Toward a Super-COP? Timing, Temporality, and Rethinking World Climate Governance

Abstract

The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Glasgow in November 2021, resulted in significant intergovernmental agreements, including the Glasgow Climate Pact, the completion of the Paris rulebook, and several informal deals. While Glasgow saw progress, it fell short of many observers’ expectations (see, e.g., Nature2021; Climate Action Tracker 2021). Pointing not to what was possible politically but to what was necessary scientifically, these observers highlight a significant “ambition gap” in measures needed to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C of warming.While a “firm step forward,” observes former UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres (2021), “we actually needed a sprint.” How can the world achieve greater ambition on climate? The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; 2021, 12) maintains that efforts to keep 1.5°C warming within reach, the chief aim of the international process, will need to concentrate on the coming decade. Drawing on new research on timing and temporality in world politics, this article shows that current modes of climate governance incentivize the type of incrementalism seen at COP26. In view of high levels of interdependence among states, governments seek to leverage each successive national commitment to maximize others’ emissions reduction pledges. Here questions of timing are fundamental. By making explicit the distinct temporal logic at play, we can better understand the nature of the collective action problem facing states.What is needed is a system that better incentivizes states to approach their true bottom lines in talks and to bargain integratively, thereby aligning climate negotiations with states’ true national interests. The approach advocated in this article is the organization of an extraordinary UNFCCC meeting, a “super-COP.” This meeting would eclipse the existing intergovernmental process, providing states with a conspicuous, unique time frame around which expectations can converge. It should be cohosted by the United States and China. In addition to policy-relevant conclusions, the article sheds light on issues of temporal coordination in climate politics and warns against the desire among some prominent actors to annualize turns of the Paris “ratchet” mechanism.Following a summer of extreme weather in 2021, including wildfires in North America and flooding in Europe and China, there was a growing sense of necessity concerning COP26. Anticipation was strengthened by the release of the first chapter of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, just months before the conference. As these events brought into focus the immediacy of the threat, states were requested to enhance the level of ambition in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.1The meeting resulted in the Glasgow Climate Pact. The pact comprises a range of items, including strengthened measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build resilience, and provide necessary finance. States committed to reducing the gap between existing emissions reduction contributions and what is necessary to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C of warming. Glasgow also provided a platform for informal agreements on coal, methane, transportation, and deforestation. Taken together, these informal agreements will result in a two-gigaton reduction in global emissions. Compared to the estimated four-gigaton reduction achieved in Glasgow through heightened NDCs, these deals will bring significant value if implemented (Climate Action Tracker 2021).All told, the emissions reductions commitments of Glasgow could limit the mean global temperature increase to 2.4°C by century’s end (Climate Action Tracker 2021). The ambitious tone of the Glasgow pact is also encouraging, signaling strengthened political will. Widespread recent commitments to reach net zero, combined with a more singular collective focus on limiting warming to 1.5°C, rather than 2°C, is indicative of progress that, even five years ago, would have seemed wildly optimistic. Yet, it is not enough.In many respects, Glasgow was a perfect storm for climate ambition. It was presided over by an active chair and backstopped by an engaged US administration. The aforementioned extreme weather and IPCC report came as preparations were picking up steam. Though it was not designed to produce another Paris-type agreement, Glasgow likely took the COP process as far as it could go. Future COPs, including the 2022 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, where states are requested to submit still more ambitious NDCs, will have to contend with an international community still feeling the effects of Russian aggression in Ukraine and a desire among some states to focus on consolidating commitments.If countries are to keep warming below 1.5°C, a step change in the level of ambition is required. To achieve this, global CO2 emissions will need to decline by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 (IPCC 2021). Such sharp reductions will require a significant and sudden leap in climate ambition. Nationally, the United States will need to overcome its domestic divisions, China will have to peak its emissions closer to 2025 than 2030, and India will need to move away from coal more rapidly than it has so far committed to doing. States will need to meet and exceed US$ 100 billion in annual financing.2While not impossible, such drastic change is hard to envision through existing processes. The current mode of climate governance, structured heavily around annual COPs, provides regular occasions for states to “ratchet” up their ambition.3 COP26 was the first such occasion. The ratchet is reinforced by quinquennial global stocktakes where governments assess progress in meeting Paris targets. The first global stocktake commenced at COP26 and will conclude at COP28 in 2023. A key outcome of Glasgow was a request that parties revisit their NDCs at COP27 for the 2030 time frame.As crucial as this decision was for the prospect of limiting warming to 1.5°C, there are risks associated with it. Indeed, such a system could reinforce the type of incremental progress seen in Glasgow. At the core of the current system is a strategic interaction among states, particularly large emitters. While the United States has made significant commitments under President Biden, it faces domestic constraints in legislating climate action. With mid-term elections approaching, polarization could intensify. A core impediment to greater domestic consensus, though not the only one, is concern that the necessary restructuring of the US economy will disadvantage it relative to its near-peer geopolitical competitors. Former assistant secretary of state A. Wess Mitchell, for instance, labels Biden’s climate policy “a gift to China.” The United States, he maintains, has made “very real concessions” that could slow economic growth in exchange for Chinese pledges in the “far-off future” (Mitchell 2021). The inability of Western governments to reduce their reliance on Russian oil and gas more swiftly in the wake of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine underlines the domestic political challenges of energy transition.China, the world’s largest emitter, looks skeptically at US pledges. The struggles of the Biden administration to gain support for its Build Back Better legislation, which contained multi-billion-dollar investments in clean energy and tax credits, hobbled US diplomacy in Glasgow. Following its withdrawal and subsequent rejoining of the Paris Agreement, the United States, China maintains, has a credibility problem when demanding greater ambition from others. China, Beijing notes, has delivered on its commitments and has made real gains in green technology.India, for its part, committed in Glasgow to reach net zero by 2070. This commitment, which was widely panned as inadequate for the world’s third largest emitter, was combined with India’s last-minute watering down of language on coal. India’s climate ambition has been pegged and predicated on progress of developed countries on finance and technology. Spotlighting the responsibility of early industrializers for the climate crisis, India has emphasized the need for leadership among those countries as a precondition for action in the developing world.There is thus a high degree of interdependence in the commitments of the world’s largest emitters. The key to bridging the ambition gap is an unraveling of this multiplayer dynamic. All have an interest in achieving this, whether it is avoiding Smog-aggedon in Beijing, preventing nonlinear changes in India’s monsoon season, or limiting the frequency of natural disasters in North America. The risks of triggering destabilizing climate “tipping points” add incentive (Patrick 2022). Opportunities to dominate the future energy transition are another draw.These governments have greater interest in averting climate catastrophe than has been reflected so far in their bargaining positions. US climate envoy John Kerry has described this paralyzing dynamic as a “suicide pact.” This is because the willingness of each to reduce emissions is conditioned heavily on the willingness of others to do so. Indeed, each has an interest in doing as little as it can to reduce emissions, while forcing others to pick up the slack. In this setup, the key aim of each actor is to leverage its emissions reduction commitments to yield maximum countercommitments from others. If an actor can avoid reaching its true bottom line, while forcing others to carry a heavier burden, it preserves maximum flexibility in its green transition and can eat up a larger share of the world’s remaining “carbon budget.” Governments wish to free ride.Research on temporal coordination dilemmas provides new insight into this collective action problem. In a temporal variant of the Negotiator’s Dilemma, I show that even when actors would benefit from value-building, integrative bargaining, they are prevented from doing so by fear of exploitation (Manulak 2022, 22–23; Sebenius 2002, 241). Rather than negotiating in an open fashion, they are incentivized to withhold information until they expect others to bargain openly. Actors must determine when to engage openly and accept risks of exploitation in pursuit of shared interests. Without a clear temporal focus, a suboptimal, risk-dominant equilibrium will persist. At the national level, domestic coalitions remain latent, and national preferences may be left unclarified. Thus temporal coordination dilemmas have important implications for the types of distributive battles at the national level highlighted by Michaël Aklin and Matto Mildenberger (2020).The central aim is to sequence and pace each commitment to motivate others to assume a greater burden. National and international actors that communicate willingness to act decisively risk being exploited for a smaller share of the remaining global carbon budget. In such an iterative bargaining scenario, as annual COPs have become, each side can effectively “pocket” successive pledges and demand more from others in future interactions. This dynamic is especially pronounced among rival states.4 An early substantial commitment can put actors on a track to overcommitment, while others do less. They therefore increase their level of ambition incrementally, seeking to maximize others’ reductions at each interval. This dilemma is deepened by the fact that NDCs are national pledges, rather than mutually agreed international commitments backed by strong enforcement measures. Actors can receive the “sucker” payoff in both the pledging and the implementation phases of mitigation.A move toward integrative bargaining is complicated by ambiguity concerning the true end game in negotiations. The absence of a clear temporal end point, where actors can converge in a coordinated fashion on their true bottom line, brings incoherence to discussions and complicates greatly the sequencing of reciprocal concessions. Caution results, generating incrementalism. States make commitments not just in relation to the current COP but with an eye to future COPs. Actors therefore leave something in the bank, timing each successive commitment to the goal of maximizing reciprocal commitments made by others in future bargaining and ensuring genuine follow-through on commitments made. Although such a system can generate ongoing progress, it is ill suited to the task of motivating the sprint Figueres called for.It is in this context that annual COP meetings and, perhaps even more significantly, the desire among some—including the United Nations (UN) secretary-general (International Institute for Sustainable Development 2021)—to annualize turns of the Paris ratchet mechanism could have undesirable and unanticipated implications. A focus on issues of temporal coordination shows us why. Such a system may generate step-by-step progress, but is unlikely to produce the leap forward required in the next decade.The concept of temporal focal points (TFP) helps to illuminate how actors can reach a temporal convergence of expectations, moving more swiftly toward their bottom lines in talks. TFPs are discrete moments in time defined by their uniqueness and conspicuousness. Potential TFPs must be unique in the sense that no other bargaining window within that sphere of institutional activity can compete with it for the attention of actors (Manulak 2020, 2022). Yearly COPs, particularly with annualized windows for increased commitments, work against this goal.In this, states should seek to eclipse the COP process, providing a clear end point, at least for the foreseeable future, to increase their levels of climate ambition. To the extent that states can commit credibly to convening for the definitive negotiations concerning commitments, the likelihood of nonincremental increases in ambition levels will be bolstered. Actors are more likely to sprint. Such a meeting could take the form of a “super-COP,” of significantly heightened profile and scope than seen so far. A meeting at least of the scale of the 2015 Paris conference is required.TFPs create a point of focus for engagement beyond government bureaus normally engaged in COP. They serve as platforms for greater involvement from nongovernmental, civil society, faith, private-sector, and other intergovernmental actors. COP26 faced limitations in this respect, particularly among the research community (Nature2021). Marshaling something akin to the Groundswell Initiative, led by Tom Rivett-Carnac ahead of the Paris conference, can help to generate the necessary mobilization (Figueres and Rivett-Carnac 2020). A conspicuous, unique time frame triggers the clarification of national preferences and the mobilization of latent coalitions. Such engagement alters the political calculus of national governments, while ensuring transparency and inclusivity. It can thus trigger nonlinear shifts in distributive conflicts within countries.A temporal convergence of expectations around a TFP alters the incentives of parties in two main ways. First, the expectation that a given negotiation constitutes the definitive choice point reduces the need to leave something in the bank for later. The no agreement alternative to a further heightening of ambition is a world with more severe climate impacts, rather than future rounds of bargaining. This enables states to move closer to their bottom lines. Second, since this altered setup confronts all actors equally, incentives to misrepresent are lessened. This eases strategic dilemmas vis-à-vis other large emitters. A credible temporal end game in talks brings coherence to bargaining, allowing sides to sequence their concessions.To foster such engagement, a super-COP would entail an eighteen- to twenty-four-month preparatory process with a dedicated preparatory committee and a special UNFCCC bureau. Such a committee can foster familiarity and build trust in negotiations. Chairs of the intergovernmental process, bolstered by UN officials, should travel to national capitals to brief high-level officials and augment the conference’s profile. UN public diplomacy should focus relentlessly on this conference. There must be a sense of real exceptionality if the super-COP is to serve as a TFP in UN climate politics. Such a singular focus will lead actors to bargain as if major temporal discontinuity looms, seeking to reach agreement in the face of unprecedented attention. Actors could very credibly come to such a COP, if orchestrated effectively, to “save the world” from the most devastating impacts of climate change. The meeting should respond explicitly to gaps identified in the 2023 global stocktake.A super-COP should be cohosted by the United States and China as an “extraordinary” COP within the UNFCCC process. Such leadership from the world’s two largest players is fundamental to overcoming barriers erected by countries that might attempt to hinder it. While challenging politically, particularly in the current context, this partnership would capitalize on mutual interests and provide the foundation for greater climate ambition. It would require these two countries first to overcome their strategic dilemmas on a bilateral basis in a manner reminiscent of the pre-Paris deal between the two countries. Such a move would bring legitimacy, political weight, and considerable impetus to the conference.Through the Paris Agreement, the international community has sought to build support for climate mitigation through bottom-up incrementalism. While this approach has yielded consistent progress, it is doubtful that it can generate the swift action necessary to keep temperatures below 1.5°C of warming. New research on the role of temporal coordination dilemmas illuminates how current modes of governance incentivize incrementalism in climate politics. Convening an extraordinary “super-COP” could provide a conspicuous and unique focus for temporal coordination among large emitters. This could enable the collective “sprint” that the international community needs to heighten climate ambition.