Raymond Clémençon

The Bali Road Map: A First Step on the Difficult Journey to a Post-Kyoto Protocol Agreement

The Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol met in Bali in December 2007.1 After some high-stakes poker about emission reduction frameworks and the role of emerging economies, participants settled on a road map for negotiating a new climate agreement by the end of 2009. The Bali meeting also managed to achieve progress on a number of important issues relating to the Adaptation Fund, avoidance of deforestation through REDD, technology transfer, and CDM. Conference side events show-cased emerging business opportunities in global carbon markets and provided a forum for countries to share experiences with national policies that have been put in place to meet Kyoto Protocol targets. Bali no doubt advanced international climate negotiations one step further, but it also highlighted the great challenges facing negotiators in the coming 20 months.2 This article takes stock of the current status of climate negotiations and discusses key issues likely to shape future talks.

Welcome to the Anthropocene: Rio+20 and the Meaning of Sustainable Development

From June 20 to 22, 2012, 45,000 participants from governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and major groups met in Rio De Janeiro for the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The outcome document titled “The Future We Want” alludes to a grand vision for addressing global challenges in the framework of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental. But the 53-page long document only reiterates promises made elsewhere. It fails to lay out a coherent roadmap forward, much less to define binding targets with specific deadlines. The declaration, however, does reflect a changing political reality in international negotiations. Developing countries are playing a much more assertive role in pushing poverty eradication as the overarching priority than at any time before. Rio+20 furthermore presents a snapshot of the divers interests and voices that shape the discourse on sustainable development, 20 years after the original 1992 Rio Conference launched the debate.

The Two Sides of the Paris Climate Agreement: Dismal Failure or Historic Breakthrough?

The December 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is better than no agreement. This is perhaps the best that can be said about it. The scientific evidence on global warming is alarming, and the likelihood depressingly small that the world can stay below a 2°C—even less a 1.5°C warming—over pre-industrial times. The Paris Agreement does not provide a blueprint for achieving these stabilization objectives. But it is ultimately the hope, however small, that a fundamental and rapid energy transition is achievable that must inform social and political behavior and activism in the coming years. In this sense, the Paris outcome is an aspirational global accord that will trigger and legitimize more climate action around the world. The question is whether this will happen quickly enough and at a sufficient scale to avoid disastrous warming of the planet. What is certain is that it will not occur without determined and far-reaching government intervention in energy markets in the next few years, particularly in the largest polluting countries.

What Future for the Global Environment Facility

For more than a decade, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has provided critical support to developing countries for fighting global environmental problems such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity. But recent developments do not bode well for the ability of the GEF to continue playing its pivotal role in support of implementing multilateral environmental agreements. Its already modest resource base has been declining in real terms, and a December 2005 deadline for the conclusion of the fourth replenishment of the GEF (GEF4) passed without a compromise between major donors. The adoption of a resource allocation framework in September 2005 is likely to complicate how the GEF can program its resources in the future, even if replenishment negotiations can be completed by June 2006. Current events reinforce the need for a close look at what the future role of the GEF should be and how resources for addressing global environmental problems in developing countries should be raised.1

From Rio 1992 to Rio 2012 and Beyond Revisiting the Role of Trade Rules and Financial Transfers for Sustainable Development

The 20th anniversary of the Journal of Environment and Development (JED) not coincidentally lines up with the anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. The JED was launched as one of many thousands of initiatives during the preparatory phase of the Rio conference around the world encouraged by a cautious optimism that this event would help launch a new era of bringing economic development and care for the environment closer together. Coming 20 years after the 1972 Stockholm conference on the Human Environment it was hoped that the Rio conference of 1992 would be able to reap a peace dividend and profit from a greatly improved international political situation to focus on global environmental challenges. The cold-war years had receded into the history books and some of the North–South antagonism had softened after military regimes had given way to democratic systems in many large developing countries. World trade was expanding more rapidly again after a decade of economic stagnation in many parts of the world. This editorial looks back at the achievements of the Rio 1992 conference and highlights one of its perhaps most consequential failures: to launch a process that could find an appropriate balance between government regulation and faith in free markets and private sector initiatives to address environmental and development challenges in a comprehensive way. This would require an integration of trade rules and sustainable development objectives and a serious debate about raising financial resources for a global eco-services compensation system that does not primarily rely on fickle, voluntary, private sector investments into carbon-crediting systems. Rio plus 20 is an opportunity to review experience with 20 years of far-reaching reliance on free market solutions to public goods problems of global magnitude. It is a chance to learn important lessons that can guide the search for better policies to meet critical global Editorial

Economic Integration and the Environment in Southeast Asia: Securing Gains from Open Markets While Preventing Further Environmental Degradation

Economic integration and freer trade are expected to further boost economic growth in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Rapid growth, however, is causing increasingly serious environmental degradation and depletion of the natural resource base. Without determined political steps in ASEAN countries, supported by international cooperation, a further wors ening of the state of the environment in this region of the world may soon affect the very basis on which economic development depends. This article is based on a workshop on economic integration and environment in Southeast Asia and explores options ASEAN countries have for addressing the environmental challenges ahead while enjoying the benefits from trade liberalization.

Global Climate Change and the Trade System: Bridging the Culture Gap

Effective climate change policies, such as the introduction of userfees on carbon dioxide emissions, would have great implications for international economic competitiveness. Such policies can only hope to succeed in tandem with international trade rules that implicitly support them. This contribution proposes the establishment of a joint negotiating group composed of trade and climate negotiators as a way to better address the global warming problem in conjunction with the development of appropriate international economic framework conditions. It is argued that treatment of this issue within the framework of existing institutions alone will not result in the broad-based dialogue and highest-level involvement likely required for successfully ad dressing the climate change/trade interlinkage.

“Zweckoptimismus” and the Paris process will not save the world from climate catastrophe

Politicians, government officials, business representatives, and nongovernmental climate activists all in various ways emphasize what they see as progress being made in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, even if they continue to warn of the dire consequences of business as usual. Indeed, there is no lack of encouraging private and public sector initiatives on climate change. Some macro trends seem to be moving in the right direction, as well. But, closer scrutiny shows that these positive trends are still far from adding up to the necessary fundamental shift in the global energy economy. Furthermore, the public may greatly overestimate the advancement of renewable solar and wind energy technology, which contributes to a false sense of progress and lessens political urgency. Without determined and reinvigorated political leadership from the European Union (EU), there is little hope that necessary emission reduction goals to stay below 2 °C above preindustrial levels can be met. The EU has driven international climate policy from the beginning of climate negotiations, and there is unfortunately no other source of leadership in sight. It will require difficult political decisions to be taken sooner rather than later to force a much quicker domestic energy transition and to raise financing to help developing countries with their own energy transition and adaptation to a rapidly warming world. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2018;14:198-201.

Leveraging the Private Sector: The Key to Sustainable Development?

ecent years, international environmental and development agrees have increasingly focused on encouraging private sector particin in the pursuit of development and environmental policy goals. growing interest in private market forces seems predicated on a ng understanding of the proper role of government and new modf governance for achieving public policy objectives, as well as a ing pragmatism in the face of stagnating government resources for lopment cooperation. Government programs that aim to help loping countries comply with international environmental agrees and address domestic environmental policy goals remain a mainof international cooperation. But overall funding for development eration has declined since 1992. Resources allocated for environal purposes were very small to start with and have stagnated g the last decade. e growing interest in private sector involvement in the advanceof sustainable development is based on two premises: first, that an emphasis can increase provision of financial and human capital rces for development, and second, that private sector involvement timulate lasting on-the-ground activities that involve many differtakeholders and are particularly responsive to development needs. national environmental agreements have in recent years put forseveral schemes based on these premises. Two key mechanisms of ort, which are currently in their early phases of implementation, are lean Development Mechanism (CDM) envisioned under the Kyoto col, and the Johannesburg Partnership Agreements (Track II ts), adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Develop. The CDM allows companies from developed countries to fund