International climate change policies: Strategies for negotiations
A country specific negotiation policy framework therefore needs to be developed taking into account issues and challenges involved with global negotiations processes
Arif M. Faisal and M. Hafijul Islam Khan
Bangladesh has been playing and active role in developing international climate change policy regime involving with negotiation processes since the first Conference of Parties (COP1) of UN Framework of Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC). Bangladesh, with its negotiating partners of other Least Developed Countries (LDCs), working to promote the interest of LDCs in global negotiations for structuring climate policy, which are both least responsible for climate change and least able to deal and cope with its adverse impacts. The adverse impacts of climate change and vulnerabilities are causing harm to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people of the country and inflicting significant economic and non-economic losses and damages particularly in developing countries like Bangladesh.
In response to growing concerns about climate change and global collective efforts to address the issue, the UNFCCC (known as Convention) was adopted in 1992. There under, the Kyoto Protocol (KP) was adopted in 1997 at COP 3. Moreover, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was adopted in 2015 at COP21, with an ambitious collective goal to limit temperature increase well below 2 degreesCelsius with efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, the success of effective implementation of the Paris Agreement depends on developing further international rules and regulations and the national legislative approaches taking into account the nature of substantive commitments made by Parties.
The Paris Agreement provides a new momentum for multilateral negotiation processes for developing international policy regime on climate change, which is also crucial for developing national policy regime to protect the vulnerable communities. So, considering the importance and challenges involved with shaping the international and national climate policy regime, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) can structure the countrynegotiation team with sectoral experts having adequate knowledge with the UNFCCC processes, and skills on policy making and diplomacy to act at international and national levels.
The developed countries are employing skilled sectoral experts to act at the UNFCCC negotiations processes and creating challenges for negotiators of LDCs like Bangladesh to uphold their country interests due to their limited skills and expertise. And hence recently some of the developing countries are structuring their negotiation team by engaging relevant experts and professionals. A Core Team of Negotiators exist in some countries including some of developing countries and such national Core Team of Negotiators, is consist with sectoral experts, and skilled diplomats from different public agencies and also external experts from the civil society, private sectors,academic and research community. There is a core team of negotiators consisting of sector experts, supporting LDCs Groupat UNFCCC Negotiations processes for last five years and LDCs group at UNFCCC, is performing well to promote the interest of LDCs at climate policy regime.
Current trends of GoB, related to forming negotiation team for UNFCCC negotiation revels that, Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) lead the Bangladesh delegation to the UNFCCC negotiation processes and negotiation team consists of government officials from different relevant ministries and line agencies including Ministry of Foreign Affairs and experts from academic community and civil society. But the decisions related to the nomination of Bangladesh delegates for various sessions of the climate negotiations is made on ad-hoc basis and there should be standard rules of procedures to nominate the delegates from Bangladesh and to act on behalf of the country.So, GoB can take necessary initiatives for structuring its negotiation team through developing a negotiation policy framework or guidelines, which would enable them to contribute effectively at the UNFCCC processes and to translate it to national policy regime on climate change.
A country specific negotiation policy framework therefore needs to be developed taking into account issues and challenges involved with global negotiations processes, so that negotiation team can work in accordance with specific Terms of Reference identified in the negotiation policy frameworks. The Bangladesh government can form a Core Team of Negotiators and the composition of such Core Team can be consist of sectoral experts including on Mitigation, Adaptation, Loss and Damage,Climate Finance, Climate Economics,Climate Change and Sustainable Development,Technology Transfer and Development,Capacity Building, Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Landuse and Land use changes in Forestry (LULUCF), Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy,Legal matters, Transparency and Compliance,Private sector, Media and Communication, etc. In each expertise areas, at least there should be 2-3 members to support the negotiation and diplomacy processes. This Core Team of negotiators can be led by the head of the delegation of Bangladesh in UNFCCC climate negotiating processes and the members of the Core Team will be working in accordance with a Terms of Reference agreed between the MoEF and these members. The MoEF can also consider to set some
selection criteria for selection of members to form the core negotiation team.
In case of developed countries, it is found that the core team of negotiators are supported by the technical experts to understand the technical issues involved in the decision making processes in UNFCCC. These technical experts are not always available physically during the UNFCCC sessions, but available to communicate virtually and to provide them inputs to the negotiators immediately they request.
So, like the core negotiation team, Bangladesh can also form a Technical ExpertGroup (TEG) to provide technical advice to the members of the core team of climate negotiation andat the same time can provide technical advice to members of the High Level Segmenton criticalissues related to decision making processes of UNFCCC. Technical Experts needs to beselected based on expertise in the crunch issues of climate negotiations and can be formed with similar modality with core negotiation team.
This TEG for UNFCCC climate negotiating processes would be coordinated by head of the delegation of Bangladesh and they will be working in accordance with a Terms of Reference. Detail terms of reference needs to be developed for each expert members. Moreover, to streamline the negotiation team, the Government of Bangladesh could consider to deploy a climate change envoy for the country to lead and guide the negotiation team and multilateral and diplomatic negotiation process. The government could also consider to engage more people from other relevant ministries and line agencies (e.g. Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning, Planning Commission, Economic Relations Division, Disaster Management Department, Sustainable Renewable Energy Development Authority, etc.) and private sectors (e.g. Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries, Infrastructure Development Company Limited, Financial Institutions, etc.) in the process.
Development partners particularly UN, bilateral and multilateral organizations could also collectively support country negotiation team in various ways. These development partner could consider supporting the country climate negotiation team through (i) providing support to at least some core member of negotiation team each year to enable their active participation in COPs and associated high level events; (ii) enhance bargaining and diplomacy capacity of climate negotiation team through various capacity building activities; (iii) enhancing capacity of the negotiation team in some core areas through capacity building activities; (iv) promoting south-south and north-south cooperation among like-minded developing countries and LDCs in climate negotiation and diplomacy for enhancing common interest among those countries; and (v) train up young negotiators so that there is never a shortage of good negotiators in future.
However, the government needs to adopt a policy/guideline to structure the country climate negotiators and thereafter it can collaborate with development partners to assist the government to implement such policy/guideline effectively.
The writers are environment and energy specialists
