by Ignazio Musu, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Sintesi
Sono ben note le difficoltà di raggiungere un accordo internazionale credibile sul cambiamento climatico. Una delle ragioni di queste difficoltà è la relazione tra economie avanzate e economie emergenti. L’Accordo di Parigi del dicembre 2015 (COP21) è un passo avanti perché sembra essere l’espressione di un accordo anche da parte delle economie emergenti (Cina in primo luogo) il cui ruolo è fondamentale. La sfida sarà il modo in cui si metterà in pratica l’accordo: un fallimento segnerebbe una sconfitta definitiva delle possibilità di affrontare il problema.
Abstract
In the scientific community there is awareness about the difficulty of reaching a credible international agreement on climate change. One of the reasons about this difficulty is the relation between advanced economies and emerging economies. The Paris Agreement of December 2015 (COP21) represents a progress since it seems to be a commitment also by the side of emerging economies, particularly China, whose role is fundamental. The challenge is given by the way in which the agreement will be implemented: a failure would mean a defeat of the possibility to address the problem.
1. The difficulty of achieving a global agreement on climate change
The most important result of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in December 2015 has been that 195 countries succeeded in finding a common basis for a strategy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigating the increasingly risky impacts of climate change.
The former Kyoto Protocol was clearly a failure with respect to these targets, the main reason being its structure, characterized by the request of reducing emissions only to advanced countries (some of them such as the United States have never accepted those commitments) and by vague and insufficient proposals to involve developing and emerging economies in the task.
Achieving a credible agreement on a global environmental problem such climate change is difficult for a number of reasons. One is that the reduction of carbon emissions is a typical global public good under-produced by uncoordinated initiatives of national governments: as each country benefits from emissions’ reduction by other countries, it is expected to avoid undertaking reduction costs, trying to transfer them on other countries.
A second reason is that “decarbonizing” the economy requires not only increasing the efficiency with which fossil fuels are used as energy sources, but moving to new renewable energy sources with the implication of changing the whole energy infrastructure. This will require substantial efforts in significant technological innovations and huge investments requiring the capacity of mobilizing correspondingly huge financial resources.
A third reason is that worldwide the public opinion does not seem to perceive the climate change problem as a crucial and urgent challenge; this is due to the high rate used in discounting future benefits of reducing the damages of climate change compared with the current required costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Finally, a crucial reason lies in the asymmetry between mature and developing countries. The stock of carbon released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has been largely caused by the countries that are now developed. However, in the last three decades the role of developing countries in the emission of polluting substances has rapidly increased and in the next future it will become dominant.
Developed countries claim that developing countries should feel responsible for undertaking emission reduction actions; but developing countries point out that their emissions per capita are much lower than in developed countries, therefore the responsibility for reducing emissions should be of developed countries.
The resolution of this conflict between developed and emerging economies should be at the center on any global agreement claiming to be credible. However this means that such an agreement should be radically different from the approach used in Kyoto based on quantitative imposed targets. For example, extending the logic of Kyoto by adding quantitative “top down” imposed targets of emission reductions for developing and emerging countries would not work at all.
2. The Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement of 2015 acknowledges the contradictions highlighted above and it adopts a “bottom up” approach, implemented through goals established at the national level, the so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). This new approach could start from the national reports prepared by the 180 countries before the Paris Conference.
The Paris Agreement does not eliminate all quantitative indications. It states as a general objective that of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and of developing any efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Through this measure it accepted the indications of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in order to significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
However we do not find in the Paris Agreement any quantitative indication concerning the path for emissions reduction compatible with that general objective. What we find is a general commitment to achieving the peak of global emissions of greenhouse gases as soon as possible and then bringing about a rapid reduction so that a parity between emissions produced and those absorbed is achieved in the second half of the century. This result should be obtained through the INDCs.
An important part of the Paris Agreement is the review process of the agreement’s implementation, which will be set up starting in 2023 and will be repeated subsequently every 5 years in order to assess progress in collectively achieving the long-term objectives. The review will cover the assessment of national contributions to mitigation, but also adaptation actions and financial commitments. The results of the reviews will be used to make suggestions on how to update subsequent national contributions and future cooperation actions between the parties. An initial assessment will be made as early as 2018 to contribute in adjusting the future national contributions.
Each country is encouraged to undertake strategies of environmental regulation including market mechanisms to foster emission reductions and reduce emission abatement costs. Countries are also encouraged to experiment cooperative institutional mechanisms to jointly achieve emission reductions in the most cost effective way.
3. Developing and emerging economies in the Paris Agreement
Developed countries are assigned a leading role in mitigation actions, while developing countries are allowed to increase their emissions in the short run, but to adopt INDCs aimed at reducing them as soon as possible.
Developed countries should provide support and flexibility for those developing countries which need more time to decrease their emissions and which need financial and technological support for the implementation of their commitments.
The Agreement also insists on increasing the capacity to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, promoting investments in developing countries, in particular the most vulnerable among them, with the aim of minimizing losses and damages from climate change and of reducing threats to food production. This effort should take place through measures of technological cooperation and transfer of technology in favor of developing countries.
Before 2025 governments will have to establish a new collective financial commitment starting from an amount of 100 billion dollars per year. It should be noticed that, according to the OECD, developed countries in 2014 provided slightly more than 60 billion dollars to developing countries, mostly from public funds. Information on how this support develops should be communicated by each country every two years.
Mobilizing financial resources, developing investment in low-carbon research and promoting low-carbon technology transfer will be crucial to enable developing countries to implement mitigation and adaptation plans.
In the Paris Agreement there is no distinction between emerging economies and less favored developing economies in the wide category of developing countries.
However, the contribution of the large emerging countries is crucial in successfully dealing with the challenge of climate change. Emerging countries have to avoid to imitate the model of economic growth based on wide and inefficient use of fossil fuels that characterized the industrialized world, and move to a low-carbon more sustainable model of economic growth.
There are in fact emerging economies whose rate of growth and availability of savings provides a consistent basis for investments towards a low-carbon economy even in absence of an external financial support. China is the paradigmatic example.
The principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, often invoked by China and other emerging countries, is perfectly compatible with an action of financial support (and related technological support) privileging the less favored developing countries.
As for emerging economies there is specifically a national responsibility of modifying the model of economic growth in a more sustainable low-carbon direction, even more important than financial support and technology transfer is a true cooperation between emerging and mature economies at the level of scientific research and technological low-carbon development which will lead to technological interdependence and cooperation.
Commitments to implement and develop such a cooperation (a good signal is recently coming from the proposal of a joint initiative in this field by US and China, which is doing a lot in the area of renewable energy technologies) are extremely important for the Paris Agreement, in order to move from the level of wishful declaration to that of practical realization.
Newsletter N. 03 | MAY 2016 - Scarica il pdf
