{"id":6353,"date":"2015-06-18T05:57:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T05:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6353"},"modified":"2015-06-18T05:57:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T05:57:42","slug":"paris-un-conference-text-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/06\/18\/paris-un-conference-text-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris UN conference text update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noted<\/a> back in February\u00a0that UN negotiators had produced \"an early draft\" of the text for the\u00a0climate deal in Paris next December. \u00a0Their initial\u00a0text had been\u00a038 pages long, but negotiators managed to whittle it down to 86 pages to make sure the document reflected every country's wishes.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a> reported at the end of last week that further progress has been made. \u00a0It noted:<\/p>\n

\"Slow progress was made until the final hours, as nations wrangled over the wording of an 89 page draft text, intending to cut it down to a more manageable size. After two weeks, the text had been cut by just four pages to\u00a085.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somehow, I had managed to miss the fact that the 86 page draft (referred to above) had become an 89 page one. \u00a0But, that's ok because it's now 85. \u00a0In this way progress is made. One page fewer in 4 months. \u00a0Happily,\u00a0\u00a0there was a last-minute development\u00a0that observers hope will put the talks back on track. \u00a0Countries have agreed that the co-chairs of the negotiations should be allowed to make their own alterations to the text, and present it to all countries for approval, probably in late July. \u00a0The Guardian notes that \"this should be a quicker process, though there is no guarantee that countries will not try to re-draw the new draft when it becomes available.\" \u00a0Indeed.<\/p>\n

The piece does provide insight into the sort of arcane discussions that go on. \u00a0Here's the G again about what hangs on the little word \"action\":<\/p>\n

At one point, the discussion was divided over whether to use the terms \u201cdifferentiated commitments\/contributions\u201d, referring to targets on cutting emissions, or the term \u201ccommitments\/contributions\/action\u201d. The former was preferred by China, the latter by the US. \u00a0The distinction may seem trivial, but it points to some of the entrenched attitudes that have dogged the talks over more than two decades.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDifferentiated\u201d comes from a term used in the original UN treaties, as \u201ccommon but differentiated responsibilities\u201d was used as the way of encoding the fact that all countries, developed and developing, have an interest in alleviating climate change, but that their responsibilities varied based on historical emissions and economic development.<\/em><\/p>\n

China is adamant that the phrase, known as CBDR in the UN jargon, is core to any existing or potential new agreement, but the US \u2013 though it accepts the principle \u2013 is wary of the phrase because it believes it has been used in the past to draw a clear dividing line between developed and developing countries. These categories are no longer so clear-cut, according to the US, because of the rapid progress of emerging economies. China, for instance, is now the world\u2019s biggest emitter and second biggest economic power.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How many pages will it be in the end? \u00a0Who knows; but it's what they say that matters, and whether anyone will take much notice. \u00a0As Tom Burke<\/a>,\u00a0environmental advisor to Shell, Rio Tinto and Unilever, said about a related issue:<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone gets over focused on what the text of the treaty is. What really matters is what gets done in the real economy and the extent that the players in the real economy react to this signal.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noted back in February\u00a0that UN negotiators had produced \"an early draft\" of the text for the\u00a0climate deal in Paris next December. \u00a0Their initial\u00a0text had been\u00a038 pages long, but negotiators managed to whittle it down to 86 pages to make...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}