„I salute the countries that have concluded this agreement,“ said Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have all set aside their own, estimated, goals to achieve a common goal of a long-term solution to climate change. [18] The Durban Platform negotiations are a series of alternatives that are not optimal from a climate efficiency perspective. On the one hand, we can follow a relatively unambitious outcome, which is probably achievable and that would improve climate efficiency relative to business, but which will probably not prevent dangerous climate change. On the other hand, we can go bankrupt and try to reach a more ambitious agreement which, if fully implemented, would prevent dangerous climate change, but it is likely that this will not be achieved and that it will in any case face serious problems of participation and respect. Michael Jacobs, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, said after the conference: „The agreement here is not in itself far from the 4-C trajectory we have taken… But by forcing countries for the first time to admit that their current policy is insufficient and that it needs to be strengthened by 2015, it has pulled 2 degrees Celsius off the impossibility. At the same time, it has re-established the principle that climate change must be combated by international law and not by national volunteerism. [3] What is the impact of a climate efficiency target on the design of the Durban Platform instrument? Many environmentalists implicitly believe that climate efficiency depends on the rigour of an agreement`s emissions reduction commitments: the stricter the commitments, the better. But, as Scott Barrett convincingly asserts, efficiency is not only a function of rigorous commitments, but also levels of participation and compliance.31 The weakness of one of these three dimensions undermines the effectiveness of an agreement, regardless of the well-being of the other two. And because rigour, participation and compliance are linked, we need to think about the difference between the factors that influence others. Stricter requirements promote climate efficiency, all other things are the same.
But they do not necessarily increase the impact on the climate if they lead to reduced participation and/or compliance. Conversely, high participation and self-respect are desirable, but they do not make an agreement more effective if purchased by watering down the material requirements of an agreement.
Comments are closed.