This is a year of big global events, of multilateral negotiations and regime formation. I have followed these global talks closely because I have intellectual and professional interests in the legal and political economy aspects of global governance. I believe the multilateral negotiations reveal the potential for cooperative action in global governance, but they also tell us something about the self-interest and game-theoretical considerations that stop nations from cooperating. For me, three of these multilateral events stand out this year. I have written about two of them in this column; the third is the subject of this piece.
Unarguably, the first major global diplomatic event this year was the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, held in New York from 25 to 27 September, when world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The summit itself was preceded by the Third International Conference on Financing for Development held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from13 to 16 July. Then, last week, as I wrote on these pages, the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC10) took place from 15 to 18 December in Nairobi, Kenya. However, a week before the trade summit, the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention in Climate Change (UNFCCC) had taken place in Paris from 30 November to 11 December.
These global events are important because of the linkages and synergies between them. The development, environmental and trade issues are complementary, which is why the three summits make reference to one another in their agendas. For instance, the Sustainable Development Agenda strongly emphasises the role of climate action (goal 13 of the SDGs) and trade (goal 8) in meeting the development objectives and targets. However, while negotiating the SDGs was relative non-contentious, securing new agreements in the trade and climate regimes have usually proved difficult.
This is why the conclusion of a climate treaty at COP21 in Paris is remarkable. The climate agreement has been described superlatively as “the first universal climate treaty ever”, a “major leap for mankind” and a climate deal that will “change the world”. The rhetoric has, indeed, been stratospheric! But is the agreement truly historic? If so, why and what does it actually say? Furthermore, what’s Nigeria’s contribution to the Paris deal? I will deal with the systemic questions first, then come to Nigeria’s pledged actions. To answer the systemic questions, we should first take a brief tour of the history of climate talks to give us some perspective on what was achieved at COP21 in Paris.
Now, the starting point in our narrative is the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. For it was in Rio that the international climate regime was created with the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention in Climate Change (UNFCCC). The convention was signed in 1992 and entered into force in 1994. The UNFCCC was established to tackle global climate change through legally binding climate agreements, negotiated by its supreme decision-making body, the Conference of the Parties (COP). However, since its first COP in Berlin, Germany, in 1995, it constant struggled to produce a universal treaty. While every country agreed that climate change poses severe and even irreversible dangers and needs to be tackled, none wanted to accept binding national carbon production targets. As the Oxford professor, Dieter Helm, puts it in his book, The Carbon Crunch, “when it comes to climate change, self-interest and collective interest are very different”.
However, the Kyoto Protocol made some progress in setting binding carbon productions targets. It was adopted in 1997, entered into force until 2005 and remains in force until 2020. But the protocol is flawed in at least two respects. First, it is expected to cover only 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emission by 2020. Second, the United States, the world’s second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), releasing 5.6 billion tonnes (15 per cent of the world’s total), did not ratify the Protocol because China did not have a cap. China, of course, is the world’s biggest emitter CO2, releasing 9.5 billion tonnes (27 per cent of the world’s total). Given these limitations, efforts were made at several COPs to develop a successor to the Protocol that is legally-binding, ambitious and universal.
For instance, attempts were made at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009to produce a binding treaty. But those efforts failed after the US and China rejected the EU’s call for a legally-binding treaty. However, COP15 was not without some success. While it didn’t result in a treaty, it nevertheless produced a political agreement that cleared the path for the Paris agreement. The political agreement, albeit reached by a small set of countries, was to keep increase in long-term average temperatures below two degree Celsius (2C), relative to pre-industrial levels. They also agreed to establish the Green Climate Fund through which $100 billion per year of public and private climate finance would be available to developing countries by 2020. This pivotal political deal was later formalised by 196 countries at COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, under what was known as the Cancun Agreement.
Yet, it subsequently proved difficult to turn the Cancun Agreement into a legally binding treaty. At COP17 in Durban, South Africa, in 2011, the US, China and India continued to resist pressure from the EU to create legally binding emissions targets, and even Japan, Canada and Russia did not want a “Kyoto plus” agreement. Despite the conference being extended for a couple of days, all that was agreed was an ‘agreement’ to try to reach an agreement! Things began to look a little better, however, at COP20 in Lima, Peru, in 2014. In Lima, the countries agreed to communicate their Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions (INDCs), their pledged actions, under a new treaty, well in advanced of COP21 in Paris. It was this heavy build-up to COP21, coupled with the political will to reach an agreement, which led to the success of the talks.
But how historic is the Paris agreement? Well, two things are certainly remarkable about the deal. The first is the scale of the ambition, the second the coverage. On the first, Article 2 of the agreement commits the parties to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial level”. The commitment to aim to limit average temperature increase to “1.5C” was not envisaged before the conference, but it has been widely welcomed as the level of ambition needed to face the challenges of climate change. The second remarkable achievement is that the Paris deal was agreed by 195 countries, including the big emitters, China, the US, the EU and India. This comprehensive coverage thus, indeed, makes the Paris agreement “the first universal climate treaty ever”!
Yet, despite all that, the treaty is still inadequate in one critical respect: it is not legally binding. It is more or less a statement of promise. For instance, it is stated in the preamble that “the Agreement does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”. Furthermore, although Articles 13 and 14 of the treaty creates a stringent monitoring and transparency regime, including a “global stocktake”, which involves a periodic stocktaking of the implementation of the agreement, it is stated clearly in Article 15 that the mechanism to facilitate compliance with the agreement shall be “non-adversarial and non-punitive”; in other words, the agreement is not enforceable!
The truth is that there would have been no agreement in Paris if countries were required to accept legally binding obligations. One interesting incident during the negotiation aptly illustrates this. In the draft Agreement that was presented for adoption, Article 4.4 had stated that the developed countries “shall” continue to take the lead to reduce economy-wide emission, while developing countries “should” continue to enhance their mitigation efforts. But the US objected to the word “shall” and insisted it be changed to “should”. In other words, the US did not want a legally binding obligation. The developing countries, particularly the Africans, opposed the removal of the word “shall” from the developed countries’ commitments. But without the US there would be no agreement. So, in the end, to prevent the talks breaking down without a deal, “shall” was changed to “should”.
But, let’s be clear, the treaty will not be without some bite. The stocktaking mechanism will ensure that countries are held accountable for their compliance with the agreement. Furthermore, the transparency mechanism will result in countries that fail to fulfil their national pledges being “named and shamed”. However, although such reputational measures may have some effect of inducing compliance with the treaty, they are not the same as having a legally binding commitment.
Now, what about Nigeria’s contribution to the Paris climate deal? Well, for a start, I would say that Nigeria’s preparation for the Paris talks was shoddy. Nigeria did not submit its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions until almost the last minute, despite two deadlines in March and October. The French ambassador to Nigeria had to make a public plea for Nigeria to submit its INDCs. The Federal Ministry of Environment said it had prepared the document but was waiting for President Buhari’s sign-off. Buhari did not approve the INDCs until 26 November, and Nigeria only submitted the document to the UNFCCC on 28 November, just two days before the conference started on 30 November! Yet, President Buhari and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, made high-profile visits to Paris for the conference. Certainly, Nigeria should be playing a leadership role in such matters, instead of competing with countries like Tonga and St Kitts and Nevis in being the last to meet such a simple obligation as submitting an action plan!
Even the INDCs that Nigeria submitted fell short, in my view, of acceptable standards. It read more like an academic paper rather than a policy or strategy document, let alone an action plan. Nigeria’s pledged mitigation and adaption actions are largely aspirational, some kind of a wish-list of things it would “work towards”, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy. The INDC document fails the SMART test, in not being sufficiently specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound. This contrasts sharply, for instance, with Ghana’s INDCs, which listed 31 measures with their estimated costs. For instance, Ghana projected that its 31 pledged climate change mitigation and adaptation actions would cost an estimated sum of $22.6 billion, $6.3 billion of which it expected to mobilise domestically while the remaining $16.3 billion would need to come from international support. If Nigeria needs international support for its energy and climate change policy, it would need to prepare a proper and SMART action plan rather than the present high-level document.
Of course, Nigeria’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is miniscule, at less than 1 per cent. But Nigeria faces serious climate change problems of its own. Indeed, a Pew Research Centre survey, cited in Nigeria’s INDC document, shows that 65 per cent of Nigerians are very concerned about climate change threats. But these threats are not theoretical. Floods, drought, desertification, coastal erosion, deforestation and other harms caused by climate change and global warming are real in Nigeria. Yet all the human causes of climate change are also present in Nigeria.
Take, for instance, energy, the production and use of which account for two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Nigeria still largely relies on fossil fuel for its electricity generation, with gas and oil accounting for nearly 80 per cent. And there is a strong clamour for coal to be given a significant role in Nigeria’s energy mix, with the minister of power even suggesting 30 per cent of the mix. Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect Nigeria to abandon fossil fuels when they are abundant and cheap and when the country has such a dire energy need, but we should also recognise the trade-off. More fossil fuels, particularly oil and coal, mean more carbon emissions and thus greater risks of climate change.
Now, when you add the widespread use of generators, the use of traditional biomass for cooking by most Nigerians, the subsidisation of fossil-fuel (i.e. petroleum) consumption, massive gas flaring, and high CO2 emissions from transport and industry, all of which contribute to increasing rather than reducing carbon emissions, then it’s clear that Nigeria needs a proper climate change mitigation action plan that can attract international support, including investments in renewable energy generation. At the moment, Nigeria’s INDCs shows little sign of seriousness to tackle climate change.
To be sure, the Paris climate agreement is ambitious and universal, but it’s vague and lacks any binding force. If Nigeria doesn’t want to be bound by an international commitment on climate change mitigation, the Paris agreement is good news, even though there is the reputational cost of being “named and shamed” for non-compliance. Yet, if there are countries that should take voluntary actions on climate change, Nigeria should be one of them because we are affected by it, not least as fossil-fuel country!
Olu Fasan
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