Why Paris Will Not Be Another Copenhagen

The closing plenary session of Dentons Global Energy Summit in London on April 22nd, appropriately scheduled to take place on Earth Day 2015, offered a unique series of perspectives on the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. Dirk Forrister, President and CEO, International Emission Trading Association (IETA), gave a keynote address setting Paris 2015 in the context of previous global climate change negotiations. Anne Lauvergeon, Founder and CEO of ALP S.A., Partner of Efficiency Capital, a fund dedicated to technology and natural resources and a former CEO of AREVA, spoke on the involvement of business to the Paris process. Ashley Ibbett, Director of Office of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the UK Government's Department of Energy and Climate Change, explained the role CCS has to play in tackling climate change. Adrienne Courboud Fumagalli, Vice President for Innovation and Technology Transfer, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), gave an insight into the ways that innovative technology will facilitate interaction with and between the 40,000 delegates attending Paris 2015. Jeffrey C. Fort, co-director of Dentons' Climate Change practice, chaired.

The road from Rio

Concerted international action to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels began with the agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The UNFCCC has been ratified by most of the world. In subsequent UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPs), it has proved more difficult to reach binding international commitments that move beyond its fairly broad aims. So, for example, the Kyoto protocol (1997) set binding emission reduction targets, but was not ratified by the US or Canada. COP15 in Copenhagen produced explicit recognition of the need to limit global temperature increases to 2°C in order to avoid dangerous climate change and provided countries with a mechanism for committing to emissions reductions up to 2020, but fell short of achieving legally binding agreements and was widely considered to have been a failure. COP21 in Paris later this year has a new starting point (agreed at Lima in 2014) and aims to set out a framework for all countries to commit to emissions reductions beyond 2020.

To be fully effective, a UN instrument must be agreed by all parties. Given the issues at stake and the tensions between countries with developing and developed economies, the process of...