 First conceive the idea of running a panel discussion on the outcomes to COP16 as a part of a class that I've just finished running, it's the last day of our course, we've been following COP17 in detail as it's been evolving in Durban and I wanted to close it off with some commentary from the best placed people that I could think of who would be able to give us an informed perspective on different aspects of what's happened at COP17 and so I thought well I'll just take the chance of inviting Will Steffen and John Drizak and Stephen Howes who are terribly busy and will definitely not all be available on the same day at the same time and they all said yes. So we've now got a wonderful panel to speak to you this afternoon. I believe that we'll hear some very insightful commentary on not only on what has happened during COP17 and how the process has evolved but also on the outcomes that were just announced yesterday. I imagine that you're here because you're interested obviously and that you'll have been following at least to some extent what's happened in Durban in the media and I'm looking forward to hearing the academic perspective rather than seeing what we have been seeing in the social media and in the print and television media as well. So without further ado I want to introduce our first speaker. We have three panellists, we have Will Steffen, John Drizak and Stephen Howes all of whom are professors here at the ANU and I'll give you a short introduction to their background as I asked them up to speak but we're going to start a series of three 20-minute presentations with Will Steffen and we'll then go into questions and answers. So if you have questions for the panellists please keep those questions until all three panellists have spoken. So first, Will. Will Steffen is no stranger to all of us I think as you are probably aware Will is executive director of the ANU Climate Change Institute. He is a climate science expert and a researcher who's published widely and extensively on aspects of climate science. He's interested in many aspects of the science of climate change. He is the panel member supporting the Prime Minister's Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, a commissioner on the Independent Climate Commission and has served as science advisor to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. I don't think I need to say any more about you Will, it's enough and we look forward very much to what you have to say. I'm going to give you a different perspective on the COP meeting, not the main COP meeting but on things that happen around COP meetings which are arguably just as important as the main negotiations and that's a whole heap of side events. So I was only get Durbin for a day and a half or so but I went down to take part in this thing called a high level dialogue on global sustainability climate change which was aimed at putting the climate change problem in a much broader perspective of sustainable development, equity and so on. Issues that do come into the climate negotiations but are often subsumed by more immediate and more more particular negotiation issues. This was high level and was co-convened by President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and the Stockholm resilience center on the scientific side and included several other African states, many African ministers of development and environment, the minister for environment of Sweden and her counterpart from Canada. There were three of us who spoke on the science side, myself, Rajendra Pichari who's the head of the IPCC and Nicholas Stern spoke on the relationship between economics and climate change. So I'll give you the sort of presentation I gave to President Zuma and his team trying to place climate change in a much broader perspective. So I went back to some well-known ice core data to really show you what climate actually looks like on a much longer timeframe. That middle red wiggly line here is a 400,000 year record of the earth's average temperature as measured in Antarctic ice core. What I've put on there is the fact that this encompasses the entire time that humans have been on the planet. Fully modern humans evolved in Africa, so it was appropriate to be in Africa about this time, but this very long line where we went through an ice age of one period, another ice age and the transition to the latest one period, we've only been hunter-gatherers. And much of that time we were only in Africa. We only got out of Africa about in here. Okay, so that puts us in perspective. This is the concern of the climate negotiations now. This is an unusually long warm period compared to the previous ones. It's called the Holocity. And it's the only time that we know for sure that humans have been able to develop agriculture, cities, villages, societies and complex civilization. So the whole effort of two degrees or less is to keep close to the Holocene climate. So that's basically the problem we're facing, but we need to look at it in a much more return perspective. So here it is now looking at the last nearly 2,000 years and we only have northern hemisphere surface temperature for that period at this degree of resolution. And this red is the contemporary climate change driven by extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So you see that we're already now poking above the envelope of natural variability which we've developed, our complex civilizations. So that's the concern that we scientists have is that we're going into terra incognita in terms of the species. The planet's certainly been warmer, but not will humans have been on it. And that's the problem. So the grappling is how we're going to turn this curve around and stabilize it. But again, people often forget we have to look at it in this long term perspective. Then we went on to say climate change is the tip of the iceberg. There are many other things happening to the planetary environment at the global scale that are driven by humans. We've massively modified the nitrogen cycle. This huge, huge error coming down from the atmosphere is entirely new. That's pre-industrial, this is what it is now. We're actually fixing more nitrogen now from the atmosphere than all of the terrestrial natural processes put together. We've really affected the hydrological cycle well before climate change actually started. These are large dams around the world. All the world's major rivers, except for a few in Siberia, are now dammed and do not flow unimpeded to the sea. And we've massively changed land cover. This is the parts of the land surface which are now heavily cultivated. Those areas which are not like the Sahara, most of Australia and up here in Siberia are either too cold or too dry to be cultivated. And of course now we have to worry about the fact that we destabilize the climate. And amongst other things, we're starting to see more extreme events and more are on the way. So we have a multi-pronged problem that goes far beyond climate change. Interestingly, climate change interacts in both directions with most of these other problems. So we tried to put this a few years ago into a long-term perspective going before the industrial revolution. So we looked at what's happening in the global environment in a very systematic way from 1750 to 2000. Here are the three famous greenhouse gases, CO2, the one that's focused the most attention. Two other well-known greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide and methane. Here's what's happened to stratospheric ozone depletion. That's the ozone hole problem. There's that global average surface temperature that I showed you and the number of great floods, which are still some argument about but some commentators say are increasing. But these bottom six panels are non-climate related at all. They have to do with how many fisheries are fully exploited, nitrogen coming through the coastal zone, how we've modified trustful ecosystems, tropical forests and now the accelerating rate of biodiversity loss. The interesting thing is, even though not all of these are related to climate, climate's but one of them, they are all related to the same basic fundamental cause. The number of humans and technologies we use and how much we consume to put it in a nutshell. So we're trying to capture that, the so-called human enterprise on the next slide, which again is looking from the year 1750 to the year 2000. So here you see the population going up strongly. We just hit seven billion a couple months ago on planet Earth. Global economy is going up even more strongly than population, much more strongly. This by the way is a good indicator for consumption. And you can go through the resources, damning of rivers, water use, fertilizer consumption, here's urbanization, paper consumption, McDonald's restaurants, it's a good indicator for globalization. The mixing of cultures, not to mention hamburgers around the planet. And transport, look at motor vehicles, communication, telephones, these are mainly landlines by the way, mobiles really came in in the last decade or so, international tourism. The one thing that stands out is 1950. The human enterprise underwent an enormous transformation after the Second World War and became much more active, much more powerful, much more industrious with huge impacts on the global environment. In fact, we coined the term the Great Acceleration to look at that post-1950 period. All of those patterns, look at 1950, the shape of the curve fundamentally changed. Now the interesting thing, and I'll show you that in a moment here, the interesting thing is the huge inequities that are behind those global aggregates. Those are global aggregates, okay? The fact is 20% of the Earth's population has driven virtually all of that, the wealthy countries, the OECD countries. And this is the fundamental equity problem that really bedevils climate negotiations and indeed all sorts of other global environmental negotiations. You can see it quite clearly if we just look at these two. Here's population growth since the Great Acceleration basically. The blue are OECD countries, the red are non-OECD countries. Virtually all the additional people on the planet come into the developing world, whether it be the rapidly developing world like China and India or the less developed countries in that and so on. But look at the global economy. We all talk about the boom in China, which you start to see this wedge in the last decade or so, but it's still dominated 80% by the wealthy 20%. So this is the huge equity issue which bedevils any attempt to get global solutions to global problems. The problem is the Earth is one interactive system. So we all share the same global environment even though we have huge disparities in our incomes, in our consumption and so on. So this is really another problem that people are grappling with in Durban and in other negotiations. So the challenge of the Anthropocene, we're rapidly passing through the exit door of the Holocene. We're leaving that Holocene, that 10,000, 12,000 year very stable climatic period. So the questions are, what are the implications? Well, we're sitting about here. This is the Holocene environment. If you look at global average temperature, the blue lines is, if you like, the envelope with variability. Right where we are now is just above that. So that's why we can discern now in observations the fact that the climate is actually shifting beyond natural variability. But these are the projections of an additional 1.4 to 5.8 to 5.9 degrees celsius by 2100, depending on how the climate responds and how many, how much more emissions we put into the atmosphere. They see this as way outside the Holocene envelope of variability. In fact, most commentators will say, if we go on the worst-case scenario, we are probably committed to seeing modern civilization collapse. It's hard to believe that modern civilization could survive a temperature shift that much, that fast. Not least of which, because all the ecosystem services, most of which are uncosted, on which we utterly depend, would fail as well. So this is really the problem we face in Durban, is how can you cap the temperature increase down in here where we know we can survive and not let it drift or skyrocket farther up? So the second part of my talk was, how do we do this? Well, one proposal, and it's hotly debated, is one that Johann Wachström and Rufus put forward a couple years ago. We need to define planetary boundaries, to define the safe operating space for humanity in the Anthropocene that at least keeps it close enough to the Holocene that we know we can get through. So it's a controversial concept, but I think it's very soundly based, because what it simply says is there are hard-wired features of the Earth's system that we have to respect. They exist outside of humanity. They existed before humanity even existed on the planet. If Martians came in and did all the things to the planet that we're doing, the same result would happen. It's the nature of the Earth. So we need to understand what that nature is and how we can define a space we can live in. So we define nine planetary boundaries, one of which up here is climate change. You see what the other ones are. They're all related to global environmental problems. Some of them are actually very local problems, but because they happen virtually everywhere, they aggregate up to be global problems. So we made a first estimate of what our safe operating space looks like on this nine-sided figure here, and this little green circle in the middle represents the safe operating space. And we reckon that three out of the nine we've already transgressed. The one, again, we're grappling with is climate change, because we've gone outside the Holocene of Anglaupe, the very village already. But two more, we've violated even more the nitrogen boundary, and the biodiversity one is the worst, even though there's a lot of uncertainty about it. But we think that's actually at least as important as climate change, or perhaps even more important in terms of a big global problem. We are really ripping up and simplifying the biotic fabric of the planet at an enormous rate. And most of that's not climate change driven. At least not turn around. So the thing I want to point out though is when you actually start impacting planetary boundaries, you come up with an interesting bifurcation point here. Some of these are very systemic processes like climate change. CO2 is well mixed. So are the other long lived greenhouse gases. So they're truly global problems. It doesn't matter who emits them. It's going to cause the same problems. Others are aggregated processes from local to regional scale up to global, and they're entirely heterogeneous and unfair, but they have global implications. Why are they unfair? Look at land use change. If you largely deforest the elements on base, and you will have reverberations all around the planet in climate and in other aspects of planetary environment. If you spread the same amount of deforestation out, you will not have that effect. So it actually matters where on planet Earth some of these aggregated processes occur. So we have global ecosystem services that are located in Apache way. Some countries possess more than others, but we all will benefit from it. This adds another level of complexity to the institutional government's problems. So one of the things we wanted to do, and this is some work that Mark Stafford Smith and I are just hoping to get published soon, is to say, all right, the planetary boundaries were conceived without any regard for equity issues. Can we bring them in? And the answer is quite interesting. I'll give you one example. That's phosphorus boundary. So if we look at application of N and P fertilizer, this happens to be P fertilizer. You see that it's highly spewed. It's very patchy. It would not surprise you to see that most of the cruise in Western Europe, Eastern North America, and much more recently in China, countries that produce a lot of food, regions that produce a lot of food, and that have the resources to buy the phosphorus. Huge parts of the world, look at Africa, are very phosphorus, both in the original phosphorus in their soils and their access to fertilizer phosphorus. And if we look at the environmental implications, you see that apart from the Nile river basins, these red areas are where there are large hypoxic areas in the coastal zone, directly related to nutrients flowing into the coastal zone, excess nutrients. And they're related, not surprisingly, to where nutrients are used. So then if we look at food insecurity, those are the countries that really suffer from a lack of food. And they are concentrated in sub-Sahara Africa and in pockets elsewhere. They are not found, of course, where there is a lot of phosphorus. So here you have a case where some parts of the world have far too much phosphorus. They're actually exceeding the planetary boundary for phosphorus on a regional stale. Others have a lack of phosphorus. So you can fix two problems at once. If you redistribute phosphorus from those areas that have too much and are transgressing boundaries, environmental boundaries, and those that have too little suffer from food insecurity and could use more phosphorus without transgressing boundaries. So we've come up with this little equation. It's a very crude one, but it makes the point that when you look at planetary boundaries alone, you get one picture, but when we add planetary boundaries with equity issues, you move toward global sustainability. So it means a transfer of resources such as P and N from regions where there's too much to regions where there are too little. It simultaneously addresses equity issues. Now the point is this isn't the wealthy countries being good. This is a transfer that benefits everybody because it keeps us from transgressing a planetary boundary. It matters where these things are applied. It matters where we dam rivers. It matters where we clear rain forests and so on. So what we're trying to say is that the planetary boundary approach has sometimes been viewed in opposition to equity. It's another way of capping developed within the poorer parts of the world. But in fact that's not the case at all. When you put the planetary boundaries together with equity issues, transfer resources from where they're too many to where they're needed, you actually move much more closely towards global sustainability. So I conclude by saying if you ask me, with all that wealth of problems I put forward, what are the three most important? These are the three I always nominate. We need to stabilize the climate and state with which human societies can thrive. That's absolutely obvious. If we go up to four or five degrees, game over, you can forget about it. Halt of the climate biological diversity needs ecological complexity. Equally important and somewhat arguably more important. And to solve either of those, you have to solve the equity problem. We cannot continue in the 21st century with that huge disparity of access to resources and wealth. I'm not a social scientist, I can't nominate how that equity problem needs to be solved. I'll leave that to my colleagues to tell you how that can be solved. All I can say is from a planetary point of view, it has to be solved and if it's not solved soon, you're not going to solve the other two. So that's a broader context. We had feedback from President Zuma. He actually listened to the presentation, I think, took on board some of the message, clearly like the equity message. So I'll leave you with it. Thanks very much, Will, for giving us that big picture context. I'm now going to ask John Drizek to address us. John is Professor of Political Science and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations here at the ANU. He's a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and has a long list of wonderful things that he does. He works in political theory and empirical social science, best known for contributions in the areas of democratic theory and practice and environmental politics. It's interesting to see that the three challenges that Will left us with and suggested that the equity one was something that social scientists could console. So as a social scientist, I wish I had some answers, but I can say that both myself and a number of my colleagues actually are working on these issues. Actually, I'm not going to focus on equity today. What I'm going to do is actually give a few reactions to what happened in Durban. And like Will, I wasn't actually in Durban, and like many of you, I actually didn't really sort of pay close day-to-day attention to the proceedings there, but I did certainly pay attention to what was agreed at the end. So what are we to make of this? Well, first of all, I should caution you to be aware of instant reactions from myself or anyone else. Here, I think I'm reminded, actually I should have checked this before I came here, but I think it's Chouin Lai who was, when asked 170 years after the fact what he thought of the French Revolution, he said, well, it's too early to tell. Now, I'm not just going to wait 170 years to decide what we think of the Durban Agreement, but it might need a sort of a bit of reflection. So distressed instant reactions, as I say, including mine. Symbolically, it does seem the agreement is important. The first time big emerging economies agree that emissions cutbacks of themselves are on the table. The language that was agreed at the last minute refers to, quote, a protocol, a legal instrument, or an agreed outcome of legal force. When I first saw that, I thought, hmm, that sounds like one of the constructive ambiguities which seem to evade the UNFCCC negotiations. This is a, you know, constructive ambiguity is a solution, well, when you've got the peculiar decision role, which the UNFCCC has, where any party can object to any clause that's on the table, and it must have that objection somehow responded to, the usual responses to find a constructive ambiguity, a way that will somehow accommodate concerns, without sort of really sort of precisely specifying anything that would put any other party off site. So I thought, when I first saw that, I thought, hmm, maybe that's another constructive ambiguity, but maybe it's not. I mean, if I read that, it doesn't sound that different from legally binding. But then, what does this mean? The problem with legally binding is that it's legally binding under international law, and international law, as we know, is a somewhat different creature from domestic law. The problem with international law, and treaties negotiated that establish international law, is that the mechanisms for compliance and enforcement are often quite weak. We need to only look at the code protocol there, that even the countries which remained in the protocol, and ratified it, did not necessarily meet their commitments under it. And there's really no mechanism for punishing their violation. So, yeah, so we shouldn't necessarily put too much store into the legally binding language, or the somewhat different, but I think somebody thought somewhat similar language that ended up in the Durban agreement. It was an agreement, of course, to not an agreement, didn't actually sort of produce a protocol or a treaty, it was an agreement to negotiate one. So, comprehensive agreement does remain elusive. And if you look at the various players, the big players in the negotiations, things still look very problematic. Probably the most problematic player remains the U.S. The U.S. can participate in negotiations and join declarations of the sort that we saw at the Durban, but we also know that the chances of the U.S. ratifying any serious climate treaty, those chances look vanishingly small at the moment. And that's, it doesn't, in a sense, doesn't really matter who's president, that the U.S. Congress seems, the Senate, sorry, U.S. Senate, which has to ratify treaties, seems extraordinarily unlikely to do so. Not just because then you have the Republican and the Jarrett, well, actually they're a minority in the Senate. Not just that you have the Republican Party is so opposed to the U.S. joining any global treaty, but the Democrats don't want to give the Republicans domestic ammunition on an issue which it seems is potentially a vote loser for the Democrats in the U.S. And I don't see that situation changing anytime soon. So, it's then the reality that the world has to go ahead without the U.S., possibly. China is, the case of China, is different and perhaps more interesting. China's approach to sovereignty is very hard-line. China and the U.S. are two countries which cling most strongly to traditional notions of sovereignty and are very reluctant to subsume those, to subsume their own sovereignty to any international agreement. But China now seems to be perhaps capable of movement as its actions in Durban indicate, perhaps in a way that the U.S. isn't. So China certainly bears watching. The other, going through the very significant players, the other interesting thing about Durban is that the EU reemerges in significant force. It's the EU which is at center stage in crafting the last-minute agreement. In direct contrast to Tobin Hagan two years before, where the EU was signed to it. And it was basically the U.S. and China negotiating on behalf of a few other emerging economies. Okay. Let me just take a bit of a step backwards from what just happened in Durban to think about the UNFCCC negotiations in general. I have a particular line on this that I've been working on over the last three years on a research project with my colleague, actually ex-college she's just left ANU, Haley Stevenson which we've been examining the UNFCCC negotiations and also the broader context of global climate governance in which they're embedded in some particular terms. We're interested in the degree to which those to which the global governance of climate change can involve deliberation rather than just positional negotiation. And what's the difference between those two? Deliberation involves joint problem solving. It is a form of communication in which public interest justifications, global interest justifications or ethical justifications rooted for example in principles of equity and justice predominate. Deliberation ideally has high quality argument informed by evidence and guided by norms of truthfulness and respect. It involves listening and reflection as well as just speaking. The deliberative ideal for the global negotiations would seek inclusive inclusive authentic in terms I've just established and also consequential deliberation will actually make a difference in collective outcomes. In contrast to that in contrast to that is positional negotiation where parties go in with preconceived ideas about their own material interest and seek to and seek to maximize their own what's in their own material interest. So global interests ethical justifications are really don't play any role in that ideal of positional negotiation. Those two are sort of if you like polar contrasts. What do we see currently in the UNFCCC? We see a lot of positional negotiation but we see a little bit of deliberation. The problem is some things that look like deliberation when public interest justifications get made when there are appeals to notions of justice are often covers for self interest. So for example when the US argues that on principle they shouldn't bear an undue burden of emissions mitigation because that would alter unfairly the global terms of trade. Obviously it's of their own interest to invoke that notion of a particular notion of fairness fairness there in terms of trade. That's a particular notion of justice. Developing countries invoke a very different notion of justice of course. They argue the case that the case that historical emissions should be taken into account. Historical emissions that got the US to being a rich economy in the first place and that those should be taken into account when allocating emissions cutback. So it's in the so justice demands that it's the US and other developed economists that should bear the burden of emission mitigation. So those are you know those sort of those claims opinions of ethics and justice do get made. But they happen to be consistent with the self-interest of those who are making them. A cynic would then say well what looks like deliberation is really often just a cover of self-interest. There isn't necessarily much in the web of listening and reflection. It's not we could also though try to look on the more positive side of things and see that this is what the political scientist John Elster called the civilizing force of hypocrisy. So even if people are being hypocritical even if they are making justice arguments that happen to be consistent with their own self-interest. The very fact that the that the dialogue is preceding the language of justice and fairness is in fact positive development because eventually it may mean that the people who make those arguments actually come to believe them and come to and then sort of sort of enter into a space of sort of ethical discourse rather than just sort of advancing self-interest. If we look empirically at the the negotiations over the years it's somehow sort of how to tell well how deliberative are they? Is it getting better or getting worse? One veteran negotiator I interviewed said that he thought actually this was actually about just over a year ago that I interviewed him he thought that he seemed to think that actually the deliberative quality of the negotiations have been going down over the years that he thought when he started in the mid 90s that there was a general ethos of we the world can solve this collective problem and now he sees it much more in terms of a positional negotiation of parties advancing their own interests and the price the problem that I just talked about of using sort of ethical arguments is just a cloak for self-interest. Okay to cut a long story short I think there is something deeply problematic about the way that the the current system of global governance of climate change works in procedural terms. There are times when the international system has been profoundly reconstructed but every time it's done every time that has happened 1648 Treaty of Westphalia 1815 Congress of Vienna 1919 Treaty of Versailles 1945 Bretton Woods followed by Founding of the United Nations every time it's been in response to total war it seems that's the only time we ever get the international system being reconstructed in pursuit of a new set of goals. Climate change has never had its Bretton Woods moment when there's been a sort of comprehensive thinking through what would a good regime of governance look like that's never happened it's kind of arisen it's sort of involved in haphazard fashion. It would be nice if we could have that Bretton Woods moment but I don't but it's hard to sort of see what would what would prompt it there's nothing quite like total war in the context of climate change that could do that no parallel to total war no matter what no matter how how profound the crisis might the climate crisis might seem. Okay, let me just just finish with just a brief sort of look at some proposes that some of my fellow social scientists have been making in the context of the global governments of climate change a number of them actually have been contemplating alternatives to the way the UNFCCC process currently works. For several authors the idea of mini-lateralism has a lot of appeal compared to the multi-lateralism of the UNFCCC negotiations. Mini-lateralism would just involve a much smaller number of parts of the negotiating table. This has been proposed in a different way by a number of the recent authors include David Victor an American political scientist author of a recent book whose title I'm momentarily blanking on but gridlock is in the title. Oran Young Robin Ackersley from the University of Melbourne for some for people like for David Victor it's very much a matter of real politic he wants to get the big players at the table to negotiate and forget about the small players and just get the composition who would it be probably there'll be the EU it'll be China US India maybe some other members of the basic group but the idea is to get the really big players the ones responsible for the vast bulk of the world's emissions at the table Robin Ackersley puts a slight different twist on that she proposes something what she calls a climate council which would have representation from states in three categories those most responsible the existing level of global global emissions and cumulative amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere those most capable of doing something about it and those most vulnerable and that's where the equity comes in and that's the difference between the real politic proponents Ackersley wants to introduce representatives the most vulnerable those who suffer most from the effects of climate change maybe representatives of representatives of small island states or sub-Saharan Africa the most vulnerable regions so so that's so that's that's the Ackersley idea she calls it inclusive mini-lateralism as a way forward she would retain a role for the for the the conference of the party it's the COP but that would be the idea would be to sort of negotiate something mini-lateral and then present it to the COP as a whole for ratification and what she doesn't have is a role for civil society civil society as we know is extremely active around the UNFCC negotiations huge sums of people go vast numbers of groups simple presence is not the problem but thinking about how they might play a constructive role in the construction of what I would call the global deliberative system is something that I think bears attention as well because when it comes to global negotiations it's not just effectiveness and problem solving is an issue it's also a matter of legitimacy those who are intertwined that it's hard to imagine an effective agreement which is not seen as legitimate in the eyes of representatives of the population of the world some of those many of those representatives are of course states but civil society matters too because civil society does represent things which states don't often represent so well so so in terms of the that the kind of thinking that Harry and Stephen and I have been doing about possibly reforming the globes the globes of climate change along with more deliberative time lines we might start with you know ECUS list proposal for inclusive mini-lateralism but also think about how that sort of see how that is located within a much larger global deliberative system in which we have which we can think of perhaps more systematic representation not just of different kinds of states but also of civil society as well that won't necessarily solve the problem mini-lateralism still has a U.S. problem when I outlined at the beginning the fact that it is going to be very hard for the U.S. to ratify and comply with any agreement and that would apply to a mini-lateral agreement as much as a multilateral one so there are lots of problems in the way but there are I think ways ways we can sort of think constructively about moving forward not just in terms of the content of multilateral agreements and the well the Durban agreement which is to actually an agreement to negotiate further but also to perhaps sort of think about how we might improve the global deliberative system for the governance of for the global governance of climate change in ways which could produce both more legitimate and more effective Thank you very much John Our next speaker is and our last speaker for the afternoon is Steven Haas Steven is Director of the Development Policy Center and of International and Development Economics at the Corford School for Economics and Government here at the ANU Steven has lengthy experience as Chief Economist at the Australian Agency for International Development he worked for the World Bank in Washington and Delhi and has done numerous things he's still a consultant for AusAid and the World Bank on issues relating to aid effectiveness and climate change policy and is a board member for the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and on the Advisory Board of the Asian Development Bank Institute I've asked Steven to come along to give his perspectives specifically from his background as an economist but also more generous You know you've really tapped into something here it's good to have this discussion straight afterwards although I endorse what John says beware of instant reactions these are very complicated things I wouldn't pretend that I understand it all I wasn't there in Durban I went to one of these climate change conferences I vowed I'd never go again unless I had to but you do get good coverage on the web so it's good to it's good to engage with this I think perhaps what I say might come across as a bit negative to some of you but I have him at the end a glass half full person I look forward to to the discussion I want to cover three things off in this talk one is sort of the driving force you know what led to the outcome you know it always strikes me since I've been following this which is since I looked on the Gano review you know when you look back at these it's kind of obvious how you ended up you think you had to end up there right and you just wish you'd pick you wish you'd done a better job predicting it so in hindsight what were the driving forces what outcomes did those driving forces lead to and then what's the outlook going forward so in driving forces you know in hindsight there were two there were two driving forces what happened in Durban one was at Kyoto was you know people say it was expiring but in technical terms this the first commitment period of Kyoto was you know it's 2012 right it's next year so in lay person's term yes the Kyoto period the Kyoto protocol was expiring was coming to an end and that had been put off right future the protocol put off again and again you could no longer put it off right this is the last chance to do something about the Kyoto protocol so that was one driving force and then the other driving force I think is this one that failure is not an option right people are still wearing the scars of the Copenhagen agreement but which was seen as a failure right and that had a lot of negative fallout generally for the climate change effort and for specific countries and no one wanted to be seen as the record of these negotiations so I think those two in hindsight with the driving forces to tell that story more detail you have to go back to the Copenhagen event two years ago that was a breakthrough agreement I mean I just I was slightly disagreeing with John you know this it was it was two years ago that developing countries put commitments on the table right perhaps not legally binding or not legally binding but they put those commitments on the table two years ago so that was a huge breakthrough event but it did leave two things unfinished and they come under this heading of legal form right one what was the future of Kyoto no agreement on that and two what was the legal what was going to be the legal status of this Copenhagen agreement right I don't mean just whether it was going to be recognized by the conference but in the text itself right there was until the last minute you know a statement that this will be converted into legal agreement that statement was taken out right as part of the compromise deal so the legal form issue was left untouched by Copenhagen agreement so then last year Kan Kun I mean Kan Kun basically just sort of regularized the Copenhagen agreement into the the COP series right because the agreement hadn't been officially recognized by the parties it was recognized and some more detailed work done but those two big issues were again left to one side the legal form issues were left to one side now we come to 2011 you can no longer leave well what you can no longer leave to one side is Kyoto right for the reasons I gave right so developing countries insist there's got to be something done with Kyoto that's why the EU comes back into the picture as John said in 2009 in Copenhagen they were marginalized because EU wanted an agreement definitely right they were the keenest so the ones who had the bargaining power with the US and the basic countries because they were not so keen on agreement right so the US had no bar the EU had no bargaining power right in Durban the EU had all the bargaining power because they were the only ones who said we're still prepared to go ahead with Kyoto right the US had ruled themselves out Japan had taken themselves out Russia had taken themselves out Canada had taken themselves out Australia sort of sitting on the fence so the if developing countries wanted second commitment for Kyoto they got to talk to the EU right so some of the EU's there in the game and so this became a a negotiation the EU then said okay you want us to sign up second commitment period for Kyoto what are you going to do for us right you know we're not going to give you that unless you give us something and that was the basic bargain that was struck at in Durban just to the weekend right so these things are always left to the last minute so what was the nature of the outcome I mean there were three basic outcomes and the first two you know I'm going to put in a way that you might think is cynical but which I think is is fairly honest although I don't want to be seen as being dismissive so the first part was that developed countries agreed or pretended went along with the pretense that developing countries were going to agree to a legally binding commitments in 2020 right so that was the negotiation as John said the final wording was this so they agreed to a protocol instrument or an outcome with legal force and that was exactly a constructive ambiguity because India and China said will agree to an illegal outcome at EU said that's not strong enough and so they came together and they agreed to this wording outcome with legal force I mean what does that mean obviously the EU can say that means we've committed to a legally binding agreement China and India can say well it presumably has got to be something more than what's going on now but whether it's going to be a document that includes targets for individual countries you know or framework agreement another framework agreement so you know that is a very wide ranging agreement and you can read into that what you want so the EU could say face and think it was getting something and drive the process forward a little bit meanwhile developing countries could pretend that the Kyoto protocol was still alive even though it's only the EU that will keep it alive possibly Australia and New Zealand and you know EU plus there are a few other European countries in there with it but not only is US out of picture but now the Canada, Japan and Russia out of the picture so the Kyoto protocol at best is going to limp forward but you know it's not dead so they've they can claim victory as well so the importance of these two agreements even though they had strong elements of pretence in them was that that gave cover so that they could continue the negotiations on the Copenhagen agreement because these negotiations as I see them they tend to be all nothing either you reach an outcome on everything or there's no outcome at all and you have to you have to reconvene so because they were able to reach agreement on those issues they were also able to reach agreement on how the Copenhagen agreement would be taken forward and that if you look at the documents I mean that is by far the thickest document it's the most substantive document it goes to all the issues about how is the Green Climate Fund going to work how are we going to verify where the countries are actually following through on their promises what are we going to do about deforestation how are we going to help with technological transfer what are we going to do about providing adaptation assistance I mean you can critique each of those and you can argue about the progress made in each of them but no doubt in each of them there is some progress being made and in some cases a fairly good process fairly good progress so the real advantage the real win was that because there was this overall framework agreement however weak that provided the cover in which these detailed negotiations could bear fruit what's the output then if we go forward you can divide it up into downside and upside downside is continued wrangling there will be continued wrangling at these conferences and just to give you a couple of examples of the sort of the basic level of wrangling that we're going to get even though the EU said it will sign on to a second commitment period for Kyoto we still don't have agreement on when the second commitment period will end will it be another five-year commitment period to 2017 or will it be out to 2020 which is what the EU would like even though the EU is the only one going forward they're not allowed to put 2020 so that's still bracket of text so a basic an idea as when is the second commitment period is still up in here and on the other side you know we still have no developing countries so-called developing country willing to come forward and actually voluntarily say well actually yes I'll graduate to NX1 right we don't see Singapore doing that right we don't see South Korea doing that you know and if they're not doing it now right by 2020 it's going to be even more irksome right for the developed countries who are still going to be in some sort of recession or recovering from this crisis to have to deal with that so we have no movement on this basic issue of when do you graduate from into NX1 so these are issues over which there will be continued wrangling and standoff and the second downside is that all this will deviate from the main game and the main game is implementation of the Copenhagen agreement the main game is acting on the commitments that were made in 2008 and verifying putting peer group pressure on each other and saying well look why haven't you lived up to your promise right there'll be less room for that kind of discussion and less of an atmosphere of trust in which that discussion take place because there'll still be this ongoing wrangling about those the next agreement kind of issues the upside of course the upside is twofold as well one I've already given is that you know this agreement provides cover for those negotiations it will continue to provide cover you know it would be nice it would have been better in a way I think if the developing countries just said okay you guys you know you said you do Kyoto you didn't you stuffed up let's forget that right and then the EU said to the developing countries look we wanted you to take on binding targets but we know you're not keen on it so let's just put that aside you know if they'd done that that would have cleared the air they could have actually got on 100% with Copenhagen but you know that's a legacy issue that is not going to happen so they need this cover to keep going forward with Copenhagen and then the second sort of upside is how is this going to resolve I mean what is that treaty in 2020 actually going to look like I mean I think the way it's going to resolve and this to me is the sort of the upside is it's going to look like the long-term cooperative agreement that they're negotiating now right this 50 page document because that is an agreement that covers everyone and it has the it's in the common but differentiated responsibility spirit right it is absolutely you know it's what countries have negotiated within the convention it's very difficult for them to think okay well we've negotiated all that we've worked on that for years and years and now we're going to adopt another framework after 2020 because these things move in an evolutionary way so my sense is that the resolution of this is that bottom-up process that we've seen over the last few years you know will get itself put into a treaty right but it will be a pretty loose framework kind of treaty it will be more like a UNFCCC treaty right that is a loose framework treaty than a tight quantitative targets-based Kyoto treaty and maybe that's whether that's good or bad at least that is a possible resolution on the way forward so to to wrap up you know when you look at it and you think well was this a success or not I think it depends on your perspective if you think about you know the urgency of the problem and the the severe downside of the climate change that's happening and it's going to happen in the future if you think about where we've got to get to you know you end up a bit a bit depressed these are kind of marginal steps going forward if on the other hand you look at where we come from and you look at the basic mess around Kyoto and the sort of the legacy of that issue and the lack of leadership coming from the United States and if you look at it against that context well then I think you come out with a much more positive assessment that for all the the pretence and the vagueness and the ambiguity at least we have made some small progress and and we've kept hope alive for the future thank you of our panelists who've given us very different perspectives on the background too and the events in Durban I'm now going to invite questions I would ask please that when you wish to ask a question we don't have a really microphone so I'd ask you to please raise your hand when I indicate that it's time for you to ask your question please identify yourself and indicate to who your question is addressed so we're open for questions ma'am um Rebecca Horwich Australian Forest and Harbour Mines what are the right forms of forests at all about the emissions from forest destruction or burning forest products to make electricity anybody know I don't know I just wonder if anybody knows well they were on they wasn't red you know red the uh or red plus right as it's now called yeah I'm not the red plus expert I was surprised by how short the section was and that had maybe a bit skeptical as to how much progress they'd been made the sort of red plus agreements seemed to me to pretty much reiterate the earlier agreements that have already been made so I didn't get the sense on that one there was a lot of there was a big breakthrough but on the other hand I guess there's no you know we have gone into this bottom-up world and so it's now it's really up for countries to within the general framework that's been set to do to do red deals I know there was also a discussion on the LULU-CF issues for developed countries and how you define the issues and my and Australia's got a position where they're going to change the definition and get rid of bushfires and my understanding of that is that there was no agreement on that issue thank you gentlemen my name is Ketia I'm from the Prophet School I have a question I just want to the first question is as you have known the European results have stated that there would be a possible agreement by 2015 which will take effect in the end of 2020 as you mentioned I'm just wondering considering your projections in the in the climate to stay by the climate how this type of agreement will help kind of go over to the last time second since Bali the UNHCCC and the parties involved in negotiations have committed themselves to have agreement in Copenhagen and now they break the process again and try to commit another agreement in somewhere in 2015 how far do you reckon that you can trust parties involved in the climate change in the negotiations to get the agreement first of all and secondly how I mean the substance of how far that you can have in terms of such a to get that kind of deal okay just quickly on your on your first question I think the answer is how quickly how quickly this bottom-up approach that Steven referred to within this broader framework can actually start getting emissions down because if you look at the signs behind it if you want to have a reasonable chance better than 50-50 of meeting that two degree guardrail we have to cap global emissions which we have to level them off by 2015 and have them on downward track by 2020 which isn't exactly the same timeframe that came out of Durbin that will that will mean if you can do that that the maximum rate of reduction in the period after 2020 becomes between five and six percent really hard to do but perhaps we could do it if you wait until 2020 to reach that leveling off point and then start dropping you've got to reduce emissions by between nine and 10 percent per year during the subsequent few decades if you're going to meet that two degree guardrail that's virtually impossible unless you put all the world's major economies out of wartime footing which doesn't look likely so the timing this decade timing this decade is absolutely critical yes so we have gone from the Bali road map to the Durbin platform and you've got to hand it to the piagos I mean that does Durbin road map wouldn't sound that good but Durbin platform does sound yes you know we're getting that it is basically well it could be the same I mean we don't really know what it is you'd think with this agreement they've already negotiated which is the LCA agreement the big thick one you know it wouldn't take very long actually to just say we're going to turn that into a treaty they could do that pretty quickly I reckon I don't think they will because on the one hand developing countries will hold out for EU and maybe others to move on Kyoto and EU and others will put pressure on develop developing countries to concede more in terms of binding us so although a model is there which could pretty readily be converted into some sort of legal agreement my hunch is that these negotiations because there's no particular urgency because the bottom-up approach is already going COVID-19 is already going these will drag out you know at least to 2015 quite possibly much longer I'm just a question for probably in light of what we'll just say about the the rapid movement needed in terms of the reductions in this sort of next decade can you tell them anything if you've got information about what's happening outside because you would consider negotiations and transactions so maybe you'd like collections like the across the regions that are happening between Norway and South America and I'll be right over there but no I don't know so in light of that maybe how Jonathan can tell us a little bit about whether those negotiations have a bit more strength in terms of their governance approach and the ability to actually move somewhere outside of the positional agreement so on right yeah there is a tendency to focus on the UNFCCC negotiations not really know what's going on outside that there is one I mean there is a School of Thought which suggests that what goes on outside may be that's important maybe more important more globally consequential than what goes on inside I mean I'm not I'm not familiar I actually don't know much about the specific negotiations that you were talking about but there are all kinds of perhaps understudied sort of networked arrangements that involve participants and sometimes states and sometimes corporations and sometimes NGOs which you know they might be perhaps to transfer technology to organize carbon trading or whatever so there are a lot of these things in the works but it's kind of hard but precisely because there's so many it's sort of very hard to sort of figure out what they all add up to and in terms of the I mean the sort of magnitude of the global challenge that we face at the moment it is hard to see them sort of having up to anything adequate yeah I just have I think it's a mistake to think you know what's happening inside the UNFCCC versus outside obviously what's happening inside the UNFCCC doesn't do anything to reduce emissions in itself it provides a framework and it's more and more a bottom-up framework and so it's a framework for all those measures you're talking about some of which are going better than others but overall we still have very rapid growth in global emissions so I think the next couple of years will be key to see because emissions in developed countries very low over the recession and really look at China and see whether China if China starts to curb the growth in its emissions that'll be very positive for both the environment and for the kind of global effort Thank you very much I remember this from the ANU I have a question to Will but also to the other one couple of questions one is how is still having on the top of the other two degrees as a sim because in fact about 1.1 degrees I'm already mitigating the sulfur dioxide and the potential through that temperature rise is estimated by 100 is 2.3 so it's like taking aspirin and say I only get 3 to 7 degrees but we'll have to continue to take the distance and ask it second question is are there still just talking in terms of cutting emissions only because again according to NASA and others the level of carbon dioxide in meter the total is 470 08 is on carbon dioxide of 393 which already according to I think many climate scientists are triggering feedback effects amplifying feedback effects in terms of global fires in terms of methane and it's estimated that the opening of the Arctic Ocean will contribute the equal amount to the atmospheric energy as the very total of carbon is limited today I don't know whether this estimate is correct so the question is is very still a disconnect between the science and the politics as the water's broken in before and by is this disconnect going is it staying the same or is it getting smaller I don't really know about the disconnect politically I think maybe John Stephen made a comment on that in terms of the science itself I think there is a recognition that two degrees is certainly by no means a safe level of climate change I think what most people are saying it's probably a level we could waddle through with most of the research I've seen indicates that most of those nasty feedbacks probably won't happen at two degrees or less although there's still debate about that there's good papers by the global carbon project on that on the carbon-related feedback mechanisms they certainly go up exponentially beyond two degrees in terms of the risk associated with those feedbacks so I think that to me the big concern is a sort of weakening of resolve to say oh well maybe we can't make two let's just learn to live with three well there's a far greater difference between two and three than there is between one and two because they're not linearities in the climate system I don't think that is so through so you're right in saying there are risks even with two degrees there's no doubt about that the judgment is we could probably waddle through at two degrees but not at three so I think that's the real concern there okay if we don't if do we have further comments on that question if not then I'll go to another question okay you're up towards Stephen and it's about the climate development mechanism which obviously was a pretty important point that we've been very vocal and seeing sort of increased investment I guess in climate development projects in developing economies I guess the period which I was going on foot obviously there are some risks coming up to these risk negotiations that there wouldn't be a second period and therefore that I guess mechanism might fall you know or collapse or they might so it must be a reduction that investment now that we've got a second period what are your thoughts on the future of that mechanism and do you think it will continue to see an increase in investment that's a good question and I think that's one where we need to at least I need to do a bit more analysis but you're right I mean the CDM market has sort of come to a standstill because of this at least for new projects because why would we build a new project if you don't know CDM credit's going to be worth anything now yes I mean on the one hand there may be a second period rather than there's still there's still some uncertainty if you're an investor but yes certainly you'd probably say the likelihood's gone up on the other hand we know that EU is not that keen on the CDM they've kind of got a bit disillusioned with CDM they want to see something that's more transformational if they're putting their their money into it so whether it's a Kyoto backed by Europe is going to be very valuable for CDM investors I think might still be a question so yeah you have to think this would be good for the CDM overall but how good I'm not sure and I think others may know that I need to do some more analysis I'm just wondering about some other reasons why you might see the Dermatological Platform which is sort of well it's helpful how to outcome and one of them seems to be there's this clear acknowledgement of the emissions gap and so on may be rhetorical and so on but it seems like there's a potential at least to bring that bear on to actually have a section of communities in the form that's for a view of the temperature goal of the 20th, 30th and 50th or so the IPCC it says the report will come through around it at that time so first question I suppose is I wonder how much that is the potential to drive increases in ambition of the leader of the 2015 but also now that the Greens are more understanding of the operation of what is as a governing instrument wondering about the potential there for the promise of funds to also increase developing countries mitigation seeing as that was essentially one of the conditions on which the 20th when the commitment was made writing contributions for the world and the treatment Well I could just respond on that John I thought that was a good point and I mean I said you know it's very complex so I realised one of the things I was leaving out was there was that whole aspect to these negotiations around ambition so I guess the two big issues were legal form next treaty and ambition and I focused on legal form because that was the one again that kept people awake at night but yes on ambition I mean they've recognised there's a gap and they need to do more I just think it's a little bit I don't know if it's that help I mean they just in 2009 so just two years ago they put forward their their offers right the main countries and I think it's unrealistic to expect well they're going to change them in just two years I mean you've got to give them some time to deliver and get serious about that so I'm more concerned about whether they deliver on their existing targets and then I mean I know it's it'd be better if you did more earlier but I just think from a practical point of view let them deliver on that and then maybe this review in 2015 you know will then they've shown some progress science shows need to do more that may then create the environment the atmosphere that's not there at the moment to actually you know go beyond the rhetoric about the ambition gap and actually for a country to step up and say well I'm going to fill that gap Frank? I'm going to get Frank out of the story and you I'm more of a sort of a half-full just half-full sort of guy and in that regard I just like to think it's sort of a historical perspective and so for the last two or three there ends with that a paradigm whereby the world returns is it developed the country, the world and the developing country and the developed countries will have to do something about the problem and the developing countries will do something about it I have and I think if this will be seen as something significant years out of that then it will be seen for the fact that that our distinction that's probably not to my mind that's that's something positive that comes out of it and that that is sort of the the fundamental for irreversibly for really addressing the challenge you know in years and probably decades to come so I just might to to put that out for for discussion Anybody like to comment on that? Well I don't want to hog the discussion and I agree with Frank I just about everything but I I'll just say one short thing which is I think I think that divide was broken at Copenhagen the Copenhagen developing countries came and said you know we're going to take these actions to produce emissions so I think we had the big breakthrough two years ago not just last weekend Are there questions or comments? I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm just going to just make a very brief public participation that you know rationally our commitment is all very well but actually achieving compliance with those commitments is another thing altogether without that of course then commitments have symbolic value but not necessarily much more than that just very quickly we're we're attaching all this back to the biophysics of the planet CO2 is a very long-lived gas and it's really the accumulation of CO2 that counts so even though there's now a recognition of that blurring between developed and developing countries it'll still be a long long time before developing countries ever catch up to developed countries in terms of the responsibility of what's up in the atmosphere so I think that although it's good to see that that continuum rather than a sharp divide it's going to be a long time before the atmosphere ever catches up with that with that continuum there'll still be a bigger obligation in terms of what's actually driving the change in climate from those who historically have put it up there just because there's so much up there already I'm just wondering if there's been a discussion here about the top-down versus bottom-up of production and energy executive described to me once says it's only that you have blue-green soil scramble with the top-down process being blue-green for future pathway and the bottom-up leading to more of a scramble which costs more and is more chaotic and more traumatic but either way we're going to have these transitions what does it mean for all policy in the way that we direct that on resources, international education if we are in a scramble world versus a different world? I'm going to turn that off and I'll call it straight away because it's more in the area than it is in the case I said that the atmosphere doesn't matter how humanity does it whether it's good or bad as long as you get it as long as you stay within that guard rail that we've agreed so the atmosphere is pretty agnostic but we as humans aren't and that's where my colleagues have more expertise than I do I guess a scramble world isn't a term that I would use and I'm not sure it's really that sort of current in literature but I think it's still true that the it's very hard to organize the international system on a top-down basis I mean so we have nothing like the level of sort of centralized un-public authority that we have within states I mean that's that almost goes without saying and in that sense I mean that poses all kinds of sort of challenges to governance and I suppose in your terms it does become to the extent we sort of don't get agreement at the peak level you have your naturalcy or in some sort of mean lateral forum then we're in your terms in a scramble world but a scramble I mean that sounds sort of disorderly and another way of putting it I would say that we're well we're in a sort of more decentralized potentially sort of network that sounds you know network sounds a bit more positive than scramble so networks can do things I'm not sure it's scrambling yeah I'm not sure it's scrambling I'll just you know address the point about what it means for Australia in terms of carbon pricing because that's come up a lot in the media and Convays come back and said well this vindicates carbon price strategy and Abbott said all this and Hunt said well this shows that it's a ridiculous strategy we're going to be out there in front and I really want to say at least on that issue it doesn't it's irrelevant you know what has happened whether we have top down or bottom up is really irrelevant for I think your domestic carbon price policy and once you've decided it might be relevant for how much you decide to cut by once you've decided to cut by a certain amount then you should just work out the most efficient way to do it and most economists would say that should involve a carbon price and then the only issue is then well can you trade and you know clearly you can trade under both a top down and a bottom up approach and in fact in some ways it's easy to trade in a bottom up approach because you can make the rules yourself right you can do the deals you know there there are less constraints on the transactions that you can you can engage in so I think this whole idea that we need to have a global agreement in order for it to make sense for us to go to go here with carbon pricing that is a fallacious idea that we should put to one side I'm not saying you're suggesting it but you've given me the opportunity to make that point so thank you Hi my name's Ashina I'm one of the students in Jeanette Stores for which this panel is staying held sorry guys in New York this is open to all of you given the EU's involved role here at Durban will the EU return as the global leader on climate change or are we due for a new leader partly depends on what you mean by leadership I suppose I suppose historically that the EU is taking the lead when it comes to questions of sustainability in general sort of beyond including climate change but not limited to that uh but of course the that's I think the EU in that sense would like to think it exercise the form of moral leadership as well but that's just one kind of leadership but of course the it remains the case that there are other giants in the system in particular China and the the US I think in terms of who is going to exercise leadership or in the future I don't think you'll be the US for reasons I've sort of mentioned in my talk conceitably China might play a leadership role but I think but then I think with with China it seems that Russia sort of much more comfortable doing things unilaterally rather than doing things as part of comprehensive global agreements and part of because they do seem to be very very committed to sort of traditional emotions of sovereignty so it would be interesting to see if they can you know the the EU it seems doesn't the countries of the EU have already given a waste of large chunks of their sovereignty so they don't they don't have that kind of hang up but China seems to do does it would be interesting to see if sort of China can transcend that and exercise more effective leadership in in the future anybody else going to go into that okay other questions my question is for well-appointed also from the Department of Climate Change how much do you think will be the size of the climate change is coming through with the the basic countries in their leadership because specifically China is going to be a few sort of like from your colleagues and the invited to join you to talk to our their finalist there William Thiel but what's your sort of understanding and how well they sort of understand the science how seriously they're taken sometimes I think they understand it better better than Australia and the U.S. to in terms of not having the silly denialist movements like we do so no I think I think they understand it very well there's no doubt China does it's it's right from the leadership on down every indication you see tells you that they listen to the science they understand they know what the consequences are of what they're trying to do they obviously face other political constraints that's why people don't automatically cut their emissions like scientists think they ought to face quite formidable political and economic constraints but nevertheless they understand the science the fact that the president Zimmer was engaged in this the side of it and in his comments sort of ad hoc after that he certainly understood the science as well but he made the comment he said the real challenge is for us to meet the the level of level of ambition required by the science so he understands exactly what that means and in terms of their science South Africa is a very strong scientific country in terms of its contributions to the global scientific effort it's by far the biggest scientific community in the continent of Africa China's many enormous gains in the last 10 years in terms of the both the quality and quantity of its science so yes these these basic countries are really moving also on the scientific front and I think the economics of that is a really big positive that's another glass more than half full in terms of what they're investing in their own countries and understanding the climate system question yes of course thank you so let's get why about that I suppose it's an interesting situation around you that the nation that has the responsibility for most emissions in the future of the global group also understands it and has its hand on the buttons to be able to sort of correct it and also it potentially has the political situation that it allows it to correct the situation doesn't face the same challenges as the U.S. that was on China on the ground so do you want to speak that anyway in a sort of use of code for the future or sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of sort of I've got I've got this in my hand so I suppose maybe I should have it in my answer in the term yeah I mean there is an interesting contrast between the again a sort of very interesting contrast between the between the U.S. and the U.S. and China that it seems that the yeah the U.S. I mean so if you roll things back sort of 40 years the U.S. was an environmental leader and was a great model for other countries and in terms of environmental policy efforts and that of course is and this has changed quite quite dramatically it does it does it does seem and are very very hard for it to it's very hard for visiting it's sort of re-establishing that leadership role on the global level but that seems to have been it seems to be gone but of course the paradox is that the U.S. I mean it is responsible for a huge proportion of the historical emissions and can we imagine a global agreement without the U.S. or without sorry to which the U.S. negotiator might sort of very well sort of sign up to to to a global agreement but getting it ratified it seems to be it's impossible so China yeah I think China in China the possibilities are both much more open but it's obviously at the moment it's not obvious some in which direction China will choose to move yeah I think one interesting thing about the negotiations is you did see fracturing of the various coalitions that have traditionally the different countries have put themselves into so the developing country group sort of split up and started some of the developing countries and not just the little island states but some of the like African countries started putting pressure on China to do a deal and then you know the basic group Brazil, South Africa, India, China which was meant to be this new alliance of emerging countries that split down the middle as far as I can tell with Brazil and South Africa wanting being happy with the EU proposal but India opposing it and China taking India's side on this so I think that's probably good that the coalitions are breaking up that allows for more movement but yes we desperately people have mentioned leadership I mean we're desperately in need of a leader the US is not really leading EU is too weak to lead China is the obvious candidate but China you know sees itself as the emerging super power and why should it normally the emerging super power will free ride on the dominant super power why should the emerging super power do the work of the US China doesn't want to want to let the US off the hook on this issue so it's not realistic to look at China to really take on an enthusiastic leadership role at best they'll be a kind of reluctant leader so it's not an easy situation that's where we are where we are you've got to hope that this kind of more fluid approach does allow in the absence of a strong leader does allow some you know new sort of more progressive coalitions to fall and take progress forward