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Article Excerpt
Halfway through the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a major earthquake shook Bali. Perhaps it was a sign of what was to come. By the close of the conference a week later, the earth's geopolitical axis had shifted slightly. The Bush administration discovered that despite the United States' unparalleled military and economic power, its legitimacy and capacity as a global hegemon had been constrained by the force of international censure. This revelation, when it came, surprised US negotiators and others as well.
Held in the Balinese resort village of Nusa Dua, COP 13 ran from 3-15 December 2007. It included nine days of meetings of scientific and expert groups, followed by four days of 'high-level' ministerial talks leading to its conclusion. It was attended by some 10,800 participants, including 6 heads of state, 3,500 government officials from 187 nations, 5,800 registered participants from the United Nations, and environmental, development, business and other NGOs, together with some 1,500 members of the media.
The conference followed a tightly intertwined dual track including the work of COP 13 and, within this, a 'second' conference, known as the Third Conference of the Parties serving as a Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 3). The latter formally excluded nonratifying parties, such as the United States.
The COP's main task was to define the path by which a post-2012 climate regime could be established--including emissions reduction targets to succeed those of the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period (2008-2012). Either the Convention's parties would agree to a process to conclude by 2009 (in time to establish targets that would enter into force by the second commitment period, 2013-2020) or the underlying architecture of the Protocol, and perhaps the climate treaty itself, would be jeopardised.
The Elephant in the Room--the United States at Bali
Although the Kyoto Protocol was supported by the Clinton-Gore administration when it was agreed in 1997, its targets were repudiated by a hostile Republican Congress. Shortly after his election, in 2001, President Bush similarly rejected the Protocol. His administration then repeatedly sought to destroy it both by refusing ratification and by discouraging other states from doing so.
Even after the Protocol finally came into force in 2005, the Bush administration continued to thwart progress towards the negotiation of new global emissions targets and other instruments relevant to the 'post' Kyoto period. It rejected emissions reduction targets, instead favouring (weak) energy-intensity targets both domestically and internationally, arguing that mandatory emissions reduction targets for developed countries were unfair if other major developing nation emitters, like China and India, remained unburdened.
At earlier COPs, participation by the United States in preliminary negotiations around the content of a post-2012 agreement had been strongly resisted by the European Union and by green NGOs. Many continued to believe that the Bush administration was prepared to stall or wreck the Bali Action Plan, just as it had successfully obstructed and undermined the work of previous meetings.
Yet the United States remained the 'elephant in the room', as Al Gore called it. Because of the importance of the United States as the planet's second largest aggregate emitter (after China), some believed the effectiveness of an agreement about the development of future targets would be reduced without immediate US support. And so, at Bali, a serious effort was made by the European Union and other parties to draw it back into the negotiating fold, despite the Bush administration's unrelenting intransigence. The hope was that, come 2009, the new US administration--Democrat or Republican--would be more progressive.
Even given the problems potentially caused by US...
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