Climate change will charge on without a new approach
OPINION: The Glasgow Climate Pact that emerged from the conference on climate change lacks the measures that will solve the problem. Precious little is binding, the necessary political will was absent, and dangerous warming remains inevitable as matters stand. The younger generation can be pardoned for wondering whether these efforts are all talk. The failure of the Glasgow conference to chart a clear and determined course ahead to combat climate change ought not to be a surprise. READ MORE: * UN to world leaders: To curtail warming, you must do more to fight climate change * Coronavirus: UN climate summit postponed until 2021 * Climate change 'accelerating': World leaders feel the heat in upcoming UN climate summit * Sir Geoffrey Palmer urges rethink on alcohol regulation with focus on public engagement * Nations gather to sign climate deal in New York Glasgow was the 26th such conference. That number should alert people to the real difficulties of reaching agreement on the issue by the methods that have been adopted. Meaningful, tangible progress remains yet to achieved. Time is running out, but too much remains unclear, undecided, and unenforceable. The 2015 Paris Agreement contained many provisions that were not binding on nations, and we now know that many nations have not met the obligations to which they did agree. The world seems to be engaged in an onward march towards catastrophe and the transformational efforts required to stop it seem not to be at hand. A prime weakness is the way in which international negotiations take place. We lack the proper machinery to hammer out the rules and then ensure they are followed. The rule of unanimous consent is a fundamental principle of the international law relating to treaties. Nations cannot be obliged to accept the rules contained in treaties with which they do not agree. This leads to lowest common denominator outcomes to secure the widest measure of agreement. Commitments are softened and watered down to secure unanimous consent, and holdout states can demand a price for signing up, so bending the commitment to their way of thinking. Furthermore, the sovereignty of states weighs heavily against securing meaningful and enforceable norms. With 193 sovereign states on the planet, it simply is not possible, as things stand, to arrive at a system that includes rules, enforcement, and third-party adjudication unless all nations agree. New machinery is required at the international level if adequate progress on climate change is to be achieved. The United Nations lacks a potent environmental arm. The UN Environment Programme is not sufficient. Environmental issues were not top of mind when the UN Charter was drafted after World War II. Now we need for the global environment a new, potent, and purpose-built international agency, in continuous session, if success is to be achieved. Climate change is not the only catastrophic environmental threat on the horizon. Think biodiversity. I made that case to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989 when I was Minister for the Environment, and later in international law journals. Nothing happened. The trouble is that it looks to be too hard to set up a new international organisation with real teeth quickly, and it may be better to adopt a fresh approach for climate change. Hard law will be required to deal with climate change and such law is scarce. And mechanisms to produce it do not at present exist in a form that will work. The clunky machinery of the COPs for climate change will not do the job. Anyone who has had experience of negotiating with such a large group in an international forum knows how impossible it is. There needs to be recognition that the UN Framework Convention machinery is not working and probably will never solve the problem. Relatively few countries, no more than 20 or so (if the EU is counted as one country) are responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. My co-author on the book mentioned at the end of this article, Professor Jonathan Carlson of the University of Iowa, and I think it may be time to focus our efforts on getting an enforceable agreement among those 20 countries, outside the auspices of the UN and the UNFCCC. It is possible that an agreement among those countries on a carbon tax may be more achievable than an agreement on emissions reductions. Holdouts within that group could be handled through border tax adjustments imposed on them by others in the group. Bold new initiatives at the global level are necessary to deal with climate change. The state of international law on climate change is not fit for purpose and cannot be made fit for purpose unless a new approach is adopted. We cannot get there from here. Sir Geoffrey Palmer is co-author with Professor Jonathan Carlson of International Environmental Law A problem oriented coursebook (4th ed, West Academic Publishing, St Paul, 2019).