For the twelfth consecutive year, nearly 190 nations convened in November 2006, this time in Nairobi, to address the critical issue of climate change. Unfortunately, the atmosphere at these two-week annual conclaves most resembles a medieval trade fair: a hearty reunion of thousands of well-tailored diplomats (some countries send as many as 100 representatives), plus additional thousands of nongovernmental “observers,” some manning colorful information booths, others intent on picturesque mayhem to attract squadrons of riot police. Hundreds of media representatives also join the party in search of a provocative sound bite or an attention-grabbing image.These UN mega-conferences have by now developed a predictable pattern. Considerable time is occupied by tedious problems of coordinating positions and tactics, both inside the huge national delegations and within blocs of countries such as the European Union and other regional or “like-minded” coalitions. There are the usual dire warnings-fully justifiable-of impending global catastrophe. There are trivial protocol debates and ritualistic ministerial speeches exhorting complicated and unrealistic actions. There are cultural diversions such as boat rides on the Rhine or dance performances in Marrakech. As the end nears, all-night negotiating sessions contribute to a sense of destiny.
Advertisement

But despite the customary self-congratulatory finale, the results at Nairobi, as at preceding meetings, were embarrassingly meager. This process has been going on every year since the 1995 Berlin Conference of Parties to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change. The sheer size of the treaty, with its integral accompanying explanatory texts, definitions, and regulations, has meanwhile grown from under 40 pages to several hundred pages of numbing complexity. Much of the negotiations have centered on how the industrialized countries can dilute (for example, by emissions trading or by arbitrary estimates of emissions absorbed by ecological land use) the unrealistic emission targets that they accepted in the midnight hours nine years ago in Kyoto and how much financial resources should flow from the “rich” to the “poor” countries, which have no targets at all.

The process is inevitably slow because of the large number of parties involved. But is it necessary to have everyone at the table? In actuality, only 25 nations, about half of them in the “developing” category, are responsible for about 85% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. None of the other 160-plus countries accounts for even 1%! Many of the world’s largest emitters are, in fact, “newly industrializing” nations that shun even a hint of voluntary restraints by claiming affinity with the poorest developing countries. Yet India’s emissions are greater than those of Japan and Germany, Brazil emits more than the UK, and China’s emissions exceed everyone but the United States. Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions from these soi-disant “poor” nations are growing far more rapidly than those of the “rich.”

The climate meetings, obsessively focused on short-term targets and timetables applying only to industrialized nations, have become trapped in a process that is unmanageable, inefficient, and impervious to serious negotiation of complex issues that have profound environmental, economic, and social implications extending over many decades into the future. The Kyoto Protocol, lamely defended by its proponents as “the only game in town,” now best serves the interests of politicians whose rhetoric is stronger than their actions and of those commercial interests and governments that want no meaningful actions at all-notably, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Near East oil producers, and the U.S. administration, which is not unhappy with the treaty’s lack of progress.

Lessons from the ozone history

It is worth recalling that the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, later characterized by the heads of the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization as “one of the great international achievements of the century,” was negotiated by only about 30 nations in nine months, with delegations seldom exceeding six persons and with minimal attention from outside observers and media. I doubt whether the ozone treaty could have been achieved under the currently fashionable global format.