This Week in Climate - Dec 15, 2014

The UN Climate Summit in Lima has been reluctantly considered a success in preparing the world for a global climate action plan to be signed next year in Paris. Despite the recent symbolic accord between the US and China to cut future emissions, developing nations such as China, Saudi Arabia, India, and Brazil took a hard-line stance on the issue of financial climate assistance. A unified front of developing nations successfully maintained language differentiating their role in causing climate change and limiting the burden they will bear in the final agreement. Although this language helped get everyone on board and paves the way for countries to begin making concrete pledges on emissions cuts to be submitted in May of 2015, this stipulation could excuses less ambitious pledges.

Discussions at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru hit familiar hurdles as developing nations demanded increased funding to combat climate change. Developing countries adhere to the argument that the developed world needs to pay more as it is most responsible for historic CO2 emissions that cause climate change. In contrast, the developed world says it is time for up-and-coming economies to begin doing their part in cutting emissions. The developing world was exempt from making emissions cuts in the Kyoto Protocol, but will be asked to share the burden in its successor agreement.

In addition to being less responsible for causing climate change, poorer nations are also generally at greater risk from the impacts of climate change due to their location and lack of resources and resilient infrastructure. In a step towards compromise, wealthy countries have already contributed $10 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which is scheduled to reach $100 billion annually by 2020 to be distributed among developing nations to support concrete climate change mitigation initiatives. Developing nations question the likelihood of reaching this goal and whether it constitutes sufficient financial support to offset the contribution of historical western emissions to climate change.

While the outcome from the Lima negotiations is not ideal, the agreement sets the stage for countries to submit emissions reductions targets ahead of the final negotiations in Paris. The remaining tough questions will ultimately need to be answered, and will decide the success or failure of a global climate change accord.

Read the full blog post on our website: Lima's Tragedy of the Climate Change Commons