 My name is Frank Yotso, I'm Deputy Director of the Crawford School and I run the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy here at Crawford School. That's my area, climate change, economics and policy. That's what I work on. That's what I get excited about and I'm so, so I'm very enthusiastic about chairing this session here this afternoon. So at the conclusion of the Paris Climate Change Conference there in December, we saw great celebrations, okay? So I think there were genuine celebrations by the people who were involved in it and my interpretation of that is actually, there's a large measure of relief that you can see in these pictures, right? Relief at the fact that a process that had been going for many years and that had very high expectations behind it was not derailed and in fact ended somewhere near where it was hoped to end up. The stars were aligned politically in terms of the leaders who were in charge and their respective objectives and motivations in the key powers. We will hear more about that in the talks that we will hear this afternoon. The agreement of course, the Paris Agreement overall, great ambition behind it, keeping global temperature rise to well below two degrees with a mention even of one and a half degrees and now major questions of course how the world community may get there or at least may get some way towards that great ambition. Regents have put pledges on the table, the so-called INDCs, the nationally determined contributions by each country and most analysis including these put out by the UN, FCCC, the UN Secretariat, put the collective effort behind these pledges at somewhere in the vicinity of three degrees, perhaps the high two degree end of the spectrum, a lot of uncertainty around that but it's clear that what's on the table up to date will not be sufficient to meet the two degree outcome. Equally it's clear that what's on the table is a significantly better global emissions outcome than what would otherwise be the case without any pledges. So key elements of the Paris Agreement, what does it mean for development? I'd just like to mention three points that I'm sure will come up in the talks. Basically it enshrines a bottom up framework for global climate policy, bottom up meaning the key determinant is national policy making, nationally based decisions that then come up into a global forum. Question is haven't we had that for a long time already since the Copenhagen protocol or is that a significant innovation? Secondly the hard distinction traditionally between developed and developing countries in the UN climate change framework is no longer so strong under this new agreement. Now is this significant? Does it mean that we will see more effective climate action globally with more action by developing countries and will there be effective support by which countries to developing countries in that context? Of course the Australian pledged to develop $1 billion of existing aid funding over the next five years to climate change. And thirdly nationally based pledges I've already mentioned it. Is it just another set of policy documents or is it an expression of quite a fundamental shift in thinking that now begins to put climate change at the centre or at least in parallel with a development strategy? My interpretation of what Paris meant is that of a glass half full rather than the reverse. So that's the message that I have. It's just my interpretation. I think it's perfectly possible to look at Paris with a completely different perspective and see it differently. So if you're struggling you won't miss anything else. I'll also following this morning's discussions I'm going to try to get through this without using the term foreign aid because I think for reasons that others set out much better than I could that can take us down a path that complicates things immensely. I think Paris affected at least these interrelated activities. The importance here is that all of these, the way the global economy works, the development process, Australia in its role, generally the way that markets, carbon markets I'm talking about here form and are used as tools and the diplomacy of climate change, Paris had an impact on all of that and they all connect to one another. People have spoken about Paris as a sudden turning point. That's not the way I see it. I think it was a great triumph. All of those hands raised were raised in relief, as Frank said, but also in a feeling of real accomplishment and it was that. But it didn't do anything radically new. It consolidated and there was its importance. It consolidated the new direction of the global economy in particular which had been apparent I think for some time. And in doing that, in consolidating momentum already underway, it will impart new momentum to these processes. What do I mean by the change in the way the economy works? It's really the salience of climate change has now risen right to boardrooms in the most important companies around the world. They're the ones who have the money that makes the world go round. And so what they're doing in their change of business models, in their apprehension of the climate change threat to their futures, what they're doing is fundamentally changing the way that our economy works for us. If you want to look at this in detail, the Secretary-General's Office did an excellent report. It was really a follow-up to the summit in 2014. This report was published just in October and it covers what they call the inflection points in private sector investment that really will determine whether there is a global and effective global response to climate change or not. So I've sort of said look, Paris wasn't brand new, wasn't a radical turning point, but there's a qualification on that and the reason for the relief is that we've been waiting a very long time for two breakthroughs in particular I think. The first was a very clear, reiterated long-term signal. As early as Copenhagen, we'd had countries agreeing that we couldn't go past a two-degree rise in temperature beyond pre-industrial levels. This time there was no debate about that. There was a lot of debate about whether 1.5 degrees was really the limit, the risk limit that we should take. The debate was not about so much whether it was the right number to keep us all safe. It was really whether it was sufficiently realistic or not, at least amongst those who favour climate action. The argument was that 1.5 degrees was so far beyond our reach that if we embraced it, we would be undermining the case for a realistic approach to the climate problem. We didn't agree with that and thankfully at the end of the day neither did political leaders and we now have 1.5 degrees solidly in scope I think. That is enormously ambitious. Nobody could describe a pathway to it at the moment that would meet all of the other social needs that we know, but it's now something we must work for. The Paris Agreement, the treaty part of the Paris Outcomes commits us to endeavour to take measures to endeavour to reach that limit. The second big breakthrough, it's been coming for a long time, it's been coming for eight or nine years at least, was the settlement that the arithmetic of the global climate response has to add up, that it can't, none of these targets can be achieved unless all countries, certainly all major emitters, whether they're developed countries or developing countries are participating and reporting on what they're doing to respond to climate change. So what does Paris mean for development? Well you can approach this from many different angles, but for me the key sort of starting point is that the nationally determined contributions that countries took to Paris and almost every country now has one, these are essentially economic plans, their strategies, their long-term plans that incorporate the response to climate change in the broad economic tasks that governments identify for themselves, bringing prosperity. This has been anticipated for a long time and you know here's the World Bank from about three or four years ago, they use the term green growth, I don't like the term green growth much, but James Batley this morning said that when we talk about foreign aid and assistance we're really talking in the language that these days is seen by people on the right of the political spectrum as not very fashionable. I think one term which people on the right generally love is growth, they can't get it out of their heads really and so I think language like this is deliberately conceived to ditch all the baggage of the past and try to start afresh. I'm not sure green growth quite does it, but I think the task in finding new language to point to different conceptual frameworks is worth doing and certainly it's got to be, we've got to look for language that will appeal universally. So I think in bringing climate change into the centre of integrating climate change into development process what the Paris Agreement is attempting to do is follow up on the rhetoric at least in the climate process and the sustainable development dialogues that have been going on in negotiations of the importance of climate, of the climate change response to sustainable development. So I think it ticks a box that's really fundamental in the SDGs process, the global goals, I haven't got time to go into that any deeper of course but be interested in views of those here of whether that makes any sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of the development community. One other way in which Paris fundamentally changes the development, the view of the development process for those from climate change is that for the first time really agriculture is identified as a priority for the global response to climate change. Agriculture until now has been neglected, kept out of the mitigation discussion, it's been part of adaptation, it's been kept out because it was seen as very easy to game if you were looking to do that and in any case very difficult to measure outcomes, climate related outcomes in agriculture. But over 100, I haven't counted them yet but I saw someone else's count yesterday saying 160 countries have mentioned agriculture mostly for mitigation but also for adaptation as priorities they have in there. Let's call them development plans rather than nationally determined contributions. I'll come back to agriculture in a minute. There is in the Paris Agreement much more attention given to adaptation. It's seen as a priority, this is the way these things are sometimes dealt with. There's a very long article on adaptation in the Paris Agreement. I think there's still rather too little and by that I mean there's not enough rigor applied to the discussion of adaptation in the climate convention. This is a core development issue and we've got people making decisions about it who are core diplomats, not really development experts and so I think we need to work a bit harder on this in the climate community so that the real work on it can be done by people who know about development, much more than people like me. You can't do much without any money of course and so what did Paris do about the funding of climate responses? There was a bit of a struggle about whether the 100 billion commitment that was agreed in Copenhagen should be updated and a new number agreed, that didn't happen and instead we have a commitment to scaling up funding and I'm being careful about the verbs I use here because there is this awkward concept of mobilising public and private investment and there's a lot of disagreement about what that word mobilise means and if you're trying to decide whether the funding commitment that's embodied in the Paris Agreement is adequate for the task then it's probably worth looking at the best in my view, best analysis of what's happening so far and that was done by the OECD and the Climate Policy Initiative and published just before the COP and what it shows is that on the basis of their analysis and that is qualified in every possible way. In fact, if you look at the report, more of it is concerned with looking at their methodologies than is concerned with actually doing the calculations themselves and that's I think quite right because really this report was to try to get to the bottom of what this word mobilise really means but even with a lot of qualifications and scope for criticism that it's too conservative or it's not conservative enough and both those criticisms have been made I think this report leaves us with an encouraging view of what's happening in the world. They argue that in or they calculate that in 2013, 52 billion of this 100 billion which is the 2020 target, 52 billion had been mobilised and that by 2014, actually that 68 billion, I've mistyped that, 68 billion had been mobilised. So what that shows is an upward trend of reasonable proportion and I've just got a signal that I'd better be a bit more crisp in my description of these developments. The Paris agreement above everything else creates opportunities for Australia. The need now to get to the nitty-gritty that Frank mentioned in introducing Professor Lee for implementation is an area that need is really a gift for Australia. We have world's best technology and expertise in some areas of what's now called transparency rather than MRV and the agreement imposes a big challenge on developing countries of being able to report suitably and we can help and the same is true in agriculture where there's great expertise in Australia to be able to assist other countries. I won't spend any time on markets but this is a tool for implementing the Paris agreement that many countries are turning to and if you look at the last stop point there's some quite interesting things happening in the wake of Paris and that they have a collective effect of bringing countries together to collaborate on the market mechanisms that they're relying on. Paris on the whole renews confidence in the way the multilateral system can work. You need very effective diplomacy very few people could do it as brilliantly as the French did but you need effective diplomacy to get anything done in the multilateral system and to get anything done in any part of the multilateral system you need US leadership. US participation is not enough. The US still is unique in the world and in the multilateral system and last year Obama didn't shake any didn't shake a hand all year without mentioning climate change that had a profound impact and helped I think here's the glass half full bit renew hope. We've got a long way to go yet but this picture I used in the last 18 months talking about prospects for Paris I thought it would be successful but just a sunrise and I think that's where we are we've got a very long way to go but Paris gave us a great start. Let me start with mentioning the very simple and easy question. Is the party agreement successful or failure? Most of the person say yes it is successful. I agree on that my answer is yes too. Professor Bamsi just mentioned that the party agreement will affect in many areas and someone say that the party agreement is the first step to end the first few years and others said that we can finally save our planet. However I'd like to point out the durability of the party agreement. From the legal perspective, the party agreement is very durable system responding to climate change. We already have two treaties one is the UNFCCC it's a durable one too but the convention has no specific emission reduction obligation and you know the Kyoto protocol has the legally binding obligation to emission reduction. However only 30 something parties included in UNX1 convention subject to the legally binding obligation to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. However under the party agreement all parties should participate in the emission reduction and they shall submit national determined contribution with progression in every five years. Progression means the new NDC should I mean the new NDC should make any progression beyond the previous one and it should all parties are required to submit their NDCs in every five years. So global participation is very important for durability of the agreement. If only part of the community are subject to the main obligation it cannot exist for a long time. So I think global participation is one important factor that makes the party agreement durable. And another thing that I'd like to indicate is the NDC will be included in the public registry you know the under the Kyoto protocol the emission target of each parties are included in the UNX. Generally speaking the UNX is the integral part of the treaty and to include the I mean to set up the new commitment period the further negotiation should be necessary. But during the previous negotiation it starts from 2007 and ended in 2012. The Canadian withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol and New Zealand, Russia and Japan did not commit their next target during the second commitment period. So it impedes the durability of the agreement. And so but under the party agreement no further negotiations are required to set up the next period. As I mentioned already every part all parties shall submit their new NDC in every five years. And as I mentioned the new contributions are included in the UNX is then that means it's the amendment to the treaty. That means all parties are required to take the domestic procedure for ratification. That's the that then many parties can face with difficulties in because of domestic economic situations. You know the the amended Kyoto protocol was prepared in 2012 three years ago three years ago yeah three four years ago three years ago yeah but it cannot be entered into force yet because of a relatively small number of parties ratified that amended one. So but under the party agreement no domestic no further negotiations are required and no amendment will be made so no ratification is required. That's the reason why I can say the party agreement is very durable one. So I think the party agreement is the first durable system under the in the climate change regime to combatting the climate change. And as I mentioned all parties to the UNF triple C are expected to participate in the good party agreement. It is global participation can be achieved because of the bottom-up approach. You know Kyoto protocol took the top-down approach and because of that reason many countries reluctant to participate in the next commitment period. Bottom-up approach was based on the self differentiation that is the proposal of the United States. United States proposed self differentiation and it is supported by many of parties to the UNF triple C and so self-differentiation can contribute to the global participation that's my idea. And another thing is the adoption of concept which are not reached on consensus. You know models I don't know what the models mean and I don't know what the climate justice means but the you know the Bolivia had consistently insist that the inclusion of models in the text and Venezuela consistently argued that the climate justice is very important concept for Venezuela so it should be included in the text but no one respond to that idea but those concepts are included in the preamble of the party agreement. If these concepts are not included in the party agreement then Venezuela and Bolivia might only participate in the new regime. So it this kind of efforts of inclusion can contribute to the global participation. Let me move on to the factors in success. There are many things that contribute to the success of the party conference. The first factor that I think is the affirmative position of the United States and China. I think you may know we may well know the position of the United States. The Obama administration have consistently supported ADP negotiations but the Chinese position was not so good. You know before the ADP negotiation to establish the new climate change regime since 2020 there was another negotiation it is called AWG-LCA. It was initiated by the Bali Action Plan. During the LCA negotiations Chinese ambassador mentioned there would be no more protocol under the UNFCCC. If my understanding is correct the Chinese did not want any more legally binding instrument but as we know the party agreement is legally binding instrument. It's a treaty. The Chinese position has been changed. I think the Chinese position has been changed because of their domestic air pollution problem. You know the large cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai suffered from very serious air pollution and Chinese people always complain against government's environmental policies. So to resolve that problem Chinese should reduce the emission of carbon dioxide. So that makes the change of Chinese position in the ADP negotiations. And I also I should also mention the leadership of friends. You know the before the conference in Paris there was a terror in Paris but the French government excised its leadership in negotiations. It can be compared with failure in Copenhagen conference. You know there is a bilateral consultation. The chair mentioned that the party convention was the easiest one for me because the climate change negotiations agreed at the last minute at the high level meeting. So it was relatively easy for me because I'm not a high level official, just advisor. The French government hold the bilateral meeting, bilateral consultation with the individual party. One plus one meeting means only ambassador plus one official can join the meeting. Through that meeting all key issues has been resolved. I have five minutes. I should mention the strong will of all parties and recognition of inevitably of all parties. You know some G77 countries that many most of developing country parties need financial support. If the party agreement cannot be reached then they lose the chance to get financial support from developed country parties. So I think the most developing countries strong will to make a deal to get the financial support. Because of this will, the negotiation procedures are somewhat different from other negotiations before. What I have heard frequently during the LCA negotiation it was the negotiation was the party driven process. That means the chair could not do anything because the process is driven by parties. However during the ADP negotiations many parties mentioned that ask the co-chairs of ADP to exercise their leadership. So it is very important because they can delete unnecessary or duplicated or unacceptable proposals. So the co-chairs can make very simple text. That's the reason why we can reach the party agreement easily, I think. And Professor Banzi already mentioned that the financial support, that's the first priority of most of G77 countries. And the G77 including the AOC's small island countries consistently insist that the balance between the mitigation and adaptation. They want to use more financial resources in the adaptation. So there is a balance between the mitigation and adaptation. That's the argument of the G77 countries and it was accepted. Let me skip this. This is the system that I think all parties are required to submit ambitious NDC with information and with progression. Then those information are subject to technical expert review under the transparency framework. The most important thing is the trust, mutual trust building. If one party does not believe the other parties, then they are reluctant to submit ambitious NDC. So transparency framework is very important. And the outcome of transparency framework will be informed into global stock taking. Global stock taking is to assess the collective progress. So if there is a gap between the requirements from science and NDC submitted by country, then the international community need to improve their emission reduction. That will be informed into the parties and the parties will be required to submit more ambitious NDCs. I was asked to explain the position of Korea. Let me briefly explain that Korea belongs to the EIG group. EIG group is the environmental integrity group consisting of Swiss, Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Korea. The position of EIG is between the strongest position was taken by the European Union and next umbrella group consisting of the next one parties including Japan, United States, Australia, New Zealand. The position of EIG is just below the umbrella group. And the weak point position is taken by the G77. The Korea submitted several proposals with Switzerland and Mexico and Liechtenstein. But in some cases there is a different opinions between Switzerland and Korea. Korean position is more similar to that of Mexico. And domestically, many Korean says that the external negotiation with other countries is much more easier than the internal negotiation with other ministries. As you can easily imagine, there is a conflict between Ministry of Industry and Ministry of Environment. Ministry of Environment wants to take a strong position and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is in the position to make a deal. So the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is more close to the Ministry of Environment. But the Ministry of Industry recently, the Korean economy has not so good. So there are a lot of strong political pressure from the industry. That's the one problem that the current Korean government take any strong measure against climate change. My perspective, as Frank said, I worked on the Gano review. We put forward some international architecture which has proved to be completely sort of irrelevant and orthogonal to the direction in which negotiations have gone. And ever since then, I've been lecturing this international climate change. I've done it about six or seven times. And trying to understand what's happened in the negotiations, trying to predict what will happen in the next one, you're terribly getting it wrong. Trying to explain to my students why, you know, where we're going, why people have different views. So I'm kind of interested outsider. And for this presentation, clearly Paris was a success. I'm not questioning that. I guess I'm trying to explore what was the nature of that success and what were some of the compromises involved. How can we understand it? And I take this as a sort of historical slash geographical perspective to understand it. You know, as I'm sure you know, these international negotiations have every year and they move around the world. And so these are just some of the highlights. Obviously the Kyoto Protocol was born here in 1997. And then another big milestone, although often seen as a negative milestone, was Copenhagen in 2009. Then Durban in 2011 was when they agreed to negotiate the Paris, what became the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated last year. And I guess what I'm interested in is in this move from Kyoto to Paris, what was the key stop? Was it Copenhagen or was it Durban? And it's kind of an interesting question because it's actually become a matter of contention if you read some of the blogs that have come out. So we have Robert Stavens. He's one of the leading climate change economists. And he really stresses Durban. Durban is the big break as he puts it. When countries agreed to achieve an outcome, it was political parties. He's written that not just in one, but in three blogs. So he clearly thinks it's Paris that was the key. Whereas then Dan Budanski, the famous climate change lawyer, he really stresses Copenhagen. And he says in many ways Paris is formalizes what Copenhagen agreed. Paris ties a treaty ribbon around Copenhagen. And he goes as far as to call it Copenhagen Paris. So you've got this interesting debate. And who was right? Well, I think if you have to choose one, I'm going to side with Budanski and Copenhagen, as he says, most of the key elements of the Paris Agreement can be found in Copenhagen Accord. Whether it's the two-degree Celsius target, the system of pledge and review, non-binding character, moving away from a strict differentiation, which I'll come to later, talking about $100 billion. All these started really at Copenhagen. Indeed, they go before Copenhagen. And I know how Bamsi was involved in leading many of those negotiations, shifting from Kyoto to a more universal approach. That thing that was applicable to all parties was that all parties should make a commitment of some kind. It could be a different commitment. Different parties make different commitments. That's okay. But every party should make a commitment. And Copenhagen should get that sort of breakthrough moniker because under Kyoto, when Kyoto was agreed, maybe covered 50% of emissions. But by the time of Copenhagen with the U.S. withdrawing, developing countries going quickly was down to about 20. And Copenhagen pushed that up to 80. So that was a clear breakthrough. Of course Paris has taken it further and now apparently it's 96% of emissions are covered by Paris commitments. But clearly it was that sort of shift from 20 to 80. So that really mattered. So if you have to choose one, I think choose Copenhagen. But maybe both are important. Maybe Stavens is wrong to admit Paris, but maybe Stavens is wrong to admit Copenhagen. But we should nevertheless say Paris did have an agreement. It did have an influence. So how did Paris differ from Copenhagen? Well, you've already heard some of these points. But Dansky says there's less differentiation, there's more durability, there are more rules. And I think you can add a fourth, there's more aspiration, right? There's more ambition than 1.5, ratcheting up targets, decarbonisation and so on. But I want to focus on the differentiation because that's also Staven's point. And he says that throughout the Paris Agreement, it's clear the firewall has been breached. I'll explain what this firewall is if you don't know. But that's the question I want to focus on. How different are Paris and Copenhagen with respect to differentiation? It might sound like a technical point. I think it's important for understanding the agreement. So there are really two arguments that Paris ditches differentiation. But Dansky puts these forward so do others. So one I call the universality argument, which is that most of the commitments in Paris apply to all parties, including some of which we've heard submitting and accounting its pledges, common system reporting and reviews. And then the second argument is that this annex one division has been abandoned. So the UNFCCC has a list of countries back in 1992. If you were a member of the OECD in 1992, or if you're in the former Soviet Union, you're in this annex one. And that turned out to be very important because you then had to take on a commitment under Kyoto. And annex one doesn't appear at all in the Paris Agreement. So these are two separate arguments. And it's important to realise they're quite different, right? Each is sort of a valid basis for arguing that differentiation has been ditched. In the first case, well, there is no differentiation, right? It's universal. In the second case, all right, maybe there's still some differentiation, but it's sensible differentiation. It's not based on something on what you were like in 1992. Maybe it's based on what you're like today. So we need to go through these arguments. And this is where I want to express some scepticism. I'm a bit sceptical of both of these arguments. In fact, I think there's still plenty of non-universality in Paris. It's true they don't make any reference to annex one or non-annex one, but there are plenty of references to developed countries and developing countries. In fact, if you just count the number of references to developing countries in Copenhagen, it's 39 times, right? Sorry, 56. 56 up from 36 in Copenhagen, either talking about developing countries or non-annex one. All right, now that's just a very crude count, but it does suggest there's still, it's not that universal, right? There's a fair bit of, could be a fair bit of different treatment. And if you look in some of the specifics about how these systems are set up, I think that kind of argument is confirmed. This is quite a dense slide. You're not meant to have dense slides. But it tries to argue that on key areas of reporting and on transparency verification, there is still scope for differentiation. I'm not saying there's no progress towards having a single system, which will clearly be ideal, but there's still significant differentiation. And that's particularly clear on the transparency system, where developing countries are given flexibility. And just to give an example, if you look at a decision outside of the agreement, but it's still a decision of the parties, it says, well, if you're a developing country, an in-country reviewer is optional. In other words, you could just send your data to the experts. They won't necessarily come and be able to dig around, which is of course what they currently can do with developed countries. So it's not clear to me that Paris is so different from Copenhagen, where there clearly were two different sets of rules for transparency for developed and developing countries. And also what you notice, a lot of this is still to be negotiated. There is a lot of this still to be decided at the future conferences. So at least there's potential for differentiation to be quite prominent in the transparency system. So that's on universality. But what about this annex one abandonment argument? Because you could argue, well, look, there's nothing wrong with differentiation in principle. It shouldn't be outdated based on this outdated annex one. Of course developed countries should do more, but it should be the developed countries now. So then it becomes, well, who are these developed and developing countries? And despite the fact they're mentioned so many times, there's no list of who's in which camp, and there's no definition. So how do we tell who actually is a developed or developing country? Well, there is one way to tell, I think, which is what I call the article 4.4 test. And that basically says that if you're a developed country, you have to have a particular type of target, which is called this economy-wide absolute emission reduction target. And that means you have to commit to reduce emissions by x per cent by y year compared to Z base year. If you're a developing country, you can have that sort of target or any target that you want. But for a developed country target, that's the target you have to have. So if you didn't put forward that target, you're clearly not a developed country. And so we're interested in those countries that are members of the OECD today, but which weren't in 1992, so they're not in annex one. And if we're interested in those countries, there are three of them, Korea, Mexico and Chile. And this is not to put Korea on the spot. This is the system that allows this to happen. But none of these three countries, which are now members of the OECD, put forward the target in this prescribed x per cent reduction by y year compared to Z base year. So you have to think that under this test outside Europe's different, because in Europe they were in the former Soviet Union, they were in annex one anyway, now they're in the European Union. But outside of Europe, the definition hasn't really changed between developed and annex one. It may change in the future. And so Paris does introduce some flexibility, but at the moment there's not much difference. So to conclude this rather technical sort of discussion, Paris is a little more universal than Copenhagen, but it still matters a lot whether you're a developed or developing country, including in ways that probably shouldn't matter. It continues to rely for the time being on outdated definitions. So I think that firewall, Copenhagen blasted a lot of it away, ever since then people have been chipping away and Paris does a bit more chipping. All right, I'm coming to the end and I want to go onto the politics, because you probably have an obvious objection to what I'm saying. If Paris is so similar to Copenhagen, why is Paris hailed as this triumph? A landmark a turning point, a flame of hope and so on when Copenhagen was reviled. It's a fiasco, a failure, a disaster, our own K-Rud said we all failed at Copenhagen. Well then why do they get such different receptions? The key answer here I think is that they're similar, they're not identical, they're similar in substance but they're very different in form. Now the tragedy of Copenhagen was that countries kind of agreed on the substance but they couldn't agree on how to agree. As Professor Li said China wasn't very keen on putting it all on legal agreement, other countries clearly did want a legal agreement and that's where I think Paris was really critical, not so much on the substance but on the form. Their countries finally agreed well look we have to put all this into some sort of legal agreement and that process took several years and finally in Paris they agreed this is going to be the new treaty. And no doubt for that the improvements in substance between Copenhagen and Paris helped, they helped give countries confidence that yes this is the sort of thing we can sign on to and make durable because it's going to be around for a long time. And something sent me the passage of time helped as well, people are used to you know Copenhagen is a very different kind of beast to what Kyoto was. So you know I think a very simple way of saying is that Paris is Copenhagen legitimised and this is the contribution of Durban. And what that means in practical terms and this is again a bit of jargon but Robert Putnam has this term negative reverberation and makes a distinction in negative and positive reverberation and that's really what we're interested in these agreements. Do they help or hinder domestic action and whereas Copenhagen hindered domestic action we saw that in Australia you know Paris is going to help deliver, it's going to reinforce the case for positive domestic action. I do want to just caveat that positive conclusion you know there is a question whether the good times will last. As I've tried to illustrate there's plenty for the parties to go and disagree about in the next few years as they nut out the rules under this agreement not only in the area of reporting and transparency but that in particular. Countries may hold off on ratifying it until they've agreed those details as was the case in Kyoto. Even if Obama decides let's ratify this treaty now while I'm still at office they may still have that won't stop the disagreements happening at these annual conferences and if that then delivers negative headlines then some of that positive reverberation will be lost so there are political benefits but there are also risks around those. So to conclude you know I have clearly this is not a full assessment of the Paris Accord but I want to leave you with three concluding thoughts. One on this particular important issue of differentiation my assessment is Paris and Copenhagen are pretty similar. Second the treaty ribbon that Badansky talks about the treaty ribbon that Paris ties around Copenhagen is worth a lot and that's a real contribution that can be traced back to that to Durban. And three to leave you with this thought there is that risk that the rules of the game will continue to be the sort of central focus of these annual negotiations and sooner rather than later the focus has to shift to what countries are actually doing. You know if we're in this pledging review system we need countries to apply peer group pressure and to challenge each other and I was rather taken aback by this very frank admission from an interview in an interview with the Singapore ambassador of climate change around the time of Copenhagen when he said well you know he was asked about the peer review process he said parties have largely refrained from passing judgment on each other's pledges. We've been so desperate to get everyone to agree and we will be very kind to each other and you know if we are serious about a world if we are serious as a global community about climate change surely this has to change. Okay well my question anyway is this one when will the honeymoon be over Howard you've got a view on this. I do Stephen asked the question you know how long will the good times last I think they'll last till the first intersessional meeting in May and I think we can expect then fairly substantial pushback on the Paris result. This is the annual rhythm of these meetings anyway that things just fall over the line at the COP and then all the losers from that engagement redouble their efforts in the next intersessional which is lower profile none of the high political engagement that we have at the COP and they start messing around with the results and stepping back from them often from the same delegations that push them over the line a few months before. So I'm expecting in May this year that some of the countries who felt that there isn't sufficient different sufficient differentiation that the equity issues have not been well enough reflected in the Paris set of agreements that they'll push back heavily on that. So I think it won't be enough to stop the sort of momentum I was talking about earlier. I think that's now pretty much unstoppable barring some enormous real world change but it will add confusion to that sort of glorious UN process that I was trying to wishfully describe earlier. Rhonda Dixon, Department of Environment. One of the things that's really struck me over the lot of the changes over the last five or six years which is the period you've been talking about is the massive advances in technology and the huge reduction in costs and we had done those people who heard Fatih Birral from the IEA just recently where he was talking about some of the dramatic uptake that there has been in renewables and other clean energy including energy efficiency. And I was wondering on the panel's view of how much that's huge change in the affordability of clean energy and all the massive changes along that line influence some of the momentum and getting to the agreement as well as the diplomatic process. Let's take that question straight away, technological progress and the impact on speed of progress of all. Well I'm not an expert but I think as an economist what's happened to carbon pricing? That's where we had such high hopes not only in Australia but in the EU and the US and in Japan that carbon pricing would take off and countries would reduce emissions as a result of carbon pricing. That really hasn't happened. It's a lot more politically difficult and I think that failure of carbon pricing has harmed the international negotiations but I think you're right, the counter to that has been the technological progress. So it doesn't seem as impossible a task, as expensive a task. Some of the benefits are more obvious. So I think perhaps crudely speaking those two have balanced the good technological progress, the bad policy progress have maybe balanced each other out. I think the two things are related and Stephen sort of given a version of that. Another way of looking at it is that there's been very patchy progress in policy but enough to encourage the technology development and the investment that leads to gradually improving affordability of new technologies and it's that combination of policy investment and benefit and the reiteration of that cycle that I was referring to earlier when I was talking about the changes in investment direction that are occurring in the private sector and the report by the Secretary-General's office measures that, looks at the number of companies who now have internal carbon prices for example which in some ways deals with the policy failures. So I think there's a reasonable story on that front that those trends are all integrated too. I think the Paris Agreement severely affects the energy policy of all parties. At first the European Union, I think the European Union to insist that zero emission but the parties exporting oil including Saudi Arabia that work. So finally it was compromised and the final text is that we should make the balance between the emission and absorption during the second half of the 24th century. So it is inevitable to use the renewable energy and to reduce the cost of the environment. Jenny Goldie from Climate Action Monero. In Paris we had three ministers, we had Turnbull Hunt and Bishop and they all seem to be making the right noises in terms of mitigating climate change and so on. But since Paris the government has approved the Adani coal mine in Queensland, the Abbott Point on the Barrier Reef. They have failed to take off, they have failed to shelve the legislation to abolish CFC, Arena and the Climate Change Authority and just this week we've had CSIRO threatening, well not threatening but promising to cut 110 climate change, climate science jobs. Now can I ask, do you think the Australian government was ever serious in Paris about what they said? Simon Pollock from the Department of the Environment, I'm just a question for the panel in general. Professor Bamsey highlighted the importance of US leadership in getting the Paris Agreement and I realise it's always fraught looking into political crystal balls but I'm just wondering, considering the sort of attitude that the US Republican presidential campaign candidates have towards climate change, what do you think the repercussions could be if we see a Republican president in the White House at the end of this year? You've got the curly questions now. Can I start with the last one? It's about how long the good times will roll. The most important development in global climate change politics this year and policy and everything else is the US presidential election. I think if you look back in Obama's second term there's been very strong and consistent US leadership and that's been critical and depending on who is elected at the end of the year we'll see a similar continuity and continuous inter-administration policies very unusual and if we saw that on climate change it would have a really marked effect but if we have the sort of outcome that we all fear then I think globally it becomes a huge blow. Also could I just make a point, I don't want to talk in any general terms about the Australian government's commitment, I think I'm being like many others being patient and waiting for the political process to unfold a bit further before I think we have a very clear picture of the Turnbull government's policy on climate but in relation to our, in relation to the obligations of the Paris Agreement can I just refer to Article 7, paragraph 7c there's an obligation on the part of all parties to strengthen scientific knowledge on climate including research systematic observation of the climate system and early warning systems. I hope our national research body has taken account of that. That's Article 7, paragraph 7c. It's a good example actually how this agreement could be reflected or should be reflected in national policy action perhaps we'll see the positive reverberations over the years to come. Professor Leigh Stephen did you want to comment on the importance of domestic changes in the US or anything along those lines? Okay we'll move on to the next question. Please just let me know if you if you want to ask a question so we'll get the microphone to you beforehand. Thank you Frank. Jack Whelan from the Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility. It's mainly a question for Howard and it's not a flippant question but in my sort of previous history of experience of at the COP I always recall that the architecture of the negotiations was just as important as the actual substance of the negotiation and in my previous experience the officials were the ones who sort of put the various agreement together and then the heads of state and government came in at the end and may or may not reach some agreement and in Copenhagen clearly they didn't despite many late nights of last minute thrashing whereas in Paris in contrast they brought heads of government in at the very beginning and they seemed to create a climate of approval that an agreement was going to take place now do you is that something that you might wish to comment on about the way in which officials then were able to conduct two weeks of negotiations with this kind of comfort zone that somehow they had the imprimatur of their heads of state and government at the beginning. I think this is this is another element I'd you know I'd love us here at ANU one day to to look closely at the diplomacy of this Paris meeting it was just fascinating really breathtaking I think and one element of it was the the first day bringing so many heads of government I didn't really figure out until I was in Paris what was going on here I'd been in Copenhagen and seen the disaster of having 80 or 90 heads of government sitting in hotels in town twiddling their thumbs wondering what the hell they were doing in this joint with nothing to do and in Paris they didn't really they were never going to have anything to do except make speeches so what was the game they all came along on the first day and they all said the result of this negotiation the next two weeks has to be a terrific agreement it's had to be a great outcome that's what heads of government always say but then and the way I've described this previously is they were effectively by their presence on the first day they were effectively hostage to that outcome two weeks later because and this was done in a number of cases if their officials their delegations were being too difficult then the head of government who was there on day one saying we will be with you got a phone call and the officials change behavior so this was a terrific tactic by the French very effective I think not not used as much as it might have been but was but was a very useful part of of this this brilliant handling of the the whole process someone else who was at Paris Alex Gossman this will be the final question and so if you want to take the opportunity for closing comments as well and thanks and I think you've got to pay tribute to the French for the culinary delights they also provided which I think to everybody focus but a question talking about what you've just said sort of the parallel between having the world leaders there and then a decision two weeks later and then the honeymoon finishing at the internet intersessional negotiations in May why wouldn't the signing at the UN in late April be a parallel process so actually use the signing of the agreement in at the UN to actually then stimulate a positive flow flow through to when the negotiators get together that's a that's a great idea I think yeah I hope I hope there are some Australian negotiators in the room who'll take it away and play it yeah I'd add more generally than that and go back to the earlier question as well I mean yes I'm sure Paris is very well handled and Copenhagen there were various problems but you know there was an overreaction to Copenhagen to its weaknesses and I mean it there was an agreement at Copenhagen yes a few countries held out but the vast majority did agree and you know in hindsight there there should have been much more of a positive acceptance that we've got this new new approach instead you know we went into this very long period right from 2009 right through to now you know what are the rules what's the new approach is it going to be a treaty and okay we've got somewhere but yes we haven't spent much time actually talking about well are we reducing enough you know despite the you know we've had this this whole process how can we be more ambitious post pre 2020 and not a single country has actually said are we going to do more before 2020 so what I'm trying to point to it goes to this question yeah I hope that the negotiators don't put all their emphasis okay now we're going to know the rules and that's the key thing right to get the rules because that's going to take years as well and you know I hope they and the leaders I hope the leaders don't walk away I hope they now put pressure on each other in terms of the actual substance of the pledges right and if they think okay well actually you're fudging the rules we don't believe you then they can go on to that but the starting point should be are we doing enough and yes US leadership is crucial so if the US decides to stop leading that whole process will be much more difficult right it'll it'll be more difficult but if the US does keep leading that's I think where the progress can be had and so it would be great if they yes they celebrate the signing and now let's go on and talk about actually talk about ambition because ambition you know wasn't reflected in pledges in Paris actually talk about challenging each other and doing more rather than continually refining the approach. Professor Lee your thoughts and closing. Yes I'd like to emphasize the leadership of cup presidency during the Copenhagen conference only 27 or 29 heads of countries get together and they agreed on the Copenhagen accord the other has stayed in the hotel and then the last day the former president of Venezuela President Chavez addressed that I'm going to leave after saying to my delegation not to agree on any issue so no country other than 27 or 29 country endorse the Copenhagen accord so legally speaking Copenhagen accord has no meaning nothing is nothing but one year later during the cancun conference the decision of cancun conference is the copy of the Copenhagen accord the same same content but all parties endorse that cancun agreement because the Mexican presidency spent one year to portray all parties so I'd like to emphasize the leadership of the cup president