Globalising the Climate

COP21 and the climatisation of global debates

Stefan Aykut, Jean Foyer, Edouard Morena, Stefan C Aykut, Jean Foyer, Edouard Morena

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317198727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

Frequently presented as a historic last chance to set the world on a course to prevent catastrophic climate change, the 21 st Conference of the Parties to the Climate convention (COP21) was a global summit of exceptional proportions. Bringing together negotiators, scientists, journalists and representatives of global civil society, it also constituted a privileged vantage point for the study of global environmental governance "in the making".

This volume offers readers an original account of the current state of play in the field of global climate governance. Building upon a collaborative research project on COP21 carried out by a multidisciplinary team of twenty academics with recognised experience in the field of environmental governance, the book takes COP21 as an entry point to analyse ongoing transformations of global climate politics, and to scrutinise the impact of climate change on global debates more generally. The book has three key objectives:

• To analyse global climate governance through a combination of long-term analysis and on-sight observation;

• To identify and analyse the key spaces of participation in the global climate debate;

• To examine the "climatisation" of a series of crosscutting themes, including development, energy, security and migration.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers of climate politics and governance, international relations and environmental studies.

1
Governing through verbs

The practice of negotiating and the making of a new mode of governance

Stefan C. Aykut

More than 150 world leaders have come to Paris and are here together in one room, with one purpose. A political moment like this may not come again. We have never faced such a test. But neither have we encountered such great opportunity. You have the power to secure the well-being of this and succeeding generations.

(UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon)¹

I recall that the objective is not to have discussions, but to produce a text.

(Daniel Reifsneyder, co-chair of the ADP)²

Introduction

Now that the dust has settled, and the euphoria of the immediate aftermath of COP21 has dissipated, the time has come for analysts and observers to examine and interpret the details of the Paris Agreement, weigh its strengths and ponder its weaknesses.³ Most such analyses aim to answer the central question of whether the Paris deal has brought us anywhere closer to a resolution of the climate problem. In other words: is the Paris Agreement a better basis for “governing the climate” than was its much-criticised predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol? Will it contribute to curbing global emissions and will it kick-start a global clean energy transition? Or is it “cheap talk”, in which the setting of long-term targets and complex governance mechanisms merely hide the fact that concrete action is – once more – postponed into the future?

In this chapter, I propose to take a detour before returning to these questions. Most scholarly accounts of COP21 seem to be primarily concerned with the meeting’s outcome. In doing so, they take for granted that climate negotiations are indeed primarily and essentially about solving the climate problem. This is, however, far from obvious. Not only are multilateral negotiations far more complex than suggested by the simplified models of “negotiation games” between rational actors that are used frequently in academic discourse. A long-standing bulk of literature on the governance of social problems has also argued convincingly that policymaking is not so much about solving problems than about dealing with problems (Hoppe 2013), and showed how, in this process, new problems are framed according to dominant normative and cultural orders and inserted in existing institutional settings and organisational routines (Gusfield 1981, Lascoumes 1994). Instead of concentrating on the outcomes of policymaking, such as administrative decisions or laws, these accounts take a process-oriented perspective, insisting on the importance of administrative practices and cognitive dimensions, like the creation of common definitions of problems and possible solutions.

Process-oriented perspectives have recently become more visible in international relations research, as proponents of a “practice turn” (Bueger and Gadinger 2014) and ethnographers of international organisations⁴ have turned to analysing negotiations as social practice that unfolds in time and space, functions according to specific logics and norms, produces meaning and creates artefacts that circulate and are taken up, but also reinterpreted and readapted, in local contexts. Following this line of reasoning, the chapter sets out to shift attention away from what climate negotiations are said to do (i.e. save the climate) to analysing what it means to make the climate problem “governable” in multilateral negotiations (Müller 2012). To do so, the chapter proposes an account of climate negotiations based on ethnographic observation at COP21 and at an intermediate negotiation session in Bonn in June 2015, interviews with participants and extensive analysis of negotiation documents, reports and grey literature that circulated at COP21.

The chapter is structured as follows: (1) Climate negotiations are analysed as a social practice that unfolds in a specific temporal and spatial setting, according to a set of rules. (2) The making of the Paris Agreement is examined as a sequence of text-related activities that separated “technical” practices of text editing from “political” bargaining. (3) Mechanisms are detailed through which different issues, problem framings and solutions found their way into the text while others were excluded. (4) The main outcome of this process, the Paris Agreement, is analysed with a view to understanding its significance in climate governance. (5) Finally, some reflections about the “social life” of the text are sketched, from its adoption at COP21 to its effects on national policymaking and social practice. The conclusion revisits the question of what “governing climate change” actually means, in the Paris conference and beyond.

Process: the negotiated order of climate conferences

Paris was what observers of climate talks call a “high-stakes conference”. It aimed to close a negotiation cycle begun in 2007 with the adoption of the “Bali Road Map”, which called for a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. The first attempt to produce such a document famously failed in Copenhagen two years later, before a new attempt was launched in Durban, South Africa, in 2011. Since then, the “Ad Hoc Group on the Durban Platform” (ADP) has been the main negotiation forum. Led by two co-chairs, the American Reifsnyder and the Algerian Djoghlaf, the ADP was tasked with elaborating a draft version of “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force”.⁵ This drafting exercise was conducted in several intermediate negotiation sessions throughout 2015, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland (February) and Bonn, Germany (three sessions, held in June, August/September and October), as well as in December in Paris, before a draft text was submitted to the COP.

Rules and procedures

As the ADP was established under the UNFCCC, the Climate Convention’s rules structured the drafting process. Interestingly, though, rules of procedure were never formally adopted in climate negotiations, because parties were unable to agree on an article about voting rules.⁶ The rules, except the controversial voting rule, have hence been tacitly “applied” ever since (Yamin and Depledge 2004, 433). Climate talks are thus a particularly striking illustration of what Anselm Strauss famously termed the “negotiated order” of social organisations: rules and norms not only are what structures human interaction; they also are subject to continuous renegotiation themselves (Strauss 1978). This situation exacerbates some of the more general characteristics of multilateral settings. Consensus decision-making for example is a common feature of environmental negotiations (Chasek 2001, 31–32) and it is generally assumed that the absence of formal disagreement indicates consensus (Zartman 1994, 5). However, in climate talks, varying interpretations have prevailed at different moments. The Copenhagen Accord is infamous in this respect: it was “adopted” despite vocal opposition by a minority of delegations, so its legal status remains unclear (Vogler 2016, 57). And while it is commonplace in multilateral settings that negotiations on substance are preceded by those on procedure (Bendix 2012, 30), climate talks have been characterised by a peculiar “politics of process”, where endless discussions about rules often replace discussions on substance. This practice has favoured obstructionist tactics by some delegations⁷ and transformed climate governance into a “fabric of slowness” (Aykut and Dahan 2015, 106) that stands in stark contrast to the accelerating pace of climate-induced environmental and social disruptions. On a more positive note, the de facto veto power of parties also had the effect of creating a relatively inclusive process, where small developing countries have a stronger voice than in other multilateral settings.

Choreography and rhythm

As at other climate conferences, access to different spaces in the “blue zone” at COP21 and especially to the negotiation area was restricted and channelled through a complex system of badges distributed to participants based on their organisational affiliation – observers, negotiators, UN personnel, media and so forth. This organisational and spatial arrangement created a relatively protected zone where negotiators could mingle and engage in informal doorway chats, while also allowing for regular interactions among negotiators, and between them and other participants in neighbouring spaces. Such “interactional openness” is believed to be important because it facilitates learning and trust (Schüssler, Rüling and Wittnebe 2014). Another important characteristic of international conferences identified by Schüssler and colleagues is “temporal boundedness”. Defining temporal boundaries, and especially setting a clear deadline, may, however, appear easier in theory than it is in practice, as climate conferences are very prone to last-minute drama, prolongations and even adjourning of controversial issues to follow-up meetings. At COP21, the ADP co-chairs and COP president Laurent Fabius therefore tirelessly repeated that the conference would not be prolonged beyond Saturday night. This created a sense of urgency that was amplified because the crucial importance of COP21 had been almost ritually highlighted by the UNFCCC secretariat and French officials in the run-up to the conference. For example UNFCCC executive secretary Christina Figueres travelled the globe to remind world leaders and the general public that Paris was the “last chance”⁸ to strike a deal, while media outlets stylised the Paris talks as “twelve days that will decide Earth’s future”.⁹ Backed by results from modelling exercises that indicated a rapidly closing window for climate action,¹⁰ alarmism also dominated opening statements, as exemplified in this quote from US president Obama’s speech:

For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won’t be too late for them.¹¹

Figure 1.1 An ADP plenary meeting at the Bonn intersession meeting in June 2015. Country delegates sit in the central ring, while observers’ seats are located at the back of the hall and on the balcony at the first floor.

Source: Caption Collective Climacop.

There are, however, trade-offs between temporal boundedness and continuous interaction over time. While regular events create more interaction and exchange, punctual high-stakes events induce a stronger sense of urgency. This dilemma is addressed in climate negotiations through a specific temporal drama-turgy, which combines intersession meetings (see Figure 1.1) throughout the year with high-stakes conferences like COP21. While intersessions receive less media attention, creating the possibility to engage in or maintain less formal interactions and explore areas for possible compromise,¹² COPs create a unity in time and space and impose a specific temporality and rhythm on negotiations.

Socialisation

Negotiations not only are made up of rules, temporal boundaries and spatial arrangements but they are also social spaces. Repeated interactions among participants create personal ties that can be observed regularly during the early days of a COP, when members of different delegations greet each other vocally across the hallways of the blue zone, or hug frenetically like old friends meeting again after a long time. The importance of group dynamics and personal relationships in multilateral negotiations is recognised in the literature (Chasek 2001, 34), but mostly analysed with a view to understanding their impact on negotiation outcomes.¹³ The emergence of social networks is, however, an interesting and significant phenomenon in itself....