Knowledge Politics in the Context of International Climate Negotiations

Increasing risks and decreasing adaptive capacity

The IPCC has once more tightened its assess­ment of the risks of climate change compared to the Fifth Assessment Report. Severe impacts are expected even at lower levels of warming than before. And the SYR confirms the finding of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, published in 2018, that an average temperature increase of this magnitude represents a significant risk threshold for particularly vulnerable ecosystems, regions and societies. A more detailed analysis of long-term sea-level rise and the likelihood of reaching tipping points has also contributed to this under­standing, building on findings presented in the 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and the Cryosphere. The observation that the impacts of climate change and losses and damages from extreme weather events are already increasing also supports this assessment. This is in addition to the find­ing that the effectiveness of many adaptation options declines with increasing warm­ing, and that hard limits to adaptation have already been reached or will be reached for certain regions and ecosystems between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming.

These AR6 findings have helped shift the focus of political and public discourse from limiting warming to well below 2°C to 1.5°C. Many governments, and the Glasgow (COP26) and Sharm-el-Sheik (COP27) dec­la­rations, now refer to 1.5°C as the collective level of ambition (see SWP Comments 2/2022 and 10/2023).

Transition in this decade

At least since its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, the IPCC has been send­ing the message that every bit of warming, every year and every decision counts. Achiev­ing the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement will require mas­sive, rapid and sustained reductions in green­house gas emissions across all sectors.

Current NDCs are woefully inadequate, and the SYR SPM (hereafter SYR) attests to a major ambition and implementation gap. In order to limit warming to 1.5°C by 2100 with only “limited overshoot” (i.e. tempo­rarily exceeding by a maximum of 0.1°C), global greenhouse gas emission reductions must amount to 43 per cent in the period 2019–2030 and 60 per cent by 2035. In par­ticular, the reduction level for 2035, which is explicitly mentioned for the first time in the SYR, is likely to be an important benchmark for the review of global ambi­tion in the context of the Global Stocktake and the subsequent reformulation of the NDCs with a time horizon of 2035.

Such quantitative estimates of mitigation levels, timelines and potentials are crucial inputs for the political process, and hence often controversial, especially for individual sectors, technologies and energy sources. The SYR contains no specific information on phase-out years or reduction targets for coal, oil and gas, nor on halting deforestation or the required expansion rates for renew­able energies. The increasing cost efficiency of wind and solar energy and their high potential contribution to “Paris-compatible” emission reductions by 2030 can be gleaned from a visual, but it is not included in the text. In contrast, there was consensus on the important role of methane mitigation measures, indicating this may become a priority issue for COP28.

The future of fossil fuels

It is widely accepted in scientific, civil soci­ety and national policy debates in indus­trialised countries that a comprehensive phase-out of coal, oil and gas is required for effective climate action. In a multilateral setting, however, it has proven extremely difficult to reach consensus on text related to curtailing fossil fuel use, production and finance, including subsidies. Indeed, the Glasgow Climate Pact, adopted at COP26, was the first UNFCCC decision document to include an explicit reference to fossil fuels. The last-minute forced change of the word­ing from “phase out” to “phase down” for coal-fired power generation almost caused the Glasgow negotiations to collapse.

The SPM of the Working Group III (2022) report broke new ground here, and some of those statements are reflected in the SYR. Both documents show that global financial flows for fossil fuel infrastructure and sub­sidies exceed those for mitigation and adap­tation. They also highlight that future emis­sions from the continued use of existing fossil energy facilities alone already exceed the remaining 1.5°C CO₂ budget. The SYR also points out that without additional abate­ment measures such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), emissions from currently existing and planned facilities would ex­haust even the carbon budget for 2°C.

Statements about the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels regularly include the quali­fier “without CCS”. Fossil fuel use with CCS is listed as an essential technology in the SYR, despite its high cost, a limited range of deployment options and low short-term abatement potential. The limitations of the CCS process are explained in a foot­note. This prominent placement is sup­ported by the fact that CCS plays an impor­tant role in many of the WG III emission reduction scenarios, especially for coal-fired power generation, which is politically rele­vant for heavily coal-dependent countries. However, the emphasis on the potential of CCS for fossil fuels in general could also be read to imply their future viability, which is important for many oil- and gas-producing countries that are counting on CCS path­ways or carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).

Overshooting 1.5°C and carbon diox­ide removal as the new normal

The SYR spells out an uncomfortable truth with unusual clarity: The 1.5°C global warm­ing threshold will probably be exceeded, at least temporarily, even with immediate and stringent mitigation action, and quite pos­sibly as soon as the early 2030s.

This highlights one of the key contradictions in climate policy: The political com­mit­ment to 1.5°C is inconsistent with the continued rise of emissions since Paris. According to the SYR, the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C would be exhausted by the end of this decade if emissions remain at current levels. A drastic reduction in global CO₂ emissions of 48 per cent by 2030 com­pared to 2019 levels and achieving net zero CO₂ emissions by the early 2050s would make it possible to still limit the temperature increase to 1.6°C. Only if carbon diox­ide removal (CDR) was to significantly ex­ceed remaining CO₂ emissions over the course of the second half of the century could the global temperature rise be lowered back to 1.5°C.

The SYR clearly states that large-scale CO₂ removal from the atmosphere is a pre­requisite to bring warming back to 1.5°C. The report also addresses the asso­ciated risks, both in terms of the potential con­sequences of global temperature being above 1.5°C for several decades, and in terms of the technical feasibility, costs, and poten­tial environmental and social impacts of such large-scale CO₂ removal, which would need to be undertaken in addition to the already significant CDR volumes required to compensate for residual emissions that are difficult to avoid (e.g. from agriculture).

This step towards normalising a necessary political debate is also based on the scientific progress since AR5. Examples include the systematic examination of the environmental, social and cost dimensions of different CDR approaches; the consideration of potential competition for land and other sustainability criteria in modelling ecosystem-based CDR methods such as bio­energy with CCS (BECCS) or afforestation to avoid trade-offs; and the resulting increase in knowledge about the sustainable poten­tial of CDR. Practical implementation is also highly dynamic: from pilot plants for BECCS and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), to extensive public inno­vation programmes – for example in the United States and the United Kingdom – to policy frameworks at the European Union (EU) level, where the Council of the EU and the European Parliament are currently nego­tiating a Regulation on the certification of CDR methods (see SWP Comment 40/2022).

These developments clearly show that mainstreaming CDR will be part of the new normal in climate change mitigation. How­ever, CDR will have to be pursued in addi­tion to, not instead of, ambitious emission reductions to achieve the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement: Deep and rapid cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are key to limiting both residual emissions and the overshoot to feasible levels.

It remains to be seen what impact the prospect of exceeding 1.5°C will have on the UNFCCC negotiations. It could strengthen the case for a shift in focus towards the “well below 2°C” mark. It is also conceiv­able that 1.5°C will become even more im­portant as a “survival limit”, especially for small island states. In this case, the focus may shift towards minimising the magnitude and duration of the overshoot, and how to politically organise and finance the necessary use of CDR without jeopardising sustainable development goals.

Climate finance, losses and damages

Climate-related investment would need to be scaled up significantly in the near future in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agree­ment. Financial flows are currently more than insufficient, and the gap is even more profound for adaptation than for mitigation. For the first time, the SYR makes ex­plicit reference to the economic impacts of climate change further increasing finan­cial constraints for adaptation, particularly for developing and least developed coun­tries.

The amount of finance required for miti­gation and adaptation can be estimated by researchers. Similarly, scientific evidence can be provided about potentially effective instruments and mechanisms to improve access to finance. However, the question of where the funds should come from and what support the (historical) major emitters should provide cannot be answered by the IPCC. Even a graphical presentation of data that may indicate responsibility or liability, such as country-specific emissions, has proven very difficult in the context of an IPCC SPM. The controversies that have arisen over draft language and visuals in this respect should also be seen in the con­text of the forthcoming negotiations on a New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance under the Paris Agreement and on the finan­cial mechanism for Loss and Damage. The list of potential donors has already ex­panded beyond the traditional industrialised countries, but tangible commitments have yet to be negotiated.

The SYR refers in many places – and with substantial emphasis – to climate-related losses and damages that have already occurred or are unavoidable in the future, especially if the 1.5°C threshold is exceeded. The IPCC consistently uses the term “losses and damages” to clearly dis­tin­guish between scientific findings and the political concept of Loss and Damage within the UNFCCC. The SYR avoids regional dif­fer­entiation beyond a generic list that includes all developing regions. It thus reflects the political consensus at COP27 that the most vulnerable and poor countries need support to cope with increasing Loss and Damage, but it gives little indication as to which coun­tries and regions these are.

An additional difficulty in dealing with these issues arises from the lack of a uni­versally accepted definition of the term “devel­oping countries” and its strong politicisation in the UN context, including through different rights and obligations. Related sensitivities also preclude the cat­ego­risation of countries at different levels of development using indices that are com­mon in the scientific community (e.g. based on gross national income or the UN Human Development Index).

The 1992 UNFCCC dichotomy between devel­oped and developing countries no longer adequately reflects individual coun­tries’ economic strength, their current and historical emissions, and the capacity to support others. One of the great breakthroughs of the Paris Agreement is its uni­versality, moving beyond this dichotomy while still adhering to the guiding principle of “common but differentiated responsibili­ties and respective capabilities”. Since Paris, the interpretation of these differentiated re­sponsibilities has been hotly contested, espe­cially between traditional industrialised coun­tries and large emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia (see SWP Comment 9/2019). This tension trans­lates into challenges regarding the word­ing in the relevant passages of the SYR, which serves as input to the UNFCCC process.

Equity

Questions of justice are ubiquitous when dealing with climate change: within and between generations and societies, between polluters and those affected, and between poorer and richer countries, especially in the context of the right to economic devel­op­ment and industrialisation. In this con­text, AR6, like AR5, emphasises the poten­tial synergies between ambitious mitigation, adaptation and other sustainable develop­ment goals. The SYR also underlines the importance of the equitable and inclusive design and implementation of climate change policies for their effectiveness and acceptability, and of considering context-specific vulnerability factors, especially for poor and marginalised groups.

A section devoted to equity and inclusion highlights the importance of equity as a cen­tral concept in the context of the UN climate regime, while acknowledging that there may be “shifts in differentiation be­tween states” and that “assessing fair shares” is a difficulty. The SYR points out that am­bitious climate change policies can poten­tially trigger “disruptive changes in existing economic structures”, with signifi­cant distributional consequences within and between countries. These include shifts in income and employment, particularly in regions that are economically heavily de­pendent on fossil fuels. In this context, which is also topical for the EU and Ger­many, the SYR points to the important role of just transitions.