Section 2 provides an overview of the political context of this analysis and highlights key challenges in aligning the two agendas
2 The challenge: aligning mitigation and sustainable development in practice
2.3 There is no consensus on how to align climate protection and sustainable development in global
governance
Whereas Parties to the UNFCCC generally agree on the necessity to pursue both mitigation and sustainable development, there is no consensus on how to align the two agendas in the global governance framework and the degree of global regulation that is necessary to do so. Parties generally agree, for example, on the necessity to measure and verify GHG reductions, such as through results-based management and finance schemes under the CDM.
However, there has been – and still is – significant disagreement with respect to sustainable development. This not only applies to the question of
how to define and “measure” sustainable development, but also to questions related to institutional approaches and governance structures, for example who should be responsible for ensuring co-benefits or avoiding negative impacts, or even whether to consider co-benefits or adverse effects for sustainable development at all.
For a long time, co-benefits of climate change mitigation policies and investments had been strongly denied, in particular by oil-producing countries, arguing that climate protection would have adverse effects on their national economies and social welfare. Promoters of climate protection instead denied these effects and highlighted the socio-economic benefits of climate protection (see the example of IRENA above), which is a perspective that is nowadays generally shared by most Parties and is reflected in the consensus on the necessity of NDCs.
Yet, the controversy over economic growth and promoting social and environmental development still prevails and shapes international discourses, leading to diverging views on the need for the public regulation of trade-offs and benefits, both at the global and national levels. For example, whereas some Parties argue for stronger global social and environmental standards for climate change mitigation investments, others argue that these would increase investment or transaction (i.e. “unnecessary”) costs and therewith hinder investments by the state as well as by private actors in climate change mitigation at the scale and speed necessary to achieve the 1.5/2°C goal.
The question to what extent the three dimensions of sustainable development overlap or generate trade-offs for the respective other dimension can be seen as a struggle about the priorities of policy goals – a struggle that has shaped UNFCCC negotiations from the beginning. Throughout the 1990s up to the mid 2010s, mitigation targets have dominated policy goals, but sustainable development, adaptation, food security and/or human rights have often been subordinated. In the past 10 years, the balance between these goals has changed, and the status of the named formerly subsequent goals has increased – at least on paper.
Further reasons for the disagreement on how to align climate and development in global governance are the questions of how to define sustainable development, and whether it should be better defined and regulated at the global or national level. As is the case under the CDM, where sustainable development is defined at the national level (see Section 4.1), there is a tendency that many countries oppose (strong) international regulation, such
as standards and safeguards, in favour of national approaches. This view is supported by the argument of national sovereignty and that it requires country ownership based on policies and regulations, which are embedded into institutional contexts and adapted to national needs, including the possibilities for locals to influence these. International standards and regulations are seen as additional bureaucratic burdens, which could even hinder any national commitment.
Others instead argue for stricter global rules and standards in aligning the two agendas. Arguments that support this position range from the necessity to incentivise sustainable development or establish comparable market conditions, up to the need to safeguard the rights of adversely affected people in case of governance failure at the national level.
Related to this controversy is the challenge to establish a global governance framework that is ambitious in the alignment of the two agendas and manageable at the same time when it comes to its implementation, in particular at the national level but also in relation to private-sector engagement. This challenge is illustrated by the UNFCCC national reporting requirements for non-Annex I countries, in particular the guidelines for biennial update reports of national GHG inventories, which imply that developing countries need to rebuild or set up new institutions and/or structures for collecting and processing the data for complying with these guidelines. The challenge is furthermore illustrated by the negotiation process and the compilation of data and views on the implementation of SDG indicators by the Inter-Agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators.10 The group had been mandated to develop an indicator framework for the goals and targets of the SDG agenda at the global level and to support its implementation. The variety of indicators and dimensions that these capture are enormous (United Nations Statistics Division, 2016). Collecting and processing the respective data at the national level is a challenge for many countries. Experience with the design of the CDM or GCF governance structures illustrates in further detail political and technical challenges on how best to align the two agendas.
10 See United Nations Statistics Division (s.a.) for an overview of suggestions.