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Summary “The Two Sides of the Paris Climate Agreement: Dismal Failure or Historic Breakthrough?” by Raymond Clémençon - Notes (GRADE 8,0)€5,99
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Summary of the material for the final exam (2021) for Introduction to International Organisations (IIOs). INCLUDES notes on Raymond Clémençon’s article “The Two Sides of the Paris Climate Agreement: Dismal Failure or Historic Breakthrough?” (Total: 11 pages).
Summary of the material for the final exam (2021) for Introduction to International Organisations
(IIOs). INCLUDES notes on Raymond Clémençon’s article “The Two Sides of the Paris Climate
Agreement: Dismal Failure or Historic Breakthrough?” (Total: 11 pages).
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“The Two Sides of the Paris Climate Agreement: Dismal Failure or
Historic Breakthrough?” by Raymond Clémençon - Notes
Table of Contents
Dialling Down Expectations Before Paris 3
The COP21 and the Paris Agreement: Voluntary Pledges but Legally Binding Process 4
The Paris Agreement Provisions in a Nutshell 4
Pursuing Effort to Limit the Temperature Increase to 1.5°C 4
Zero-Emissions by 2060-2080 5
5-Year Review Cycle 5
What Is Missing in the Paris Agreement? 5
No Legally Binding Emission Targets 5
No Specifics on Financial Support 5
No Liability Provision Linked to Financial Compensation for Loss and Damage 6
No Change in Basic Policy Premises 6
How Much Time Is Left to Keep the World From Warming Beyond 1.5°C? 6
How Much Will INDCs Reduce Emissions? 7
European Union 7
The United States 8
Japan 8
China 8
India 9
Brazil 9
Does the Paris Agreement Provide Reason to be Optimistic? 9
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Paris Climate Agreement: A climate agreement adopted at the 21st United Nations (UN) Climate
Conference (COP21) in Paris in December 2015. It is built entirely around voluntary country pledges.
➔ Criticisms:
◆ It has officially abandoned the idea of an international equitable burden-sharing
arrangement to control and reduce carbon emissions based on multilaterally
negotiated binding emissions targets and timetables for each country, the foundation
of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
● It has effectively sidelined equity and environmental justice considerations as
a guiding principle for multilateral cooperation.
◆ Instead, it is pressuring developing countries to control their future emissions while
leaving the poorest and most vulnerable countries exposed to the threat posed by
ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions for which they have no responsibility
(World Bank/Potsdam Institute, 2012).
Timeline:
● From the late 1980s on, it was the European Union (EU) that pushed for binding emission
targets and timetables, with the United States (US) firmly rejecting such targets when the
1992 Framework convention was adopted.
● In 1997, the US during the Clinton administration ultimately agreed to the Kyoto Protocol,
which now included targets and timetables for developed countries.
➔ Kyoto Protocol: An agreement that built on the principle of common but
differentiated responsibilities of developed and developing countries which the 1992
Framework Convention on Climate Change had set out (Article 4) and the need for
developed countries to take the first steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
before developing countries would be asked to do so.
➔ For the US to ratify this protocol, the EU had to agree to the principle of emissions
trading; the idea that countries would be able to purchase emissions rights from other
countries or get offset credits by financing projects in developing countries that
reduce emissions. This was done instead of following carbon or energy taxes.
◆ Cap-and-Trade Schemes: Allows the private sector to accrue all proceeds
from the optimal management of emissions rights, while using many
opportunities to game the system without reducing overall emissions (e.g.
emissions trading).
◆ Carbon Tax: Revenues that accrue to governments that can use them to offset
other taxes and support renewable technologies and energy conservation (the
double dividend).
● HOWEVER, in 2001 the US left the agreement under the new Bush administration, which
doomed the idea of an equitable burden-sharing arrangement for reducing global greenhouse
gas emissions. Canada, Australia, Japan, and Russia eventually have stepped away from the
Kyoto Protocol.
➔ The US argued that nothing developed countries do will matter if the large emerging
economies (e.g. China, India) are not held accountable for their rapidly growing
emissions (a universal global agreement). For domestic political reasons, never was in
a position to accept a climate agreement formally based on mandatory recognition of
past emissions.
➔ This understanding could have been accommodated in the second phase of a
Kyoto-type framework after developed countries have shown their leadership and this
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greatly reduced pressure on the developed country polluters to commit to ambitious
emissions reductions.
Dialling Down Expectations Before Paris
The Paris climate talks were set on track the year before at the climate conference COP20 in Lima
with the idea that countries will submit intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) that
would facilitate a comprehensive agreement as countries’ commitments would be already known.
➔ Many countries (e.g. the EU) continued to insist that there would be no agreement without
binding emissions reduction commitments. HOWEVER, they also emphasized that the
priority for Paris was to find a path to completely decarbonize the world economy by the year
2100.
➔ As INDCs were already known, common global objectives (e.g. long-term vision, procedural
issues related to review cycle, financial and technology support, etc..) still needed to be
discussed.
During the Paris conference, US Foreign Secretary John Kerry convinced reluctant nations that
insistence on binding commitments would lead to a failure of the conference. By not requiring legally
binding targets, more developing countries will be motivated to take action.
➔ The real reason being the anti-climate stance by a right-wing Congress, where a majority does
not believe in human-made climate change.
Nevertheless, there has been a significant turnaround in US climate policy during the Obama
administration, despite a U.S. Congress that is hostile to any kind of climate legislation and
UN-sponsored international agreement. This includes:
● Helping build a cooperative spirit among countries with the limited tools available.
● Fostering a relationship with both China’s President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister
Narendra Modi ultimately helped secure the final Paris deal.
● Having the world accept the domestic constraints in the US as a feature of international
climate talks.
➔ The Obama administration designed the Paris agreement in a way that would allow
him to bypass approval by the U.S. Senate. This required that developed countries
would not make their commitments binding under international law, as they did in
1997 with the Kyoto Protocol. Neither could mandatory commitments for climate
financing and acceptance of any compensatory responsibility for loss and damage
suffered by poor countries resulting from climate change be part of it.
➔ In the end, the US made no concessions and achieved its negotiating goals partially:
◆ By exploiting and getting poor developing countries to pressure China and
India (resulting from their tremendous emissions coming from fast economic
growth).
◆ As the EU was not going to hold up an agreement, due to its need to shore up
lagging EU enthusiasm for pulling the climate policy wagon.
◆ As poor developing countries had to resign to the fact that any agreement was
better than no agreement at all.
For India, the hope lies in a change of global markets away from long-term investment in fossil fuels
and in support of renewable technologies where India is one of the world leaders in installed capacity.
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