The previous 17 conferences failed to reduce emissions, and Kyoto similarly ‘bound Europe and Japan [and Australia] to do nothing much and most other countries to do nothing at all’. Further, the United States never ratified Kyoto, and Russia, Canada and Japan have each withdrawn from it. Of the world’s top 10 emitters, only two — Germany and the United Kingdom — have Kyoto targets.
Against this background, what was achieved at Doha? Were any achievements sufficient to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels? And what next, post-Doha.
The CMP determined at Doha that a second commitment period would take place from 2013 to 2020. The relatively few developed state parties taking on emissions reduction commitments must review their existing commitments no later than the end of 2014. A ‘Platform for Enhanced Action’ on climate change, a non-binding agreement ‘to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force’ under the UNFCCC and applicable to all parties — both developed and developing — was launched at the Durban climate change conference last year, to come into effect from 2020. At Doha, it was agreed that ‘elements’ of a draft negotiating text for such a document would be ‘considered’ no later than the end of 2014, ‘with a view’ to completing a negotiating text before May 2015. Further, the work program for developed states to ‘mobilise’ US$100 billion per year from 2020 in climate finance for adaptation and mitigation in developing states was extended to the end of 2013.
It’s possible to argue that Doha presents an illusion of progress — an argument reinforced when one considers that not ‘a single new pledge to cut pollution from a major emitter’ was made. Post-Doha, delegates openly questioned whether the UN system provided ‘cover for leaders to take no meaningful action’.
A World Bank report on climate change that was also published in November reveals the full scope of the problem that the UN climate change framework is ostensibly addressing. The report concludes that, without further action and commitments to reduce emissions, the world will likely warm by more than 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels; that the sum total of current policies, in place or pledged, will very likely lead to warming in excess of 2 degrees; and that present emission trends mean that warming of 4 degrees within the century is plausible.
Yet a report from Ecofys, Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, also published in the lead-up to Doha, concludes that limiting global warming to below 2 degrees remains feasible ‘provided there is sufficient political ambition backed up by action to introduce the required measures and policy changes now’. Kyoto’s second commitment period will, again, cover barely 15 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. And yet, as these reports have made clear, this period is critical for achieving the 2-degree limit.
The lack of progress at Doha should encourage the world to consider alternatives to the UNFCCC in addressing climate change. One alternative way forward would be to contemplate a more decentralised arrangement in which particular issues are discussed and negotiated. Two US academics propose a climate change ‘regime complex’ — a loosely coupled set of specific regimes. They argue that such an arrangement has advantages in terms of adaptability and flexibility — characteristics which are ‘particularly important in an environment of high uncertainty, such as in the case of climate change where the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement such commitments’.
David Victor argues that the UN is not the right place for serious diplomacy and that its choice represents bad strategy. He proposes smaller forums, or carbon ‘clubs’, to engage the largest countries and a shift in talks ‘from focusing exclusively on controlling emissions to dealing with the reality that lots of climate change is inevitable’.
At some point post-Doha, perhaps in recognition that the UNFCCC regime may actually constrain agreement on addressing the climate change problem, a shift away from a top-down, ‘Kyoto-style’ architecture for international climate action may result. The shift could lead to a more bottom-up approach, to smaller agreements between particular groups of states and sectors, or to states taking action where they can.
Australia’s minister and parliamentary secretary for climate change and energy efficiency may have offered inadvertent support for this latter approach. They say that, by the time the 2020 agreement comes into operation, ‘a carbon price will already be operating in fifty countries covering around three billion people’ and that, in 2013 alone, new carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes are expected in China, the United States, Canada, South Africa and Ukraine. And this without any UNFCCC-related agreement.
The Doha outcome, with its state-based focus, reinforces the view of Richard SJ Tol expressed at the beginning of the Doha talks: ‘Having flogged, ever harder for 18 years, the dead horse of legally binding emission targets, the UNFCCC should close that chapter and try something new’.
David Hodgkinson, a lawyer, leads an international project team which is drafting a treaty to address the problem of climate change displacement. He is also Principal at The Hodgkinson Group.