GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Copenhagen’s climate summit in 2009 was a deflating experience for those hoping for systematic progress in the global fight against climate change. COP15 is largely viewed as an opportunity lost, and leaders convene in Cancun for COP16, this year’s edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the question is what kind of opportunities are within reach.

From growing the green economy, to projecting and dealing with the consequences of climate change on security and immigration, the questions facing climate leaders are many and urgent.

 

Climate and Energy Program Associate Christina Elvers is part of a GMF contingent traveling to Cancun this week for the conference. She answered a set of questions about expectations, incentives, and the key players at COP16.

Expectations have surely changed from before COP15 to Cancun, especially on the European side. Europeans really thought that a global deal would be possible in Copenhagen, and worked hard for it. In the run-up to COP15, they convinced the Chinese to agree to reduce carbon intensity by 40-45 percent by 2020; brokered a deal on international financing; and persuaded President Obama to attend the important closing days of the conference. While the real level of European influence during the conference is under dispute - the notion that they got sidelined is certainly exaggerated - it is safe to say that they had hoped for a different outcome and were somewhat disappointed with what was achieved. For Cancun, expectations are a lot lower. Politicians across Europe, including Commissioner Hedegaard, say publicly that they do not expect a global deal in Cancun, while still hoping to achieve a deal at COP17 next year.

 

While expectations have been lowered since Copenhagen, the hopes for a global deal on climate are still very much alive in Europe. In the United States, in contrast, even the most optimistic observers and officials hope for little more than agreement around a weak set of international standards in parallel to the conclusion of bilateral and regional deals on discrete issues like technology sharing. The attention is returning to the state and local level where, it is hoped, action on a number of fronts could prepare the ground for more ambitious action at the federal level that is, ultimately, the precondition for any U.S. engagement in an ambitious international agreement.

The boldest agreements that could be reached in Cancun are on REDD and possibly on financing.

REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries.

 

Basically, deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries are thought to contribute about 15% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. The idea of REDD is to provide positive incentives (i.e. funds) to the developing world to stop deforestation. Countries have been working on an agreement (called REDD+) ever since Copenhagen and a deal might actually be possible in Cancun. One of the remaining contested issues on REDD+ is the question of how funds for these efforts will be transferred from the developed to the developing world, and how successes will be measured and verified.

Financing the second area of discussion in which at least some progress might be made in Cancun. In Copenhagen, the developed world pledged $10 billion a year for adaptation and mitigation in the developing world starting in 2010, and $100 billion a year starting in 2020. What remained unclear was how that money would be raised. It was originally thought that a lot of the financing would come through a carbon price, and the UN’s High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF) has suggested this is essential. However, with a carbon price and a cap-and-trade regime being out of the question for now in the United States, the option doesn’t seem very feasible in the short term. What also remains unclear is if private investments in the developing world would contribute towards the overall sum (developed countries very much wanted this to happen, while developing countries were opposed). Finally, developed countries want to make sure that there is a proper system in place for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) so they can track where their money is going and what it is being used for.

 

There is hope for progress on both issues. At least for the time being, the U.S. will be able to transfer the money it has pledged, even without a carbon price. The EU should also be able to make good on its commitment. This could help build trust between the developed and the developing world.

 

The figures to watch are:

·         Christina Figueres, Executive Director of the UNFCCC, her first time at the helm

·         Patricia Espinosa, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and incoming President of COP 16

·         Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change of the United States

·         Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Change, European Commission + Artur Runge-Metzger, the EU’s co-chief climate negotiator

·         Huang Huikang, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s special representative for climate change negotiations

·         Brazilian, Indian, and South African negotiators, especially as South Africa will be hosting COP17 and Brazil will be hosting Rio+20

 

How does the deterioration of climate change politics in Washington – sure to degrade even further when the next Congress is installed – affect the mood of this conference, and the expectation of what’s possible?
The mood hasn’t really changed significantly with the mid-term elections. The results were anticipated and even under a democratic Congress, no real progress was made on climate legislation in the U.S. Senate to match the comprehensive bill passed in the House of Representatives. Also, while the United States does play an important role in this, it is not the only important player, and other countries such as China have showed resistance to a global deal on climate change. Thus, one could say that to an extent the debate has moved on from just looking at the international negotiations to other forms of cooperation, for example through investments in renewable energies.

 

 

It depends very much on how you define “take charge”. If you define it as working together towards a global deal, then I would say that the transatlantic partners are absolutely essential. The Chinese, being the biggest carbon emitters in the world, will not move unless the U.S. has signed up to a global deal. The Europeans are still very much on the forefront of fighting climate change and pushing the issue forward, so they are needed to move towards a global deal. No other region in the world is as invested in this as are the Europeans, thus no other region will push this.

However, if you focus on green growth and renewable energies, a very different picture emerges. The Chinese have invested heavily in renewable energies, in particular wind and solar. Today, China has the largest wind resources in the world. In 2008, China was the fourth largest producer of wind power (after the United States, Germany and Spain). As of 2010, China has become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, surpassing Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the United States. China also produces 30 panels of the world’s solar panels. Some of the largest companies in solar and wind energy are from China. The Chinese government has made investment in renewable energies one of its top priorities and wants to increase the market share of Chinese companies in both.
So with or without an international agreement, the Chinese are pushing forward on renewable energies. While India has yet to develop renewable capacities on the same scale, it has introduced policies and regulatory measures for renewable energy development, which lead to substantial investments in both wind and solar energies. And Brazil has been a world market leader in biomass and biofuels for a while. Thus, the so-called BASIC countries are already taking charge in the field of green growth and are likely to surpass the efforts of the Europeans and Americans.

 

Some say that because nobody expects any major breakthroughs during this conference, and because it isn’t in the limelight like Copenhagen was, this can actually be a very productive conference. The negotiators can actually concentrate on the real technical issues without having to work towards a big political agreement. They can concentrate on a few issues such as REDD and really work out the details of these agreements rather than having to juggle with a vast array of agreements and drafts at the same time.