CoP a turning point, failed to turn?

Authors: Gungun Anand, a 3rd-year student, and Tarun Barskar, a 4th-year student, both study at the National Law Institute University in Bhopal.

Introduction:

Human-induced climate change exists as a dangerous, widespread disruptor of nature, affecting the lives of billions of people around the world as a consequence of which the world faces multiple inescapable climate hazards. From the burning of the Amazon to the roaring bushfires in Australia and America, the results of the climate chaos are being mirrored in a humanitarian disaster every week. Heatwaves, droughts, and floods are all increasing at the same time, generating cascade effects and exposing millions of people to acute food and water insecurity, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.

Tackling climate change and its accompanying issues effectively would therefore require the working together of not just the governments but also the private sector, and civil society in order to prioritise risk reduction and avert losses and damages from such catastrophic climatic risks.

The CoP – a Turning point?

The Conference of Parties, known as the CoP, is the decision-making body responsible for monitoring and reviewing the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC, 1992 which brings together 197 nations and territories called Parties, as its signatories was the first global convention to specifically address climate change. It created the Conference of Parties’ yearly venue for international negotiations aimed at stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These extensive climate action plans, which contain emissions-reduction objectives, have been implemented in order to address the human-induced climate crises caused mostly by the use of fossil fuels and deforestation, as well as the development of corporations as a major source of emissions. These activities have significantly increased the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, causing the world to warm.

For over three decades, world governments have convened annually at the Conference of Parties to construct a worldwide response to this climate emergency and effectively examine the implementation of the members’ decisions for establishing a collective approach to tackling global climate change. The Kyoto Protocol (2005) and the Paris Agreement (COP 21) are its effective outcomes; While the Kyoto Protocol was the first legally binding climate treaty, requiring developed countries to reduce emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels through an established system of monitoring countries’ progress, the Paris Agreement proved to be the most significant global climate agreement to date, with an agreed-upon goal of staying below a global average temperature increase of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by requiring all countries to achieve set emissions-reduction pledges and government-set targets known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Following the Paris Agreement, hundreds of financial institutions promised to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 by joining the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). Similarly, CoP 27 in Egypt resulted in the establishment of a “loss and damage fund” to pay vulnerable nations for climate risks.

From a policy and scholarly standpoint, these UNFCCC-CoP meetings emerged as an international institution, creating path dependencies and initiatives that result in increasing returns over time that stabilise cooperation between states, often simultaneously on multiple topics, without which the world would be truly adrift and completely at the mercy of individual governments and vested commercial interests.

CoP- A failed institution?

Despite 27 UN Conference of the Parties (CoP) sessions convened to date, the world community has been unable to avert the impending tragedy that the climate issue appears to promise.

Through the Kyoto protocol and the Paris Agreement, the countries agreed to reduce greenhouse emissions but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere keeps rising, heating the earth at an alarming rate, which if continued unabated could result in further environmental catastrophe to much of the world.

The impact of the CoPs with obvious flaws has waned due to their ineffectiveness in encouraging actual action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and address the core causes of climate change. The COP aims and commitments have been criticised for not being sufficient to address the scope and urgency of the climate catastrophe. For example, the Paris Agreement intends to keep global warming far below 2°C, over pre-industrial levels, but a goal limit of 2°C is unlikely to even avert the calamity. The results suggest that if the global average temperature rises by 2°C, the Mediterranean would see an average mean temperature increase of 3.4°C. The world temperature needs only increase by 1.4°C if our goal is to keep warming in the Mediterranean to 2°C. The Arctic experienced the most dramatic changes: with a 2°C rise in global warming, the average temperature in the far north rose by 6°C. When global warming averaged 0.6°C (it is currently roughly 1°C), the 2°C objective for the Arctic has already been exceeded. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement sets out a goal to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but there is a growing consensus that even this target may not be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

In addition to the target inadequacy, there lies a huge gap in implementation as well. While countries have made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change, there have been challenges in implementing these commitments. Some countries have been slow to adopt policies to reduce emissions or have not followed through on their commitments. For example, a 2021 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found that global emissions need to be reduced by 7.6% annually between 2020 and 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. However, the report found that the pledges made by countries under the Paris Agreement are only expected to reduce emissions by 0.5% per year over the next decade.

Lack of commitment is a major bottleneck in the success of CoP, but the problem of funding cannot be ignored. Many developing countries require financial support from wealthier nations to fund climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. However, funding commitments made at the COP meetings have been criticized as insufficient and not effectively delivered.

For example, the Green Climate Fund, which was established to provide financial support to developing countries for climate action, has faced challenges in securing funding and disbursing funds effectively. The fund has received only a fraction of the $100 billion per year pledged by developed countries to support climate action in developing countries.

Climate change is a highly politicized issue, and some countries have been reluctant to take action due to economic or political considerations. Additionally, the COP meetings rely on consensus-based decision-making, which can make it difficult to reach an agreement on ambitious climate action. For example, the COP25 meeting in Madrid in 2019 was widely criticized for failing to reach an agreement on several key issues, including carbon markets and loss and damage funding for developing countries. Some countries, particularly those with large fossil fuel industries, have been resistant to more ambitious climate action, making it difficult to achieve consensus-based decision-making.

The Way Forward

Climate change is a global problem and affects everyone, regardless of nationality or location. It is a problem that requires collective action and cooperation at the global level, and countries must work together to mitigate and adapt to its impacts. It is important that collective efforts are put forth to ensure that unsatiable human greed does not become the cause of the annihilation of life forms from the planet. A concerted global effort on behalf of member- nations is a way through which this herculean task can be performed such as a structured and accountable mechanism to ensure the proper function of the Green Climate Fund. Developed nations must contribute to this cause and there must be a shift from Mitigation to Adaption. While ‘Adaptation’ refers to assisting countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change (coastal states, island nations) with finance and infrastructural assistance, Mitigation refers to reducing carbon emissions since historically, countries have wrangled over the deadlines and upper limit of emissions to keep global temperatures from rising 0.5 or 1 degree Celsius from current levels.

Conclusion

Combating climate change has been a subject of debate since the early 1990s, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) emerging as a response by providing essential conditions for positive change, a stable platform for trust-building and collaboration among countries, a venue for interaction across levels of governance, and a critical event to mobilise civil society and media coverage. But, as the campaign to halt global warming progresses, so must the CoP. For a long time, a worldwide agreement on the need to provide a framework for driving collective action for formal diplomacy and broad involvement was needed.. Despite the fact that the negotiations resulted in several important agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, the targeted efforts of which were mostly adopted, it is important to recognise that the diplomatic needs to effectively address the existing climate catastrophe are waning. As a result, as the CoP27’s Egyptian hosts correctly identified, the key gap that must be rapidly addressed is implementation. The implementation may not be effectively observed through global consensus; rather, small groups of motivated governments, firms, and civil society may be required to learn how to cut emissions, which must then be reflected in the discussions of the groups that arrive at the CoP in larger numbers with better intentions each year.