Parties associated with the Copenhagen Accord have now submitted their quantified economy-wide emission targets and mitigation actions. These submissions are on the UNFCCC website. The US Climate Action Network has provided a useful table which summarises these submissions.
It is useful to have a ’schedule’ (such as the chapeau of the accord) in which as many emitters as possible list their targets and commitments. It is also useful to have conditional targets (along with conditions) placed into this schedule. If countries are able to commit to both conditional and unconditional targets, then we have a framework that could lead to countries choosing their targets cooperatively. This has been strongly suggested by research on mechanisms that implement public goods.
Unfortunately the way that these things are done in the accord is far too vague to work. It is hard to say what the accord’s targets imply in terms of actual emissions, because issues such as LULUCF accounting, international trading, carryover of Kyoto AAUs, and definitions of ‘business as usual’ are completely unspecified. Furthermore, the conditions that countries have specified for their conditional targets are completely vague, and it is impossible to be able to tell with much certainty from the accord schedule whether any of these conditions have been met. For example, the EU conditions use words like “comparable emission reductions” and “responsibilities and respective capabilities” without stating what these conditions actually mean.
A global framework for emission reductions should have an accounting framework that converts commitments into actual emissions. When countries make conditions for their commitments, these conditions should be based on this framework. Countries would then know what they would need to do in order for other countries to increase their level of ambition.
If a legally binding treaty is negotiated, it should be designed with these considerations in mind. Unfortunately progress on a legally binding agreement has been difficult: at Copenhagen, Tuvalu proposed to form a Contact Group to discuss legally binding agreements, but this was blocked by China, India, Saudi Arabia, and some other OPEC states.
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