Institute of Development Studies

The USA’s plans for a future Climate Change agreement: Questions and Concerns

Farhana Yamin - 14 August 2009

The success or failure of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen will determine whether we are able to prevent a future globally catastrophic temperature rise of four to six degrees centigrade. Representatives from across the world now have less than 20 negotiating days before meeting in Copenhagen to agree an international framework on climate emissions for the next decade. They must decide whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which the US has not ratified, beyond 2012 or replace it with a new agreement that also brings in the United States.

The fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-15) will be the culmination of a series of meetings in a far longer negotiation process which started in March 2009. The third of these meetings, running from 10-14 August in Bonn, Germany, included an informal workshop where nine different parties put forward their proposals for a future international framework. I was invited to give a response to the USA's proposal.

How do we assess merits/shortcomings of proposals?

There are three main areas to consider when reviewing these proposals. Firstly will they build momentum? Will they strengthen or weaken current levels of international cooperation? Secondly how effective will they be? Will they meet the key objective of climate protection? And finally are they fair in the sense of reducing burdens and distributing benefits, particularly with respect to vulnerable developing countries and communities?

The strengths of the US Proposal

The US has made a huge political and technical effort on the domestic and international front to engage in international negotiations. The Waxman-Markey Bill is absorbing a lot of time and will hopefully be passed in time so the US can come to Copenhagen with a strong domestic mandate. The international elements of US proposal addresses all the major components of the Bali Action Plan that sets the terms of reference for Copenhagen, including: a shared vision, mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology. By focussing on low-carbon national plans the US proposal is also trying to raise the ambitions of all parties, developed and developing, to take larger, long-term strategic actions. With just 116 days left until a final agreement must be reached the US proposal has been tabled early enough to allow time for elaboration and gives a realistic glimpse of what must be agreed by December and what can be decided on later.

Questions and concerns about the US Proposal

These fall into four categories: climate science, mitigation of global warming, adaptation to climate change and the finance and technology required to achieve all of these.

1. The US vision for climate science

Reviews of commitments to keep in line with climate science form a basic building block of the international framework. The US proposal is not clear about how international scientific assessments will help to define the level of mitigation efforts needed by all countries as its focus is mainly on domestic programmes. As currently drafted, the proposal sets out an incoherent approach for the UNFCCC that would appear to sanction low ambitions for richer countries, as set out by their ‘domestic law' whilst requiring developing countries to base their actions on ‘objective criteria for economic development' at levels that must be ‘consistent with the level of ambition needed to contribute to meeting the objective of the Convention.' This form of differentiation risks losing a scientific, rule-based, international system in favour of one defined by power and short-term politics.

2. The US vision for mitigation

The US proposal moves away from a multilateral framework based on carbon budgets and assigned amounts, which provides international transparency, comparability of effort and a strong framework for robust global carbon markets. Instead it favours non-transparent, nationally defined actions and targets. New bilateral negotiations would then be necessary in order to build carbon markets and related infrastructure from the bottom up. This "linked fragmentation" approach risks weakening current momentum for global carbon markets and could undermine the past two decades of efforts to build common understanding, standards and institutional mechanisms for inventories, accounting, reporting, verification at project and national level.

3. The US vision for adaptation

The US proposal rightly favours integrating adaptation and disaster risk reduction into development planning and programmes, enhanced actions and coordination at local, national and international level. However the proposal fails to elaborate a suitable vision for providing the means of implementation, finance and supporting institutional architecture, to support adaptation, leaving developing countries to pick up the burden, and bill for adaptation. In addition it fails to address human rights or payment of damages to the most vulnerable people and ecosystems - especially if ambitious mitigation levels are not met.

4. The US position on finance and technology

More details from the US, and other developed countries, are needed before we can draw a conclusion here. As things stand, the US proposal lacks detail and fails to recognise the scale of the financial challenges ahead for developing countries. The proposal speaks of a ‘wide variety of finance' but focuses on public funding, private investment and carbon markets - these won't be sufficient. It neglects and is therefore incompatible with funding innovations, such as the auctioning of Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) and aviation levies. As far as technology provisions are concerned it places too much focus on national actions, enabling environments and mitigation from the biggest emitters.

Farhana Yamin is a Climate Change Fellow in the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team at the Institute of Development Studies and a member of the Climate Change and Development Centre

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