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Climate change and developing countries: from background actors to protagonists of climate negotiations

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Abstract

The role of developing countries in climate negotiations has been changing over time, evolving from spectators to main actors. Accordingly, this paper provides a descriptive analysis of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the formal documents containing mitigation and adaptation efforts voluntarily set by each country, submitted by developing countries. In particular, the purpose of the paper is to analyse the contents of NDCs moving from the regional analyses provided by most of literature to the examination of NDCs among countries that are similar and that might share common negotiating positions. The analysis of the documents focuses on both mitigation and adaptation actions, together with an evaluation of the financial efforts required. From the descriptive analysis, specific needs and priorities emerge, as well as the need for external support in the form of technology transfer, capacity-building and financial support. In this respect, the analysis identifies a gap between supply and demand for climate funding. Trying to fill this gap would represent one of the main challenges in future.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Source: own elaboration from NDCs database

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Notes

  1. As of October 2018, 181 out of 197 Parties to the UNFCCC have ratified the Paris Agreement (EU, China, India and USA included). However, US President Trump in June 2017 declared his intention to withdraw from the Accord.

  2. Costantini et al. (2016) argue that countries belonging to different negotiating groups can have different attitudes towards mitigation and adaptation issues, depending on their socioeconomic and geographical characteristics that determine their relative peculiarities and vulnerabilities.

  3. In 1997, Parties succeeded in defining the Kyoto Protocol, entered into force in 2005, to reach the global reduction of GHG emissions to an average of 5.2% with respect to 1990 levels over the period 2008–2012. It has been extended for a second commitment period (2013–2020) and it exclusively commits Annex B developed countries to reduce their emissions, in accordance with the CBDR-RC principle.

  4. These projects can earn one Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credit for each ton of CO2 (tCO2e) abated, which can be used by developed countries to meet their mitigation targets. Alternatively, CERs can be either banked for future commitments or can be traded on the carbon markets.

  5. This mechanism operates through the NAMA registry, a web platform where DCs can publish their mitigation plans and needs so that developed countries can decide whether to participate or not (http://www4.unfccc.int/sites/nama/SitePages/Home.aspx).

  6. UNFCCC, Decision 5/CP.17.

  7. UNFCCC, Decision 27/CP.7.

  8. See Footnote 28 for some examples of climate funds.

  9. The GCF was mentioned for the first time during the COP15 of Copenhagen as the “Copenhagen Green Climate Fund” (UNFCCC, Decision 2/CP.15). It was formally established in 2010 during the COP16 in Cancun (UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.16) and then adopted in 2011, during the COP17 held in Durban (UNFCCC, Decision 3/CP.17). In 2014, GCF launched its initial resource mobilization.

  10. 12 out of 24 Board members represent DCs.

  11. UNFCCC, Decision 2/CP.19.

  12. In this respect, Nieto et al. (2018) conclude that in the best of cases global temperature would increase by at least 3 °C, thus not respecting the 2 °C target. For this reason, the importance of actions by non-state and sub- national actors (both public and private) encouraged in the formal document for the adoption of the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015) is widely recognized (Chan et al. 2018; Hale 2016; Hermwille 2018; Morseletto et al. 2017).

  13. This is in line with the process of fragmentation of the original negotiating block of DCs: while in the past DCs appeared to be a solid and unified group (G77 and China) working for common interests, nowadays we can notice a pluralization of their positions (Brunnée and Streck 2013; Hurrell and Sengupta 2012).

  14. See Table 6 in “Appendix” for the complete list of variables used to perform the Cluster Analysis in Costantini et al. (2016).

  15. As for BASIC countries (i.e. Brazil, China, India and South Africa), they are excluded because, in recent years, they have started to act as independent players in international agreements and because their interests in terms of mitigation and adaptation needs are different from those of other DCs.

  16. Costantini et al. (2016) perform a two-step cluster analysis: step 1 consists of a hierarchical Complete Linkage, implemented in order to find which is the optimal number of clusters (9); the second step is a k-means aiming to find the composition of the nine clusters.

  17. These two countries have not submitted their NDCs because they have ratified the Agreement only recently (Autumn 2017). As for Syria, this was due to the ongoing civil war, while Nicaragua originally refused to sign in protest because it did not judge the agreement ambitious enough.

  18. http://www4.unfccc.int/submissions/indc/Submission%20Pages/submissions.aspx.

  19. Information on the applied methodology to estimate GHG, set out in the IPCC 1996 Guidelines (IPCC 1997), is not included because only 3 countries out of 87 (Cambodia, Jordan and Pakistan) specifically refer to it. In particular, they all apply the Tier 1 methodology, which uses country-specific activity data and the default emission/removal factors and other parameters provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Tier 2 (like Tier 1 but with country-specific emission/removal factors and parameters) is applied only by Jordan in the agriculture and aviation sectors.

  20. Comments on vulnerability are based on the ND-GAIN Index (University of Notre Dame 2013). Vulnerability is measured on the basis of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to the negative effects of climate change. It considers six life-supporting sectors: food, water, health, ecosystem service, human habitat, and infrastructure.

  21. See Table 7 in “Appendix”.

  22. See Table 7 in “Appendix”.

  23. As many countries do not give information on implementation costs, Table 4 shows such costs per country instead of per group.

  24. Some countries do not distinguish between adaptation and mitigation costs in their NDCs but they simply provide an estimate of total costs. In this case, the last column of Table 4 (Total) corresponds to this number. Otherwise, it is given by the sum of mitigation and adaptation costs (Columns 2 and 5, respectively).

  25. Since this analysis does not take into account all countries and not all of those under investigation provide information on implementation costs, the reported costs are lower than the effective total amount of money required by DCs to implement the projected actions.

  26. As of 30 April 2018.

  27. Source: https://climatefundsupdate.org/. It provides information on: Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Program (ASAP), Adaptation Fund, Amazon Fund, Biocarbon Fund, Clean Technology Fund (CTF), Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF), Forest Carbon, Partnership Facility Readiness Fund, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Carbon Fund, Forest Investment Program (FIP), GEF Trust Fund (GEF 4), GEF Trust Fund (GEF 5), GEF Trust Fund (GEF 6), Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA), Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund (GEEREF), Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund (ICCTF), Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), MDG Achievement Fund, Partnership for Market Readiness, Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program (SREP), Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), UN-REDD Program.

  28. UNFCCC, Decision 2/CP.15; UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.16.

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  1. Department of Economics, Roma Tre University, Via Silvio D’Amico 77, 00145, Rome, Italy

    Giorgia Sforna

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5, 6 and 7.

Table 5 List of acronyms
Full size table
Table 6 Variables driving the classification of countries.
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Table 7 Main characteristics of groups (2011–2013).
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Sforna, G. Climate change and developing countries: from background actors to protagonists of climate negotiations. Int Environ Agreements 19, 273–295 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-019-09435-w

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