Durban's meek outcome doesn't bode well for international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions or the sustainability of Australia's domestic scheme.
After 13 days of negotiations, governments agreed to the Durban Platform. But they did not agree to a new international treaty to cut emissions.
The key component of the platform includes all countries negotiating ''an agreed outcome with legal force'' by 2015 to start cutting emissions by 2020.
It's a platform to continue debating the details of an agreement where countries disagree on most of the substantive matters.
The negotiations for other countries to sign an agreement to engage in climate-based economic hardship, as Australia has through its carbon tax, are all uphill from here.
Significantly, Kyoto has been taken out of its casket and been put on critical life support.
With Kyoto's emission reduction commitments expiring on December 31 next year, its future will be decided at next year's December meeting guaranteeing a gap.
Kyoto's survival is still in doubt. Canada is likely to withdraw in the next year. Japan and Russia aren't likely to sign up to a new Kyoto emissions reduction round.
Keeping Kyoto alive is a strategic move to use it as a 2012 bargaining chip to pressure developing countries to stay in the negotiating tent.
It's their cause celebre because it puts emission cutting obligations on rich countries.
The legal architecture of a $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund will also be established to finance climate change adaptation for developing countries.
Ultimately, financing the GCF will become the negotiating chip for rich countries to buy off support from poorer ones.
Where the GCF's money is coming from remains unclear.
If financing is direct, Australia's contribution is expected to be between $2bn and $3bn a year.
The option to finance the GCF from an international shipping and airline tax that disproportionately hits geographically isolated, trade dependent nations (read Australia) remains.
The division and hostility that exists around negotiating a document to progress negotiations doesn't indicate positive outcomes in future talks.
Structurally, negotiations remain difficult because they are required to be progressed on an equity-based approach where developed countries take on more obligations, and developing countries fewer obligations despite being the major source of emissions growth.
The extent of the wrangling about whether the world negotiates a new treaty probably doesn't make much sense from the outside.
But there are good reasons for division.
Any agreement is about cutting global greenhouse emissions levels. But it will also be about if, and how, the world agrees to radically restructure the global economy.
Cutting emissions means countries have to take on higher costs bases. All countries will have to rededicate resources from economic development to the high cost of emissions reduction, slowing growth.
Because most of Australia's emissions profile comes from cheap coal-based electricity, the cost gap to alternatives is high. Europe desperately wants other countries to impose equivalent costs that they've shackled their economy with through the introduction of an emissions trading scheme.
But proportionate to the size of the economy it's less burdensome than for developing countries.
In India, the bulk of their population has never turned on a light switch. Before agreeing to the deal Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan argued India wouldn't ''write a blank cheque and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians''.
Any future treaty can make the difference between whether Indians living in electricity-free shanty towns ever enjoy the modern conveniences we take for granted.
The conference isn't a victory for global emissions reduction. It's a victory of intent.
It still leaves Australia and its carbon tax plan well ahead of global action.
The entire economic case for the scheme was built on the premise that other countries would impose equivalent carbon prices, which would have reduced the acute economic pain inflicted on the Australian economy.
The Durban Platform does not rectify that.
It means Australia's carbon tax, starting on July 1 next year, will be implemented years before we know whether a successful international agreement can be struck and other countries take action.
As a result, the Durban Platform perpetuates the problems with Australia's carbon pricing scheme.
It is politically unsustainable to increase a carbon price without a comprehensive international agreement and a price in other countries.
With no certainty about equivalent action in other countries, the ''certainty'' the government claims will be provided by the Australian price remains elusive.
The Treasury modelling's carbon tax impact scenario is at odds with reality.
That leaves the Durban Platform as a breath of life for the Gillard government and their carbon price. But it's a long way from the outcome Australians need if they're going to shoulder the world's largest carbon tax.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment