Every year, the UN climate conference is marred by great power rivalries over minimal terms. At the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, there was talk of “phasing out fossil fuels.” At this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), a discussion is expected to take place on “tripping renewable energy capacity.”
These clashes tend to grab the headlines. Who wouldn’t want to know whether it was China, Saudi Arabia, or the United States that played a spoilsport role in high-flying global diplomacy?
It’s not a bad thing that UN-backed climate talks are finally starting to make the front pages.
But despite being held for nearly three decades, these talks have also failed to achieve the progress needed to achieve climate goals. Preliminary analysis shows that global emissions will hit another new record this year, rather than falling as quickly as the Paris Agreement requires.
This may be due to prioritizing the wrong things, says Navroz Dubash, a professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.
The assumption built into the Paris Agreement is that naming and shaming countries that are underperforming on climate ambition will be enough to force them to do more.
But in a new article for the magazine SciencesA more important driving force may be whether countries establish ambitious national climate policies, Dubasz argues.
Let us take the example of the law of disinflation. The United States has been under global pressure for many years to do something to reduce emissions, but it took a certain combination of domestic factors to pass the country’s most ambitious climate law.
There is now hope that by combining subsidies and jobs in places that have traditionally resisted climate action, there will be a broader shift in national political expectations, a shift in which majorities agree that action to combat emissions can have an immediate impact.
“If you work hard on national policies, you can achieve global consensus faster,” Dubach said, rather than hoping global consensus will lead to national policies of, say, phasing out fossil fuels or tripling renewable energy sources.
COP disputes also tend to overlook the fact that most countries face enormous obstacles when trying to enact climate legislation.
On this front, Dubash says three mechanisms can help move things forward at the national level:
First, researchers must develop better modeling tools that fit national needs.
There is no shortage of global climate models, but few are adequate to address the trade-offs that every country must face in setting its ambitions.
India, a country with a lot of coal (and therefore many jobs in this sector), will face different energy challenges than Kenya, which harnesses clean geothermal energy. Dubach hopes to see more initiatives such as Deep Decarbonization Pathways and the Climate Futures Project targeting this issue.
Second, countries must work to create independent institutions capable of helping governments steer the entire economy toward a low-carbon future.
More countries should have the equivalent of a climate change panel in the UK, which can identify strategic choices for the government to make and evaluate progress annually, says Dubash.
More countries should also create entities like South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, which brings together people from all backgrounds (from coal miners to coastal communities) who will be most affected by climate policies.
Finally, although national policies are a more effective driving force, some issues can only be resolved at the global level.
For example, most developing countries suffer from a shortage of capital at a time when interest rates are high and developed countries are unwilling to invest in emerging markets.
Efforts like the Bridgetown Initiative, a proposal to make climate funds available to developing countries, are critical to getting global institutions to develop the right tools to move huge sums of money to where it is needed most.
Dubach admits that what may appeal to a national audience may not appeal to a global audience.
However, many climate policies have multiple benefits. “Different stories are told to different audiences,” he said. “You are not deceiving. You’re just politically smart. “You’re presenting different fronts to different audiences.”
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