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The CGD Podcast
What to Expect at COP21 – Podcast with Frances Seymour
00:14:21
Next week, nations gather in Paris for the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) with the goal of establishing a global plan to address climate change. CGD Senior Fellow Frances Seymour discusses what's on the agenda in Paris and what success might look...
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Foreign.
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Hello, I'm Rajesh Merchandani. Thanks for joining me for this edition of the CGD podcast. Now, we all know that Paris has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. But many are now hoping that some more positive headlines will come out of the city as nations are gathered for the 21st Conference of Parties, otherwise known as the UN Climate Change Conference. The goal is a grand deal among countries that is a state step towards addressing climate change and its effects. CGD experts are in Paris as well, talking about our work on the importance of tropical forests to both development and the climate. More on that in a minute. But first, let's welcome CGD Senior Fellow Francis Seymour, who leads our climate work. Frances, great to talk to you.
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Thanks, Josh. Happy to be here.
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What's on the table?
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Well, there are a lot of issues on the official negotiating table. I'd say sort them into four big categories. One is mitigation. What is our level of ambition? What's the target? Are we going to keep to the 2 degrees centigrade target for keeping global warming below that? Might we be more ambitious or might it be something more squishy? Within mitigation, there's the whole issue of whose responsibility is it across countries to reduce emissions to meet that target, and what level of differentiation is there going to be between rich countries and poor countries? And how often are we going to review these targets and increase our ambition? The second bucket is about adaptation. In other words, how do we deal with the climate change that is already in train and going to happen? And the big controversial issue there is the extent to which the rich countries have a liability for compensating the unavoidable loss and damages to be suffered by poor countries. The third set of issues has to do with finance. How are we going to pay for all this? Where is it going to come from? How much is it going to be? All those sorts of questions. The fourth bucket is about accountability and transparency. You know, how and how often are we going to check whether countries are following through on their commitments, both in terms of reducing emissions and coming up with the finance? So that's the big picture of the issues that are on the table.
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And all of those buckets really are covered by CGD's work on tropical forests. Forests and the work that focuses on payment for performance by rich countries to developing tropical forested countries for the service provided by keeping the forest standing to absorb carbon and provide incomes for forest communities. You've got mitigation, you've got adaptation. You've got finance and you've got accountability because the idea is to pay for verified results. So you'd think forests would be big on the agenda, but where are they in Paris?
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Well, there's a great irony, Rajesh, because in a way, the reason forests are not high on the agenda in Paris is because the negotiations on forests have been so successful. Ever since tropical forests were put back on the negotiating table in the context of the climate convention about 10 years ago, they've been one of the areas that have been most constructive and productive in negotiating a mechanism called reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, so called REDD plus. And as a result of those constructive negotiations, because they are such a win win, essentially the negotiations were finished up in Warsaw two years ago with the so called Warsaw Framework that set out sort of the rules for under which rich countries would pay developing countries for reducing emissions from forests. And the sort of last details were signed off on in a subsidiary set of meetings in Bonn in June. So there's really nothing left to talk about with Forrest. And so that's the good news, but the bad news is that, that as a result, they're kind of slipping off the agenda. And so now the question boils down to whether or not the term redd+ is included in the formal negotiating text. And over the last several months they've been in, out, in, out. And so it's unclear whether or not REDD will be officially, you know, part of the formal agreement in an explicit way.
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How bad would it be for the planet if REDD was left out of the agreement, in your opinion?
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Well, I think many of us believe that it's really important for REDD to be visible and acknowledge just as a signaling that forests are particularly important in that, you know, emissions, forest based emissions are greater than the emissions from the European Union. So they're a big part of the problem and they're an even bigger part of the solution. And given that we have this negotiated mechanism of REDD plus you know, ready to go as a way to deal with that big slice of the emissions, it seems crazy not to label it, you know, and have it more prominent and signal to countries that forests need to be this big part of the solution and get their fair share of the finance. And I, you know, this is part of the point of a working group report that CGD recently released, a working group chaired by Nancy Birdsall and Pedro Pablo Kaczynski on, you know, that we need to gin up finance for forests as an important part of the solution.
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One area of forests that presumably will be talked about in Paris is what's going on in Indonesia. Huge forest fires at the moment. It's kind of the backdrop, the climate backdrop, that are causing air pollution across the entire region. That's going to be big on the agenda, isn't it? What's going to be said there?
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Well, certainly the forest fires in Indonesia will be on everyone's minds because they are so significant in terms of emissions. I mean, during the months of September and October, the emissions from Indonesia's fires were routinely greater on a daily basis than emissions from the entire U.S. economy. So they are a big deal and therefore are sort of in the back of everyone's mind. Minds. In addition, I'm sure that the government of Indonesia is feeling some pressure to come to Paris with, you know, some big announcements about what, you know, they plan to do to get on top of the fires, both immediately in terms of a response, but also dealing with the underlying drivers. And as I've said in some of my recent blogs, the announcements that the Jokowi administration has made in recent weeks about, for example, prohibiting further opening of peatlands are really promising and showing that the government is quite serious about getting on top of the problem. But I think it's really important that the international attention to Indonesia's forests recognize that from the Indonesian perspective, the main issue with the fires is that they are a domestic public health emergency. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people having serious respiratory impacts of breathing the smoke from the fires. And so it would be very inappropriate for the international community to come at this with a sort of finger wagging, you know, judgmental approach. And I think there's maybe an analogy here with the international response to the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris. Nobody would think of showing up to the conference on climate change and lecture the French about the need to improve security in the interests of international climate negotiators. Instead, it's a moment for solidarity and to recognize the terrible cost that French citizens have paid. Well, it's the same with the Indonesian forest fires. It really is inappropriate to lecture the Indonesians about what they need to do in the interests of the global climate, when in fact it's Indonesian citizens who have suffered a lot and the worst from having to breathe all this smoke. Now's the time for solidarity and for the international community to offer support and working together to address the underlying issues.
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What's different this time in Paris at.
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The climate change conference, I would say there are three things that are different this time compared to certainly Copenhagen and previous years. The first is that this time we have, in addition to the negotiations on the formal text, something called INDCs and intended nationally determined contributions. And an INDC is sort of a pledge that each country brings forward to say what they're going to do to reduce emissions in their country. And so now we have, I think, more than 190 INDCs that have been submitted by various countries that don't add up to a solution to the climate change problem, but add up to a significant step towards that solution that's happened even before anybody gets on a plane to Paris. So it's an important outcome. And it's also significant that that process of pledging through INDCs has begun to erode the firewall between rich countries with responsibilities on one side and poor countries with less responsibilities on the other side. Because we have big developing country emitters like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia coming forward to say what they're going to do. And so it completely undermines some of the positioning in rich countries that say, well, we're not going to do anything because it won't matter if the developing countries don't do anything. Well, in fact, the developing countries are now stepping forward to say what they're going to do. The second thing that's different is that in Copenhagen, the heads of state all flew in at the end. And as you remember, it was kind of a mess with heads of state coming in and not having a deal to sign off on. The French, as hosts of this year's cop, are taking a gamble and inviting heads of state to come at the beginning. And so the idea is that by marshaling political will and signaling from the heads of state that that will help avoid a sort of collapse, a messy collapse, with heads of state standing around at the end. So we'll see what difference that makes.
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That is very interesting.
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Another thing that's different at this time is that there's an official stream of events called the Lima Paris Action Agenda, the lpaa, which is an official set of events that's more broad based than just intergovernmental negotiations, but rather including other stakeholders like private business or civil society organizations, to focus more on implementation of, you know, who's going to do what and showcasing initiatives that are already going on.
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What everyone wants to know is, will there be a deal? What kind of deal is possible? What kind of deal will it? Because even if you add up all the INDCs that you explained, that's not enough to limit the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees. Celsius by the end of the century. So what's the point of a deal?
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Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is that by having a deal, it provides a mechanism for ratcheting up the commitments that have already been made. So even though you're right that it's not likely that even in the face of additional commitments that may come between now and Paris or sort of on the day of the show, we're going to close the gap between what needs to be done and the commitments are being made. But I think, as I said before, the fact of those commitments is already a step forward, and it provides a baseline for increasing ambition over time. So I think it's a lot of it is about signaling good faith, both in the times in terms of willingness to reduce emissions, but also willingness to put up finance and a recognition that everybody's got a role to play in this, both governments, private sector, civil society groups, indigenous people's organizations, and that by working together over time, we can ratchet up ambition and get to where we need to be.
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And with major emitters like the US And China now stepping up and making commitments to reduce global emissions, is there a sense of optimism or hopefulness around Paris that, say, was lacking at Copenhagen?
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Well, I think there was a lot of optimism in the run up to Copenhagen. And maybe that was irrational exuberance. You know, maybe people were not as clear eyed as they should have been about the difficulty of reaching an agreement. And I think those of us who experienced Copenhagen are maybe a little bit gun shy and don't want to be, you know, overly optimistic, only to set ourselves up to be disappointed again. But I think you're right that this time, precisely because we have had many of the major emitters that previously, for whatever reason, had been reluctant to step forward with commitments, having done so in advance of the negotiations. And the fact that we have multiple ways for Paris to be a success, not just the negotiated text, but also the collection of INDCs and the LPAA, you know, kinds of commitments that will come out of that, that there's lots of ways for this to be a success in a way that maybe Copenhagen could not have been.
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Do you have optimism for the planet?
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I think that the alternative is abject despair. So, yes, I choose to be optimistic, being clear eyed that the hurdles are immense, that there are difficulties ahead. But look, civil rights was the issue of my father's lifetime. And over the course of my short lifetime, we went from a segregated society to an African American president of the United States. So change is possible, and I look forward to experiencing it in my lifetime.
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Okay. Problems in that transition notwithstanding, you're still optimistic. Okay. Great to hear that. Francis Seymour, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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My pleasure.
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CGD experts will be in Paris, and we'll be blogging from there. So check out our website for the latest from the conference and the deliberations going there. That's cgdev.org and join me again, Rajesh Merchandani, for the next podcast from the center for Global Development.