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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