Montreal Protocol nearly delivers a climate present in Paris

After a week of intense negotiations in the UNESCO building in Paris, the Parties to the world’s most successful Multilateral Environmental Agreement ultimately failed in their now almost universally shared mission to transform the Montreal Protocol from being exclusively an ozone treaty to being explicitly an ozone and climate treaty.

Given the importance of the scientific imperative to recognise in international law that the fate of the ozone layer and the global climate system are inextricably intertwined, the eventual success of attempts to reform the Montreal Protocol are vital to winning the struggle to protect the climate, or at least to avert many of the worst of the projected impacts.

It needs to be more widely understood that by phasing out the CFCs to protect the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol quite inadvertently achieved a massive climate benefit because of their very powerful heat trapping properties.

It is well established that the magnitude of these global warming emissions reductions are well in excess of five times the emissions abatement sought by the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period.

However, this was largely achieved by the transition to hydrofluorocarbons (HFC’s) and the less ozone depleting, but still powerful, super greenhouse gases the HCFC’s, which were subjected to an accelerated phase out in 2007.

It is even less well known that the massive climate benefit achieved by the CFC phase out stands to be completely undermined in coming decades by the projected continued rapid increase in the atmospheric concentration of HFC’s, growing at an alarming rate of 8% per year. Estimates of the magnitude of emissions abatement available by getting rid of HFC’s range from between 130-200 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent.

A cartoon penned for Greenpeace in 1994 depicted this highly regrettable transition as jumping from the CFC frypan into the HFC fire. While HFC’s may arguably have been justified in some applications in the CFC phase out as better solutions were not mature, it is reprehensible that any HFC fridges were ever built. Hydrocarbons were successfully applied in domestic fridges by Greenpeace in Germany 20 years ago as “GreenFreeze), and now have an increasingly dominant market share.

If the Montreal Protocol were not then, and still (but less), so heavily dominated by fluorochemical industry representatives, policymakers may have listened to Greenpeace’s now thoroughly vindicated representations that HFC’s were never an acceptable solution. Substantial research and commercialisation effort to begin implementing natural refrigerant solutions from the early 1990’s could have had a truly transformative impact that would have further augmented the climate benefits of the CFC phaseout; and those who were there know it.

Recognition that widespread use of HFC’s was a big mistake is now more commonly heard in statements from the Parties, and it is essential for the Parties as a whole to stand together to accept responsibility for creating the HFC’s mess, and to work stridently to avert the projected extremely rapid increase in atmospheric accumulation of HFC’s.

Given the determination of the proponents of the HFC amendment proposals (Canada, Mexico, Micronesia and the USA) and the importance placed by the EU in facilitating an agreement, combined with the now firm and broad support from the vast majority of Parties, it is virtually certain an agreement to expand the Montreal Protocol mandate will be struck, likely either next year or in 2016 once the complications of the climate process are resolved.

Apprehensions prior to the meeting in Paris last week that the Indian Government support for taking action on HFCs under Montreal would fail to be reflected in the contributions of the previously stridently oppositional Indian delegation in the end proved to be largely unfounded, to universal relief. The world community, and the climate, has already much to be thankful to Prime Minister Modi for.

Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar ‘s attendance at the meeting was not anticipated, but his presence, delegation statement and contribution to the Ministerial Roundtable in the high level segment on Thursday morning all contributed to largely resolving the deadlock repeatedly encountered in previous years.

Instead an orchestrated group of the oil producing Gulf countries, and Pakistan took India’s place in being recalcitrantly obstructive of a consensus agreement on the HFC amendments during the week-long meeting.

Arguments mounted against dealing with HFC’s under Montreal centred mainly around apprehensions from some who should know better about the availability of non-HFC refrigerants that will perform well in high ambient temperature regions.

Others maintained a petulant refusal to accept the calls from the leading scientists present that the fate of the ozone layer and climate system are inextricably intertwined.  This is used to advance a view that HFC’s could be better dealt with by the UNFCCC climate process, a position so patently absurd it was widely interpreted as being driven purely political, if unclear, motives.

As a result of persistent efforts throughout the meeting by the USA to address outstanding concerns of those seemingly determined to scuttle an agreement on HFC’s, including rumoured calls to and from the White House to try to seal the deal, most leaders and supporters of the minority view including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait eventually agreed to compromise.

Intense but good natured discussions in corridors and back rooms undertaken until late on Friday night were strongly hoped to have reached universal agreement on an amended version of a last minute “Conference Room Paper” presented by the USA to establish a mandate for discussions to take place on HFC’s, and to provide for an extra meeting of the Parties and associated workshop to discuss the availability of solutions to the HFC’s problem.

Lamentably, in spite of these urgent last minute negotiations, at the very end Pakistan and Iraq refused to back down and blocked the needed and very nearly achieved consensus, depriving the world of a landmark climate agreement, and the co-Chairs of an historic achievement at the end of their watch.

Fortunately the extra meeting and workshop will still take place under another agenda item on alternatives to Ozone Depleting Substances, valuable in its own right and prepared as insurance against the failure of the HFC’s management decision.

Finally, it is noteworthy that Australian Patrick McInerney, who has been co-chair of the Montreal Protocol meeting for the past two years (and is the Director of the Department of the Environment’s Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Office) has reached the end of his two years in this challenging position.

During this last meeting in the role, Co-Chair McInerney has faced a difficult set of problems, and he well deserves the praise he has received for being fair and balanced in handling disagreement between the Parties.

He has exercised great skill in helping the Parties move together towards constructive outcomes, and has been assiduous in not taking sides in sometimes vigorous debates.

By tactfully taking breaks from the meeting and reorganising the agenda Co-Chair McInerney has placed great importance on facilitating agreement by allowing time for the Parties to resolve differing perspectives on issues informally in the corridors.

With the benefit of this experience it is highly likely he, and through him Australia, will continue to play an important role elsewhere in what is often described as the Montreal Protocol family.

While tackling CO2 emissions is undoubtedly the main game in the race to save the climate, urgently phasing out HFC’s can make a important contribution that we simply cannot afford to pass up. The task unquestionably deserves a greater allocation of industry, Government and NGO campaign resources and attention.