Paris climate deal: High on ambition, vague on detail

Based on widely divergent perspectives, the Paris climate deal is either shaping up as “a great escape for polluters and a poison chalice for the poor” -- as Asad Rehman, of Friends of the Earth UK branded it -- or “a signal to wider world that the era of building prosperity on high carbon is coming to an end”, according to Edward Cameron, Irish-born director of Business for Social Responsibility.

The latest streamlined negotiating text, released on Thursday night, has something for everyone -- almost. It's a measure of the huge amount of work done by ministers and delgates from 195 countries that the number of square brackets -- indicating contentious issues -- has been slashed from 1,609 when COP21 started on November 30th to only 48 in the latest draft. That, in itself, is a remarkable achievement.

As always, however, the devil is in the detail. Although the long-term goal is to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would significantly reduce risks and impacts of climate change”, the draft agreement is quite vague on precisely how this overarching objective is to be achieved.

At the outset, a number of options were put forward -- such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by between 40 per cent and 95 per cent by 2050, “decarbonisation” of the world’s economy over the course of this century (as the UN’s Intergovernmental on Climate Change has recommended), in the context of setting a “carbon budget”, under which emissions would be limited in order to achieve temperature goals.

All the 27-page text says is that countries would “aim to reach the peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter towards reaching greenhouse gas emissions neutrality in the second half of the century, on the basis of equity and guided by science in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication”.

What precisely “emissions neutrality” would look like has not been defined, but it is certain to permit the continued burning of fossil fuels, if the emissions can be offset by planting more forests as “carbon sinks” either at home or abroad or by using still-unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage (“CCS”, as it’s known) or even more fanciful geo-engineering notions about sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere.

Setting realistic price for carbon -- by far the most effective economic tool to curb emissions -- is not in the draft agreement, even though this would do more than anything to accelerate a global switch to clean technologies. Also, setting a timeline “in the second half of the century” to achieve “emissions neutrality” could mean any time between 2050 and 2099, although in fairness nobody expects that it would be the latter.

As expected, the “elephants in the room” at COP21 -- international aviation and shipping -- have got off scot-free yet again, even though they already account for nearly 6 per cent of global CO2 emissions. A paragraph calling for these to be limited or reduced by working through the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the International Maritime Organisation, respectively, has simply disappeared from the draft agreement.

On the plus side, COP21 delegates have agreed on a process for reviewing and updating the pledges already made by 185 countries worldwide to reduce their emissions, even before the Paris agreement takes effect in 2020. There are also specific references in the text to developed countries providing a minimum of $100 billion per year in aid to poorer nations from 2020 onwards, to enable them both to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

This was a key demand of the least developed countries and small island nations on the frontline of global warming, and was first promised by richer countries in 2009 at the abortive Copenhagen summit. Prof John Sweeney, one of Ireland’s leading experts on climate change, also put the figure in stark perspective: “Though this sounds like a lot of money, it is still only one sixth of what is currently used to subsidise fossil fuels.”

Another make-or-break element of the Paris deal was a “loss and damage” mechanism for countries hit by the worst impacts of global warming, first mooted at COP19 in Warsaw two years ago. Its inclusion in the draft is a concession to their insistence on it, but this came at the price of excluding any route to compensation claims under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, based on developed countries having any liability.

Ministers and other delegates are working to resolve the remaining areas of contention on mitigation, finance and transparency as well as loss and damage. But former World Bank chief economist Nicholas (Lord) Stern was upbeat about the outcome, saying it would chart a way forward by giving a strong signal to about the world’s low-carbon future, even making it clear that high-carbon investments carried financial risk.

At previous annual UN climate conferences, Stern recalled that there was a “fake horse race” between making progress in tackling climate change, on the one hand, and eradicating poverty, on the other. “The atmospherics here in Paris are the best I’ve seen in the last 10 years,” he said. “There is now a clear recognition of magnitude of the risks and a clear recognition of how to combine poverty reduction with climate ambition.”