The voluntary approach
Paul Suff asks if voluntary commitments to cutting carbon emissions might be more successful than holding out for a multilateral legally-binding follow-on from Kyoto
Many of us had high hopes in the run up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009 that a new international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol would be signed in the Danish capital only to be disappointed.
Expectations were far lower last December, when climate negotiations reconvened in the Mexican city of Cancun, but the outcome was substantially better than we feared.
The Copenhagen Accord, a voluntary agreement to reduce emissions put together behind closed doors by a small group of countries, was ratified in Cancun. Now 76 countries have pledged to reduce emissions. Importantly, the group includes China, India and the US, all of which had remained outside the Kyoto process.
These commitments to reduce emissions are only voluntary, however, whereas the Kyoto cuts are legally binding on participants – though some countries are likely to default.
Given the outcomes at Copenhagen and Cancun might it be better to pursue voluntary agreements rather than continue the seemingly futile search for a successor, or an extension, to the protocol?
A new report from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford thinks we should. It argues that by securing pledges from the US, as well as emerging economies like China, the voluntary approach is the way forward because these two countries – the world’s largest emitters of greeenhouse gases – are among a group of nations that would never sign a legally binding treaty.
The problem with the voluntary approach is that there little to stop countries moving the goalposts if circumstances change. One of the main objectives of the Cancun agreement is to “encourage the participation of all countries in reducing emissions, in accordance with each country’s different responsibilities and capabilities to do so.” It is this last bit, about capability that is worrying.
The US pledge is to cut its emissions by 17% against 2005 levels by 2020. That is only 3% below 1990 levels – the main Kyoto baseline – and is subject to the successful passing of energy and climate legislation. That legislation is now stalled and will not become law anytime soon, so the US is no longer capable of meeting its own voluntary target.
Following the global economic recession and slow recovery, the US is unlikely to be the only country that is incapable of meeting its Cancun pledge.
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