Vinita Banthia, MJLST Articles Editor
In December 2009, over a 100 world leaders gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which included the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the 5th Conference of the Parties for the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 5). The international gathering culminated in the “Copenhagen Accord,” which member countries of the UNFCCC agreed generally to “take note of,” but failed to promise more substantial action.
While the Accord endorsed the Kyoto Protocol and included specific omission reduction targets for some countries, it did not set out any legal framework or structure for the enforcement of these guidelines. Developed countries agreed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to developing countries for climate improvement. Again, however, no strategy was developed for the implementation of this funding, and countries continue to disagree on the amount and sourcing of the funds.
Fast forward six years later to the meeting in Bonn, Germany last week, where delegations convened once again to negotiate an international climate agreement. In December, the delegations will reconvene in Paris for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC to further discuss the terms of an international climate deal, and ideally, all 195 attending countries will adopt it. However, many of the issues that prevented a deal from being developed in Copenhagen continue to haunt current discussions.
Frist, developing countries are concerned about the amount of funding developed countries are willing to provide for their transition to clean and sustainable energy sources. In addition, most countries are hesitant to agree to a predetermined emissions reduction target and prefer a self-guided, non-legally-binding requirement that is informally tracked. The members in attendance at the climate conference in Bonn took this strategy and allowed countries to determine their own emissions goals. These compromises allowed the nations to conclude the Bonn meeting with a draft agreement that is predicted to be more successful than the Copenhagen Accord, during the final round of negotiations in Paris. However, it will be important for nations to avoid the temptations of diluting the provisions too much to gain approval of a large number of nations. Instead, nations should take a more heavy-handed approach to ensure important actions are taken, while implementing a legal structure to enforce the provisions of any final agreement.