<
https://theconversation.com/why-climate-summits-fail-and-three-ways-to-save-them-267470>
"Nearly three decades after the first UN climate conference, emissions are
still rising. The global system for tackling climate change is broken – it’s
slow, cumbersome and undemocratic.
Even Donald Trump may not be totally wrong when he blames the UN for producing
“empty words and then never [following] those words up”. If we assess the
progress since the first UN Cop climate summit in 1995, the numbers on
emissions confirm that not very much did, indeed, follow years of words.
We urgently need not just to redesign climate policies but also a new method
for drafting those polices. Climate change could even be the right issue in
which to experiment with an approach that might inspire a wider reform of
multinational institutions.
A conference I have helped organise beginning October 16 in Venice on the
global governance of climate change will discuss three ideas.
First, we need to gradually redesign the decision-making process to solve a
deficit of both efficiency and democracy. Decisions today are slow and weak
because they de facto seek unanimity.
The Paris agreement, for instance, only required 55 countries producing at
least 55% of global emissions to enter into force. And yet diplomats worked so
that it could be agreed by all 195 UN member states – including those that
later dropped out – by adopting words that tend to be “empty” to avoid
displeasing anybody.
At the same time, the process does not even include all the parties that really
matter: technically, the microstate of San Marino is one of the signatories of
the agreements; the megacity of Los Angeles is not. Current mechanisms also
miss the opportunity to experiment with direct representation of groups for
whom climate change matters more, such as young people, indigenous people or
farmers.
One idea would be to leverage the relative concentration of the world economy.
China, the US and India represent almost half of the world population (and much
of the population living below the global poverty line), more than half of the
GDP and emissions; and most of the private investment in artificial
intelligence that may enable some of the most interesting solutions."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
