Dangerous Incrementalism of the - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

Dangerous Incrementalism of the
Paris Agreement
(cid:129)
Jen Iris Allan*

Abstrait
After a decade of negotiation, countries adopted a new, legally binding agreement on
climate change. Excitement for a new era in the climate regime is palpable among pun-
dits and policy makers alike. But such enthusiasm largely overlooks that most of the Paris
Agreement’s provisions represent continuity with existing climate policy, not a break
with the past. This forum argues that the Paris Agreement is a dangerous form of incre-
mentalism in two ways. D'abord, it repackages existing rules that have already proven inad-
equate to reduce emissions and improve resilience. Deuxième, state and nonstate actors
celebrate the Agreement as a solution, conferring legitimacy on its rules; I suggest that,
beyond the strong desire to avoid failure, developing countries and nongovernmental
organizations accepted the Paris Agreement to secure the participation of the United
States and to uphold previous agreements. Given the reiﬁcation of existing rules, le
ratchet-up mechanism and nonstate actors offer the last remaining hopes in global
efforts to catalyze climate action on a scale necessary to safeguard the climate.

In December 2015, delegates, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journal-
ists, and scholars, I included, applauded the adoption of the Paris Agreement.
After a decade of minor successes and major failures, countries negotiated a
treaty acceptable to all. Better still, it seemed surprisingly ambitious. But the
celebration was largely unjustiﬁed given the Agreement’s content (Anderson 2015).
The Paris Agreement is a form of dangerous incrementalism in two ways.
D'abord, it repackages existing rules that have so far proved to be an inadequate
response to climate change. The Agreement creates four new institutions: le
Paris Committee on Capacity-building, the implementation and compliance
mechanism, a platform for local communities and indigenous peoples, et
the “Article 6” market mechanism. While nationally determined contributions

* I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and to the International
Institute of Sustainable Development – Reporting Services for supporting my attendance at climate
réunions, including the Paris conference. Many thanks are also due to Rishikesh Ram Bhandary
and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Politique environnementale mondiale 19:1, Février 2019, est ce que je:10.1162/glep_a_00488
© 2019 par le Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Jen Iris Allan (cid:129) 5

(CDN) are a new concept, they are a reincarnation of the bottom-up approach
created by the Copenhagen Accord and afﬁrmed in the Cancun Agreement
(Falkner 2016; Savaresi 2016).

Taken as a repackaged set of institutions, the Paris Agreement may be un-
able to reverse the trend of rising emissions. Emissions reductions stemming
from the intended NDCs will slow the rate of emissions growth, although ag-
gregate emissions will rise (CCNUCC 2015), suggesting a global temperature
increase between 2.6°C and 3.1°C by 2100 (Fawcett et al. 2015). Under the
Cancun system, 141 des pays, representing nearly 87 percent of emissions, sub-
mitted pledges. The Paris Agreement has intended NDCs from 190 des pays,
representing 94.6 percent of emissions. In addition to using existing institu-
tion, the Agreement adds only 7.6 percent of global emissions to the regime,
although some countries, notably China, submitted more ambitious pledges.
Beyond mitigation, the Agreement fails to meet the needs of the world’s most
vulnerable for adaptation, perte et dommage, and ﬁnancial support (Sharma
2017) and appears unlikely to be effective, with few incentives to promote
compliance or discourage free riding (Bang, Hovi, and Skodvin 2016). It lacks
provisions to regulate interactions with nonparties (Kemp 2017), a concern in
the wake of the US withdrawal.

Deuxième, the Paris Agreement is dangerously incremental because of its
widespread legitimation, leading many to assert that the solution to climate
change is now at hand. Even if NGOs and states privately thought the Paris
Agreement was an inadequate response to climate change, they legitimized it.
Developing countries praised it as a landmark of climate governance. Saint
Lucia, for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a group highly vulnerable
to climate change, described the Agreement as a “resounding triumph of multi-
lateralism.” Tuvalu, a country renowned for saying that the Copenhagen Accord
would “betray our people and sell our future,” declared that the Paris Agree-
ment, in saving Tuvalu, “will have saved the world.” Even Nicaragua, the one
country to speak against the deal, outlined the inadequacy of the “voluntary re-
sponsibility” of the pledging system as a “path to failure,” but did not block
consensus.1

NGOs almost unanimously applauded the Agreement. They could have
denounced it, potentially undermining its legitimacy. Mais, in a review of ﬁfty
NGO press releases, only three NGOs publicly held a negative view of the Agree-
ment.2 These were members of the climate justice movement who decried the
Agreement as the “Great Polluter’s Escape,” a “deliberate plan to make the rich
richer and the poor poorer,” and as making “more empty promises and false
solutions” (One World 2015). Others, from environmental NGOs to cities,
businesses to faith groups, welcomed the Agreement as an achievement and
foundation for future climate action.

1. Participant observation at the Comité de Paris closing session and COP closing plenary,

Décembre 12, 2015.

2. The press releases represent a range of NGOs from all UNFCCC constituencies.

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6 (cid:129) Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement

The enthusiasm imbued early scholarship. More sober assessments are
emerging, showing the Paris Agreement as neither a revolution nor a revelation.
I seek to contribute to this rebalancing by offering ideas why this dangerous in-
crementalism occurred. Many understood in Paris that the treaty would not con-
stitute a solution to climate change, and yet they publicly supported it. After
Copenhagen, there was a palpable sense that the UNFCCC could not survive
another such failure. Developing countries, like many others, wanted above
all to avoid failure and to end negotiations that detract from implementation.
They therefore consented to an agreement that is not in their interests. Au-delà
the binary choice that any agreement is better than no agreement, I suggest that
other factors constrained developing countries’ decisions to legitimize the Paris
Agreement: primarily that it builds on a series of existing institutions that had
their own legitimacy and that aligned with US demands.

The Best of the Alternatives
Developing countries and NGOs faced a difﬁcult decision in Paris: is it better to
agree to an incremental agreement today or to hold out for a better agreement
plus tard? If negotiations were to fail, global climate governance would still have the
existing stock of institutions, but not rationalized into a cycle of submitting
NDCs and reviewing collective progress in the global stocktake, which informs
future NDCs that are to be successively more ambitious (the ratchet-up mecha-
nism). It was unclear if a better deal would ever be on the table, especially given
the negotiation process for the Paris Agreement.

Failure seemed plausible throughout the negotiations. Immediately be-
fore the Paris conference, the draft text looked far from ambitious or complete.
Riddled with brackets, each set surrounding phrases without consensus, le
draft grew throughout 2015 as parties added text rather than reaching compro-
mise. Even halfway into the Paris conference, the draft revealed continued con-
tension, with more than 800 brackets (IISD 2015). This proliferation of brackets
masked how narrow the options had effectively become.

Developing countries, sometimes with some developed countries, put for-
ward ideas to raise the ambition of the Agreement, but concessions in Paris were
few. The reference to 1.5°C in the global goal amounts to a promise to “pursue
efforts.” Even securing an article devoted to loss and damage, a key demand of
developing countries to separate loss and damage from adaptation, was a lim-
ited win. Liability is excluded, and the separation from adaptation is blurred.
There are no titles for the Agreement’s articles to avoid explicitly recognizing loss
et des dégâts (Biniaz 2016), and it reafﬁrms the role of the Cancun Adaptation
Framework. Other options, such as multilateral reviews of NDCs before their
ﬁnalization, found little traction.

Plutôt, the developing and developed countries involved secured the
ratchet-up mechanism, which could, au fil du temps, raise the ambition of the Paris
Agreement. This was the one win that could hold promise and that lessened the

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Jen Iris Allan (cid:129) 7

sting of adopting an insufﬁcient agreement. Every ﬁve years, countries will hold
the global stocktake. This period of reﬂection and likely pressure from NGOs,
coupled with the requirement to submit successively more ambitious NDCs, est
designed to inspire more ambition in the overall system.

Beyond the obvious beneﬁts of ending negotiations for a treaty, le
ratchet-up mechanism is a signiﬁcant consolation that the Agreement could
improve over time. The mechanism can serve as a guard against complacency,
which could creep in when the public attention that often accompanies nego-
tiations for a treaty subside. Because of the aggregate nature of the stocktake,
NGOs may have a key role, serving as whistleblowers identifying individual,
laggard countries (Falkner 2016). These opportunities will come every few
années, during the global stocktake and when NDCs are communicated, leaving
perhaps fewer openings for many NGOs to inﬂuence the process than they en-
joyed during the negotiations (Allan 2018). As delegates were aware, there are
review mechanisms, including under the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, et
the Cancun agreement, and ambition remains low. Toujours, developing countries
and NGOs accepted and celebrated the Agreement not only to avoid failure
and secure the ratchet-up mechanism but also because of two interlinked con-
siderations that informed their choice: the need to bring the United States on
board and, partly because of that need, the difﬁculties of overturning existing
institutions.

There were strong signals that the United States would ratify the treaty if it
had certain features. The United States could not ratify a treaty with new obli-
gations beyond what it previously agreed to, putting the world, as Kemp (2016)
explains, in a “ratiﬁcation straitjacket.” For the United States to agree to the Paris
Agreement, it would have to use existing institutions. This constraint, et le
Byrd-Hagel Resolution, ruled out a legally binding obligation for developed
countries to adopt quantiﬁed, economy-wide targets. The ratiﬁcation straitjacket
also meant that NDCs could not be annexed or in any other way inscribed in
the Agreement, which could imply a new legal obligation. The United States, le
world’s most signiﬁcant climate free-rider, agreed with the Paris Agreement,
which represented a win for vulnerable countries eager to see global emissions
decline through an inclusive multilateral regime.

The existing institutions also had legitimacy among parties, in both idea-
tional and strategic terms. Parties may have viewed existing institutions as con-
stitutive of climate policy, as “natural” ingredients for the Paris Agreement,
which perhaps explains why there were so few attempts to renegotiate the
bottom-up approach or other existing institutions. Not even NGOs argued for
a return to legally binding mitigation targets. The Kyoto Protocol was languish-
ing; still today, there are not enough ratiﬁcations to bring the Doha Amendment
depuis 2012 into force. Parties sealed the bottom-up approach into the Paris
Agreement in 2013 when they agreed to the concept of intended NDCs. Debates
lingered on what “intended” meant, either to signal parties’ intentions before
the treaty takes effect or, as India argued, that parties would intend to meet their

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8 (cid:129) Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement

CDN. But it was clear that the Paris Agreement would be bottom-up. Strategi-
cally, vulnerable countries likely viewed these institutions as the best, and only,
option on the table. Like the ﬁnancial and technology mechanisms established in
2010, perhaps these institutions could deliver given the chance. Using these insti-
tutions would also avoid opening old issues and expedite reaching agreement.

Many of the institutions in the Paris Agreement were established as part of
“package deals,” including greater transparency for developing countries (dans
2007, 2009, et 2010), references to 1.5°C (dans 2010), and the need for a mar-
ket mechanism (dans 2011). There would likely be social opprobrium if a country
sought to untie a previous package that was carefully balanced to allow all to
claim that their interests were met. In the “rulebook” negotiations for the Paris
Agreement, parties routinely reminded one another not to upset the Agree-
ment’s careful balance. Opening previous agreements would lead to other coun-
tries reinserting their pet issues to try to get a better deal, complicating the
agenda and further dwindling trust.

Such social pressure also applied to other agreements, such as the United
States–China bilateral commitment that stipulated that countries “in a position
to do so” could contribute to climate ﬁnance. While the language was debated
during the Paris conference, China’s lead negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, noted in a
press conference that the wording was settled, pointing to the bilateral state-
ment. If the two largest emitters, one a provider and the other a recipient
(and provider) of climate ﬁnance, agreed on the future of ﬁnancial ﬂows, con-
sent by others seemed a fait accompli. Developing countries would get an ex-
tension of the promise of USD 100 billion per year by 2020 à 2025 but no new
ﬁnancial commitment. The bilateral deal extended to the world, just as the de-
mands of the United States to use existing institutions shaped the decisions
available to other countries. Years of incremental progress partly locked coun-
tries into legitimating the Paris Agreement, a progression of the years of climate
policy countries collectively built over decades.

Securing Consent

Negotiation strategies by powerful countries and the conference presidency
helped remove any last opportunities to block the Agreement. The United States
employed a range of techniques to increase pressure to adopt an agreement
made according to its requirements. The High Ambition Coalition, led by the
Marshall Islands and the United States, was a media and NGO darling that also
served to ostracize countries, such as India and Saudi Arabia, that some believed
could block a deal. As the US Climate Envoy Todd Stern explained to the media,
“there are some countries here who are not in the coalition and, en effet, would
seek a more minimal outcome” (Clark and Stothard 2015). Such coalition
building has previously helped secure the consent of low-income countries
for climate agreements (Ciplet, Roberts, and Khan 2015). By aligning them-
selves with the United States, including marching triumphantly together into

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Jen Iris Allan (cid:129) 9

the plenary hall, developing countries had already acceded to the Agreement.
Participating in the momentum and helping to marginalize other developing
des pays, states vulnerable to climate change conceded their ability to speak
against or block the treaty.

The last resort for a country wanting to block the Paris Agreement is to
blame the process, as the climate negotiations are perhaps notorious for. Le
tactic worked in Copenhagen, given the closed-door negotiations and leaked
documents. The phrase “party-driven process” and calls for “inclusive” and
“transparent” negotiations became common mantras in the UNFCCC, used
by developing countries to ensure their participation. The French presidency
undertook considerable efforts to align with these norms, which Ciplet, Roberts,
and Khan (2015) show can help facilitate consent by those less powerful. Chaque
evening of the second week, the COP president convened the Comité de Paris,
an open session for all. Overnight, indabas—open, high-level negotiations—
would meet on speciﬁc issues. The indaba co-chairs included delegates from
countries known to block decisions, such as Venezuela. Presidency team
members would brief delegations, outlining the Agreement’s contours without
showing the whole text. Agreement drafts were distributed in plenary, a tactic
speciﬁcally meant to allay concerns over preferential treatment by ensuring that
parties received the text at the same time.

These negotiation strategies worked, although there was already consider-
able pressure to uphold the legitimacy of previous agreements and bring the
United States into a legally binding climate treaty. Given the legitimacy the Paris
Agreement holds as a product agreed to by states, President Trump’s decision to
withdraw from the Paris Agreement was a deep betrayal. Countries agreed to a
treaty that was built upon legitimate institutions, with US involvement, et
negotiated in a transparent process. The United States’ decision to withdraw
rebuked the foundations on which developing country support was based. Dans
the bid to win United States’ participation, countries adopted a treaty that could
lose the planet. Alors, they lost the United States.

Locked into the “Best” Alternative?

Is the future as bleak as the past? The Paris Agreement is designed to endure, de-
fering no opportunities to revisit its fundamental design. Parties are locked in the
cycles of submission, reporting, global stocktake, and resubmission of NDCs. Même
if those reviews and the many other reports on the state of the global climate
show that the global response is inadequate, parties remain in the same circle.
Some, including Higham (2018), argue that the Agreement should be
considered in its broader context, including the mobilization of nonstate actors
as a second foundation of the Agreement. Institutions such as the Non-State Actor
Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA Portal) and Lima–Paris Action Agenda (LPAA)
helped highlight, synthesize, and further nonstate actors’ climate actions (Morgan
and Northrop 2017). These institutions align nonstate actors’ efforts with the

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10 (cid:129) Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement

overall social structure and goals of the UNFCCC, which can confer legitimacy on
their actions (Bernstein 2011). This legitimacy and the orchestration efforts of the
secretariat are clearly important to overall climate action. But they are not a sub-
stitute for meaningful, ambitious climate action by states. The Paris Agreement
may have passed responsibility to nonstate actors. The “all hands on deck” ap-
proach that Hale (2016) describes requires states as drivers, implementers, et
funders of mitigation and adaptation efforts; what the Agreement largely lays
dehors, cependant, is a reliance on the status quo.

But it has lofty goals, leading some, such as Clémençon (2016), to char-
acterize the Agreement as aspirational rather than substantive. Developing
des pays, and the world, consented to an inadequate treaty, pinning their hopes
on a long-term vision of how climate governance could learn and grow in the
multilateral system.

Jen Iris Allan is a lecturer in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University,
ROYAUME-UNI. Her research focuses on interstate negotiations for, and nonstate actors’
interactions with, global environmental institutions. She publishes primarily
on climate change and chemical and waste governance.

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