Can 192 countries agree on a global deal to confront climate change when 17 economies cannot? For those watching the proceedings at the G8 summit in L?Aquila last week, this must be a nagging question in the lead up to the much-anticipated meeting on climate change in Copenhagen in December. The signs are mixed but there is one clear message: for the global negotiations to succeed, greater trust is needed.
G8 summits have become an ever-expanding alphabet soup. In earlier years, the eight industrialised powers reached out to Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa under the G8+5 dialogue. This year the Major Economies Forum (MEF) added another four (Australia, the European Union, Indonesia, and Korea). Together these 17 economies account for about 80% of current emissions. No meaningful action against climate change is possible if these economies cannot find a way to stabilise and reduce their emissions as a whole. Beneath the aggregate numbers lies much difference among the countries, and the L?Aquila summit failed to paper over them.
Let?s focus on the positives first. The G8 declared that it wants the world as a whole to reduce emissions by half by 2050 and that, as a group, it would cut emissions by 80%. Being the first time that the G8 has committed to an 80% reduction, the declaration is historic in one sense. Another positive is that the MEF agreed to limit by 2050 the rise in global average temperature to 2C above pre-industrial levels. A majority of scientific opinion considers any increase above 2C as dangerous. That the world?s leaders have lent political support to the prevailing scientific consensus is worth celebrating.
The good news ends there.
The G8?s declaration masks the uncertainty of its commitment because reductions would be ?compared to 1990 or more recent years?. Since emissions have risen since 1990 for most countries, taking a more recent year as base line lowers the burden of emission reduction. Moreover, the G8 refused to commit to interim targets for 2020. (The US House of Representatives? recent climate change bill calls for only a 17% reduction by 2020 from 2005 levels.) The more rich countries backload actions to reduce emissions to 2050, the more would be the burden of reduction on poor countries.
In the absence of interim commitments, major developing countries scuttled the proposed target for a 50% reduction globally. Finally, the G8 leaders failed to put a concrete funding proposal to help developing countries adapt to climate change or to transfer cleaner technologies to them. In other words, the world?s biggest emitters now agree where they want to be in the emissions journey to 2050, disagree on how to get there, and offer no money to pay for the ride. This is a recipe for a free ride: when no one pays up, the train doesn?t leave the station.
What does the L?Aquila outcome mean for the bigger Copenhagen summit? The main lesson is that small negotiating groups do not necessarily deliver an agreement. The G8/G8+5/ MEF are not substitutes for multilateral UN negotiations. The legitimacy of a forum matters. An agreement struck between major emitters would exclude a majority of countries, offer no guarantees of support to the poorest countries and reduce the incentives of others to cut emissions.
Another lesson: equity considerations cannot be understated. Rich countries have already appropriated a large portion of the earth?s atmosphere. The atmosphere doesn?t care where each molecule of CO2 comes from, but an equitable approach to development would give a lion?s share of remaining permissible emissions to poor countries. This is why developing countries insist on steep emissions cuts in developed countries by 2020, rather than wait for 2050.
Thirdly, the quest for justice implies compensation for adjustment costs. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently proposed a multilateral fund worth $100 billion annually to help developing countries cope with climate change. The proposal has received little support from other major powers and poorer countries already question such promises. President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives (a country whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels if temperatures increase unabated) noted earlier this week at a conference in Oxford, ?Let?s not talk about the money because the funds never arrive.?
Without legitimacy, equity or justice, the issue boils down to a lack of trust. The question is not how much developing countries would have to be bribed to get them to agree to emissions cuts but how can the promises of developed countries be made more credible. The climate regime has suffered from weak enforcement, so other routes have to be explored to build trust.
One option is to collaborate on technology development and deployment. The MEF announced a Global Partnership on climate-friendly technologies. Industry representatives in the UK have started highlighting the power of government procurement to finance and support R&D. Joint development can partially overcome intellectual property barriers to access cleaner technologies.
Secondly, cooperate on information. The use of remote sensing satellites to monitor environmental changes is cheaper than ground-based surveys. Sharing the costs for collecting information across countries can greatly increase confidence in emissions data (for instance, Brazil?s National Institute for Space Research discloses real-time satellite-based data on deforestation).
A third strategy: reform multilateral development banks. As the likely funding agencies for climate mitigation and adaptation projects, these institutions need to give poor countries greater voice and ownership over nationally appropriate strategies while increasing the predictability of financing.
None of these strategies?and there are others?would yield immediate benefits. But sincere efforts in these directions could begin to create a more conducive atmosphere for collective action against one of humanity?s greatest challenges.
?The author is Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow at the Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford