Weighing the Climate Elephant https://www.foreignaffairs.

com/print/1114808

Home > Weighing the Climate Elephant

Monday, June 29, 2015

Weighing the Climate Elephant
The First Step to a Sustainable Future
Lou Leonard

LOU LEONARD is the head of the Climate Change Program at World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

During the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris this November, there will be more in the
conference rooms than white boards, translation technology, and steely-eyed negotiators.
There will also be an elephant. Namely, the gap between the carbon-cutting pledges that
countries are making [1] and the cuts that scientists say are needed to keep the increase in
the average global temperature below 1.5–2 degrees Celsius (2.7–3.6 degrees in
Fahrenheit)—the threshold that likely separates the world from the worst effects of climate
change.

Nearly everyone involved in the climate process expects such a gap to exist. What’s
unknown is how big it will be. Assessments [2] by non-government organizations show a
difference of many gigatons; some analysts [3] predict that the pledges will secure only about
half [4] of the reductions needed. And the gap is expected to grow over time.

Any climate agreement that fails to take the emissions gap into account will fall shamefully
short of what the world needs to avoid catastrophe. If the negotiators are serious about
putting humanity on a path to a safer future, they shouldn’t leave the table without weighing
the elephant in the room and figuring out what to do with it.

MIND THE GAP

Why is addressing the emissions gap even up for debate? The answer comes down to one
word: Copenhagen.

In the lead-up to the COP15 talks held in that city six years ago, many countries, scientists,
and civil society experts advocated for a top-down agreement requiring countries to first
calculate the amount of emissions reductions needed to stay below the two-degree threshold
and then equitably divide the work of meeting that target. But the Copenhagen talks
collapsed because countries could not agree on how to fairly carve up the carbon pie—and
because the United States and other high-emitting countries couldn’t get agreement on
major emissions cuts back home.

Nobody wants a repeat of Copenhagen. So, in the run-up to the Paris talks, negotiators have
agreed that each country can submit whatever emissions target it deems appropriate and
politically feasible. In a remarkable expression of collective pragmatism, nearly all
stakeholders have accepted this bottom-up approach. But if the agreement fails to
incorporate some key safety features—starting with a measure of the emissions gap (which
will unavoidably arise from this approach) and creating a process to close it—any meaningful
outcome in Paris is at great risk.

Measuring the gap should be straightforward. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, a body composed of top climate scientists chosen by their governments,

1 de 4 30/06/2015 11:51
Weighing the Climate Elephant https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/1114808

released a report that included a collection of peer-reviewed emissions scenarios for limiting
warming to the necessary target. All governments have formally adopted the report. By
simply comparing the total of nations’ declared emissions targets against the scenarios in the
IPCC report, countries would know how far off course they are.

But nothing about the climate process has been so simple, and the question of whether to
even calculate the gap was one of the most contentious issues at COP20 in Lima last
December. The agreement crafted there contained language outlining a fairly strong
gap-assessment process—that is, it did until the final hours, when the language
disappeared. In its place, governments instructed the UN climate secretariat to “create a
synthesis report of the aggregate effect of [the country pledges].” There was no call for
comparing national pledges to what’s required by science. And the report isn’t due until
November, leaving only a few days for countries to react to it before the Paris talks begin.

Even so, this could be a decent first step toward weighing the elephant if the secretariat
produces a strong report. Unfortunately, that’s a big if. There are whispers that the
secretariat is under strong pressure from some countries to interpret the directive in the Lima
Agreement narrowly. Those countries are said to be pushing for only a bare-bones summary
of the country targets, rather than an assessment comparing targets against science-based
trajectories that would keep emissions in a livable range. The secretariat should resist such
interference and instead provide the substantive comparative analysis that the world needs.
The analysis should also be the starting point for making regular, formal gap assessments
part of the Paris agreement.

FROM MEASURING TO CLOSING

Measuring the gap, of course, is just the first step. A Paris climate agreement should also
create an explicit approach to closing it. The good news is that many of the necessary pieces
are already on the negotiating table. Taken together, they could form a path out of Paris that
keeps a safer future in sight.

The first element is cooperative mitigation targets. Under this approach, both developed and
developing countries would submit two-part “dual targets” to reduce emissions—one part to
be done unilaterally, the second to be achieved through cooperation. Developing countries
would follow the approach taken by Mexico, which agreed to cut emissions by 22 percent by
2030 on its own, and up to 40 percent with help [5] from other nations. At COP20, several
other developing countries sent the same signal through the Lima Challenge [6]. The
question going into Paris is whether developed countries will respond with dual targets of
their own. Developed country two-part targets would include a pledge to reduce emissions at
home and a second pledge to cooperate with developing countries to achieve greater cuts to
move to the higher end of their target range. Thus far, pledges announced by the EU and
the United States are limited to domestic emissions reductions; that won’t be enough and
everyone knows it. Former Congressman Henry Waxman recently endorsed [7] the dual target
approach calling on the United States to add to its domestic pledge with a commitment to
cooperate with other nations to secure an additional one gigaton of emissions reductions in
developing countries. U.S. support could come in the form of export credit finance,
technology, and capacity building support or other financial incentives. The newly
announced U.S.–Mexico climate task force [8] or upcoming bilateral talks with Indonesia could
test such a partnership ahead of Paris.

The second is called Workstream 2. For three years, UN negotiators have been prototyping
this promising process for addressing the first-generation emissions gap—created by the
shortfall from the Copenhagen targets expiring in 2020. By bringing together technical
experts, Workstream 2 has uncovered solutions that could cut emissions quickly while
delivering other development benefits such as better health and rural economic

2 de 4 30/06/2015 11:51
Weighing the Climate Elephant https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/1114808

development. Perhaps more importantly, it has cracked open the doors of the UN talks to the
private sector and other non-government experts, fostering creativity and practical solutions.
Still, Workstream 2 has yet to produce concrete initiatives, partially because it has been
starved of resources and political attention. Negotiators should link an expanded Workstream
2 to existing mechanisms, such as the Global Environment Facility [9], the Green Climate
Fund [10], and the Technology Executive Committee [11], to give it legs.

Finally, pundits disagree about the impact of a UN climate agreement but not about whether
the climate talks are good at generating political attention. They are, in part because they are
the only stage on which smaller, vulnerable countries and civil society have a voice. Starting
in Paris, an annual high-level platform should be created where government and corporate
leaders are expected to consistently deliver new cooperative action beyond the modest
national targets, and where progress to close the gap is monitored. In June, several
governments proposed appointing prominent, global leaders, such as respected former
heads of state, to lead this kind of high-level process.

DON’T FEAR THE ELEPHANT

Given that the objective of the Paris talks is to address climate change, observers can be
forgiven for wondering why there is so much resistance to such fundamental steps as
measuring and closing the emissions gap. As with many roadblocks in the UN process, it’s
about fairness.

For 200 years, economies in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, powered their
prosperity with enormous amounts of polluting fossil fuels, putting us on the edge of climate
disaster. Today, developing nations are growing fastest, so closing the emissions gap falls
largely on their shoulders, even as fairness says that developed countries should do more.
Developing nations have been reluctant to take on what they see as a disproportionate share
of the problem at a critical moment in their economic evolution.

This standoff could have been solved if developed countries had kept their promise from
Copenhagen to mobilize $100 billion in annual climate assistance, but they have failed to
fully meet this goal due to economic and political challenges at home. In Paris, developed
nations will need to show how they will partner with nations such as Mexico, India, and
Indonesia to meet the bold emissions goals those countries are setting. In all, the fate of the
emissions gap could be determined by whether nations close another gap—in finance.

Some have suggested that a Paris agreement that finally secures emissions-reductions
commitments from major players such as China and the United States would be reason
enough to celebrate. They say that we can effectively kick the can down the road, waiting for
proposed, regular five-year reviews that might start producing stronger targets by 2030. But
we don’t have 10 or 15 years to wait. The longer we put off closing the gap, the more
expensive future climate action and impact will be. Left to suffer will be island nations,
farmers from California to Kenya, 128 U.S. military bases [12], and coastal cities from Miami to
Mumbai, among many others. The stakes are high.

The elephant in the room in Paris is scary. But we must confront it. Closing our eyes won’t
make it disappear.

Copyright © 2015 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.

All rights reserved. To request permission to distribute or reprint this article, please fill out
and submit a Permissions Request Form. If you plan to use this article in a coursepack or
academic website, visit Copyright Clearance Center to clear permission.

Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-06-29/weighing-climate-elephant

3 de 4 30/06/2015 11:51
Weighing the Climate Elephant https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/1114808

Links
[1] http://unfccc.int/focus/indc_portal/items/8766.php
[2] http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgapreport2014/
[3] http://www.climateadvisers.com/mind-the-gap/
[4] http://climateactiontracker.org/global.html
[5] http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2015/03/30-mexico-pledge-global-climate-action-roberts-
edwards
[6] http://www.cop20.pe/en/17190/english-forest-countries-call-for-international-partnerships-to-achieve-
emissions-reductions/
[7] http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/06/waxman-obama-can-be-more-aggressive-on-climate-000103
[8] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/27/joint-statement-us-mexico-climate-policy-cooperation
[9] http://www.thegef.org/gef/
[10] http://news.gcfund.org/
[11] http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6437.php
[12] http://www.espc.oar.noaa.gov/sites/ESPC/Documents
/National%20Security%20Implications%20of%20Climate%20Change%20for%20Naval%20Forces_NRC_12914.pdf

4 de 4 30/06/2015 11:51