CHAPTER III: THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE
3.2. Key steps of the development of the international climate change regime for
3.2.9. COP 19: The Warsaw Outcomes
Convened in a backdrop of urgency,452 COP 19 in Warsaw/Poland took place from 11- 23 November 2013. It was halfway between the Durban COP 17 (which produced the ADP) and the 2015 COP 21 in Paris, the deadline for the signing of a universal binding climate change agreement. At Warsaw, parties’ progress towards pre-2020 emission reduction ambitions seemed shrunken despite the growing evidence about the need for drastic emissions cut and repeated calls for urgent action.453 However, debates focused on intensifying the work on the content of the 2015 universal climate change agreement, and on concrete outcomes on pre-2020 GHG mitigation ambition through Intended Nationally Determined Contributions that countries had to submit on the course of 2015.454
451 Information available at: http://indianexpress.com/article/world/climate-change/after-like-minded- developing-countries-meet-prospects-for-climate-change-negotiations-appear-bleak/. (Accessed: 30 July 2016).
452 The following events are the major facts constituting the backdrop against which the Warsaw climate change conference was convened. Those factors have been significantly influential on the conference and its outcomes:
1. In 2012, during the Doha Climate Change Conference, Typhoon Bopha ravaged the Philippines.
2. In 2013, at the opening of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference, Super typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm to ever make landfall, ravaged the Philippines again.
3. Few weeks before the Conference, the scientific community issued a “clarion call” that climate change was unequivocal and its effects were evident in many parts of the world, including flooding in the Middle East and Europe, and prolonged droughts in the US and Australia.
4. Two months before the COP, the IPCC-WGI concluded that human influence on the climate system was clear, and limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions of GHG emissions.
5. The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2013 was among the top ten warmest years on record and that melting ice caps and glaciers brought global sea level to a new record high 452.
6. Many other reports showed how paltry the international response then was.
7. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report showed an increase in emissions in 2013, noting that the opportunities for reaching the 2°C goal are closing and warned against the costs of inaction. See IISD (e) ‘Summary of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference: 11 November – 23 November 2013’ (2013) 12 (594) Earth Negotiations Bulletin 2, at 27. Available at http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop18/enb (Accessed: 16 July 2016).
453 IISD (e) (note 452 above; 30).
454 ‘In anticipation of the adoption of the Paris Agreement, countries publicly outlined what post-2020 climate actions they intended to take under the new international agreement. Those actions are known as
The two objectives were crucial as they were simultaneously aimed at giving back enough confidence towards the UNFCCC process as the relevant forum for climate change negotiations.455
3.2.9.2. Outcomes
No decision was taken with regard to the issue of a new regime for developing countries.
Discussions went on about revising the traditional differentiation between developed and developing countries.456 A key demand from developed countries for the 2015 universal climate change agreement was that it may take into consideration fundamental changes in the global economy since the adoption of the UNFCCC in 1992,457 seeing that some developing countries such as the Republic of Korea, China, Brazil and India, classified Non-Annex I countries under the UNFCCC, were worldwide economic power houses in 2013, with important associated GHG emissions.458
Developing countries were however divided upon the matter.459 The LMDC group460 was supportive to the reflection of the traditional Annex I/Non-Annex I distinction in any future agreement,461 whereas the AILAC group 462 sought instead for the differential
their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The climate actions communicated in these INDCs largely determine whether the world achieves the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement, which is to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C, and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C, and to achieve net zero emissions in the second half of this century.’ Information available at: http://www.wri.org/indc-definition. (Accessed: 10 October 2016); ‘Further to the negotiations under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, the Conference of the Parties, by its decision 1/CP.19, invited all Parties to initiate or intensify domestic preparations for their INDCs towards achieving the objective of the Convention as set out in its Article 2, without prejudice to the legal nature of the contributions, in the context of adopting a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties.’
Information available at: http://unfccc.int/focus/indc_portal/items/8766.php. (Accessed: 8 May 2016);
Decision 1/CP.19 2014 UNFCCC available
at:http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2013/cop19/eng/10a01.pdf#page=3. (Accessed: 8 May 2016).
455 IISD (e) (note 213; 30).
456 Ibid.
457 IISD (e) (note 213; 29).
458 Winkler (a) (note 35 above; 469).
459 Ibid.
460 See note 449 above for more details on the LMDC group.
461 IISD (e) (note 213 above; 29).
462 See section 3.1.8.2 above for more details the AILAC group.
treatment to be extended to the group of developing countries, with more national diverse circumstances and economic situations.463
It eventually turned out that the 2015 agreement was developing with a purely “bottom- up” approach, meaning that the responsibility was going to lie on a state to itself delineate the extent and nature of its contributions towards the GHG global abatement.
The bottom-up approach is in contrast to the top down approach, through which legally binding emissions reduction targets are statutory commitments provided to parties by the treaty as it is the case for the Kyoto Protocol.464 With the bottom up approach under the Warsaw outcomes, Global emissions reduction were going to depend on countries’
contributions, through the “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)”.465 However, after considering the inefficiency of the submitted national pledges, under which the aggregated global pledges remained inferior to the cut needed, negotiating parties opposed each other upon the term “contributions” (as opposed to
“commitments”), and ended up leaving unresolved the question of a differential treatment between countries under the upcoming Paris regime.466
As for the ambiguity of the term “contribution” within the phrase “INDC”, Bodansky467 further understood parties’ fears and explained that they were right, as long as
“contribution” from a certain country could lawfully take the form of adaptation, finance, technology transfer or capacity building contributions, which have nothing to do with emissions limitation, and in which case the country would have done nothing in cutting its emissions reduction yet as the object of the discussions.
463 Winkler (a) (note 35 above; 469).
464 See section 2.3 above on the CBDR.
465 See section 5.3.8.2 below for details about the INDC.
466 Also decried by the IPCC and the UNFCCC secretary which has mandate to compile all the INDC;
IISD (e) (note 213; 29).
467 D. Bodansky (f) ‘The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A New Hope?’ Draft (March 2016) at 14-15.
Available at: https://conferences.asucollegeoflaw.com/workshoponparis/files/2012/08/AJIL-Paris- Agreement-Draft-2016-03-26.pdf. (Accessed: 17 August 2016).
3.2.10. COP 20: The Lima Call to Action