhagen Accord, which was not accepted by all, to the Cancun Agreements (a COP decision) to the Paris Agreement (a treaty) is particularly notable. The inclusion of reference to a 1.5°C limit and carbon neutrality in the Paris Agreement constitute significant advances resulting from the determined and effective advocacy of proponent governments (especially by the small island developing countries) and civil society, as well as the strong sense of solidarity present during the Paris negotiations.
14 E.g. see Weikmans and Roberts (Citation2019); and Berrang-Ford et al. (Citation2019).
15 See UNFCCC Article 5, along with numerous references to scientific information throughout the Convention.
16 The IPCC has produced a number of special reports, including on 1.5°C, adaptation, and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) that have been instrumental in guiding negotiations.
17 Examples include UNDP’s work on capacity building, UNEP’s work on supporting the development of national climate legislation, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) secretariat’s work on emissions trading, and WHO’s work on air pollution and climate change as health issues.
18 Indeed, the promotion of ‘education, training and public awareness’ is enshrined as a general commitment in both the UNFCCC (Article 6) and Paris Agreement (Article 12).
19 For example, UN General Assembly resolution 45/212 from 1990, in its first preambular paragraph, refers to taking into account ‘the particular needs and development priorities of developing countries’. Convention Article 3.4 commits developed countries to providing ‘new and additional financial resources’ to developing countries to meet certain costs of their obligations. See also Kyoto Protocol Article 11 and Paris Agreement Article 9.
20 There are two operating entities of the financial mechanism. The Global Environment Facility, which predates the Convention but serves it (and other environmental agreements), constituted a modest first step in implementing the commitment to support implementation by developing countries. The Green Climate Fund, launched in 2010, had a slow start but has become a more significant part of the financial architecture of climate change multilateralism.
21 For assessments on progress towards the USD 100 billion target, see OECD (Citation2019) and Oxfam (Citation2020).
22 There is a vast literature on the CDM, pointing to both its achievements and shortcomings. See for example Hultman et al (2020) and references therein, along with UN Climate Change (Citation2018).
23 UNFCCC secretariat data reveal that there has been a huge increase in participation in the formal process by observers. COP 1 formally ‘admitted’ 163 NGOs and 14 intergovernmental organizations. By the time of COP 22, these numbers had risen to 2133 and 126 respectively. In terms of actual numbers of participants, just under 1000 representatives of NGOs attended COP 1 in 1995. Recent COPs have seen numbers of NGO participants range from approximately 6200 (Paris, COP 21) to 7700 (Bonn, COP 22), despite the fact that registration quotas had to be put in place after the chaos arising from 12,000 registered NGO participants in Copenhagen for COP 15.
24 CBD and Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNCCD).
25 One clear example of the weakness of action relates to the issue of the significant emissions from international aviation and shipping. The slow and half-hearted responses of governments and industry acting through their representatives in ICAO and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), despite these organizations being specifically mentioned in the Kyoto Protocol, is shameful.
26 Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen from 354 ppm in 1990 to 415 ppm in 2019, with ‘stabilization’ not yet on the horizon.
27 Global Carbon Project (Citation2019). Some recent data (e.g. IEA, Citation2019) suggest that global emissions may have peaked in 2019. Confirmation of this will require a bit more time, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic impacts have led to a significant decline in global emissions in 2020.
28 Too many pandemic response and recovery support packages, while sometimes touting green objectives, have maintained a business-as-usual approach to subsidizing the fossil fuel and aviation industries. See also – Energy Policy Tracker – Track funds for energy in recovery packages.
29 Bringing to conclusion the outstanding ‘rule book’ negotiations on the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is important. They should be completed without further delay to provide an enhanced role for effective market mechanisms.
30 The issue of fossil fuel subsidies is a particularly striking example of implementation failure. In the face of compelling economic arguments, the Group of 20 (G20) countries committed to ‘rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’ in 2009. Ten years later, such subsidies in G20 countries still stand at USD 150 billion annually (IISD, Citation2019).
31 With similar cuts for the other greenhouse gases.
32 Address by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld at University of California Convocation, Berkeley, 13 May 1954.