On a positive note, the major accomplishments of the Durban COP were agreements to:
- Negotiate an agreement by no later than 2015 that would apply for the first time on all parties under the UNFCCC, that is both developed and developing countries, on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, transparency of action, and capacity building, and that such agreement will come into effect and be implemented by 2020. [6]
- Initiate a new Green Climate Fund as the financial mechanism under the UNFCCC in regard to mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. [7] Several European countries in Durban pledged more than $ 50 billion in seed money to establish this fund, an amount that is expected to rise to $ 100 billion per year by 2020.
Durban also produced several other agreements that could eventually be helpful in implementing a comprehensive international solution to climate change on technology transfer, reference standards to be used in the program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+), sources of funding for REDD+, an extension of the Kyoto Protocol for a second commitment period, and procedures on national climate adaptation planning. (For copies of these decisions, See [8])
Despite these accomplishments, strong criticism of the Durban outcomes is warranted because the agreement to cooperate on a new binding legal instrument is only an agreement to negotiate an agreement about which almost nothing has been settled and that will not likely become effective until 2020.
Because there is a growing scientific consensus that the world is running out of time to prevent an additional 2 degree C warming, let alone 1.5 degree C or lower warming limits that may be necessary to prevent rapid, non-linear warming, the Durban outcomes may be seen as another tragic lost opportunity to put the world on a path that avoids dangerous climate change.
Given that the voluntary greenhouse gas emission reductions agreed to at COP16 in Cancun are expected to allow an additional 3.5 degree C warming and that significant greenhouse gas emission reductions are necessary before 2020 to have any reasonable chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees C, the Durban deal can be seen as almost insuring dangerous warming unless nations agree to make further emission reductions before 2020, the effective date of the new Durban deal. (For a discussion of the gap between voluntary emissions commitments and emission reductions needed to achieve a warming limit of 2 degrees C, See [9])
Although the Durban deal included agreement to create a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, since Canada, Japan and Russia joined the United States in announcing their unwillingness to accept new emission reduction targets under an extended Kyoto framework, the Durban extension of Kyoto is not likely to produce significant reductions in the threat of climate change. It is notable, however, that some nations agreed to commit to a second commitment target under Kyoto despite the fact that most of the larger polluters refused to do so; thus, recognizing that some nations seem to acknowledge that they must act on the basis of obligation to the planet and not only on the basis of self-interest alone.
Although Durban finalized many of the administrative details of a new mechanism to administer funds for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, the Green Climate Fund, adequate, predictable and additional financing at agreed upon levels has not yet materialized in UNFCCC climate negotiations.
III. An Ethical Analysis of Durban.
To evaluate what happened in Durban, it is necessary to have some understanding of prior negotiations leading up to Durban, and in particular, the UNFCCC COPs at Bali, Poznan, Copenhagen and Cancun. This history is necessary to have some concrete understanding of the negotiating positions and their context that nations took coming into Durban, and how this history reveals that most nations have been guided primarily by economic self-interest, and not international responsibility.
Looking at the most recent COP before Durban, the 2010 Cancun COP16 goals were modest in light of the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen the year before to achieve an expected global solution to climate change. Copenhagen was expected to produce a global solution to climate change pursuant to a two-year negotiating process and agenda that was agreed to in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007.
At the COP13 negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007, parties to the UNFCCC agreed to replace the Kyoto Protocol with an agreement that would create a new emission reduction commitment period under the UNFCCC and would include binding emission reductions for developed countries and new programs on adaptation for developing countries, deforestation, finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. This agreement was referred to as the Bali Roadmap, which also called for articulating a “shared vision for long-term cooperative action”, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions.
The original UNFCCC climate treaty had neither a quantified temperature limitation goal nor a GhG concentration atmospheric stabilization goal. In the Bali Roadmap, the international community agreed to negotiate such a goal.
The Bali decision also recognized that developing countries could make contributions to solving the climate change through the development of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), meaning climate change strategies for developing countries. The NAMAs, however, would not constitute binding emission reduction requirements for developing countries in contrast to the binding obligations of developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol that would be further developed and extended in Copenhagen.
Over the next few COPs, progress was made from the standpoint of the United States and several other developed countries, most notably when U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009 personally negotiated the Copenhagen Accords, which were somewhat strengthened by the agreement reached in Cancun a year later in December of 2010. In Copenhagen, President Obama was successful most notably in getting all nations to identify voluntary emission reduction commitments and getting key developing nations to agree to procedures that would allow the international community to better verify these commitments. Yet, the U.S. negotiated in Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban as if it need not commit to reduce its emissions until other nations made commitments.
The United States approached negotiations in Durban as if it need not make binding emission reduction commitments unless it could secure commitments to reduce GhG emissions from high-emitting countries including China and India that had no binding commitments under the Kyoto deal. For this reason, the U.S. pushed for agreement to negotiate a new international agreement that would include all nations, a goal that was achieved in Durban.
In Copenhagen, U.S. President Obama led negotiations that appeared to be motivated, at least in large part, by what was politically feasible in the United States. In Copenhagen, Obama was clearly interested in getting China, India, Brazil and South Africa to make commitments on climate change because the failure to get commitments from major developing countries would guarantee that no climate deal would get ratified by Congress. Most observers would agree that there was little chance of getting U.S. congressional support for an international deal on climate change unless China and India and other high-emitting nations agreed to commitments. For this reason, Obama was focused on getting some developing nations to agree to voluntary emission reductions, an outcome that he succeeded in accomplishing in Copenhagen. Yet, no nation may deny its duty to reduce its emissions to its fair share of safe global emissions on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm have failed to cease harmful behavior. [1] This is so because no nation or person has a right to continue destructive behavior on the basis that others who are contributing to the harm have not ceased their destructive behavior.
