Others should follow the US-China lead
The Paris Agreement will come into force on the 30th day, after at least 55 countries covering 55 percent of global GHG emissions deposit their instruments of ratification, acceptance, or approval to the UN Secretary General. The US-China acceptance brings the Paris Agreement closer to the 55-55 threshold, hopefully by October 7 this year, as these countries together account for 38 percent of global emissions. By joining the Paris Agreement early, these countries are effectively encouraging others to follow their lead.
So far, 26 countries representing 39 percent of total emissions have joined it. Furthermore, 31 other countries have also committed to join the Agreement. This will mean that 57 countries representing 58.4 percent of emissions - well over the 55:55 threshold - will likely boost the implementation of the Paris Agreement. This will make a history in multilateral diplomacy, as no other agreement came into force so quickly. The US Congress never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, citing it as a `flawed treaty.' This time the Paris Agreement reflects the internal politics of the US and its constraints of domestic law, where the President has subtle executive power to accede to certain international agreements, bypassing Congressional ratification. The Paris outcome includes two documents: a 29-Article Agreement and 140-para decision text. The PA can be viewed as an excellent patchwork of compromises, kind of an anodyne political narrative, soothing to the disparate coalitions representing 195 parties. While the procedural aspects, such as submission of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to mitigation and their reviews, every five years are legally-binding; the substantive issues - such as emission reduction targets - remain voluntary, though a process of progressively dynamic differentiation has been structured. Again, the compliance mechanism based on peer review remains facilitative and non-punitive. In terms of finance, the Paris Agreement is no better than its parent, the Convention. However, there are few silver linings as well: the Paris Agreement is the first accord where state obligations to climate finance have been linked to the avoidance of 20C threshold of temperature rise, along with identifying adaptation linked with mitigation, explicitly recognising it as a global responsibility.
Such a rapid entry of the Paris Agreement into force reinforces the global desire to build a zero-carbon, climate-resilient future. Now parties have to adopt procedures for operationalising the new frameworks, institutions and processes established under the Agreement. This include: a transparent framework for mitigation and finance, global stock take every five years, a 12-member compliance mechanism, a clearing house for risk transfer and insurance, a task force to devise integrated approaches to deal with climate-induced displacement, formation of the Paris Committee on Capacity Building and adoption of a five-year work plan, the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency, development of modalities for accounting of public climate finance, a new market mechanism, and a global sustainable development mechanism. So the plate appears full for COP22.
Climate finance stands at the core of concerns for the PVCs (Particularly vulnerable countries), which being nano-emitters are already losing the most from increasing climate impacts. Though the Paris Agreement has added renewed focus on adaptation, the means to realise the global goal and responsibility remain vague. The track record of preferential treatment to the PVCs is not encouraging, with about one-fifth of adaptation finance allocated to them. As the PVCs have neither positive (material) nor negative (emission) power, they must marshal and hone discursive and argumentative power, reinforced by building alliance with progressive groups and countries. Bangladesh obviously has the parameters to lead the process.
First, the PVC needs to fight for expanding the CF cake, focusing particularly on mobilising extra-budgetary resources. The polluter-pays-principle (PPP) as a payment against pollution, either ex-ante or ex-post, is the most basic of economic principles, which originated as an economic and ethical principle since the days of Plato and Kautiliya, gradually evolving into a legal policy in the EU and elsewhere. Today many governments from the North and the South apply the PPP domestically. It also remains implicit in the Paris Agreement's expanded principle of CBDR +RC "in light of different national circumstances." This can only be realised through the global application of a carbon tax, instead of its current truncated practice. The funds generated either nationally or internationally can finance low-carbon and climate resilient development.
Many scientists including Nobel laureate economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman question the anomaly where they argue that if the earthly garbage dump is not free, why should atmospheric dump be treated freely? Is it because the earthly dump has state boundaries, whereas the atmospheric dump straddles borders? This is a gross free-riding by major emitters. There is already an emerging consensus on carbon pricing, as evident from the World Bank's Declaration on Carbon Pricing, endorsed by several dozen governments and hundreds of companies, and the recent Letter addressed to G20 leaders by investors controlling over $13 trillion of assets urging for introducing carbon pricing. Who hold us back then?
Second, instead of complaining as done so far, PVCs need to raise their voice louder for implementation of the long pledged elimination of subsidies to fossil fuel. This pledge goes back to the G8 meeting in Pittsburg in 2009. The G20 just ended with no roadmap for elimination of funding the problem or plans to invest for its solution.
Third, ambitious mitigation brings in the most adaptation benefits in the form of avoided loss and damage. Under French leadership, the PA rightly linked adaptation and climate finance to the level of mitigation and temperature rise. So adaptation plans must include prevention of harm and ex-post payment for unavoidable loss and damage, at least through underwriting premiums for insuring the poor.
Fourth, even under neoliberal thinking, which the PA embodies, funding for adaptation can bring in both direct and indirect global benefits, such as R&D on improving drought and flood-resistant crops, control of climate-sensitive infectious diseases, vulnerability of over 100 trading partners, reduced dislocation and migration, reduced pressure for violent conflicts, avoiding threats to human and global security, etc. Such benefits may not be enjoyed equally by all countries and citizens. Thus, the tax-funded national public goods do not benefit citizens equally, or some may not benefit at all.
Fifth, to follow through these cerebral processes, the PVCs must build stronger alliance with progressive groups and countries. France, for example, leads an initiative in the EU to levy a little on financial transactions, to be distributed as climate finance. Some other countries already contribute 0.7 percent of their national income as overseas aid (ODA). They will be willing to realise the agreed principles of climate finance, such as new and additional, adequate and predictable funding. This is exactly what is needed in order to plug double counting of ODA as climate finance.
Finally, basic human rights and no-harm rule are regarded as sacrosanct in western countries. Obviously, holding on to centuries-old Westphalian sovereignty and national interests cannot deal with emerging global public bad like atmospheric pollution, and a new type of, what Igne Kaul calls`smart' or `pooled' sovereignty is warranted. Joseph Nye recently in a Washington Post piece cogently argues that while the US led in production of global public goods since World War II, now cooperation of other powerful states is needed, because power has become a positive-sum game for achieving global goals. PVCs as the canaries of vulnerability, must sing their song louder to reach the major emitters, old and new.
The writer is Professor of Environmental Studies in North South University.
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