Lord Stern calls for a new approach to climate change negotiations

As the Lima Climate Change Conference enters its second week, British academic Professor Nicholas Stern has released a report stating that governments should be ambitious, dynamic and collaborative in their negotiations over a new international agreement on climate change.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992 and has since been ratified by 195 parties. Since then, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 to implement the UNFCCC and entered into force in 2005; while in 2007, the parties initiated work aimed at drawing up a post-2012 climate agreement, applicable to all emitters of greenhouse gases.

At the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), to be held in Paris in December 2015, the parties plan to conclude their new climate agreement in 2015, with entry into force planned for 2020. But Lord Stern claims that governments should not insist that the agreement be an internationally legally binding treaty.

“International agreements on climate change should be structured so as to facilitate the kind of collaboration needed to achieve mutual confidence and equitable access to sustainable development,” said Lord Stern. “They should be dynamic in the sense that countries’ ambitions for emissions reductions can be encouraged by, and captured in, international processes and in ways that promote increased ambition over time.”

The UNFCCC negotiations leading up to Paris have been organised on the basis that each country or region will determine their own contribution to the global climate mitigation effort - a decentralised approach which Lord Stern says seems likely to lead to more ambitious commitments from many key countries.

“Some may fear that commitments that are not internationally legally binding may lack credibility,” he said. “That, in my view, is a serious mistake. The sanctions available under the Kyoto Protocol, for example, were notionally legally binding but were simply not credible and failed to guarantee domestic implementation of commitments.”

Lord Stern suggested that the discussions between governments should be founded on an understanding of four key elements which should be built into the Paris agreement:

• The risks from unmanaged climate change are potentially immense and delay is dangerous.
• The path to a low-carbon economy can be highly attractive, embodying strong and high-quality growth, investment and innovation in the context of rapid global structural transformation.
• The agreement should be based on a shared commitment to creating ‘equitable access to sustainable development’.
• The agreement should be structured to facilitate dynamic and collaborative interactions between parties. Governments should not insist that an agreement be an internationally legally binding treaty.

“The journey to Paris must be constructive and creative,” Lord Stern said. “We are already seeing promising signs such as the joint announcement by the United States and China in Beijing in November 2014, and the adoption of the 2030 climate and energy package by the European Council in October 2014. Together, these commitments cover about half of annual global emissions of greenhouse gases. These decisions are important and substantive steps in a sensible direction and suggest seriousness about a strong agreement in Paris in 2015. However, taken together, they do not add up to being on track for an emissions path that would mean a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous global warming of more than two centigrade degrees above pre-industrial level. All involved are now discussing the possibility of raising ambition on emissions reductions. That is a task of great importance.”

The report ‘Growth, climate and collaboration: towards agreement in Paris 2015’ can be downloaded here.