Global deal on climate is need of the hour

World leaders meet today in New York for a landmark climate summit convened by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The event is expected to be accompanied in the city by the world’s largest ever “climate march” of an anticipated one million plus climate activists, religious campaigners, and other concerned parties.

While the laudable ambition for the summit is to inject major momentum towards a new global climate treaty, this is highly uncertain in practice. Barring a massive diplomatic breakthrough, a deal will most likely remain precariously in the balance in coming months before the 2015 deadline.

Yet, amidst the fog of international diplomacy, a blueprint is already emerging for a deal based upon the impressive, growing patchwork of national climate legislation and regulation across the world. In stark contrast to the slow pace of UN talks, such domestic action is advancing at an impressive clip.

Earlier this year, for instance, US President Barack Obama announced historic rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants — a major source of US carbon dioxide emissions. The US, which alongside China is one of the two largest emitters of global greenhouse gases, may now be intent upon ramping up domestic actions to tackle climate change.

‘Named and shamed’

To this end, it is reported that the Obama administration, given its political inability to get a binding UN deal ratified in the US Senate, is seeking an alternative ‘politically-binding’ global climate accord. Under this idea, states would make voluntary pledges as part of a UN deal in 2015, and then be ‘named and shamed’ if they do not subsequently take domestic climate measures to realise these cuts.

The US proposal reflects the fact that while domestic challenges in some countries, including Australia and Canada, have stymied the pace of UN global climate negotiations, over 450 national climate-related laws have been passed across the world since 1997 in some 66 countries covering around 88 per cent of global greenhouse gases released by human activities. As research from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics underlines, this momentum is happening across all continents from the Americas to the Asia-Pacific.

And, yet more is in the pipeline. For instance, China is developing national climate legislation in addition to considering carbon constraints under its 13th Five Year Plan due for approval in March 2016.

Part of the reason for this spectacular wave of progress is changing attitudes. Previously, the debate on climate change was framed by a narrative about sharing a global burden.

Inevitably, some governments naturally sought to minimise their share when the debate was cast in this way. Now, however, countries are increasingly seeing mitigating climate change — through clean energy and energy efficiency solutions — and strengthening resilience to its impacts, as being more firmly in the national interest.

A clear implication is that existing domestic laws and regulations can help form the blueprint of a new global climate agreement. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that such a deal is dependent not just upon national action in place in advance, but that it will be best overseen through domestic laws, overseen by legislators from all sides of the political spectrum.

A national commitment or contribution put forward at the UN is more likely to be credible — and durable beyond the next election — if it is backed up by national legislation. And international best practice is for this to be supported by cross-party legislators in a way that puts in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation.

Worst risks

To be sure, a new global deal founded on national actions is only a start, not a complete panacea. As yet, the patchwork of existing domestic laws and regulations around the world are not yet enough to limit global average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the level scientists say we must not breach if we are to avoid the worst risks of climate change.

So while national actions are putting into place the legal frameworks necessary to measure, report, verify and manage greenhouse gas emissions, even more will be needed. The ambition, must therefore, be that these frameworks are replicated in even more countries and ratcheted up in coming years. Taken overall, as world leaders prepare to meet in New York, UN-led international talks need major new impetus that the Summit may not provide. And this at the same time as the scale of the climate change challenge to humanity becomes apparently ever greater by the day.

Imperfect as a global climate treaty based on national action might be, it probably therefore represents the single most likely blueprint for success in 2015. World leaders should recognise this and help create what could be a key foundation stone of future global sustainable development for billions across the world.

Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics, and was formerly a UK Government Special Adviser.