From Rio to Paris: The Climate Change Agreements that Mattered

To salvage efforts of a global climate agreement, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions mechanism was evolved

It’s worthwhile remembering that the 2015 Paris talks are the 21st meeting of the parties to the 1994 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Here, we take a look at the climate agreements that preface this week’s talks.

Rio Earth Summit, 1992

This mega summit 23 years ago laid down the architecture of several environmental agreements and declarations hugely relevant even today. A bit of an over-achiever of a conference, the outcomes of the Earth Summit included the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, Forest Principles, UNFCCC, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biodiversity. Taken together, these documents laid the ground for much of today’s environmental architecture.

In a sign of things to come, the conference also saw debates on equity, justice, the historical responsibility of developed countries for climate change and the need to prioritise being careful about environmental risks (the “precautionary principle”) over scientific certainty. Then, as now, developed and developing countries bitterly argued about issues such as technological transfer, responsibility and financial assistance while at the same time committing to “cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem”.

Kyoto Protocol, 1997

The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC had one main goal – to stabilise and control greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. This was to be based on the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) which acknowledged that while all countries had a common duty towards ensuring that climate change did not devastate our planet, nations had vastly different responsibilities when it came to mitigating their GHG emissions. This is because the problem of GHGs is the result of cumulative emissions – and developed nations, by virtue of their early industrialisation are primarily responsible for the current GHG levels. To put things in perspective, India may currently be the 4th largest emitter in absolute terms but it has contributed to just 3 per cent of the cumulative emissions.

Thus, broadly speaking, after Kyoto, countries were divided into two main categories – Annex I (countries which undertook to make legally binding cuts to emissions) and the other countries which undertook to reduce their emissions as far as practicable. Annex I nations were to use the three “flexibility mechanisms” to achieve their goals – these allowed for international emissions trading and setting up “clean” projects in other developed and developing countries. Kyoto’s commitment period was to initially last till 2012 before it was extended till 2020.

Paris, 2015 via Copenhagen, Warsaw, Durban and Lima

Towards the end of the last decade, climate negotiations for a post-Kyoto framework took a decided turn away from CBDR’s top-down, measure and mitigate philosophy. By this time, developed countries were beginning to increasingly protest against a climate framework which they felt was unfair since it imposed all the mitigation responsibilities on them without imposing any binding duties on developing countries like India and China. Some countries even began to walk away from the Kyoto commitments.

Ultimately, in an effort to salvage the efforts for a global climate agreement, the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) mechanism was evolved. This aimed at a bottom-up, “pledge and review” system where countries were required to self-assess their mitigation responsibilities. This has the advantage of being realistic (countries are more likely to uphold commitments they have willingly made) but it critics believed that it would allow each country to avoid taking tough decisions on climate change. The critics weren’t wrong – the INDCs from developed countries have lacked ambition and many believe that they fall far short of what is needed to avoid a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees.

It is important to note that while India, like many other developing countries, may have high absolute emissions, it still has relatively low per capita emissions, in complete distinction to the US and the EU. This disparity raises huge ethical issues around the “carbon space” available for the world, and whether developing countries should be given priority due to their development needs. Protecting our planet is important but it is equally important to ensure that there is an equitable burden sharing on the long road to change. Climate change is a global problem and we’re all in this together.

(Shalini Iyengar is a lawyer and Research Associate at the International University College, Turin.)