Prospects for a Climate Change Agreement

Joan MacNaughton reviewed the history of international efforts to reach a climate change agreement and looked at the prospects for global agreement in the future.

On prospects for global agreement, she took the view that

• negotiations for a global agreement will continue to be extremely difficult
• the  ‘loss and damage’ issue adds to tensions
• emission reduction pledges are  far short of what is needed for 2 degree  goal
• but many more countries now have mitigation plans,
• and many countries looking at carbon pricing (including Korea, seven pilot schemes in China, California and Kazakhstan)

In  terms of  the overall prospects for global agreement, there were a number of serious issues and a real risk of the 2^o goal becoming unattainable. If it happened at all, then December 2015 in Paris (COP 21) would be a critical event. Prospects were not strong, at least in the absence of either a cataclysmic event or strong political leadership.