Why should we still spend our energy following the UN climate negotiations? Motivations for Durban

While no one expects the upcoming Durban Climate Conference to deliver an international deal that would “solve” the climate crisis, this meeting offers one more opportunity to make progress in the right direction. In the long run, the success or failure of this process does not depend only on the decisions of a few key decision-makers, but also on our collective ability to hold these actors accountable for their (in)actions.

As representatives from 194 governments and thousands NGOs converge in South Africa to take part to a new round of climate negotiations, very few (no one?) expect the meeting to conclude with a deal that would be ambitious enough to match the gravity of the climate crisis. The financial crisis and the short-term economic thinking of our societies make such a result event more unlikely in the current context.

Hence, it seems difficult to understand why activists and NGOs still invest their energy and passion in engaging with these negotiations. I am sure that most of those who have already attended a few of these sessions must have faced the same question: is it still worth to spend time and resources to follow this process despite the low expectations of what could possibly come out of it? Personally, I have certainly faced these doubts many times since I started to follow actively these negotiations three years ago.

Despite this rather uninspiring background, I decided to continue my engagement in these climate talks because I remain convinced that this process is still one of the main keys at our disposal to address climate change.

Firstly, while the complexity of the problem makes it difficult to reach a comprehensive and global agreement, every positive step in the right direction contributes to promoting solutions.

One should not disregard scientific facts and the urgency of the situation. All recent research indicates an extremely tight timeframe for us to adopt a more sustainable path and preserve chances to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change. Our objective should clearly be to work towards solutions and policies that take this assessment into full account. This daunting task should, however, not prevent us from using every opportunity to make incremental steps that will contribute to this final objective. Despite still lacking the fair, ambitious and legally-binding agreement that many expected in Copenhagen, some progress has been done at the UNFCCC in the past months, for instance on the provision of climate finance to support adaptation measures, with many other steps remaining clearly within reach at the Durban conference.

Secondly, while the UNFCCC is no magic wand capable of solving the climate crisis, it can certainly provide support to the actions of other stakeholders.

In the past two years, more individual countries, both developed and developing, have adopted their own comprehensive climate change laws. In addition, a increasing number of cities and regions across the planet is setting their own local climate change policies. Many private firms have also responded to consumer choices by adopting better practices. As the root causes of climate change lie in our way of life, it would be foolish to expect that the solution to this complex challenge should come from 194 ladies and gentlemen (in practice, disproportionably the later category). If we need to acknowledge that the UN climate negotiations wont stop climate change in itself, we should also remain confident that it can certainly build on these positive trends and provide incentives and mechanisms to enable other actors to take stronger actions to address the causes (mitigation) and consequences (adaptation) of climate change.

Thirdly, there is, at this point, no better international forum that can provide an alternative to these talks.

Since the failure of the Copenhagen conference, several disillusioned observers have expressed their skepticism on the capacity of the UNFCCC to deliver any major achievement and recommended the use of other channels for climate diplomacy. This judgment however fails to recognize that these negotiations are the only international process, which is based (to some extent) on inclusiveness and transparency. The countries most vulnerable to climate change are also those with the least political influence. Right now, there is simply no other international forum that would allow for their perspectives and interests to be taken into consideration to the same extent that those of most powerful players. Also, and while the participation of civil society could still be enhanced, the UN climate talks are more transparent than many other international meetings such as the Major Economy Forum or the G20 summits.

Despite current restrictions on its participation to the process, I strongly believe that civil society is also responsible for the success or failure of the climate negotiations.

My personal reading of the climate talks is that the main issue is not the number or diversity of actors at the negotiating table. What prevents major progress from materializing is the ability of countries to hide their own lack of leadership behind the inaction of others. While governments are responsible for the (lack of) progress made in these UN processes, it is our collective role to ensure that we hold our political representatives accountable for the position that they hold at such meetings. Through grassroots mobilization or elections, we have the tools at our disposal to make sure that our governmental delegations would not want to come back from Durban or other UNFCCC sessions without achieving progress.