Enforcing a Global Climate Deal: Speak Loudly, Carry No Stick

Negotiators have several terms for the way they plan to enforce any deal reached at global climate talks in Paris this December.  "Peer pressure" and "cooperation" are a couple.  "Race to the top" is the American buzzword.

What you won’t hear mentioned is the word "sanctions". Or "punishment".

For all their efforts to get 200 governments to commit to the toughest possible cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, climate negotiators have all but given up on creating a way to penalize those who fall short.

The overwhelming view of member states, says Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, is that any agreement "has to be much more collaborative than punitive", if it is to happen at all.

"Even if you do have a punitive system, that doesn't guarantee that it is going to be imposed or would lead to any better action," Figueres said.

To critics, the absence of a legal stick to enforce compliance is a deep - if not fatal - flaw in the Paris process, especially after all countries agreed in 2011 that an agreement would have some form of "legal force".

They warn that a deal already built upon sometimes vague promises from member states could end up as a toothless addition to the stack of more than 500 global and regional environmental treaties, while the rise in global temperatures mounts inexorably past a U.N. ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), with the prospect of ever more floods, droughts and heatwaves.

Read more at Enforcing a Global Climate Deal: Speak Loudly, Carry No Stick