It has been an exercise in managing optimism and reality in the week after the Paris Agreement on climate change. When we have had such a rough time getting our act together, merely sorting out a plan feels like an achievement. We protect ourselves at the same time by attaching all sorts of caveats.
We have wanted this breakthrough for so long, yet doubt our capacity to meet its demands. We assure ourselves that doing nothing is surely worse than not doing enough, soon enough. We fret that our plan may yet be sabotaged.
One thing that can be certain is that COP21 is pivotal, not just because of what it signals, but in terms of the model it offers for solutions to global problems.
The Paris summit departed from a top-down approach, facilitating differentiated, voluntary pledges from governments based on their unique situation. This blunted some of the adversarial positions that skewered the 2009 Copenhagen conference.
The conditions enabled the 43-member Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), led by current country-chair the Philippines, to work persuasively.
'We were more united,' says Tony La Viña, dean of the Ateneo School of Government in Manila and veteran negotiator. Events such as Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated the Philippines in 2013, likely provided impetus to assertions long made by island states and small developing nations.
La Viña adds that trust was critical to resolving intricate issues. It is the foundation of indaba, a Xhosa/Zulu discussion format first adopted at COP17 in Durban in 2011. This streamlined process enabled each participant to speak personally about their 'red lines' (hard limits) and propose common ground solutions. It reportedly broke a deadlock at the Paris summit within half an hour.
The imprints of less powerful countries are thus all over the Paris text. The CVF had pressed for the 1.5 Celsius cap above pre-industrial levels (previously abandoned at Copenhagen), financing for technology transfers in clean energy and adaptation, as well as a human rights framework that accounts for indigenous peoples, women and intergenerational equity.
The CVF had also sought a binding mechanism to deepen emission cuts. Current pledges are fundamentally patchy and projected to keep the planet on track for a temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius at the end of this century.
A climate pledge audit every five years from 2020 concretises the mutual expectation that emissions reduction goals should become ever more stringent. It is a compelling investment signal for decarbonisation and renewables; even if