DOHA: As the stalemate on the plenary floor in the climate change negotiations in Doha reached its tortuous 10th hour on Saturday evening, members of the French delegation gathered in a tight knot in the main aisle and expressed their alarm at the course of events. “We cannot allow this to happen in Paris in 2015,” I heard one of them say. “That would be a disaster.”
It was as though it had suddenly dawned on the French delegation the size of the task at hand. The creation of a “Paris Protocol” that united and binds all nations into a climate treaty may appear as an alluring trophy to mount in the Elysee Palace, but as these talks have revealed, matching rhetoric with action has escaped the skills of 17 different hosts of these annual climate change negotiations. The French reputation for diplomatic finesse will be at stake.
Agreement in Doha was finally reached shortly after 7.30pm local time, and it seemed that nobody left happy. It was, at best, a patch up job. It was designed as a “working COP” (conference of the parties), as Mark Dreyfus, Australia’s parliamentary secretary for climate change who led the delegation, put it.
It tied up loose ends so a path could be cleared for a new attempt to forge a global treaty three years hence. But even effective housekeeping proved impossible and, given the urgency for action, few left the sprawling convention centre with a sense of achievement. A pathway had been created, but for all they knew, it could lead to another Copenhagen.
There is, however, one significant ray of light. If there is still no political constituency to move on climate, there is a growing economic one. Qatar and Saudi Arabia didn’t get many rave reviews for the way they handled their responsibilities at these talks, but their legacy may lie far beyond the modest achievements of this year’s conference – in the sheer scale of investment that they plan for concentrated solar power.
The world’s biggest oil exporter and the biggest gas exporter respectively, these two nations are intent on becoming, well, the Saudi Arabia and Qatar of solar. It is a move borne out of self interest – the ability to sell more fossil fuels to others – but it is also a recognition of the need to diversify their economy, even for those who have built their wealth on the exploitation of fossil fuels.
And this investment may have a broader significance. It is the economic actions of individual countries that will likely deliver the technological breakthroughs that are needed to combat climate change. Germany’s investment in solar PV has triggered a wave of investment and deployment that has helped bring down the costs of flat panel solar by 80 per cent in the last two years, and spark a revolution in the world’s energy markets. Energy efficiency standards in Europe, Japan, the US, and now in Australia, will do the same.
As we discuss in this article, the investment of tens of billions in CSP by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, along with other Gulf states and emerging economies such as India and South Arabia, could drive the massive investment needed to drive down the cost of CSP – a crucial link to establish new electricity markets that rely on renewables. The western economies were unable to free up the money to make the investment, but the Gulf nations, with their massive sovereign funds, can.
“The solutions to climate change are becoming very good investments,” Jennifer Morgan, from the World Resources Institute, told RenewEconomy at the close of the conference. “Whether it is CSP or wind, you have incentive to invest in these technologies for a range of reasons. Then you can build the political constituency to support it.”
There was not much else to celebrate in Doha, the capital of the world’s highest emitter per capita and quite possibly the world’s largest construction site. Logistically, it was a success. A decision by the Qatari organisers to make it a “paperless” COP even saved more than 250 trees. It didn’t save much else.
It did succeed in tying up some loose ends, kicked a few cans down the road on sensitive issues such as finance for developing countries, managed to cap the extent of hot air that could dilute the ambition of future treaties, and reached a tentative agreement on “loss and damage”, a sort of insurance mechanism for the disasters that may beset the poorest and most vulnerable nations.
It also sealed the implementation of a second period of the Kyoto Protocol, the only effective climate treaty in place, which will begin in three weeks with even few members and lower ambition than the first.
But on the substantive issues, the need to ramp up action and meet a rapidly closing window to cap global warming at a maximum 2°C, it achieved nothing apart from creating another avenue to a hoped-for treaty – this time called the Doha Gateway. Not even the spate of scientific reports, such as that by the WMO, UNEP, the IEA, and PwC, the impact of Hurricane Sandy, or even a devastating typhoon in the Philippines, and the emotional response of its delegates in the final days of the talks, could spur governments into action.
“This is about more than the science and the legal wrangling as far as we are concerned,” said the chief negotiator from the Marshall Islands. “It is one of urgency. Our islands are being inundated by salt, our food security is threatened. There is very little that we can do to stop the degrading of our way of life.”
So should we hang on to this UN process? For the most exposed countries, that is all they have – which is why they were so keen to hang on to Kyoto, as impotent as it will be. For the 100 poorest nations representing some 1.4 billion people, it is all they have. “Without it, we don’t have forum to press for our survival,” said Gambia’s representative Pa Ousman Jarju.
But will it serve any use? And will a treaty be reached in France? “That’s an interesting question,” said Connie Hedegaard, the head of the EU climate commission, and a central figure in the Copenhagen failure. At least, she said, the negotiations were on a single track.
“It’s going to be hard work, as you see from the divisions here and the total lack of ambition from the developed countries on emissions reductions and finance,” said Alden Meyer, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The next meeting will be held in Warsaw, the capital of the country that is almost single-handedly restraining Europe’s ambition, before likely moving to Peru and then Paris. But the key event could be the leaders summit that Ban Ki-moon will host in 2014.
His goal is to extract commitments to action before the new treaty will come into force from 2020 – recognising that a lack of ambition before that date will condemn the world to 3-4°C or even more. Rumours in the corridors suggested. France’s President Francois Hollande is also focusing on country leaders, and the talk in the corridors of Doha was that he intends to hold a series of “leadership retreats” in exclusive areas of France in the lead up to the Paris negotiations.
And there are more signs that the political economy will start to catch up with the real economy. Nick Mabey, the CEO of European think tank E3G, told RenewEconomy that Sandy could have changed the way the US thinks about climate change. “I think you will see the US starting to focus on minimising risk, rather than trying to minimise the cost,” he said.
The chief US envoy, Todd Stern said Sandy had “important lessons”, and noted the tens of millions of people who were either directly impacted, were close to it or were watching it, or were friends of those who were. “I don’t think those people are interested in ideological, or rhetorical exchanges about climate change of the kind that often happens in the US. I think they are much more interested in action being taken to protect them, to protect their families and their homes, and their businesses.”
But as Peter Yu, the deputy chairman of Australia’s Indigenous Experts Forum, told a briefing on Savanna burning in the second week of the conference: “If some bureaucrat tells you that there is light at the end of the tunnel – don’t believe him. It’s probably just that he’s got a torch and he’s running backwards.”
