DHAKA: The second week of November has been no less than a ‘roller coaster ride’ for global climate change action. The month kicked off on a high note with Paris Agreement coming into force on last Friday, just two days prior to the 22nd session of the Conference of Parties (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech setting the floor for ‘enhanced pre-2020 action’ to build a well-founded strategy for post-2020 climate actions to pursue efforts to limit global temperature rise beyond 1.5°C.
This year’s COP is anticipated to be a significant one in the history of UN Climate Talks in terms of ‘implementation’ -- serving as the first session of meeting among the parties to the conference under the UNFCCC. The elevated expectation among climate negotiators and expert met with a ‘tremor’ when the world’s second biggest greenhouse gas emitter and the sole superpower, the USA, voted a ‘climate change denier’ as their President for the next four years.
According to the Guardian, International environmental groups at UN Negotiations in Morocco have cited Trump’s presidency as an indication of a ‘catastrophe’, given Trump acts on his campaign pledges to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.
This fear of a possible derailment from the momentum that started in Paris last year has put the climate envoys in Marrakech into a tight spot.
A CBC News report said that under President Barack Obama climate change has been given much precedence, followed by playing a major role in ‘crafting’ the Paris Agreement. This September, the USA fast track ratification of the Paris Agreement has been welcomed by the world climate envoys. Nevertheless, the victory of Donald Trump has shaken the hope built by President Obama in last one year to make Paris deal a success.
The anxiety that’s brewing in COP22 and across the civil society group cannot be ruled out completely, given Trump’s tweets and campaign slogans that have been surrounding the media for last few months, calling global warming as an “expensive hoax” “created by and for China”.
In NBC’s May issue they published, during a campaign rally in North Dakota Trump said, “We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement -- unbelievable -- and stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”
A lot of contingency on Trump Presidency’s conduct on Paris Agreement is going on in relation to how this unforeseen win of a climate change disbeliever will affect the “climate action” agenda in Marrakech and beyond. A recent news post from Marrakech articulates, “There is no question the US election presents “real political risks to the global climate efforts”, said Mohamed Adow, a climate policy expert at Christian Aid. So, the burning question at the moment striking in our mind is whether Trump’s presidency will thwart the most widely adopted agreement or not.
As a matter of fact the future of the Paris Agreement, should a Republican President is elected after the incumbent President Barack Obama, was well-thought of. The fact that the Paris Agreement is called an ‘Agreement’ and not a ‘Treaty’ is one of the reasons why Trump presidency cannot just ‘cancel’ the deal right after taking position in the White House next January.
Josh Busby in his report “The Paris Agreement: When is a treaty not a treaty?” reveals that the Paris Agreement is not a treaty under Article II of the USA constitution which allowed the Obama administration to submit a presidential statement or executive order while signing the agreement rather than going through the Senate for advice and consent to ratify the Paris Agreement as is required for treaties falling under Article II of the constitution.
Considering the article, we could say, in order to cancel the agreement, Trump has to ‘actively repudiate’ Obama’s signature. Luckily, the agreement’s coming into force on last Friday, made it unattainable for Trump presidency to scupper the agreement anytime soon.
According to Article 28 of the agreement, an official withdrawal from Paris Agreement cannot be made for three years as soon as it goes into effect and once the “withdrawal notification” is submitted to the depositary (the UN Secretary General) the cancellation takes one more year to be effective. Daniel Bodansky, a scholar of international environmental law at Arizona State University and a former attorney at the State Department said that if the agreement goes into force under Obama presidency, “then the next president could not withdraw until sometime in 2019, and the withdrawal would not be effective until sometime in 2020.”
In case, the Republican President wants to disavow the agreement sooner, he has to withdraw US from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992 as mentioned under Paragraph 3 of Article 28. The cancellation will then be active in a year at some time in 2018.
Now, what happens if Trump persists in his election slogans and takes the belligerent route to cut ties with the Paris Agreement?
In a report by Elliot Diringer, executive vice-president of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) said, “Ditching the Paris accord would almost certainly trigger a major diplomatic backlash.” Adding to this he mentioned, “To renounce it would undermine US credibility and influence abroad.”
George W. Bush abolished the Kyoto Protocol on global warming which was signed by the US in 1998 right after becoming president in 2001. Bush presidency thus endured massive disgrace for taking a negative role in sinking an international climate treaty. If Trump pursues the trail Bush left behind, this time around the consequences will be worse than before. A Huffington Post article stated that there is a “major difference” between the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol. While Paris Agreement is a concerted effort to cut emissions with support from developed nations for the least developed and developing nations, the Kyoto Protocol asked for the developed countries to reduce emissions from greenhouse gases. Moreover, the Kyoto Protocol had an exemption on 100 polluting countries comprising India and China, the two big greenhouse gas emitters. The silver lining to the ongoing tension regarding the Paris Agreement is that all the giant emitters including China, India and the European Union are part of this movement towards a renewable world.
Abandoning the agreement is also unfeasible for the President-elect in terms of international trade between the USA and rest of the world. A business magnet like him would definitely give much thought before jeopardizing trade relationship with its major trade partners -- the European Union, China, India, Canada, Germany and others, who are actively supporting the global goal of reducing temperature rise through more investment in renewable energy.
According to Energy Transition report, Germany has been recently enlisted itself as one of the countries to have generated 100 percent of its power from renewable sources.
Even for a climate change skeptic like Trump it will not be a smart move to violate global climate efforts and build walls from the rest of the world; making the US an “insurgent nation” from its current efforts to play an exemplary role in lowering the emission.
If by any chance the President-elect chooses to discard the Paris Agreement, we should not let it shift our attention from how we can make COP22 a success to get the momentum achieved in Paris last year going.
The universal agreement that is binding us altogether is less likely to be blown off because of one man’s stand against a global need. Thus, it is rightly said by Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid’s international climate lead spokesman, in Guardian: “The global transition to a zero-carbon economy will not be held up by one man. The rest of the world will not risk a global climate catastrophe because of one man’s opposition.”
Writer Shaila Mahmud works in the field of climate change and development
BDST: 1609 HRS, NOV 14, 2016
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