Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Paris Agreement: Triumph for Developed, Compromise for Developing Nations



The world gathered at Paris to protect the lives on the earth. The esteemed gathering was attended by the leaders of developed nations and small and developing nations, more prone to the ramifications of climate change. This was the 21st meeting of Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and France was confident to help the world to combat climate change. The governments of the world signed a historic agreement on climate change in Paris at COP21 by enacting a universal and binding agreement to reduce the green house gases (GHGs) in post Kyoto-space of 2020.
            The Kyoto Protocol[1] was signed on December 11, 1997 and ratified by all parties to UNFCCC except Andorra, Canada, South Sudan and the US. The most vocal and assertive advocates of climate change, the US and Canada[2] are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The US was assigned six per cent reduction relative to the 1990 level under the Kyoto regime. The Kyoto Protocol assigns ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ to countries based on their economical growth categorized under non-annex parties without any targets to reduce GHGs. 
The tragedy of climate change politics was that though it necessitated common efforts to ensure reduction in GHGs; countries, both developed and developing, begin to engage bilaterally rather than committing multilaterally. Non-annex parties were not ready for reduction of GHGs, which is the historical responsibility of ‘stocked nations. Developed nations, less prone to impacts of climate change and better equipped to mitigate the ramifications, hold developing nations responsible for climate change.  
Since 1997 Kyoto protocol, the world has experienced tremendous transformations and so the conditions of countries have changed. Some have figured well in Human Development Report of United Nations Development Programme, a few are in a transition period and a few are still floating in the same condition. Countries transforming their economies and stepping up growth rate, mostly developing countries, eventually increased carbon emissions. China (22.3%) and India (5.1%) became the biggest emitter and the fourth biggest emitter of GHGs, respectively, in 2011. Nonetheless, in per capita emissions, India was the 10th largest emitter while China was the seventh largest emitter of GHGS. But these two countries were targeted by developed nations to reduce emissions and compromise with their development – an antidote for ramifications of climate change. Eventually, both India and China formed an alliance together with South Africa and Brazil, BASIC, to secure the interests of developing countries in climate change negotiations at UNFCCC and preserve and maintain the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ clause of UNFCCC. But developed nations constantly tried to weaken the alliance, and sometimes they succeeded too.    
  The second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2020.[3] The leaders sat again to formulate a legally binding agreement to curb the emission of GHGs in Paris in the post Kyoto-space. At the Paris Summit, leaders of the world agreed to ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDC) to ‘keep global temperature rise in this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels’. This is the first time when all countries, irrespective of their contribution to ‘stocking the GHGs’, have been brought into the ambit of the global climate change regime to reduce emissions. This is a welcome step in combating climate change, and France, together with developed nations, succeeded in its approach to include all nations, which were left out in the Kyoto Protocol. The Paris agreement though accepted the ‘common but differentiated’ responsibilities of the nations, but diluted the original mandate of Kyoto whereby developed nations had legally assigned quota for emission reductions. Thus, developed nations will be at their will to fix the quota for reductions.
The agreement sets two time frames to set nationally determined contribution. First, a time frame up to 2025 to communicate by 2020 a new nationally determined contribution by agreed parties. Second, a time frame up to 2030 to communicate or update by 2020 these contributions.
The global climate change regime is moving backward from global regime to bilateral arrangements. The voluntary reduction target of ‘bilateral arrangement’ is echoing in the Paris agreement. Developed nations have tricked developing countries to enter into a universal legal agreement without defined targets of reductions for them. This serves two purposes for developed nations. First, they are without any legally binding reduction target. Secondly, the developed nations will compel developing countries to set a target for reductions and could deploy subtle means of coercion. The Paris agreement, for the time being, also served the interests of developing countries. Firstly, they are not assigned to any legally binding reduction target. Secondly, the agreement accepts that parties are free to set their targets in the ‘light of their national circumstances’. But the agreement makes crystal clear that Parties should “strive to include all categories of anthropogenic emissions or removals in their nationally determined contributions and, once a source, sink or activity is included, (they would) continue to include it (emphasis added).”
Both India and China were instrumental in including the provision of ‘common but differentiated’ responsibilities in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreement and thwarted the attempt of developed countries to set ‘universal legal binding reduction targets’ of emissions. In fact, India and China are the torch bearers for “nationally determined contributions” by voluntarily announcing to reduce their carbon intensity ahead of Copenhagen Conference of UNFCCC, 2009. India announced 20-25 per cent carbon emission intensity cuts by 2020 on the 2005 levels, while China proposed to reduce by 40-45 per cent the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 2020 compared to the level of 2005. Leaders of both countries, though, have welcomed the outcome at Paris and hailed it as a historic agreement, the developing countries have failed to set a legally binding reduction target for developed countries. The ‘nationally determined contributions’ are originally meant to bring the developing countries to commit for emission reductions based on their national circumstances. The US, which never conceded for reduction target set by Kyoto and even did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, happily agreed for NDC provisions as the US doesn’t want to commit reduction target under the global climate regime.
The divisive climate politics of developed nations, engaged in favouring ‘bilateral commitment’, has already weakened the India-China climate alliance. The US-China Climate agreement sets bilateral target for combating the ramifications of climate change. At bilateral negations table, the US can easily convince the other party to enter into an agreement to reduce the emissions. India could not commit to high target of reduction as China because India has a young population and it will continue to grow till 2050 when its urban transition and industrialization will be almost complete and its annual emissions would stabilise. Unlike India, China is in the last leg of urbanization and at the height of industrialization. 
The Paris agreement, though hailed as a historic climate deal, fails to penalise the offenders of its provisions. The biggest beneficiaries of the agreement are developed nations, which have been set free from the provisions of the Kyoto protocol and, now, they are without any legal target of reductions. The agreement though includes the notion of ‘climate justice’, but only some aspects.  Another disappointing provision of the agreement is promoting non-market approaches to assist in the implementation of their nationally determined contributions. Kyoto Protocol’s market based approach supported developing nations to promote sustainable development, with the help of certified emission traded in carbon market. The agreement, though support sustainable development and poverty eradication and thereby calls to “continue their existing collective mobilization goal through 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions, (which) shall set a new collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.”
Overall, the Paris agreement is a diplomatic triumph for developed nations’ climate diplomacy, and not a total defeat, but ‘compromised solutions’ for developing countries. It would have been a victory for developing countries, provided the agreement included ‘defined reduction targets’ for developed nations and ‘nationally defined contributions’ for developing countries. The post Paris-space definitely opts for ‘universal defined legal reduction targets’, thereby abolishing the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle of UNFCCC.
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[1] The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. The detailed rules for the implementation of the Protocol were adopted at COP 7 in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2001, and are referred to as the "Marrakesh Accords." Its first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012.
[2] Canada withdrew from Kyoto protocol in 2011.
[3] In Doha, Qatar, on 8 December 2012, the "Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol" was adopted and agreed on the Second commitment period from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2020. 

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