On the eve of the COP 24 in Poland, the Brookings institution, one of the leading independent policy think tanks, has published the short report “Paris Agreement and its future”, where identified the significance of the Paris Climate Accord and addressed the main points of the critics made against it, namely non-binding targets.
Critics who dismiss Paris because of the non-binding targets not only misunderstand what was possible, but also miss a larger point about the Paris idea, -says the Report. The critics miss the core point that Paris made a different bet, namely, that the rising force of norms and expectations will make climate action important to global standing and reputation and will goad and prod countries to do better and do more. Norms and expectations might sound weaker than binding targets, but, in reality, such targets would almost surely depress ambition, since many countries would opt for lower targets out of fear of the consequences of coming up short.
Norms and expectations might sound weaker than binding targets, but, in reality, such targets would almost surely depress ambition, since many countries would opt for lower targets out of fear of the consequences of coming up short.
Moreover, expectations can play an important role in areas where rigid rules will not work. For example, given the opposition of many powerful and influential developing countries, it is not possible at this time to create formal subcategories of developing countries with different requirements for mitigation, transparency, or accounting. Yet, it is difficult to construct an effective agreement unless countries of very different capabilities—for example, industrializing, emerging economies on the one hand and Least Developed Countries or small islands on the other—can at least be expected to act in different ways. So, a bet on the premise of rising norms and expectations is at the heart of the Paris Agreement.
The Report underscores the particularities and the significance of the Paris Agreement, that has succeeded by changing the paradigm of climate diplomacy: it abandoned the old Kyoto model of top-down negotiated emission targets and instead adopted a bottom-up structure for mitigation or nationally determined contributions (NDCs), balanced by a number of the top-down provisions related to accountability. The Report briefly looks at the prospects of Paris Agreement at post-rule book and after-math of COP24 and calls upon greater cooperation between developed and developng countries.
