Global GDP Growth 2007-2010
7.3 Institutional arrangements
7.3.1 Institutional arrangements internationally
Chapter 7.India vying to occupy centre stage with the USA & China: the fourth phase (2011–2015)
science of climate change impacts on India (as per AR4, AR5 and the INCCA’s 4x4 assessment among others) and the continued importance of agriculture to the Indian economy. This budget also announced funding to establish “ultra mega solar power projects” in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Laddakh. However, the finance minister also announced measures to enhance coal production and exploit old petroleum and natural gas wells – unsurprising given the 12th FYP projections in relation to domestic energy demand (Planning Commission, 2012a; Yeo, 2014).
The 2015/6 budget struck slightly discordant notes. While environmentalists called it “destruction- oriented” after Jaitley reduced the MOEFCC’s budget allocation from Rs 2,043 crore (US$ 378 million) in 2014-15 to Rs 1,681 crore ($300m), the coal cess was doubled to Rs 200 per metric tonne in order to fund India’s ambitious green-energy plans, including plans to generate 100 GW of solar, 60,000 MW wind, 10,000 MW biomass and 5000 MW small hydro by 2022 (Pandey, 2015).
essential to defending their interests and increasing the level of ambition of emissions pledges of developed countries. Another key concern related to the lack of clarity surrounding the continuation of the KP’s flexible mechanisms: CDM and JI after 2012 (IISD, 2011). This extension was formalised at Doha when the necessary amendments to the Kyoto Protocol were agreed upon, thus enabling the second commitment period to officially operate between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2020 (UNFCCC, 2013b: decision 1/CMP.8 para.4) and also allowing the flexible mechanisms to continue operating uninterrupted for those countries that took on targets in the second commitment period (UNFCCC, 2013b: decision 1/CMP.8 section IV). While the extension of the KP was politically important, it was – as one commentator put it – a pyrrhic victory (Ryan, 2012) given that countries with reduction targets in the second commitment period together emitted less than 25% of the global total of GHG emissions.
In Doha the work of the AWG-KP was concluded (UNFCCC, 2013b: decision 1/CMP.8 para.30) as was the work of the AWG-LCA (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17 para.1). This meant that from 2013 onward all efforts could be focused on the ongoing ADP negotiations toward “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force” that would be “applicable to all” (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17 para.2).
7.3.1.2 ADP negotiations - the road to the Paris Agreement
The Durban Platform negotiations heralded an increasing move toward symmetry of obligations and responses between developed and developing countries by calling for “the widest possible cooperation by all countries” (decision 1/CP.17,) and by stipulating that the outcome of the negotiations would be “applicable to all parties” (decision 1/CP.17, para. 2) (Bodansky, 2012).
In May 2012 the ADP had convened for its first session and decided to initiate two workstreams to facilitate the negotiations. Workstream 1 would address matters related to the 2015 agreement (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17 paras.2-6) and workstream 2 would address those related to increasing emissions-reduction ambition in the pre-2020 period (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17 paras.7-8). During 2012 and 2013, governments were invited to submit their positions on both workstreams as mandated in paragraphs 5 and 7 of the ADP decision (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17). The Doha decision on advancing the Durban Platform encouraged the ADP to consider draft text proposals submitted by COP20 (2014) in order to make the draft negotiating text available before May 2015 (UNFCCC, 2013a: decision 2/CP.18 para.9). Much like the lead-up to the Copenhagen COP, the lead-up to COP21 in Paris has seen an increase in the number of meetings convened, signalling the importance of this next step in the evolution of the regime (see Table 10 in Appendix 9.5).
Chapter 7.India vying to occupy centre stage with the USA & China: the fourth phase (2011–2015)
7.3.1.3 Evolution of the Financial Mechanism
The COP at Durban also formally launched the Green Climate Fund, officially designating it as an operating entity of the financial mechanism (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 3/CP.17), with further arrangements regarding its operationalisation to be undertaken and concluded at COP18 (IISD, 2011). At this point the financial mechanism could be depicted as in Figure 54.
Figure 54: Overview of the UNFCCC finance mechanism and the Kyoto Protocol flexible mechanisms
Two years after the finance pledges made at Copenhagen it was deemed necessary to establish a
“work programme on long-term finance” to make progress toward mobilising climate finance from a wide variety of sources after 2012 (UNFCCC, 2012a: decision 1/CP.17 paras.127, 130). In Doha in 2012 the COP endorsed the selection of Sondgo, South Korea as the host city for the GCF with the anticipation that activities would thus begin in 2013. The problem was that Copenhagen’s promised Fast-start financing was only for the years 2010-2012. Thus the COP encouraged developed country parties to make efforts to at least match that level of financing in the 2013-2015 period (UNFCCC, 2013a: decision 1/CP.18, para.68) while also providing (by COP19) information regarding their plans to help mobilise finance of US$ 100 billion per year by 2020 (UNFCCC, 2013a: decision 1/CP.18, para.67). Talks on long-term finance at COP19 in Warsaw, however, failed to provide clarity or certainty, but did expose the trust deficit developing countries felt towards developed countries. In the context of a 7.1% decrease in “climate finance pledged through multilateral funds” in the preceding year and the paltry capitalisation of the GCF at the time (only US$6.9 million donated by
ten countries), many developing countries seemed justifiably sceptical of the promises of the mobilisation of US$100 billion a year by 2020 (IISD, 2013). In the end the Warsaw COP only produced a commitment to continue talks on financing under the Long Term Finance Work Programme established at COP17.
During the second week of the Lima COP, contributions to the Green Climate Fund passed the US$10 billion mark, providing much-needed assurance to developing countries that funds would be made available and enabling the GCF to begin committing resources (Morgan et al., 2014). At the negotiation table, however, discussions under the the Long Term Finance Work Programme were not extended, leaving only text urging developed countries to provide finance in the Lima Call For Action (UNFCCC, 2015c: decision 1/CP.20, para. 4). In addition, no institutional structures were put in place to guide how developed countries might achieve the Copenhagen goal of mobilising US$100 billion by 2020, beyond requiring these countries to “enhance the available quantitative and qualitative elements of a pathway” in their biennial submissions on scaling up climate finance (UNFCCC, 2015d: decision 5/CP.20, para. 10).
Despite intense lobbying by developing countries for more specificity in relation to finance, the final text of the Paris Agreement only stipulates that “developed country Parties should continue to take the lead in mobilizing climate finance” and that these efforts “should represent a progression beyond previous efforts” (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 9.3). During the negotiations specifics were moved from the Agreement to the accompanying COP decision text (Rajamani, 2016). This prompted some critics to point to the lack of detail in the Agreement in relation to finance as a bad trade-off for developing countries. Reporting from Paris, India’s CSE staff blog captured this sense of unfairness succinctly: “Developing countries have got “words” and promise of money while developed countries have finally got rid of their historical responsibility of causing climate change.
They have no legally binding targets on finance or emissions cuts” (Down to Earth, 2015).
Notably the PA does not grapple with the long-vexing issue of defining what constitutes climate finance - rather the COP decision calls for development of modalities for accounting and reporting climate finance for consideration (not adoption) in November 2018 (UNFCCC, 2016: decision 1/CP.21, para.57) Nor does the PA include the words “new and additional” in relation to finance despite the long-held (see Article 11 of the Kyoto Protocol) concerns amongst developing countries that existing ODA funds might be re-labelled as climate funds (Roberts, 2015). In a move toward more symmetry in relation to provision of finance, all countries agreed to contribute to financing:
developed countries “shall” provide whereas “other Parites” (presumably developing countries) were “encouraged” to voluntarily contribute (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 9.1 & 9.2). In addition both
Chapter 7.India vying to occupy centre stage with the USA & China: the fourth phase (2011–2015)
developing and developed countries are to provide indicative information related to finance - although this is mandatory for developed countries and merely recommended for developing countries (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 9.5). Whilst the PA has explicitly expanded the pool of potential donors to include developing countries, overall the finance provisions tack relatively closely to the differentiation of the FCCC (Rajamani, 2016).
7.3.1.4 Technology triumphs and troubles
The Technology Mechanism – consisting of a Technology Executive Committee (TEC) and a Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) – had been established at the Cancun COP in 2010 in order to enhance action on technology development and technology transfer. During 2011 the TEC had developed modalities and rules of procedure that were then adopted by the Durban COP (IISD, 2011). More progress was made during 2012 such that by the Doha COP a UNEP-led consortium could be confirmed as the host of the Climate Technology Center (CTC) for an initial five-year period (UNFCCC, 2013c: decision 14/CP.18 para.1-2) and an advisory board established (UNFCCC, 2013c: decision 14/CP.18 para.5) – a graphical representation of the Technology Mechanism is in Figure 55 below.
Figure 55: The Technology Mechanism of the UNFCCC Source: UNFCCC (2015b)
Discussions at the Durban COP concerned the nature of the link between the TEC and CTCN, the Technology Mechanism and the Financial Mechanism and, crucially, the TEC’s consideration of matters related to IPRs – a topic favoured by developing countries, but not developed countries (IISD, 2012). Little progress was made on technology-related issues at Warsaw as the joint session of the SBI and SBSTA could not reach consensus on the joint annual report of the TEC and CTCN
and therefore did not forward any decisions to the COP (IISD, 2013). In Lima there was no progress on the important issue of the link between the Technology Mechanism and the Financial Mechanism and thus this was forwarded to COP21 for decision instead (IISD, 2014). Thus the promising progress of the Technology Mechanism in the beginning of this phase slowed significantly as the 2015 agreement deadline loomed.
The 2015 Paris Agreement adopted the Tech Mechanism established under the FCCC (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 10.3) and stipulated that assessment of efforts related to technology development and transfer would form part of the global stocktake (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 10.6). Furthermore, a technology framework was established by th e Paris Agreement to “provide overarching guidance to the work of the Technology Mechanism” (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 10.4) .
7.3.1.5 The Global Stocktake in the Paris Agreement
One of the key features of the Paris Agreement is the global stocktake to “assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals” (UNFCCC, 2016:
Article 14). This was deemed necessary given the acknowledged inadequacy of the INDCs in lowering emissions in line with what 2 degrees requires41 (UNFCCC, 2015e). The global stocktake process is intended to provide information to Parties in order to update and and enhance both nationally determined actions and provision of support (UNFCCC, 2016: Article 14.3).
Figure 56: Timeline of global stocktaking in the Paris Agreement Source: World Resources Institute in Northrop (2015)
The hype surrounding the agreement of a so-called ‘ambition mechanism’ (Northrop, 2015) notwithstanding, the first serious review of the adequacy of the cumulative mitigation commitments is only scheduled for the global stocktake in 2023 (Figure 56) see - far too late to make meaningful corrections (Jayaraman & Kanitkar, 2016). In relation to mitigation, all parties are bound to pursue their NDCs “with the aim of achieving the objectives of such contributions"
(UNFCCC, 2016: Article 4.2), but in order to assuage the concerns of the USA in relation to
41“The estimated aggregate annual global emission levels resulting from the implementation of the INDCs do not fall within least-cost 2 °C scenarios by 2025 and 2030.” (UNFCCC, 2015e, para. 39)