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=Overview= | =Overview= | ||
After failed negotiation talks in 2010 and 2011, EU decides to restrict carbon emission by carbon trading within its own region and successfully implements it ([[Carbon Trading, Finances and related Economics]]). This move is mainly driven by [[Increasing influence of media]], [[Position of Corporates]] and [[Dynamics of Public Support]]. Afterwards the EU introduced import duties on countries with high emissions (without emission targets) and China shortly afterwards followed this model because the country was affected by several [[Catastrophes - Acts of God]]. The money derived from this import duties was redistributed to developing countries for education and implementation of emission reducing measures. <br><br> | |||
During the end of this ten years period USA also implemented emission reduction targets for its country to be an example for the developing countries. USA wanted to push mainly the BRIC nations to also put targets. In this way their economic growth should be stopped. <br><br> | |||
However, the funds mainly from the import duties provided enough finances so that the most important developing countries were able to invest in emission reducing measures without harming their GDP growth. So in the end also these countries implemented reduction targets and fulfilled them. <br><br> | |||
=2010= | |||
The sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) was held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The expectations from media and public all over the world before that meeting to the participants were high after the disaster in the previous conference in Copenhagen. It was mainly expected to agree upon a protocol that commits all participants to reduce its GHG emissions to a reasonable level. The result would be a lower increase of the global temperature under the 2 Celsius marker. This would be the protocol succeeding the Kyoto Protocol, which is ran down in 2012, but with tougher limits for the countries.<br><br> | |||
However, the reality showed that expectations were too high. The draft for the new protocol (LCA) prepared in Bonn (Germany) and Tianjin (China) was not agreed upon. This was even a bigger disaster in the eyes of the observer of this conference and more baneful and alarming for all experts than after the Copenhagen conference. Each delay in the climate negotiations would mean that a reduction of GHG in the atmosphere and thus a reduction of the global temperature increase are more and more impossible to achieve. An achievement of this was only meaningful if all countries in the world limit their GHG emissions. <br><br> | |||
So what happened? Or better: What did not happen, that the most important parties in these negotiations were so relaxed and were not able to attain a consensus? <br><br> | |||
USA was mostly concerned for its own industry. Companies from the EU region were at that time leaders in green technology, so USA did not see an advantage in this. GHG abatement would mean higher costs for the US industry, so their standpoint was not to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | |||
Developing countries -and herein are included the BRICs- were furthermore expecting the first step to be done by the developed countries. Their biggest concern was not to stop their economic growth. Additionally, they expected financial support from developed countries since those had polluted the world since their industrialization which had happened long before their industrialization. <br> | |||
Even though China had been affected by some natural catastrophes, like landslides and floods in 2010, these were not alarming and driving the government to change their climate negotiations behavior.<br><br> | |||
The EU harbored many companies active on the green technology sector (wind turbines, solar power generation, efficiency improvement, etc.). These companies saw a worldwide market once an agreement on UN level would have been reached. So there were heavily lobbying to their governments and the EU representatives in the UN conferences to establish global GHG abatement rules. <br> | |||
In the meanwhile the EU started to implement carbon trading within its region and between the EU member countries. This project was also pushed by the pressure on EU governments by the European citizens. The public awareness in the EU about the necessity of measures mitigating climate change had been high before the meeting in Cancun. However, mainly NGOs were waking up the people and so the governments could feel the rising pressure, that something needs to be done. <br><br> | |||
On the economic field, indications for Chinas growth were becoming more and more evident. The EU was at that time Chinas biggest trading partner and China was the 2nd biggest for the EU (after the U.S.). The signs were directing towards China becoming the number one also for the EU. (See also:[http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/bilateral-relations/countries/china/]) | |||
=2011 - 2013= | |||
Mostly driven by the public awareness and the pressure that came from this direction on the EU governments after the fiasco in Cancun, the region decided to put emission reduction limits for its region of 25% in the early stage of this timeperiod. Because the corporations realized that installation of emission reducing technology also increased the efficiency, they rapidly invested in this. This lead to the emissions target be reached soon after it came out as a EU wide regulation. <br> | |||
With this measure the region mainly tried to be a symbol to other countries around the world to also set reduction targets. It was also the green tech industry that pushed its governments to come to a global agreement. Moreover this should be another sign to the world that the EU an aggregation of 27 countries without a governing body at that time- was going to be more unified. <br><br> | |||
In a second step the EU environment ministers decided upon a McKinsey report on climate change from 2009 to offer half of the amount needed to reduce GHG emissions to nations that use the money for this purpose. With a yearly GDP of around 15 trillion (EU) this would have amounted to a yearly spending of 3% (=EUR 415 bn) of its GDP. The other half, the EU expected, should come from the other part of the developed world, the USA. However, this did not happen in this period. The position of the USA in fighting global warming was not really progressive. <br> | |||
The money should be used for one or more of the three GHG abatement opportunity areas that were energy efficiency, low-carbon energy supply and/or forestry & agriculture. Obviously, the funding was related to strict reporting and compliance standards. <br><br> | |||
In the middle of this period several severe natural catastrophes occured in China. Furthermore its cities were constantly highly polluted and more and more people were suffering by this. The government found out that the death rate caused by air pollution has increased dramatically. Having a lot of green technology manufacturing in its own country, the government later on decided to reduce carbon emission using its own and technology mainly from EU companies and funding from the before mentioned EU funds. <br> | |||
Later on, China even decided to put a reduction limit and declared this also in the global climate change conferences. However at that point in time China and EU were the only countries or regions that had reduction limits. The developing countries were mainly concerned about their economic growth and saw it negatively affected, if they had put GHG reduction targets. Furthermore China was receiving the biggest part of the funds provided by the EU, so for them the EU could not provide enough financial support to enhance their technology for emission reduction. | |||
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=2014 - 2018= | |||
With the intention to push the other nations, EU put import duties on goods that had their origin in countries with a certain minimum per capita GDP without emission reduction targets. This was a surprising action for many at that time. However, it was also brought forward because EU was steering towards more unification and had now own EU ministers being responsible for each field on EU wide level. EU had even one minister called EU Ministry for Climate Change Issues. <br><br> | |||
This fact plus China becoming a more and more the trading partner number one (before US) for the EU, changed the negotiation behavior of EU and thus it also ignored the WTO, which abolished such trade barriers. <br> | |||
The idea was to give the money received by this import duties to developing countries for education and GHG reduction measures (James Hanson). During the end of this period the developing countries also started to employ it for the implementation of green technology and thus realized that could become realistic to agree upon reduction targets. <br> | |||
In another step the EU Minister for Climate Change issues raised the internal emissions reduction target even further. <br><br> | |||
In the past China had bought land in some parts of Africa, which it was using for farming to provive the Chinese population with food. An increasing number of droughts in Africa damaged the harvest on these lands. This added to the natural catastrophes still occurring in China. <br><br> | |||
Behind the curtains of the UN climate conferences China and EU were talking about the implementation of the import duties by EU. For China this was not a problem, since they had emission reduction targets in place. However, China was planning to implement such import duties on goods from countries without any reduction targets as well. This was good news for EU. Because since EU had this import duties its relation to US worsened slightly, which affected some EU exports to US. With China putting the same import duties towards the end of this period, US did not have much choice. The biggest trading partner for U.S. was China and EU. <br><br> | |||
In the climate negotiations, however, US was still concentrating on its own industry and thus was not willing to put any emission targets. The developing countries still had other problems, like fighting poverty and improving infrastructure. So the climate change would still negatively affect their growth. During this period they did not agree to put emission targets. Furthermore they were not affected by the import duties of China and EU, since their GDP/capita was under the threshold. | |||
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= | =2019 - 2020= | ||
The | The negotiations on UNFCCC level had lost importance in the worldwide discussion about reducing global warming, mostly in terms of the awareness of the public. People and media saw that initiative came from some countries and had the impression that conferences in the UN were only ongoing power games. <br><br> | ||
<br> | This does not mean that the climate debate between the countries went on. It rather went on behind the scenes of the UN. For example, all of a sudden USA put itself emission reduction targets. It required mainly the industry to improve efficiency. The country did this for two reasons: 1. To avoid the import duties from China and EU and 2. To be an example to developing countries to also set emission targets. USA observed the developing countries growing economically. The country believed to put with emission targets a brake on this growth, which was seen as a threat to USA. So they communicated it on the UNFCCC conference.<br><br> | ||
<br> | Almost in parallel also developing countries, like Brazil, Russia and India put emission reduction targets. This was driven by that they received during the years enough funds to finance such projects like reforestation in Brazil or renewable energy power generation in India. Russia additionally was ultimately affected by several natural catastrophes that were again devastating for their harvest and thus it drove them to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | ||
The IPCC report from 2018 <br> | |||
As a consequence of this news the outlook was that countries would find an agreement to further fight global warming and even further decrease GHG emissions. | |||
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= Timeline = | = Timeline = | ||
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