Hi everyone, welcome back to Net Zero.
Here’s a key lesson from the past three decades of global climate diplomacy: It only works when everyone is included. The first global climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was ultimately ineffective in driving down emissions in large part because it left out some of the biggest emitters: The U.S. was never willing to ratify it, and the treaty didn’t hold China to binding emissions cuts. The theory of the Paris Agreement was that it wouldn’t impose binding emissions targets and would let each country essentially volunteer its own actions. That might sound a lot weaker, but its flexibility was the only way to get every country on board. Another critical procedural element was that all Paris Agreement decisions require the unanimous approval of all countries.
I mention all of this to give a sense of the diplomatic challenge Sultan al-Jaber faced as president of COP28. There’s really no other geopolitical forum besides COP in which representatives of every country have to get together and reach unanimity on something fairly contentious in a very short period of time. That means the outcome is virtually guaranteed to leave most parties dissatisfied to some extent, and I doubt we’ll see the day when a COP produces an agreement that is as forceful and specific as climate activists would like. But the summits have become one of the world’s only venues for true multilateralism, which has positive ripple effects for all areas of global governance. The “big tent” mentality means there may be strange bedfellows at times, of which al-Jaber, an oil exec leading a climate summit, is the best example. But as our story today explains, he might have been just what the doctor ordered — and even some previously skeptical climate activists agree.
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Source: Semafor
