Climate Change: the Institutions

September 19, 2023

Climate Change

Taking the analysis from last week forward to deal with climate change regime creation, in contrast to advancement of women, climate change reached an agreement relatively quickly - over about 20 years.

The issue turned on step two, in contrast to advancement of women, because once the problem was defined, the other steps went relatively rapidly. For much of this description I draw on the excellent study by Matthew Paterson (of the UK) entitled Global Warming and Global Politics (London, Routledge, 1996).

History of climate change

The idea that there was pollution in the air has been known for some time. All you had to do was breathe in some cities. You can even still do so in Beijing or Shanghai or Mumbai.

The idea that air pollution had international dimensions was also known for some time. For example, there were discussions between the United States and Canada over acid rain. In Europe, one of the activities of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe was a regional agreement on Transboundary Air Pollution.

The issue of pollution was a feature of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Environment.

The weathermen

The notion that pollution could have effects on climate came out of a combination of civil society and international organizations.

Slowly, but then increasingly there was international cooperation in meteorology, through a specialized agency of the United Nations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This had permitted consolidated and cooperative research. In 1969, for example, as a result of the UN-sponsored International Geophysical Year, WMO and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) set up the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) to do research. In that community, there was beginning to be a sense that human action could change climates.

Like many of the technical United Nations agencies, business is done through networks of civil society as much as by governments, with the international secretariat serving as a gatekeeper...

There was a series of United Nations conferences on food (1974), water (1976) and desertification (1977). The conferences were called because of perceived crises in these areas (including the first Sahelian drought of the 1970’s).

In 1979, the WMO together with ICSU organized the first World Climate Conference (WCP), which, among other things, noted that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing and this might have consequences for humans. One result was to establish the World Climate Programme to coordinate full-scale research.

By 1985, an international conference was organized by WCP in Villach, Austria on the theme "Assessment of the role of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in climate variations and associated impacts." This concluded that there was a relationship and that global warming was taking place.

In a parallel way, research was beginning to show the depletion of the ozone layer as a result, mostly, of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and international agreements were being reached to limit them (easy to do, since they were mostly found in aerosol sprays and refrigerants). Included in this was a Vienna convention and its Montreal Protocol that called on states to take steps to limit CFC emissions.

This issue was how to bring this emerging scientific consensus to governmental attention.

Step One: Raising the salience of the problem

According to Paterson, the issue of climate change reached the political level in 1988 when, at a legislative hearing, James Hansen, the chief climatologist of the US Government said that the greenhouse effect was occurring.

The statement came on the heels of six of the hottest ten years in history and a major drought in the US.

The Canadians, the UK and the Russians at the General Assembly began to mention the importance of the problem.

The problem, however, was that the developing countries did not see this as a problem for them.

Step Two: Determining the parameters

Convincing the developing countries that climate change, which was not their fault, was their concern took some time. Scientific civil society was not well rooted there. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gases would have impact on development (an old idea was: we’ll stop polluting when we’re developed, just like you did...)

An Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created, to agree on the facts.

This was important, since the US had its own problems, with much of industry concerned that air quality controls would cost money. (NB. They still are.)

The IPCC reported to second World Climate Conference in 1990, where scientists called on politicians to do something and began to establish its credibility as a source of facts, something it has continued to do with increasing success (including a Nobel Prize in 2007). It completed its Fifth Assessment in 2014, which helped speed the negotiations and its Sixth Assessment that was issued in 2023 and it completed an interim assessment, based on a scenario of 1.5 degrees Celcius, in 2018.  Each assessment was increasingly pessimistic and calling for rapid action.

Step three: major event

Framework convention was negotiated over two years over a series of negotiating sessions from 1991-1992. Mandated by GA (as a result of the Climate Conference), with a view to being a part of the 1992 Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio, which led to the agreement on the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Rio+20 Conference in June 2012 reinforced a consensus that something had to be done without, unfortunately, being too specific.

The convention is mostly about principles, norms and some procedures. This in part is due to the lack of consensus on what had to be done. By deferring issues ("the devil is in the details"), it was possible to get a legally-binding framework which prevent renegotiation of basics as the rules and procedures were negotiated.

Participants in the process

As in all regime creation scenarios at the global level, there are different participants, both governmental and non-governmental, and international and national.

Civil society

Environmentalists, in a large number of organizations like Greenpeace, Environmental Defence Fund, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Federation.

Businessmen, particularly concerned with how reducing emissions might affect their costs.

Scientists, not as organized but clearly involved.

International secretariats

UNEP, Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

The first Executive Secretary was Michael Zammit Cutajar (Maltese, out of UNCTAD, economist not a lawyer, sensitive to developing countries)  He retired and was replaced by Joke Waller-Hunter, the former Director of the Division for Sustainable Development of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Dutch). She died in office and was replaced by another Dutch national, Yvo de Boer, whose career included being part of the intergovernmental negotiations on climate change. After the Copenhagen session of the Conference of Parties to the Convention, he was replaced by Cristina Figueres of Costa Rica, who is the daughter of a former President of that country and the sister of another. In July 2016, she was replaced by Patricia Espinosa, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, who had been active in the Beijing Conference negotiations on gender and who retired on 31 July 2022.  Her replacement, named on 15 August 2022 is Simon Stiell, former senior minister in the Government of Grenada holding the portfolios of Minister for Climate Resilience and the Environment.

Governments

Negotiation has been largely by country groups, as is usually the case. These include:

G-77 generally, often including China

Small island and coastal states (SIDS) (because climate change could inundate them)

EU/Canada/Australia (as main sources of industrial pollution)

US

Step Four: Structuring of institutions

The new Climate Change Secretariat was set up and is working in Bonn. It services the meetings of States parties and undertakes policy research. It is supported by the World Meteorological Organization which provides a substantive secretariat for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which maintains the scientific consensus on climate.

Step Five: Periodic review of the regime and elaboration of details

In December 1997, there was a COP (Conference of Parties) in Kyoto, Japan to agree on the details of emission control targets.

• Rio plus 5 was unable to agree on any figures (the U.S. did not want to)
• There were advertisements against the treaty on CNN (based on presumed non-universality of responsibilities)

An agreement was reached on targets at Kyoto, but details were left to negotiation, including the issue of emissions trading as a means of letting polluters buy their way out in the short-run and to transfer funds to developing countries.

The issue was pursued at the next COP in Buenos Aires. A difficult negotiation took place, setting some agreements on principle but leaving the implementation machinery to be negotiated.  The Bonn negotiations in 2004 made significant agreements on emissions trading (but not its machinery), revised some of the targets and solved some conceptual problems (like sinks). These were confirmed at the Seventh Conference of Parties in Marrakesh.   The US decision not to participate, however, undercut this negotiation. The protocol would only come into force if either the Russian Federation or the United States ratified it. The United States decided not to ratify, but the Russian Federation ratified in 2005 and the Protocol has since come into force. Its goals only go to 2012, however, and before that the issue is being renegotiated, something that may be aided by the belief, in the United States, that global warming is one factor affecting the severity of hurricanes.

A process was set in motion to negotiate an extension (or replacement) of the Kyoto Protocol. The Secretary-General has organized a consultation on climate change during the 2007 General Assembly, the Group of 8 countries (including the US) have agreed that climate change negotiations should take place under the United Nations and the matter was pursued at the 12th meeting of the Conference of Parties in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2007. The COP-13 agreed on a process to negotiate, based on the existing Kyoto Protocol Machinery and a new Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperation (AWG-LTC). This has been meeting through the year and reported to COP-14 in Poznan, Poland in December. The negotiations proceeded until COP-15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009, at which point a new protocol should have been agreed. Unfortunately, Copenhagen was not successful and, in fact, did not formally adopt a result (called the Copenhagen Accord), and most of the issues were forwarded to COP 16 in Cancun, where some progress was made, and on to COP 17 that was held in 2011 in Durban, South Africa and adopted the Durban Platform. It was followed by COP 18 in Doha in November 2012, which did not make much progress. At COP 19 in Warsaw, Poland, which was held at the National Stadium, there was still not much progress. Time was running out, so COP 20 in Lima set the scene for the conference in Paris in December (COP 21) that adopted the Paris Agreement that will guide international and national action and, theoretically, solve the problem.

Even the Paris Agreement is lacking in details about methods and procedures, especially on how to improve (and verify) national reporting. It gave until 2020 for States to set up their actions to implement the Agreement and determined to review commitments in 2022, but this has changed thanks to COVID-19.  At the 26^th session in 2021, there was an agreement to move forward called the Glasgow Climate Pact.

The next (28^th) session, in the United Arab Emirates should lead to more progress.  To prepare for it, the UNFCCC prepared a technical assessment or stocktake of progress to implement the Paris Agreement that was not particularly optimistic.

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