Why COP26 will (likely) be a flop
Sunday marked 20 days to COP26, the eagerly anticipated 2021 UN climate summit. The hype around the event is palpable. There is immense excitement about the idea of the world leaders gathering in Glasgow to commit to targets that will deliver a maximum global warming of 1.5°C. But not all that glitter is gold.
Credits to Matt Bors
You have probably read this a million times by now (if not, where have you been?), COP stands for Conference of the Parties. Parties are the signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty signed in 1992 which includes 196 countries and the EU. The 2021 conference is the 26th meeting of the Parties, therefore COP26. Every year, the COP takes place in a different country.
UN climate change conferences are among the largest international meetings in the world. The negotiations between governments are complex and involve officials from every country around the globe as well as representatives from civil society and the global news media. Roughly 30,000 people will be flying to the UK for COP26 - some of them even with a private jet. Although the conference is labelled as carbon-neutral, it is not exemplar for an event focusing on climate change.
A successful COP depends on the groundwork that is done ahead of it. Considering the recent Naples G20 outcome, we don’t start under the best constellations. And if we look back 30 years, the picture is even worse. A huge amount of time, effort and political capital have been invested in this COP process since the UNFCCC entered into force. Has it worked? Looking at the numbers, no. The global concentration of carbon has been marching up 2 parts per million every single year for the past three decades, including the 2008 financial crisis and even the COVID-19 lockdowns.
So, why is the system not delivering the desired outcomes? We need to take a step back and understand what the UN is all about. Bringing together the world’s nations is what the UN does, and climate change gave it a whole new role. Getting the US, China, Brazil, and many more countries at the same table asking to commit to binding climate targets is not an easy task. Indeed, it has never been done. Why? Because the UN system is affected by many flaws. Trying to simplify, we discuss the main two here:
The UN had the ambition to create a carbon cartel. Accordingly, all the signatory countries would agree to limit their emissions by setting cap that, jointly, would add up to reductions that will deliver a maximum 2°C warming (1.5°C for COP26). Like any cartel, this one faces the killer incentive problem. Every country is motivated to encourage others to reduce their emissions and benefit from the collective gain of less global warming. But each country also faces the cost of doing so. And here comes what in economic jargon is called the “free-rider problem”: ask others to do the hard work, promise you will do it too, and cheat.
This is exactly what happened under the Kyoto and the Paris agreements. And all the hype around Paris is even less justified considering that the targets set by each country, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are not binding. To be precise, signatory countries are legally obligated to have an NDC but its achievement is not a legally binding commitment. Alias, governments committed to something they will not be accountable for. Isn’t it brilliant?
The UN approach was to design a top-down treaty framework. Like in (almost) every case, it doesn’t work. Not the US, nor China, nor India, nor any other country on this planet is going to sign up to international intervention in their economies, to cede their sovereignty over their conduct, and to tolerate a sort of international supervision. If you think about it, COP26 will take place in a country that refused to cede its sovereignty to the EU – if Brexit rings a bell. How ironic is that!
So, what can we actually expect from COP26? I don’t have a crystal sphere so you can consider my thoughts as speculations. Well, my speculation is that although COP26 might turn out to be inconclusive, it will still be labelled as a triumph, similar to the COP in Paris, Durban, Copenhagen. And this is because the UN is determined to keep the process going: climate change has become part of the UN reasons to exist with so many people and budgets invested in it.
Unfortunately, I don’t expect COP26 to delight us with legally binding targets especially because of point 2) above. Hence my recommendation to you: take the excitement about COP26 with a salt of grain. And if I will be wrong (thanks god!), I said it clear: mine are only speculations!
