- Well done, but real test to come
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- UN Climate Conference: Full coverage
For negotiators engrossed in months or even years of arcane, technical wrangling for a new global climate agreement, the sudden involvement of political leaders in the talks in Paris was both a curiosity and a distraction.
![Participants at the climate conference listen to the speakers.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170819013910im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/l/k/w/z/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.glpyt4.png/1450415424367.jpg)
"These are some of the biggest egos in the world," one negotiator told Fairfax. "And yet they can't take the microphone until they have the floor."
Also amusing was to observe two politicians meeting in a corridor, entourages in tow. "Who steps aside? These are people used to getting their own way."
The politicians' presence was a necessary if often disruptive component in the first successful global pact to curb greenhouse gases in nearly two decades, sealed this past week in France. These are the people who will have to implement the promises made, including convincing their own nations that the pledges are just the start of a generation-long campaign to bend the carbon curve towards negative CO2 emissions by the second half of the century.
How they behaved in Paris, though, offered insights into why the fight to avoid dangerous climate change is far from over. As seen through the eyes of one negotiator with eight climate conferences under his belt, the relief that a deal was done must be tempered with realism: the task ahead can't be left to the politicians.
This time around, failure to get an agreement when 188 parties had already volunteered what they thought was their fair carbon commitment would likely have spelt the end of multilateral efforts to combat climate change.
Australia's offer to cut 2000-level pollutions about 19 per cent by 2020 was widely panned as being among the least ambitious. Australia's position was viewed as closely aligned with the US. But the Australian negotiators also had an easier time of it because of Malcolm Turnbull's September ousting of Tony Abbott, altering Australia's image as a potential spoiler to a positive player in one fell swoop.
Not that the Americans were saints in Paris. Negotiators such as the Cameroons' Fobissie Kalame recalled how US Secretary of State John Kerry lectured delegates at 2am on the night when the deal was basically settled.
Brandishing one of the voluntary pledges – known in UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Commitments – Kerry said this was all the differentiation they needed.
"It was a show of American power – take it or leave it," says Kalame, who was giving up research time at his base in Finland to serve his native Cameroon for free.
At that point, negotiators were already worn down by days with minimal sleep. Colombian dark chocolate, coffee carts thoughtfully provided by the French hosts (lines at which doubled as impromptu negotiating clusters) and power naps in corners and corridors were common coping strategies.
Soon after the Kerry decree, rankling as it was to some, the crux of the Paris accord was secured, according to the European delegate. There in Room 7, in an event chaired by Peru, about 30 key negotiators sat around a square table to hammer out perhaps the key paragraph of the agreement, Article 9.
In the end, rich countries agreed to continue to provide aid to developing countries to slow further global warming and to adapt to the impacts of extreme weather already under way. Other parties – unnamed but implying China and India – "are encouraged to provide such support voluntarily".
The European negotiator considered the final result "pathetically weak" but the best that could be extracted.
Major battles are still to come. The wealthy nations promised only to review the existing promise of providing $US100 billion ($139 billion) in aid yearly by 2020 before 2025.
The final Paris pact – even though pledging to keep global warming to "well under 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels" with a well-meaning reference to "pursue efforts" to keep the increase to 1.5 degrees – also explicitly rules out liabilities for loss and damage, another item on the wish list of the most vulnerable nations.
With few fresh inducements, developing nations may be less willing partners in future climate talks when the rules determining the scrutiny of five-yearly target reviews get hammered out. That's why Paris is just another step along the climate action journey.
Climate campaigner and former US vice president Al Gore likes to say political will is a renewable resource.
In the case of Paris, though, it's likely to be the self-preservation instincts of political leaders fearing a popular backlash if they don't deliver – that will determine whether Paris was a triumph or the last, best and ultimately wasted chance to avoid dangerous climate change.
Fairfax Media is a global partner of the UN Foundation.