The Durban Call for Action on Climate Change

Assessing the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference

By Jochen Hauff
Director, Renewable Energy and Sustainability
December 2011

By the end of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, international negotiators were ready to adjourn. There was little consensus about the outcome—the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action—of the marathon negotiating sessions. Some saw it as a “breakthrough” and “watershed moment”; others said it was a “disappointment” that brought “meager results.”

The following offers a conference perspective—on what was achieved, what fell short, and what the implications are for the rest of the world.

Achievements and Shortfalls

The conference’s most notable achievement was that all countries—including the United States, China, and India—agreed to enter a negotiation process toward legally binding greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets.¹ This is, indeed, a breakthrough in the 20-year history of international environmental negotiations, dating to the Rio Summit in 1992. The Platform keeps open the possibility that a truly global, legally binding approach, including both industrialized and developing countries, can be forged to address global climate change.

Participants also agreed on a clear roadmap for continued negotiations, with stipulations that settle on global targets by 2015, and enter into force upon national ratification by 2020. In the meantime, the Kyoto Protocol’s validity was extended at least until 2017, safeguarding Kyoto flexibility mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism.

Another step forward was the decision to launch the Green Climate Fund, a proposed $100 billion per year investment in mitigating and adapting to climate change. To put this in perspective, global investments in clean energy in 2010 were roughly $200 billion. Furthermore, the fund would significantly boost the share of clean energy investments in developing countries, which currently receive only a fraction of global investments.

While these represent advances, they are still not tangible results. In all of these areas, it could be many years before any agreements are made, ratified, and implemented. This lack of immediacy is perhaps the biggest deficiency emerging from Durban. Climate change will not wait for leaders to forge and ratify complex international agreements. Scientists say that global emissions must stabilize by 2015 and decrease by 2020 in order to limit global warming to the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) target agreed upon in Copenhagen in 2009. Experts believe that, following only now-existing commitments, the global mean temperature will increase by 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit). Durban may prove to be “too little too late,” and catastrophic levels of climate change may become unavoidable soon.

Also, the willingness to negotiate a binding deal does not mean that a deal will actually be adopted in 2015, let alone ratified by 2020. Canada’s announcement to drop out of the Kyoto Protocol (on December 12, a day after the conference ended) demonstrates that agreement will be difficult to achieve as national interests dominate decision making. While the Durban Platform ensures that talks will continue, it provides no certainty that they will produce results.

The Implications

Durban confirms that the political process will provide neither speed nor certainty that leaders will mitigate catastrophic levels of climate change in due time. The results are nothing less than a call to action for the rest of us—we “non-parties” of consumers, corporations, and cities—not at the Durban negotiating table. Also, the gulf between those who fall with this “us” category may be equally wide and require a similar amount of time to bridge. Because the risk of climate change is real, the world must find appropriate measures to mitigate it. Fortunately, there are plenty of promising developments already under way:

• Consumers are better informed than ever before. Today’s consumer can accelerate product innovation by opting for more sustainable products or by refusing to buy from non-sustainable companies. Combining this “customer energy” with awareness of the sustainability challenges politics fails to address can have a significant impact on climate change. Armed with knowledge of products’ carbon footprint and aware of the options to reduce or offset them, consumers become active agents in protecting the planet—effective immediately.
• More corporations understand that sustainability and climate change-related issues are among their top priorities to address strategically and communicate actively. More than 5,500 international corporations today have a corporate sustainability or corporate social responsibility report in place, up from 2,500 five years ago. Indeed, 90 percent of top-ranking, publicly traded companies reported their CSR performance in 2010.² Sustainability-related key performance indicators, governance structures, and processes are integral to organizational structures, with most companies actively managing and reporting GHG emissions. Also, thanks to the Durban results, there will be more discussions about how restrictive GHG reduction policies will impact corporations globally. This supports the rationale that corporate GHG policies are not merely “nice to have” but, increasingly, are a necessity. However, compliance is not the only factor spurring corporate action—customers are making their desires known. In the consumer goods sector, for example, carbon and energy-related sustainability commitments are a significant trend among leading players worldwide, even though most are not directly subject to carbon regulations. The automakers are developing electric vehicle concepts, with their inherent efficiency gains and the possibility to switch to “green” energy, because customers are expected to demand these in the future. Utilities are embracing the notion that renewable energies, backed by a strong public and political will, can in fact replace significant levels of fossil-fired capacity. Renewables will also play a larger role for final energy consumers distributed energy systems become competitive.
• Home to half of the world’s population, cities will have a bigger impact on climate change. Cities are where many innovative efficiency concepts will emerge—from energy-positive buildings to electric transportation to advanced water conservation efforts. Also, cities, more than nations, compete against each other and are increasingly seeking to stand out. Stockholm and Hamburg, for example, won the European Commission’s “Green Capital” award, Chicago defined a Climate Change Action Plan, and New York City is promoting its “GreenNYC” initiatives. Mayors and administrators consider sustainability valuable commodity when advertising their cities—not only as desirable places to live but also as productive, innovative environments for corporations to find talent, partners, and customers. Additionally, new city concepts such as Masdar in Abu Dhabi and Tianjin Eco-city in China illustrate the potential of cities old and new to compete with other cities in implementing climate protection.

Not a Defeat

The Durban results can be interpreted as an urgent call for action for those concerned about climate change—rather than a defeat. The positive news is that a political process will continue and provide impetus to the debate. At the same time, it is clear that politically negotiated treaties hold little hope for preventing a potentially catastrophic increase in climate change. Instead, consumers, corporations, and cities can—and must—use existing means at their disposal to deliver results quickly and with certainty.

The author wishes to thank Matthias Kannegiesser for his help with this commentary.

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of A.T. Kearney or the Global Policy Business Policy Council. The views are not meant to suggest specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of opinion.

¹ The conference was officially the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the 7th Session of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol.
² See the statistics section at www.corporateregister.com.