Dr Joanna Depledge is a research fellow at the Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG) at the University of Cambridge.

Midway through the COP29 climate summit in Baku last November, a number of prominent figures signed an open letter calling for “fundamental reform” of how COPs work. As currently structured, they said, COPs “simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale”.

The letter put forward several proposals, like imposing eligibility criteria on COP hosts and streamlining the negotiations, adding to a heated ongoing debate about the COP process. But it ignored the most fundamental and potentially impactful reform of all: to finally introduce a voting role for the climate negotiations.

The COP process is clearly failing to take ambitious decisions commensurate with the urgency of the climate challenge. Failure at COP25 to welcome the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on 1.5˚C; at COP28 to clearly acknowledge that fossil fuels need to be phased out; and at COP29 to make any advance at all on mitigation, are just some of the latest examples.  

But all those concerned about the credibility, integrity, and effectiveness of international action on climate change need to be clear as to where the obstacles to strong decision-making lie. These are not primarily to do with organisational flaws in the COP process that minor reforms could address, but rather, with the blanket requirement for consensus decision-making and the obstruction resulting from it.

This stems from an act of sabotage committed at the very first COP talks in Berlin in 1995, when fossil fuel-exporting governments, notably Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, supported by allied lobby groups – in particular the US-based Climate Council and Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – blocked what should have been the routine adoption of voting rules.

The resulting default practice of consensus conferred outsize influence on very small blocking minorities of countries, who regularly water down decisions by threatening to obstruct. The result, year after year, is that the voices of the large majority of more ambitious parties fail to be reflected in the decisions of the COP. As Fiji said at COP29, “we are continuously asked to ignore our needs”.    

Requiring consensus, without a clear definition, also makes for arbitrary, messy and inconsistent decision-making, overly reliant on the (sometimes dubious) judgement of the COP president. At COP28, the most high-profile decision – the Global Stocktake – was taken without small island developing states (AOSIS) in the room. At COP29, the talks’ president, Mukhtar Babayev, banged his gavel to adopt the NCQG finance goal without even looking up to see if there were objections. These incidents are testimony to the flaws of the status quo. 

In this context, by far the most impactful reform would be to introduce carefully crafted voting rules. Ideally, these would require either a super-majority (seven-eighths of nations, for example), or a double-majority of developed and developing countries (especially for finance decisions). Dissenters could be listed in a footnote if they wished.

This would almost certainly have allowed much stronger language to be adopted throughout the history of the negotiations, not least at the last four COPs, sending a more powerful signal to decision-makers worldwide and in all sectors about the ambitious direction of international climate policy.  

Introducing a voting rule in this way, even just for certain decisions, would be resisted tooth and nail by those who have long profited from the status quo. A broad progressive coalition cutting across political groupings would be needed to explore legal avenues for doing so, most likely amending the 1992 United Framework Convention on Climate Change (which can be done by a vote).

Pursuing such a momentous reform would involve an epic battle with those who have so effectively obstructed the negotiations since the beginning. But for the ambitious, the vulnerable, and all those who genuinely want to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change, it is a COP reform proposal that would definitely be worth fighting for.   

(Written by Joanna Depledge, edited by Joe Lo)

The post To reform climate COPs, we should start with the voting rules appeared first on Climate Home News.

To reform climate COPs, we should start with the voting rules