Whither the UNFCCC and the Copenhagen Accord?

I have been meaning to post some thoughts on an article in Foreign Affairs for some time, so here goes!

Levi puts forward the argument (NB: bear in mind that it was written in the run-up to COP15) that mega-multilateral agreements, a la the Kyoto Protocol, are a dead end. Hopes that an international treaty, to be negotiated in Copenhagen, are misplaced. And not solely due to logistical, diplomatic barriers. Levi sees the problem as running much deeper. At a fundamental level the possibility of agreement between the developed and developing nations is not possible, due to the divergence of international demands and domestic political realities. This is a familiar story-line, but that makes it no less true: the US needs China/India/Brazil to take on absolute emissions targets; China needs the US/EU to take on aggressive absolute emissions reduction targets; the “south” needs a large pile of money from the “north”; and the “north” needs to put in place effective monitoring and verification measures to ensure that emissions cuts in the “south” are actually taking place.

Levi pulls three core problems facing an effective international treaty, and highlights them as the reasons why the Kyoto/Copenhagen process should be abandoned in favor of a “bottom-up” country-driven approach (in which countries adopt their own domestic targets and then strike targeted bilateral/multilateral deals):

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The way forward: Finding a new home for international climate negotiations?

Further to my post on the take-aways from COP15, Rob Stavins has posted on the institutional implications of the Copenhagen conference for the UNFCCC. Stavins suggests that the UNFCCC is troubled by four major problems:

1. Too many voices: at a current membership of 196, the UNFCCC is just too cumbersome. Having been witness to the process, it is hard to disagree with this evaluation. Precious time is taken up with procedural discussions, pro forma statements, and political posturing. Considerations of process legitimacy support an open and inclusive forum for international negotiations that deal with the ultimate public good (the atmosphere and global ecosystem). But when it comes to crafting a political agreement between states, this concern for inclusion and formal equality may need to be suppressed.

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COP15 – Reflections, Conclusions, Prognostications

Some fairly unorganized thoughts about the process and outcome of COP15 – as filtered through two weeks of turkey, booze, and really cold weather back home for the holidays!

• The role of China in the negotiations (assertion of Chinese power, strained relationship between China and the G77, tension b/w China and the US that is running across a number of issues including climate, currency valuation, int’l trade, human rights)
• the dysfunctionality of the mega multilateral, all-inclusive conference and the questioning of the COP as the most appropriate forum for effective decision-making on climate (revealing a real tension between the process and output legitimacy of the thing).  In my view, this was the last (and largest) of the great climate conferences, and the real decision-making on climate policy will shift to a more manageable forum (maybe the G20, maybe the G8, maybe the Major Economies Forum). The big question that remains is….will the COP be retained as a site of “legitimate” decision making (even though the real decisions will be made elsewhere) or will it be jettisoned as it gets dragged down into Doha-like WTO stagnation?

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A New Decade – A New Distribution of Power?

In the shadow of the end of the “noughties” and the transition to decade number 2 of the new millenium (is it still new enough to warrant such a title?) prognostications abound regarding what lies ahead in the realm of international relations and world politics. Are we heading for a world of decreasing order and increasing anarchy – a descent into what Randall Schweller refers to as entropy? In this reading, the number and complexity of issues facing the system of states is increasing, leading to “[a] world subsumed by the inexorable forces of randomness, tipped off its axis, swirling in a cloud of information overload.” Schweller’s neoclassical realist take is is coloured by more than a tinge of realist angst at the unwillingness of a messy world to conform to the dictates of structural imperatives – why can’t those damn states just recognize the importance of their position and relative power and act accordingly! But does he hit the nail on the head in asserting that chaos is increasingly replacing order, uncertainty replacing order?

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