Less rigid rules key to success in Paris global climate change summit, Kerr says

Friday 20th November 2015

The use of non-binding national commitments to act on climate change is the most "exciting" and necessary result required from next month's global climate change summit, in Paris, says climate change policy expert Suzi Kerr.

A senior fellow at the Motu economic and public policy research institute, Kerr told a Science Media Centre briefing that the New Zealand-initiated concept of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) was the key to ensuring much wider international participation in climate change action than the more rules-bound Kyoto Protocol, which expired in 2012 and covered only a group of developed countries, mainly in Europe and including New Zealand.

Her comments were echoed by Dave Frame, director of Victoria University's Climate Change Research Institute, who said the most important outcome from the Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 summit would be "widening participation" in the global response to climate change.

"In the Kyoto round, there was an attempt to have quite stringent mitigation policy but it wasn't very broad participation," he said. It was important not to "tightly manage one part of pollution but not the rest of it" as activity would shift to avoid the costs of regulation and defeat the need to put the global economy on a path to zero net carbon emissions by the end of the century.

"You probably also weaken the will of the people with the stringent regulations, compared to those outside the tent," he said.

The principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" for action on climate change was vital to allow countries to take actions that were tailored to their particular circumstances.

While some would argue that binding international agreements were better than voluntary agreements, "people are sometimes naive about international environmental law in this context," said Frame. "It's not clear how meaningful it is."

Kerr said the advent of INDCs was creating interest among countries that had previously taken no interest in tailored solutions.

She reported increased appetite from countries in Latin America, many of which have similar emissions profiles to New Zealand's with high, hard-to-stop agricultural emissions but fewer carbon dioxide mitigation options than many countries because of their high levels of renewable electricity.

As a leading member of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions, New Zealand had a "competitive advantage" in this area to contribute to solving the global climate change challenge.

Kerr said forestry plantings still had the potential to make a major contribution to meeting New Zealand's contribution to a net zero emissions world, but only if planters had confidence that a carbon price of perhaps $15 a tonne was guaranteed, and as long as market mechanisms didn't encourage mass tree felling if carbon prices fell too far, since that would worsen emissions.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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