U.N. officials have begun preparatory meetings for the international climate negotiations scheduled to take place in Paris this coming December. The talks are intended to produce an international action agreement for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and effectively addressing the problem of climate change, something the United Nations essentially failed to achieve at its last climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009.
Current action plans on climate change expire in 2020. At the Paris talks this December, governments will be expected to create commitments for at least the following decade and ideally beyond.
Delegates from close to 200 nations met Monday in Bonn, Germany to conduct preparatory work for the Paris talks. Already, involved parties have been working with scientists, private sector leaders, and a variety of others in a variety of capacities to continue the work begun in 2009. This week’s session involves cutting down a draft text from a hefty eighty-three pages to something more manageable. There will only be one more five-day preparatory session in October before the Paris negotiations take place in December.
The U.N. is facing a monetary crunch as well as a time crunch on this. U.N. Climate Chief Christiana Figueres told delegates that there was insufficient funding for both the October talks and the COP, the Conference of Parties, the official title of the Paris talks.
“I regret to inform you that we have a deficit now of 1.2 million euros ($1.3 million) just to cover the sessions you have in your calendar,” she said, urging “parties in a position to do so, to contribute.”
Climate Change is Not A New Problem
Copenhagen in 2009 was certainly not the first international attempt to address climate change. Global temperatures have been rising pretty steadily since at least 1900 (Industrial Revolution, anyone?), and environmental scientists and activists have been working to call attention to the problem since the 1970s and 80s.
In 1992, governments convened in Rio de Janeiro and created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in which governments agree to take action in preventing dangerous climate change. The Rio conference did not, however, specify what actions each government should take.
Rio did effectively set into motion years of negotiations that ultimately resulted in the landmark 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a pact that required worldwide cuts in emissions of around 5% by 2012. International governments signed the agreement into force fully without the help of the United States. Then-Vice President Al Gore signed the treaty, but it was never ratified by Congress. President George W. Bush continued to oppose Kyoto during his time in office, taking issue with the fact that Kyoto exempted many smaller and developing nations from reduction requirements and stating that compliance with the treaty would do serious damage to the U.S. economy.
Where We Are Now
The Copenhagen talks in 2009, though chaotic, were not completely unproductive. In Copenhagen, for the first time, all of the major players in global greenhouse gas emissions agreed to set limits and work together towards a common goal. The targets agreed on were far from the kinds of numbers advised by scientists, and no concrete treaty was produced in order to back the agreement with actionable and accountability-enforcing structure. That, hopefully, is what will happen at Paris.
Many do not believe it is possible. The kind of clean technology that will effectively reduce emissions is quite expensive. Developed nations will have trouble financing their own reductions, let alone aiding developing countries in achieving their green goals–that is, assuming they can even agree on and ratify a treaty in the first place. This year will be a crucial one in the battle against global climate change, and many scientists will tell you that we’re already behind schedule.
