A recent article coming out of the UK by Steven Connor in the Independent “Painting roofs white is as green as taking cars off the roads for 50 years, says study” reports on a scientific study that examined the potential impact on global warming from painting the world’s roofs white.  The study, by Hashem Akbari and colleagues appeared in the recent volume of Environmental Research Letters.  The upshot is that we could realize significant effects by something as simple as painting roofs and roads white or some other reflective color.  The effects are two-fold as the white paint would increase the albedo effect reducing solar radiation and it would reduce the temperature in buildings reducing the need for energy intensive air conditioning.

This is a neat finding on its own and I hope it is both substantiated and finds its way into practice.  My interest in it is the implications it might have for governance.  There are dozens if not hundreds of this kind of simple options being touted for producing relatively large scale emissions reductions–reducing global warming by reducing soot was another recent one.  The question is what kind of governance infrastructure–what kind of rules and institutions–will be best able to figure out which ones are relevant/effective and how to scale them up?  I suspect that the traditional multilateral approach is not a good fit–small scale options that should be scaled up is not what multilateral treaty-making is good for.  Instead, the key will be to match these innovations with climate governance experiments that can more quickly get them implemented in transnational city networks, corporate-NGO alliances, and other initiatives. How to do such matching and scaling should be a matter of serious scholarly attention and policy inquiry.

Mat Patterson at the University of Ottawa just posted a blog outlining the direction of some collaborative research I’m engaged in with him, Steven Bernstein, and Michele Betsil.  It examines the networks of individuals and organizations that have been engaged in constructing carbon markets over time.  Here’s the link: exploring global governance networks.

A recent New York Times article by John Broder described the emergence of a new climate initiative spearheaded by the United States (with Canada!)  that is designed to address climate change by expressly looking beyond carbon dioxide.  The US is putting up $12 million and Canada $3 million to kickstart a voluntary mulitlateral program to address black soot (which alters the reflective capacity of ice, making it absorb more solar radiation) and methane and HFCs (powerful greenhouse gases).  The program is designed to encourage and provide resources for developing countries to address these pollutants and raise awareness of these contibutors to global warming.

This is a noteworthy development for a couple of reasons.  As the Times article reports, addressing these three kinds of pollutants can have a large impact on global warming (30-40% is the estimate in the article) and a number of technical fixes are available for addressing these issues.  These fixes are attractive because they are less politically fraught than addressing carbon dioxide–for instance addressing soot has huge health benefits. This means that an effective program to deal with these pollutants could have a larger and quicker impact on climate change than anything likely to come out of the UNFCCC process in the next 5 years or more.

It is also noteworthy as another example of the expanding experimental governance approach. This is expressly not a treaty negotiation with targets and timelines for reducing soot, methane, and HFCs with enforcement mechanisms to back it up.  It is a voluntary multilateral program that will use carrots to get countries involved in addressing these pollutants. Like transnational municipal networks, provincial-state initiatives in carbon markets, and NGO-corporate alliances that have proliferated in the last decade, this new initiative looks to respond to climate change outside the UN process, across borders, using new governance mechanisms (or old mechanisms in new ways).

This endgers both hopes and worries.  On the hopeful side, experiments like this, especially at the multilateral level and involving the US, can move quickly on a major part of the climate change problem without getting bogged down in the making of an international treaty.  In addition, this initiative contributes to the expansion of what counts as responding to climate change–moving beyond an exclusive focus on carbon dioxide emissions reductions and legally binding treaties.  Climate change needs to be attacked from multiple angles and the ultimate goal needs to be transformation of the energy system and economy away from fossil fuel dependence.  Expanding the response is a move in the right direction.

Of course, this kind of climate governance experiment–voluntary action–is not a pancea and raises important questions about effectiveness.  Will the carrots be enough to get buy in and can the program reach its goals outside the context of binding international legal instruments?  Time will tell.

This is a positive move in a political context where good news on the climate front is hard to come by.  It is certainly an experiment that bears watching.

A colleague and I just published a piece in The Mark analyzing the results from the recent Durban climate negotiations.  It’s more critical than my original summary of the outcome (maybe a bit more pessimistic as well upon some further reflection).

http://www.themarknews.com/articles/7809-durban-post-mortem-and-the-band-played-on

Confusion reigned in the immediate aftermath of the climate change negotiations that went overtime by almost 48 hours in Durban, South Africa.  When the dust settled, one thing became clear.  Whereas the worries heading into Durban and even the trends from late in the final week of the negotiations pointed to an epic disaster for the multilateral negotiations, the international community managed to eke out agreement on a number of issues that may portend success in the future.  The process of developing an international response to climate change continues to move.  Whether that motion is forward or in the correct direction remains to be seen.

What Happened?

Sorting through the varied dimensions and discussions that make up the decisions made at a major UN conference of this complexity can be a daunting task.  At the risk of oversimplifying, the following can be considered key ‘results’ of the negotiations:

• All countries attending the negotiations (194) agreed to “ to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”  (http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/durban_nov_2011/decisions/application/pdf/cop17_durbanplatform.pdf).  These negotiations will begin in 2012 and are to be completed by the end of 2015.  The new agreement is mandated to come into force in 2020.
• The Cancun Agreements will continue to govern climate change for those who are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol  (US, Canada, Japan, Russia) and for those who do not have emissions reductions obligations under the Kyoto Protocol (e.g. China) until 2020.  Countries are still obligated to work towards the emissions reductions goals that they pledged in Cancun.
• The Green Climate Fund, which is designed to facilitate the flow of billions of dollars (up to $100 billion per year by 2020) to the most vulnerable countries to aid in adaptation to climate change, was approved and operationalized.
• Those countries that were parties to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to a second commitment period (recall that the Kyoto Protocol goes out of force at the end of 2012).  However, this was a relatively hollow victory. Russia and Japan signaled well-before the Durban meetings that they had no intention of signing on to a second commitment period. Canada confirmed what everyone already knew would happen by officially withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol on Dec 12^th (after destroying what was left of its international reputation in climate change by trashing the protocol and telegraphing its impending withdrawal during the negotiations). Those countries still committed to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to decide relatively quickly in 2012 what the targets for the second commitment period will be and decided that it will run from 2013 until 2017 (or perhaps 2020), but it is hard to see how this second commitment period could possibly be relevant

What Does it Mean?

The results from Durban do not warrant despair, but neither should they engender much enthusiasm.  There are positives to take away. The prospect of a legally binding global treaty is still on the table when it seemed far-fetched to predict this even two weeks ago.  This will keep the multilateral process moving forward.  Perhaps more importantly, this outcome provides critical signals for long term investments and planning along with a boost for extra-UN initiatives taking place in cities, amongst NGOs and MNCs and others dedicated to dealing with climate change.  In addition, it is a breakthrough that India and China agreed for the first time, in principle, to negotiate emissions reductions comparable to developed countries and that the US was convinced to participate as well.

But let’s not kid ourselves, there is a large gulf between agreeing to launch negotiations toward a relatively ambiguous end and accomplishing an effective, legally binding treaty that will move the world towards decarbonization and away from climate crisis.  The politics involved in achieving such a treaty have not gotten any easier because new negotiations have been agreed to and there are serious questions about how binding a pledge to negotiate a treaty by 2015 can ever be.  In some ways the Durban Platform is actually quite reminiscent of the Bali Roadmap from 2007 in which countries pledged to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by 2009—a pledge that went spectacularly unfulfilled.  Further, while nations agreed, in principle, to ramp up their commitments in the coming negotiations, it is far from clear that the size and speed of emissions reductions being considered will be sufficient to aggressively confront climate change.

For now the pledge and review mode of climate governance enshrined at Cancun, with its woefully inadequate pledges, will remain operative through 2020 and it will take significant political shifts from key players arising from as of yet unclear sources to change the fundamental dynamics of the climate negotiations. Starting from scratch with a 2015 deadline to reach an ambiguous goal of a legal instrument will be difficult.   Two years may well be insufficient to build the kind of political momentum behind a large-scale global accord that would be necessary to fulfill the mandate.

The size of challenge involved in shifting to a more stringent legal agreement after 2020 was made clear by the hollowing out of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol mentioned abovethe political difficulties that were obvious in the discussions over the future of the Kyoto Protocol have the potential to plague the negotiations over the 2020 commitments as well.

So if there is optimism to be found it is in the fact that the multilateral process did not collapse and has taken tentative steps forward.  The solution to climate change is still not likely to be found in a global, legally binding treaty.  It is more likely to be found in the diffuse actions of multiple actors working to decarbonize the energy system and economy.  What Durban may end up providing is the kind of encouragement for global city networks, regional emissions trading systems, corporate-NGO alliances, community activities and more that increases their motivation and enhances their activities.  In turn the action outside the negotiating halls may provide the kind of political momentum and shifts necessary to make it possible to actually agree on an effective treaty by 2015.  This is the best case scenario.  Time will tell.

I just had an updated version of an earlier post (Why Durban Matters for Climate Governance) published in The Mark, a Canadian News, Analysis, and Opinion e-zine.  Its title is: Why the Climate Change Negotiations Matter.

An interesting and provocative article by Fiona Harvey in the Guardian “Rich nations ‘give up’ on new climate treaty until 2020” is making the rounds on facebook and the wires.  The ‘news’ that a global climate treaty is far from imminent is not surprising.  However, the explicit admissions that a global climate treaty is unlikely to be in place before 2020 are surprising.  This could be a case of lowering expectations ahead of negotiations, but as the expectations were low to begin with, this does not seem plausible.  It is more likely that the lengthy wait described in the article is simply what is now conventional wisdom for some of the major players in the negotiations.

The danger is that this will further marginalize the multilateral process and sap the energy and resources from the places where action is taking place–cities, states, corporations, NGOs.  On the other hand, it is at least a bit heartening that the admissions that nothing will be done soon were accompanied by timetables for the next treaty, rather than skepticism that a global treaty would ever be signed.  Not much in the way of a silver lining, but with global climate treaty-making we have to take what we can get.

With less fanfare than there has been in years, the next installment of the UN negotiations on climate change are set to begin in Durban, South Africa in less than three weeks.  To no one’s surprise there has been scant media attention on the run-up to the meetings.  Imminent climate change negotiations cannot compete with an ongoing economic crisis for air time, especially when the expectations for Durban are so low as to be non-existent.  The fundamentals of the political gridlock that hampered the previous two UN negotiations have not changed substantially–the US will not move quickly given its domestic political situation and economic woes; the EU is pushing for ambitious targets given that it has already achieved almost 20% reductions from 1990 levels (see this Reuters article); and China is beginning to show signs of leadership but is not yet willing to commit to large binding reductions.  The likelihood that a follow up, second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol will be agreed to in 2011 is close to nil.

Yet, though obscurity relative to earlier negotiations may be Durban’s fate, that does not mean that this year’s incarnation of the climate talks is unimportant.  Ironically, they are important even though and perhaps even because nothing substantial is likely to be agreed to.  First, the annual multilateral gathering is important for more than the negotiation of international agreements.  The UN meetings are forums that draw a multitude of diverse organizations involved in the global response to climate change.  At UN approved side events and at other forums in Durban, cities, corporations, states, regions, NGOs, and others will converge to share their expertise, urge further action, network, and discuss fruitful ways of moving forward.  The importance of these actors and initiatives that work outside the UN process is now being recognized within the negotiating halls.  In a recent speech (see this Bloomberg article), the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, Christiana Figueres, noted the dynamism of climate innovation outside the negotiations and urged actors working in these areas to help break the deadlock in the UN negotiating halls. This is another indication of how the center of gravity in the global response to climate change is shifting from the multilateral negotiations to innovative climate governance experiments. Yet without the annual UN meetings, efforts to publicize and link the activities of these crucial innovative initiatives would be hampered. Even when very little is expected from the negotiations, the UN meetings are a focal point for the global response to climate change.

Second, the Durban meeting is important because nothing substantial is likely to happen. There is value in continuing to meet and negotiate in the face of low expectations, maintaining the practice and institutions of multilateral cooperation and forging agreement on parts of the problem where there is relative consensus (e.g. REDD+), so that when political momentum does emerge behind significant action on climate change, the infrastructure for making a comprehensive treaty is in place. The impetus for far-reaching action on climate change is not likely to come from the multilateral negotiations, but multilateral treaty-making processes need to be maintained so that when (or if for those feeling pessimistic) the catalysts from outside the negotiating halls create a surge of possibilities, the tools are in place to harness global cooperation.

So do not expect much from Durban, but resist the temptation to call for an end to the UN negotiations.  Durban matters both for how it can continue to feed and grow the innovation to be found amongst climate governance experiments and for how it maintains the continuity of a multilateral process that may some day be called upon to implement a global response to climate change catalyzed elsewhere.

Climate Governance at the Crossroads

My book on climate governance experiments–Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto–has just been published. It’s available on Amazon and the Oxford University Press website. Here’s a link and a blurb:

 

Matthew J. Hoffmann

Description

The global response to climate change has reached a critical juncture. Since the 1992 signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the nations of the world have attempted to address climate change through large-scale multilateral treaty-making. These efforts have been heroic, but disappointing. As evidence for the quickening pace of climate change mounts, the treaty-making process has sputtered, and many are now skeptical about the prospect of an effective global response. Yet global treaty-making is not the only way that climate change can be addressed or, indeed, is being addressed.

In the last decade myriad initiatives have emerged across the globe independently from, or only loosely connected to, the “official” UN-sponsored negotiations and treaties. In the face of stalemate in the formal negotiations, the world is experimenting with alternate means of responding to climate change. Climate Governance at the Crossroads chronicles these innovations–how cities, provinces and states, citizen groups, and corporations around the globe are addressing the causes and symptoms of global warming. The center of gravity in the global response to climate change is shifting from the multilateral treaty-making process to the diverse activities found beyond the negotiating halls. These innovations are pushing the envelope of climate action and demonstrating what is possible, and they provide hope that the world will respond effectively to the climate crisis.

In introducing climate governance “experiments” and examining the development and functioning of this new world of climate policy-making, this book provides an exciting new perspective on the politics of climate change and the means to understand and influence how the global response to climate change will unfold in the coming years.

Features

• Presents a new, broad perspective on climate governance that analyzes active alternatives to ineffectual multilateral negotiations
• Includes an original database summary of climate governance initiatives at individual, municipal, national, sub-national, corporate, and transnational levels
• Analyzes the prospects and pitfalls for new climate governance initiatives

Reviews

“The perennial quest for a seamless international bargain on climate change has yielded to a far more complex set of climate governance initiatives around the world. Matthew Hoffmann takes a fresh look at this ever-expanding arena of public policy and thoughtfully explores early lessons and possible next steps. This book represents a valuable scholarly contribution and provides an important public service.”–Barry G. Rabe, Professor of Public Policy and Professor of the Environment, University of Michigan

“Growing concern about the impacts of climate change, coupled with frustration at the lack of progress in intergovernmental climate negotiations, has motivated numerous subnational governments and non-state actors to launch experiments with alternative approaches to climate governance. This important book provides the first systematic assessment of these initiatives. Focusing on the experimental governance system, it not only sheds light on ways forward regarding climate change; it also adds to our understanding of a trend of fundamental importance to the pursuit of governance more generally.”–Oran R. Young, Professor of Institutional and International Governance, University of California-Santa Barbara

“Matthew Hoffman brings light to the darkening literature of climate change. He shows that, while negotiations at the international level have stalled, there is a multitude of promising governing efforts taking place in the municipal, corporate and nongovernmental sectors. Seen through Hoffman’s incisive analytical lens, we can appreciate such ‘experiments’ as grounds for hope. If you care about and want to respond positively to climate change, read this book!”–Paul Wapner, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Environmental Politics Program, American University

The perceived contrast between the 2010 UN-climate negotiations just concluded in Cancun (http://unfccc.int/2860.php) and 2009’s Copenhagen UN-meeting could hardly be starker.  The Hopenhagen negotiations began with wildly unrealistic expectations about the possibility of achieving a comprehensive, legally binding agreement to combat global warming.  It ended as Brokehagen, achieving only a maligned Copenhagen Accord that both failed to commit major greenhouse gas emitters to change their ways and tarnished the negotiating process because of the nontransparent process that produced it.  The 2010 Canothingdoing negotiations in Mexico opened with little fanfare and virtually no expectations of success. The political climate for significant action has been chilly to say the least—midterm elections in the US that brought a climate-skeptical Republican wave to Congress was only the last of string of setbacks for global progress on addressing climate change.  Yet in the early hours of Saturday December 11, 2010 this UN meeting became the CanDo negotiations.

The “Cancun Agreements” were endorsed by nearly 200 nation-states.  They enshrine efforts to aggressively reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, lay out a goal of stabilizing global warming below a 2 degree temperature rise, provide billions of dollars to developing countries for adaptation to the ravages of climate change, they shored up the climate for investment in climate friendly technology and carbon markets, and they reaffirmed the global commitment to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the process of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), tools that facilitate the development of low carbon economies and forest protection in the Global South. What a difference a year makes!

Or does it? Lost in the mild euphoria that an agreement was reached in Cancun is the fact that, substantively, the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements are actually quite similar.  Both allow developed countries to set their own emission reduction targets and methods.  Both commit developed countries to provide $100US billion per year by 2020 for adaptation efforts in developing countries.  Both call on developing countries to begin nationally appropriate mitigation efforts and move away from business as usual.  Both call for holding warming under 2 degrees. There are small, but important differences in the two agreements—more consensus on monitoring and verification of commitments and a reaffirmation of major market mechanisms like the CDM and REDD are in the Cancun Agreements. But on balance a first glance at the two results shows them to be functionally  similar. And yet the Cancun Agreements are already being cautiously lauded and they have the potential to be a long-term success.  The features that set the Cancun Agreements apart from the Copenhagen Accord are not a matter of details, but of process and the way in which they may be able to catalyze future action.

The Copenhagen Accord was widely perceived as being a backroom deal—the US and China colluding and usurping the ideals of transparency and consultation that are cherished in a multilateral process that has engaged virtually the entire world for the last two decades.  The Cancun Agreements, on the other hand were developed through the traditional negotiating process and transparency was stressed from the outset and throughout the meeting.  Instead of countries “taking note,” almost in protest, of a Copenhagen Accord that they had no hand in devising, the last plenary session erupted in applause as nearly 200 nation-states committed to the Cancun Agreeements.  Process matters.  The legitimacy of the UN-negotiating process is a key to moving this aspect of the global response to climate change forward.

The Cancun Agreements also promise to have a larger impact than did the Copenhagen Accord, but again, not because of the details of what was agreed to. It is time to admit that a relatively vague, general framework like the Cancun Agreements may be the best that global negotiations on climate change can produce.  The issue is simply too complex and the negotiating process simply to unwieldy and fraught with competing interests to produce the kind of legally-binding, comprehensive, and effective treaty that has been the ultimate goal since the early 1990s when global warming first became a prominent global issue. Many of the more difficult issues—quantified global targets, enforcement mechanisms, intellectual property rights on climate technology—have been punted to the next UN-negotiation to take place in South Africa in 2011 and the chances of producing a comprehensive, detailed, legally binding agreement there are no greater than were at Copenhagen and Cancun.

Yet broad, vague agreements like the one just negotiated play a crucial role in the global response to climate change in that they further the momentum to take action in a multitude of ways and locations. In enshrining a decentralized approach to addressing climate change—diverse national commitments rather than enforceable global targets—the Cancun Agreements provide motivation for innovations that are already underway across the globe in various guises.  National commitments will rely on activities that are already underway and that have been working for the last decade to move the response to the climate crisis forward. Global networks of cities are working to alter municipal economies, transportation systems, and energy use.  Corporations are forming alliances with environmental NGOs to devise large and small ways to deliver climate friendly technology and move towards a low carbon economy.  States, provinces, environmental organizations, and corporations are engaged in developing carbon markets that promise low-cost means of reducing emissions.

The success of Cancun, if it is ultimately considered as such, will not arise from the substance of the Agreements.  It will rather emerge from the transparent, legitimate process that garnered global support for an overarching set of goals and commitments to address climate change.  With this in place, the activities and momentum already evident in a multitude of initiatives can move forward and with luck, resources, and work, move the world onto a low-carbon path.