Commitment benchmarks

President Maithripala Sirisena has become a globetrotter. After participating in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Malta last week, he arrived in France on Sunday to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is in Le Bourget, France. This is the 21st Conference of the Parties, i.e. the annual meeting of all countries which want to take action for the climate. The meeting is expected to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions but many observers have noted it will likely fall short of a legally-binding treaty.

What pragmatics are hoping for instead is a “political agreement on steroids,” essentially a supercharged political framework that can accommodate the bottom-up commitments from sovereign states – the so-called INDCs. This bottom up architecture is an important move away from the top-down architecture previously set out in the Kyoto Protocol and a recognition of geo-politics within which international law must function.

It would need to be a high level political and flexible framework that does not need to be legally binding but it does need to be detailed and robust enough to evolve into a legally binding instrument when the time is right. Activists also insist such a framework should critically link the bottom up Intended Nationally Determined Commitments (INDCs) in the international context and recognise that all countries of the world need to take action with respect to current and future emissions yet be sensitive to historical contributions.

World leaders would also need to recognise it is not all about governments and policy; it is equally about clean technology reaching critical mass, efficiencies and private sector finance. The politically difficult bit would be to have a framework that addresses climate finance in a way which is satisfactory to both the so called developed and developing countries. Finally it has to be capable of responding to increased urgency and political will to ratchet up the level of individual and aggregate ambition embodied in the INDCs and address integration across other critical regimes such as, trade/WTO, financial stability, financial regulation, aviation and shipping.

Sri Lanka in its plan said through the INDCs, it puts forwards ambitious and progressive delinking of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions in its efforts for economic growth. Sri Lanka said it intends to reduce its GHG emissions from the sectors of Transport, Waste, Industries and Forest. But has stopped short of one of the key sectors – energy. Many pundits have pointed out one of the most important fields to decentralise for economic growth would be energy. Currently the largest competent of power is produced in Sri Lanka for domestic use and if solar power is accessible then most of these houses can be shifted away from the central grid, leaving more energy and a cheaper level for industries.

Others argue Sri Lanka’s strong unionised energy sector is hampering efforts to move towards renewable energy. Currently the aim is to only have about 20% of renewable energy by 2020 and focus remains in outdated concepts such as coal, which the rest of the world is moving away from. Moreover the Government has stayed regressive on easy forms of environmentally friendly practices such as electric cars. Tax concessions for green industries would be a good way forward as well. Clearly the National Government has to formulate more wide-ranging policy to meet with the swiftly changing technology for a greener world.