by Richard J. Smith
26. August 2010 10:22
At the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) conference of parties held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the climate change negotiators avoided the worst outcome: another Kyoto-like agreement to unrealistic, so-called “mandatory” carbon emission reduction commitments that were undertaken only by developed countries. Rather, the Copenhagen Accord, which was brokered in the closing hours of a chaotic meeting with the direct involvement of U.S. President Obama, moved away from the unproductive approach of the failed Kyoto Protocol. Many observers have expressed disappointment with this result, but I am convinced that it has put us on a much more promising path towards dealing with the challenge of global warming.
The countries that account for the vast majority of the world’s carbon emissions were included in the agreement to develop their own plans for controlling those emissions. Importantly, they agreed that those plans would be transparent and that they would be subject to review by the other parties to the UNFCCC. Further, for the first time both developed countries and the major emerging economies, including India and China, joined together in a commitment to deal with the problem of global warming in a serious and sustained way.
The emission reduction plans envisioned under the Copenhagen Accord would not be legally binding, and this bothers some people. Those plans will, however, be strong political commitments, and the countries that make them can be expected to exert every effort to avoid the international embarrassment of falling short on such commitments. I believe that an insistence on the need for mandatory agreements is misplaced and can get in the way of achieving real progress in addressing the challenge of climate change.
Environmental agreements have withdrawal provisions, and countries that are pressed to take actions that they believe are not in their interest have the option to use them. The effectiveness of trade sanctions or other punitive measures to enforce compliance by parties to an environmental agreement is questionable, and in any case, in my view, would be nonnegotiable as part of a climate change agreement.
It is also significant that the signers of the Copenhagen Accord agreed to a common goal of keeping the global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius. What they are prepared to do initially may not be enough, but they are committed to taking meaningful first steps in the right direction. As of March 2, the United Nations listed 106 countries, accounting for 81 percent of global carbon emissions, as having signed up to the Copenhagen Accord, and 72 of them have submitted specific national emission reduction plans.
This article is drawn from a policy brief prepared for the Petersen Institute for International Economics (PIIE).
Richard J. Smith was the chief U.S. negotiator of the London Amendments to the Montreal Protocol. He has received numerous awards including two presidential honors and the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award, as well as several Superior Honor Awards. He is author of Negotiating Environment and Science: An Insider's View of International Agreements, from Driftnets to the Space Station, published by RFF Press in October 2009.
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