坎昆各种可能 对NGO意味着什么？分享

(2010-12-01 18:11:35)

Implications of Cancun Scenarios for NGOs

NGOs are the conscience of the global climate negotiations and civil society looks to the NGOs to push the process toward conclusion of an effective agreement. This gives NGOs a significant role in shaping the narrative and influencing perceptions around the globe. During the development of the scenarios, E3G held interviews with NGOs, governments and academics from across the geographic and political spectrum. In discussing the scenarios, a significant majority of stakeholders highlighted the importance of NGO messaging in Cancun as one of the tipping points between the scenarios.

Below are a series of implications of the Cancun Scenarios for NGO communications, these are meant to serve as a useful steer for NGOs to consider when developing messaging:

Danger of escalation

For more than two decades NGOs have contributed to achieve the limited progress that has been made. Looking forward, NGOs have a responsibility to consider how the frames we build will affect the negotiating environment itself, public support for the UNFCCC, and political will to achieve a deal.

Traditionally, ENGOs have set high expectations for what should be delivered at individual COPs – with a strong focus on specific policy recommendations. In general, expectations set for individual COPs have not reflected the pressures of Parties' domestic politics, and each time that the process failed to break free of domestic politics NGOs deemed the COP a failure.

Keeping Parties focused on an effective deal is essential and rightly determines much of how NGOs engage in the UNFCCC process. However, it is unlikely that a FAB deal can be forged in an environment characterized by polarization, mistrust, blame games and doubt. NGOs need to consider whether/how to modulate our responses in order to minimize the risk that we are actually reinforcing the very gridlock that prevents a breakthrough. After all, the only way to achieve a breakthrough in the UNFCCC is to create the political space for this to happen.

Admittedly this is a difficult balance for the NGO community to strike. We have a responsibility to hold governments accountable when they do not deliver outcomes and should continue to advocate for ambitious efforts. But getting a FAB deal in the UNFCCC will require a strategy which creates an environment of trust and momentum. In some cases this may mean allowing our champions to reach for consensus even if this falls short of our ideals. In other cases this will mean pushing Parties to step away from positions they are holding for purely tactical reasons so that a deal can be struck which still meets their substantive needs. This calls for a careful assessment by NGOs of countries tactical versus substantive demands to identify where we can apply pressure that accelerates agreement on key substantive points.

For example, calling out the EU/Brollies on non-additionality of their FSF commitments, whilst true, doesn’t open up the political space for more mature and honest discussions to move forward on FSF between contributors and developing countries. However, incentivising them to become more transparent and creating a race to the top can begin increase the overall ambition.

Failure of the UNFCCC is the politics, not the process Copenhagen resulted in many governments, NGOs and other actors seriously questioning the ability of the UNFCCC in delivering a fair, ambitious and binding deal on climate change. This scepticism, whilst understandable bears little justification. It is important to acknowledge that the current waning of confidence in the UNFCCC is not the result of any insurmountable flaws in the UNFCCC itself. It is largely due to the lack of progress in reaching consensus dictated by national political conditions and compounded recently by the global economic crisis. This has led to some actors beginning to question whether multilateralism itself can ever deliver action.

This debate is sometimes presented as “false choice” between top‐down and bottom‐up action; when in fact we need both. A top‐down process is essential to ensure that the aggregation of global mitigation effort matches the imperative to reduce global climate risks. Only a multilateral mechanism can achieve this, and importantly, incentivise ambition. But to rebuild trust in the multilateral system it is vital that we now make complementary investments to build the bottom‐up processes within countries which can support change first in the real economy, and then in countries’ perceptions of their national interest in contributing to the global regime.

The UNFCCC is crucial in delivering an effective response to climate change, but by itself it can never be sufficient. Cancun is an important moment to invest in both the top‐down and bottom‐up actions necessary to make progress.

Our criticism of the UNFCCC also puts our own credibility at risk. For example, if NGOs continue to define COPs as “failures”, we will no longer be able to credibly demand that the UNFCCC should hold authority over issues like climate finance. A UNFCCC that habitually fails to manage two-week climate negotiations is not an attractive fiduciary. It invites questions about NGO credibility that we would chose to put a fundamental element like climate finance in the hands of a process which, by our standards, never delivers.

Calling out the real laggards

As mentioned above, careful assessment by NGOs of countries tactical versus substantive demands will enable us as a community to apply real pressure. Identifying countries which hold up coalitions of the willing, and applying a more granular approach i.e. not just slamming EU as a whole, but highlighting key blocking countries within the EU, provides leverage to those constructive forces move forward. In addition, the media are more interested in names of particular blocking countries rather than just the usual suspects of blocs

Highlighting National Progress

The success of highlighting the progress made in China on climate change during the Tianjin conference helped to dispel myths regarding Chinese ambition, and supported a more constructive platform away from the bickering during the conference itself. This illustration of low carbon resilient development tempers the overwhelming negative press at the UNFCCC, and provides a message of hope and action to those following the media reports.

Building the political conditions in key capitals

To achieve a FAB deal, NGOs need a strategy that involves more action in capitols than at the COP, better planning around identifying and supporting viable/powerful champions, strategies to disempower blockers, identification of areas of convergence, and well thought out ties to complementary venues and institutions. Clearly much of this is already taking place, but it needs to be better linked to what we are trying to achieve on a global scale and subjected to strategic analysis to ensure that it pays off in needed outcomes. Time invested in this sort of coordination may be the fastest road to increasing ambition and delivery on a global scale.

Without a change in current political conditions both in key countries and the global economy, agreement of a FAB deal is highly unlikely within the next two years. This is not disastrous if NGOs use this time to achieve needed mitigation, adaptation, technology deployment, meaningful structures for effective flows of finance, and a diplomatic environment that propels breakthroughs. Indeed, this type of approach may pay off faster than traditional “power” tactics.

In trying to build the right conditions in key capitals, local NGOs can also help reveal the gap between national interests articulated at home (e.g. ensuring competitiveness in a low carbon economy or shifting toward low carbon development) and unhelpful tactics and diplomacy by negotiators that put process and default alliances ahead of a country’s long-term interests. Ideally, NGOs will adjust their strategies in ways that support helpful Parties and pressure unhelpful ones regardless of their historic role in climate negotiations or whether they are developed or developing countries, but based on who is blocking progress and who can help bring together a global deal.

Conclusion

In light of this, E3G has deliberately attempted to frame the scenarios in ways that point the messaging toward the flaws in the quality of negotiations and needed adjustments by Parties, rather than in a polar success/failure framework. This merits some direct discussion amongst NGOs to determine how to use our power as framers to get the outcomes we need, and whether we are willing to risk our engagement with the COP contributing to the overall gridlock that is preventing progress.