Let go the neoliberal imperium

A gritting truth bleeds out from the passage below. It has been extracted from the seminal essay of Keynes, Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren. I could write thousands of words, to prove my point that 'degrowth should be normalized', and that we need to save ourselves from the intoxication of neoliberalism, as Stern and Martin Pearson would have called as 'neoliberal imperium'. 

I quote Keynes:

"

Let me remind you of the Professor in Sylvie and Bruno: 

'Only the tailor, sir, with your little bill,' said a meek voice outside the door. 'Ah, well, 1 can soon settle his business,' the Professor said to the children, 'if you'll just wait a minute. 

How much is it, this year, my man?' The tailor had come in while he was speaking. 'Well, it's been a-doubling so many years, you see,' the tailor replied, a little gruffiy, 'and 1 think I'd like the money now. It's two thousand pound, it is!' 

 'Oh, that's nothing !' the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in his pocket, as if he always carried at least that amount about with him. 'But wouldn't you like to wait JUS! another year and make it Jour thousand? Just think how rich you'd bel Why, you might be a king, if you liked!' 'I don't know as I'd care about being a king,' the man said thoughtfully. 'But it dew sound a powerful sight 0' money! 

Well, 1 think 1'11 wait-' 'Of course you will!' said the Professor. 'There's good sense in you, 1 see. Good-day to you, my man!' 'Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?' Sylvie asked as the door closed on the departing creditor. 'Never, my child!' the Professor replied emphatically. 'He'll go on doubling it till he dies. You see, it's always worth while waiting another year to get twice as much money!' 

"

It is always worthwhile waiting. But, if we do that, just to earn more next year, when do we stop? 

An Appraisal of Climate Action Governance system: looking forward to the COP 27

 What is lacking in climate resolutions taken so far by UNFCCC? What can the COP 27 do better so we can see improved progress in countries’ greenhouse gas emission reductions to reach the global 2030 targets?

The UNFCCC was signed between 3rd to 14th June 1992 with the aim to combat the "dangerous human interference with the climate system". Since then, the global environment governance system has seen additions of more agreements specialising on various aspects of pollution, emissions and human activities, stakeholders and gained structural complexity. Looking at this complex structure, one would agree that a lot has been done yet we are not even a tad near to solving climate change. Today, there exist more than 100 environmental treaties and yet climate change negotiations have earned a notorious reputation and several Conference of Parties are marred with criticisms of failure. 

A sound analysis of why have COPs or climate resolutions not been effective points us to various glaring realisations. The environment governance structure is divided. At the heart of this division lies the issues of climate equity and climate imperialism between the developed and developing countries who have failed to come to terms with. Also, climate change is a high-politics issue secondary to geopolitics, economics and trade gets lashed, compromised or forgotten very often. Finally, issues discussed or negotiated at the supra-national level have a good chance of facing rejection at the national-level governments which points to the fact that the international space is an anarchic one. 

Additionally, what has been lacking in the climate resolutions take so far across UNEP, UNFCCC and GEF has been a universal participation of 196 countries, agreement of committing to reductions or other adaptations, the issue of who shares the financial burden of technology transfer to the needy countries, training and capacity development and loss and damage, etc. 

The decade of 2020 has been inadvertently termed as the last best chance to keep the goal of 1.5 degree celsius alive. With this, each COP has been viewed with great expectation. The present juncture of climate change demands a shift of perspective from pledges to actions. In this light, the 27th COP would be held in the deserts of Sahara at Sharm El-Sheikh, a place whose maximum temperature goes as high as 50 Degrees, in 2022 must shoulder a climactic responsibility. 

Not only is Egypt a strategic player as it represents the African continent, the Saharan belt, but also its high participation in G20 since 2016 stands relevant in bringing different geography-based as well as issue-based blocs together at the negotiating table at the COP 27. With this, it is pertinent to look at what COP 27 can do to improve the progress in countries’ emission levels, and to achieve the 2030 goals. The following analysis draws heavily from the UNFCCC publications, the WWF COP 27 Expectations Paper, Bonn Conference, the Glasgow Climate Pact official documents and the IPCC Report 6 Part 3 which have been released in the past few months. 

From Pledges to Action

There is a broad agreement that the focus must urgently shift from planning to implementation. Climate diplomacy in the form of negotiations, agreements, pledges need to be put to action. These include the Paris Rulebook finalised at COP 26, the Glasgow Climate Pact, the Nationally Determined Contributions. Out of the 197 parties to the Paris Convention, about 194 have submitted their NDCs as of today. The final step would be to get the last three parties to comply to achieve universality in the same. This also calls for the formalisation of the Enhanced Transparency Framework and transition to biennial transparency reports from all members. 

Global climate governance currently consists of a complex structure of institutions created to address each turn of processes and issues. The Action for Climate Empowerment is an initiative for accelerating solutions through education, training and public awareness is striving to reconfigure climate change action from a matter of high politics to a local one. The Work Programme which represents non-state actors and their role as equal partners. The Global Stock Take (GST) which will assess the sum of all individual actions as a unit instead of NDCs. The Adaptations Communication initiative has also been failing with only 47 submissions by February 2022. These are important initiatives that need to be strengthened at COP 27. 

The three legs of climate change action are finance, technology and capacity building. The COP 27 must strive to achieve the long-dream of collecting $100 Bn every year for financing the developing and vulnerable countries, primarily for technology transfer, training and loss and damage. This will set the stage for enhancing the trust between developed and developing countries. 

Multilateralism, plenitude of perspectives and changing dynamics within DCs

The next suggestion would include a greater variety of stakeholders from the public as well as private sphere. The public sphere includes coalitions, alliances and blocs- regional-based such as OASIS, African Union and issue-based such as Corals, tropical forests, Methane emission, etc. Learning from the lessons learnt after the failure of the Copenhagen Summit and the subsequent Cancun success, it has become pertinent to include such groups. With this, COP 27 can bring all the countries at the negotiating table, and help in arriving at a common ground, especially the developed and developing countries. While the divide between  the two is not new, what we see today, is an increasing schism within the developing countries (DCs). The emerging markets like India, China who want an escape-window to burn fossil fuel to industrialise themselves, while the smaller, weaker and vulnerable countries are looking for an immediate change. The latter may also coalesce with the developed counterpart against the emerging market coalition. Thus, many DC blocks are pitted against each other. This makes the involvement of developed nations to negotiate and address the rising schism between the developing countries with high emissions and smaller-vulnerable nations, very much necessary. On the other hand, the private ones include not only the businesses, but also civil society, youth leaders, observers, etc. 

Geopolitics and its climatic risks

Finally, over the next few months until COP 27, the geopolitical situation around the world must be solved. This includes the rising energy insecurity and prices, the risk of pandemic coming back and most importantly, the Russia-Ukraine crisis. This is because the geopolitics tensions will inadvertently harm the already frail thread on which climate negotiations are done. 

Therefore, one certainly has very high expectations from the COP 27. The job to not only learn from the mistakes from the past, to work on the existing structure and make required additions is a responsibility to be handled at the upcoming conference. A lot has been said and said on ambitions. There is no dearth of ambitions and at the same time mere ambitions are not enough. It is time to move to a post-ambition phase and focus on implementation. 

The Prospects of a Co-hosting Model in Climate Change Negotiation Regime

Right from the 1972 Stockholm Conference until today, more than 100 agreements have been signed which centre around a range of environmental issues such as Greenhouse Gas emissions, protecting the biodiversity and ecosystem and curbing the use of harmful and polluting substances. Moreover, the greatest set up in global environmental governance has been the UNFCCC since 1992. These conferences have brought almost all the countries in the world on a single platform to discuss climate change and its related action. These conferences are hosted by member-countries. Hosting a conference is a complex task and even complex is the politics of selecting a host. The politics and conflict resolution that goes behind selection of a host country offers a great case-study to understand the complexity of climate change negotiations in all. 

According to Marina Terzi et.all., destination is one of the most important factors that shapes the decision-making process of potential participants. The dynamic of the conference location decides the communication strategy. In their research, they deploy a dynamic simulation model to determine the factors that are important in selecting the location such as use of international languages, safety, security, availability of means of transport, and infrastructure. Their study concludes that criterias such as security was considered important (that is, somewhat important + very important) by almost 76% whereas safety was considered very important by almost 86%. Similarly, the use of English language and access to direct modes of transport score more than 90% votes as being important. 

 

Figure (1)

If one applies the same principle in the locations selected for climate change negotiations for the sessions of Conference of Parties under UNFCCC, one can derive interesting lessons (Figure 1). Out of the 26 conferences that have taken place till now, almost 60% of the summits have taken place in Europe, followed by 16% in Asia. North America has hosted just one summit so far, that too in Canada. Surprisingly, no summit has taken place in the United States of America so far. Similarly the Asian giants like Russia and China too have not shown any interest. While many countries have not hosted the session even once, countries like Germany, Poland, Morocco and the United Kingdom have hosted more than once. 

Figure (2)

While issues and debates around equity centre around responsibility of emissions, commitments and finance. However, if we apply the same principle on participation and representation at the climate change negotiations,  we find that only a handful of countries have been hosting the sessions so far. Moreover, if we analyse the countries who have hosted the sessions from a point of view of their development-status (Figure 2), we find that 15 out of the 25 sessions have been held in developed countries, which is 60%. In the decade of 2020 itself, both out of the two sessions held so far were in a developed country. However, the successive sessions that are COP 27 (Egypt) and COP 28 (UAE) will balance out the same. India has hosted the COP once so far, that is the 8th COP in 2002. 

 

The COP generally meets every year. According to the UNFCCC website, the meet takes place in Bonn, the seat of the secretariat, unless a party offers to host the session. Here we see that the onus on hosting a session is seemingly on the members. It is certainly true that the countries bid to host a session. This venue, moreover is subjected to rotation among five identified regions namely- Africa, Asia Pacific, eastern Europe, Latin America and Caribbean and western Europe and others. However, the final decision is subject to support from a large number of countries in the specific region- for example, in the case of UAE who will be hosting COP 28, the support had to come from the Asia-Pacific group of nations.

 

 

  Figure (3)

Irrespective of this rule, maximum sessions have taken place in Europe. The first and the second COP, and the fifth and sixth COP successively took place in Europe, specifically Western Europe. Moreover, if the countries fail to select a hosting nation, the responsibility automatically falls on Bonn, the seat of the secretariat. This happened when Fiji, the host of 2017, was declared unfit to host the event. Hence, the  event was held in Bonn under the Fijian Presidency. If we consider this argument to be applied every time, most of the island-nations and smaller countries will not be able to host a COP. This has been evident as the world has shied away from bids of countries like Costa Rica in becoming hosts in the past. If we analyse the figure (3), we can conclude that none of the sessions taken place so far have taken place in smaller countries. There also lies an additional dilemma that the host city must be prepared to incur huge expenditure on the event, and make arrangements for thousands of heads of governments and states, and other personalities. This is bound to have a considerable carbon footprint which may not be feasible for smaller/vulnerable island nations. A possible solution here would be to allow co-hosting between countries of two different regions. For example, countries representing two regions such as Africa and Asia-Pacific each could participate as a co-host.

 

Similarly, the COP 25 whose designated host was Chile could not fulfil its commitment because of political unrest and its host-ship was taken over by Spain. As members of one international community who are striving to achieve peace and order at all levels of governance, the members should have shown interest in insisting that Chile host the next COP once it is able to quell the domestic situation. Another solution could have been to insist another country within the same region to volunteer to be the host. This is because, with Chile losing its host-ship, is not only the loss for Chile but also for the entire region it represents- the Latin America and Caribbean. Therefore, the opportunity that comes with being a host, to represent one’s regional identity, to voice the concerns of one’s region, to advertise the progress made in climate-action is lost for the next five years which is a very big price to pay for the entire region.

 

Climate change negotiations today have become far more complex. Countries at the negotiating table do not represent just their regional or geographical identity. Their participation is across various geography-based and issue-based alliances and informal groups. These crosscutting divisions have made the use of the region-wise criteria redundant. It is also important to include the issue-based alliances or informal groups when deciding the host of a session. For example, a host-country from issue-based alliances such as OPEC, the BASIC, Least Developing Countries (LDC), OASIS, Rainforest Alliance could be selected. This will ensure that countries who play an important role in issue-based groups but are not as significant in geography-based coalitions also get a chance to host. An even more effective solution would be in applying the co-host formula here, where one host is selected from a geography-based coalition and another from an issue-based. This will ensure that climate change negotiations in the future are giving due recognition to issues as well. 

It is an opportune time for the UNFCCC secretariat to bring reforms in the climate change negotiation system, and starting with the host-selection mechanism would be an adequate way to go about. The co-host model does offer us plenty of opportunity to seek greater representation on geography-based and issue-based lines. There are also a number of challenges that one may foresee in the planning and implementation of the same. But, at least in a theoretical sense, it seems to be a fitting way to go about with.

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