It’s been 23 years of struggle, but we are now very close to achieving an effective international climate governance regime to address climate change; a global survival threat for us and future generations, with the impacts already being felt in every continent.
The Paris Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP21), starting on November 30, 2015, is a significant moment for the global community.
A new agreement on the greatest challenge related to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, is expected to be adopted. This new ambitious and legal agreement will set targets for all parties to reduce emissions and keep the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius.
Being a climate justice lawyer, I have been following this process closely over the last three years. This year I am also a Chevening Scholar, and doing my specialised LLM at the University of Edinburgh, on Global Environment and Climate Change law.
My Chevening award, the UK Government’s scholarship scheme, has given me the unique opportunity to observe the international law making process and its history under the supervision and guidance of world renowned academics, lawyers, and negotiators.
The Paris agreement is intended to provide a new paradigm to replace that established under the Kyoto Protocol (KP) signed in 1997, which effectively put binding emission reduction targets on the few developed countries with a long history of industrialisation.
However, with ever-growing emissions in emerging economies, like China and India, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has repeatedly stressed that both developed and developing countries need to reduce emissions.
This, and the reluctance from a number of states to engage with the KP has, over time, moved the protocol out of step with the challenges and impacts of climate change.
To persuade more states to reduce emissions, it was agreed at Durban COP17 in 2011 that a new agreement will be adopted at Paris COP 21. This negotiating process took a new approach and differentiated between parties, with developed and developing states both committing to reduce emissions, but doing so at different levels.
Whilst the world agreed a new approach was needed, like me, many people found the negotiations leading up to Paris burdened with hurdles. The curtains of the Paris conference are about to be raised, but parties are still some distance away from reaching an agreement.
At the end of the last negotiating session before Paris, held in Germany in October, parties made limited progress on the Geneva Text.
Whilst reduced in size, now 31 pages instead of 86, the text remains largely incoherent and contains diverging options on the core issues. Some fundamental legal issues, on which the agreement’s effectiveness depends, also remain unresolved.
One relates to legality. The Durban Mandate provides different options regarding the legal form of a new agreement, including “protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.”
All of these still remain in the frame, and need to be agreed between parties in Paris. Secondly, the legal nature of the “nationally determined contributions” to global greenhouse gas emissions reduction submitted by parties is yet to be decided.
Thirdly, the question of differentiation, how the burden of mitigation as well as capacity-building, finance, and technology will be distributed among states, remains unresolved.
Negotiation on these three issues will be key in Paris, and will significantly shape any agreement emerging on December 11 when COP21 ends.
The Durban Mandate and the contents of the negotiation text, in particular the “nationally determined contributions,” indicate a range of possible outcomes in Paris.
Outcomes might be a package comprising of an agreement, COP decision, supplementary instruments (such as information and/or miscellaneous documents, schedules, etc), and one or more political declarations.
To date, the approach by states to a new climate regime has been very bottom-up. Parties are deciding acceptable commitments on mitigation, and their approach to adaptation, loss, damage, and the means of implementing a deal.
Political consensus is therefore crucial if we are to deliver needed progress on the technical aspects of the negotiation in Paris. COP 21 will start with a high-level segment, which many heads of state are expected to attend, and its political leaders will need to provide the critical overarching guidance required to turn the negotiating text into a legally binding treaty.
I believe the risks and challenges of climate change are more real than ever, and to keep postponing radical action against the root causes is nothing but turning the gun on ourselves. I strongly urge global leaders to set out a clear direction of travel consistent with the long-term goal of keeping the rise of global temperatures to 2C, or, even better 1.5C, with transparency, collaboration, and solidarity so we can start putting an end to this crisis.
As Ambassador Collin Beck of the Solomon Islands has said: “Paris is not the end, it’s the beginning.” But for many of us, if we don’t get the agreement right, Paris will be the beginning of the end.
We have already talked a lot about urgency and risk. The next big step is to just do it: For us, for all, and for the future. Because we only have one planet, one chance, and it is time to make a difference.
