Climate change negotiations have become the poster agenda of global diplomacy today. This was again evident by the second climate summit on September 23, 2014, hosted by the UN Secretary General in New York. Consensus on two core issues -- commitment for GHG emissions reduction and climate finance -- is central to the 2015 regime that is expected to be agreed in Paris next year. On both counts the picture remained bleak from the perspective of more than 100 particularly vulnerable countries (PVC). But there was a consensus on the need for instituting carbon pricing as the lead solution, which in varied forms is being implemented in some developed and developing countries. However, because of a lack of ambitious mitigation targets by the major emitters, the EU efforts have had little impact on the global GHG emissions, which shot up by over 30% today compared to 1990.
Let me share my observations from my recent participation in two meetings -- one of select negotiators in Lima in late August hosted by the Government of Peru, and the other of Climate Expert Group Forum in mid-September, hosted by the OECD in Paris. These meetings were not negotiations per se, but expert level deliberations to marshal ideas by the incumbent and next hosts of the UNFCCC COP process. A draft text must be ready by the first quarter of 2015 for final negotiations in Paris. Frankly, based on my long experience of serving as an academic-negotiator, I could not be optimistic from these discussions. Here are my brief observations, first on fixing ambition on emissions reduction, the most intractable issue that continues to hold back a meaningful agreement.
Setting of mitigation target: Based on the current trends of GHG emissions, scientists predict that global T0 will rise by 3 to 80C by end of the century. Already the world is witnessing close to a 10C increase compared to pre-industrial level. The recently concluded week-long UNFCCC negotiations in Bonn remained incomplete in agreeing to mitigation targets. According to the latest IPCC assessment, meeting the goal of reducing 40% to 70% of GHG emissions to keep the T0 within the agreed 20C would cost a trivial 0.06% of economic growth annually from now through 2100. But the challenge is about sharing the mitigation cost among major emitters. There is not enough, and effective, leadership to solve such a collective action problem. In both Lima and Paris, discussions focused more on how private sector can lead the process. But the contradiction is that unless major emitting countries commit to ambitious targets, private sector can never effectively be brought into the fold.
Tunnel-vision politicking: The political economy of climate change is diabolically complex, with emissions of yesterday mixing with increasing emissions of today, and the most severe impacts are likely to manifest in coming decades. Here, the role of actors differs. Industrial countries are mainly responsible for cumulative emissions since 1850, while major developing countries led by China are new emission powers. Though the EU has assumed leadership role since 1992, the recent commitment of reducing 40% of their emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 level is not enough. EU is not an emission power, contributing only about 14% of global emissions. Actually, major mitigation efforts need to be shared by around 15 countries from both sides of the aisle, which emit about 80% of global GHGs today, but only two countries -- the US and China -- contribute half of it.  So, the push for a global regime must come from this duo. Once the US comes forward, China is expected to respond, with its massive renewable energy programmes, and a centralised decision-making framework. Extreme local air pollution and its fatal impacts on citizens are likely to push China for curbing emissions. In any case, the power of example is missing.
Second, climate change is global both in its cause and effect. Costs are individual and upfront, but benefits are a bit distant, and distributed globally. So, unilateral action is lacking because of the free-rider problem. Then the solution must be long-term, but in market-led democracies politicians respond to citizens' immediate concerns. For example, solving water pollution or solid waste problems was easier in the US because people could see their impacts immediately. One expert cogently argues that had the problem of climate change been about eating kittens or gay sex, there would have been stronger street activism and politicians would have to respond, as they did in legalising same-sex marriage.
Actually, what is required is an equitable regime of protecting the atmospheric environment through a global realpolitik approach to defining state sovereignty, instead of the centuries-old Westphalian lens. Unless we can get over the old and narrow perspectives of defining national interests, it would be really difficult to have an effective universal regime. The failure to do so, as the IPCC report warns, will make the cost of addressing runaway climate change extremely prohibitive in the years to come.    
The major emitters must not forget that the main victims of this endless procrastination and active inaction are the PVCs, with their weakest adaptive capacity. Without unalloyed global cooperation, this intractability is likely to continue, though December 2015 is knocking at the door!
Let me conclude with a statement by Winston Churchill in the House of Commons on November 12, 1936, which sounds as if it had been written for today's most intractable climate negotiations: “So they [the government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent…Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger… The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close.  In its place we are entering a period of consequences….We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…”

The writer is a professor of Environmental Policy at North South University.
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