Category Archives: bilateral treaties

US-China Paris Agreement Bilat Blooms

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Obama and XiOver the course of the UNFCCC’s 24-year history, the relationship between the US and China on climate change has changed dramatically.

Since COP15 in Copenhagen, the gradual movement away from a hard line between developed and developing country obligations has been eased by the two countries’ improving bilateral working relationship. In November, 2014 – just a month before COP20, a pivotal point in the Durban Mandate’s search for a new climate change agreement that would bind all UNFCCC parties – President Obama and President Xi Jinping announced at the close of the Pacific Rim conference in Beijing new U.S. targets for carbon emissions reductions and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.  As one senior Obama administration official put it, “the United States and China have often been seen as antagonists. We hope that this announcement can usher in a new day in which China and the U.S. can act much more as partners.” Jairam Ramesh, a member of the Indian Parliament and climate negotiator, was quoted at the time observing that “in one move, Obama and Xi broke the logjam of climate politics. Until now, China has insisted that the U.S. and the EU are largely responsible for climate change. But this raises the bar for other nations.”  Of note is China’s influence on other advanced developing countries, like Brazil, South Korea, India, Mexico, and Indonesia.

In last Thursday’s U.S.-China Joint Presidential Statement on Climate Change, the two countries took the lead again.  Affirming that “over the past three years, climate change has become a pillar of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship,” Presidents Obama and Xi announced “another significant step in their joint climate efforts” – signing the Paris Agreement.  Specifically, the two presidents stated that “the United States and China will sign the Paris Agreement on April 22nd and take their respective domestic steps in order to join the Agreement as early as possible this year.”  In addition, they “encouraged” other UNFCCC Parties to do the same, to bring the Paris Agreement into force as soon as possible.

In addition, both countries reaffirmed their bilateral work with each other, as well as with other UNFCCC Parties, focusing on the following specific actions:

 

Reading Between the Lines on the US-China Climate Agreement

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Obama and Xi JinpingAs noted on this blog yesterday, at the close of the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Beijing, President Obama and President Xi Jinping issued a joint US-China “announcement” on climate change.  The United States announced that it intends to achieve economy-wide emissions reductions of 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, while China for the first time announced its intention to commit to peaking its CO2 emissions by 2030 and to increase its share of renewable energy consumption to “around 20%” by 2030.  This agreement between the two countries has been described variously as a landmark agreement, a gamechanger, and historic.  But is the agreement really all it is cracked up to be?

First of all, some commentators have opined that the agreement’s targets are simply not ambitious enough. For instance, climate scientist Kevin Tyndall recently expressed to chinadialogue that if we wanted even a reasonable chance of achieving the goal laid out in Copenhagen of limiting global temperature increases to 2C, China’s GHG emissions would have to peak at least as early as the mid-2020’s. Second, even if the United States and China are able to meet the targets set out in the agreement, enormous challenges would remain.  By 2030, the GHG emissions of the two countries would account for over half of the carbon budget that would give us a 50-50 chance of staying within the 2C goal.  This would leave little room for rising economies such as India and Brazil to continue to grow. Third, some have noted that this agreement does not amount to much because it largely reflects what the US and China are already doing anyway.  A Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst told the Daily Beast that “the commitment on the U.S. side is a summation of a variety of commitments that have already been made.”  Morever, three years ago the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had already predicted that due to a variety of factors, China’s GHG emissions would peak by 2030.  And finally, the agreement is lacking in detail, but what detail it does contain has been a cause for alarm for some environmentalists. While renewable energy is mentioned only once in the agreement, the promotion of carbon capture and sequestration and advanced coal technologies is featured prominently, mentioned no less than six times.  The agreement also promotes the increased use of shale gas without mentioning control of methane, which, according to the director of Food and Water Watch, simply amounts to “more promotion of fracking under the guise of climate action.”

Nevertheless, despite the agreement’s limitations, it still provides much cause for optimism.  Indeed, it represents the first time the world’s two largest GHG emitters have publicly expressed a willingness to cooperate on climate change. As Secretary of State John Kerry noted, the United States and China must cooperate on joint efforts to reduce GHG emissions – otherwise, there is simply no hope of solving this problem.  Besides this symbolic importance of the agreement, it also includes some practical bilateral measures that are encouraging, such as expanding the US-China Joint Clean Energy Research Center, enhancing cooperation on phasing out HFCs, jointly launching a new initiative on Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities, and promoting trade in green goods.

Perhaps most importantly, the willingness of the two largest economies and two China-deal-638x532largest GHG emitters on the planet to come together to announce action on climate sets a good example for both developed and developing countries.  According to Zou Ji, deputy director of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, this agreement will set the tone for the 2015 Paris climate negotiations and as such, could have “wide-reaching impacts on the global low-carbon transition.”  By one estimation (see graph), if developing countries were to follow China’s lead and developed countries were to follow the United States’ lead, we could slash global carbon emissions from the “business as usual scenario” by an enormous 2500 billion tons by the end of the century. The fact that these two countries have stated publicly their intention to act on climate change essentially leaves no excuse for others to not take action.  Now let us hope that they are serious.

US-China relations post-COP19

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Today’s HuffPost features an article on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s view that China is poised for beijing air qualitya green revolution.  McCarthy sees internal pressures by the rising Chinese middle class on its political leaders to do more on environmental regulation and climate change.  She cited to the now famous example of the U.S. embassy’s air quality monitoring that led to a diplomatic brouhaha – and greater transparency from the Beijing municipal authorities.  Recent school closures and public health threat warnings due to industrial smog recall the Donora, PA killer smog that spurred the fight for the Clean Air Act.  McCarthy made these remarks on the eve of a trip to China to seek ways to work with the Chinese government on environmental regulation.

Venezuela working with the U.S.

Venezuela working with the U.S.

Post COP19/CMP9, as I think about the question most often asked of me – what was accomplished at this negotiation? – I’m struck by the interplay between multilateral and bilateral treaties in making international environmental law.  There is a long tradition of bilateral (think US-Canada Great Lakes Compact and governing Commission) and regional multilateral (think of the Rhine River treaty and its governance structure) environmental treaties that have provided very effective legal and environmental management of common natural resources.  The challenge in addressing climate change is trying to regulate a natural resource – the atmosphere – shared by every country in the world, which is being degraded in a variety of ways through multiple means of pollution.  One legal solution is the UNFCCC, which seeks an all-in approach, and the annual COPs that refine the complex inner workings of this legal compact. Post COP15 in Copenhagen, there have been repeated calls for scrapping the UNFCCC and focusing instead on getting the top 25 emitting countries who contribute some 75% of GHGs to the atmosphere to negotiate a new treaty amongst themselves.

EU working with India.

EU working with India.

But this HP article reminds me of the importance  and potential for bilateral and regional multilateral treaties to add to, not supplant, the work of the Framework Convention.   McCarthy signals the US-China work to come (and we shouldn’t lose sight of the achievements of this past summer) – all of which builds on and adds to the working relationships that are the backbone to broader UNFCCC progress toward a binding legal agreement for all 195 countries in 2020.