Wednesday 23 December 2009

After Copenhagen, let's focus on governance

I end a series of posts on the Copenhagen climate conference with this one to reiterate why governance has to be at the heart of future climate negotiations. For nearly two decades climate negotiators have been trying to get deals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but they have largely failed to develop the institutions that would make such deals credible. Any future climate deal will have a combination of emissions reductions or controls, financing, monitoring, and development and transfer of cleaner technologies. While all this is on the agenda for climate meetings, there is a real gap between substantive discussions on emissions and those on other aspects of climate governance. If we have to get beyond the Copenhagen impasse, negotiators, political leaders and ordinary citizens have to recognise the realities of unequal power in world politics. And we have to find win-win strategies for collaboration on technology development, organise more efficient but also more representative coalitions to manage negotiations, and build capacity for better information collection, analysis and exchange.

You can read more in my op-ed for the Financial Express, Climate for a win-win dialogue, here.

2 comments:

Sanjay Raj Singh said...

why have you stopped blogging???

Arunabha Ghosh said...

Dear Sanjay: Thanks for your comment. You are right that I have indeed been 'offline' for a long time. This is not intentional and I hope to get back to the blog soon. Since Copenhagen, I have been working on three fronts: the shifting architecture of the climate regime, the governance of energy in era of climate change, and most importantly alternative institutional designs for managing climate finance. These diverse work streams have ensured that I have been on the road often while conducting my research. I will write up some updates soon. There are also some more interesting developments that I hope to publicise soon. Thanks again for your interest.