Copenhagen is the destination for one of Karin Bäckstrand's more important trips this year. During two weeks in December, the UN is holding its large climate conference there which, it is hoped, will result in a new climate protocol as the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The intention is that agreement will be reached on halving the aggregate carbon dioxide emissions of the world by 2050.
- That goal may be difficult to reach, in view of the fact that the developing countries will not even achieve the Kyoto goal of a 5.2 per cent reduction of emissions by 2012, says Karin Bäckstrand.
Karin Bäckstrand is associate professor in political science at Lund University and has several reasons for attending the summit meeting on the future global climate policy: She is a member of the Expert Group of the Ministry of Finance for environmental studies and also has a post at the Government Offices as an external expert for the Commission for sustainable development.
She is also in charge of the Mistra project The Politics and Policy of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) which studies the political dimensions of a technology that captures carbon dioxide from coal or gas fired power plants and converts this into liquid form for onward transport and geological storage.
She is also in charge of the project GreenGovern on Sustainable Social Control which is aided by a grant from Formas. Karin Bäckstrand took the initiative in 2005 to apply for a grant for a project on transdisciplinary environmental issues, which is administered by the Universities of Lund and Stockholm.
- We have assembled an exciting research team of eleven dynamic people with backgrounds in research policy, environmental and energy systems, physical geography, ecology and sociology, she says.
Soft forms of governance
GreenGovern studies the legitimacy and effectiveness of the new forms of governance in three areas of policy: climate, forests and food safety. Karin Bäckstrand is a member of the research teams which study climate and forest policy. As regards climate, she has seen a change since the 1990s.
- There has been a change from hard to soft control, she says. Now it is increasingly like network governance with a complex collection of participants: politicians and decision makers, representatives of industry and voluntary organisations, NGOs. The other trend is that it is becoming more and more common to apply market control such as trading with emission rights and forest certification.
- As a counterbalance to regulation, there is a third trend that is based on a broader participation, with dialogue among the actors in society. Even though traditional command and control, with mechanisms for observance and sanctions, will still be needed, adds Karin Bäckstrand.
Mechanism for clean development
According to the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries shall primarily reduce emissions in their own countries, In addition, there are three flexible mechanisms which are to keep costs down:
- Clean Development Mechanism CDM: Countries with commitments according to the Protocol can reduce emissions in countries which are signatories to the Protocol but which are not required to reduce their emissions.
- Joint implementation takes the form of cooperative projects among countries on environmental technologies, and modernisation and effectivisation of the industrial and energy sectors.
- Trading with emission rights implies that the amount which each player is allowed to emit is determined from the start. If they emit more, they must buy extra emission rights.
Karin Bäckstrand is a delegate to the international climate negotiations of the UN in order to monitor CDM which chiefly concerns developing countries.
- I call the climate negotiations our climate laboratory, since it is there that I observe how the mechanisms are discussed, she says. It can be seen as field work with partricipant observation, where I interview the delegates and also follow the decision making processes in the plenary discussions.
One general observation is that climate negotiations can take a very long time.
- It is an enormously complex process when 191 countries are negotiating. The delegates may have long discussions on whether "shall" or "should" is to be used in a negotiation document.
European diplomacy
Karin Bäckstrand can see several cultural differences between parts of the world. She compares the US, which is sceptical that multilateral negotiations can solve the issue of climate, with the EU that employs a moral discourse:
- In Europe there is a tradition which is partly associated with the fact that the EU has been established through diplomacy. The EU is after all a result of multilateral negotiations and the formation of institutions, and the Kyoto Protocol is based on this tradition, she says.
Karin Bäckstrand reminds me that the US left the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 when George W. Bush was president.
- A change has certainly taken place in the US, with a more open and positive attitude to global cooperation, since Barrack Obama came to power. But, although there is now greater understanding of environmental diplomacy and the UN, the power and interest perspective is still a key point of departure for a great power such as the US, which has never allowed itself to be ruled by clauses in international treaties.
- Even though rapprochement is now taking place, it is not probable that the US will sign a treaty during the Copenhagen meeting that implies quantitative reductions in emissions. She predicts that the US will not allow its economy to be directed by UN treaties.
Global governance
The EU has assumed the role of global climate leader. Karin Bäckstrand points out, however, that its credibility will be jeopardised if the Union, despite its global environmental profile, does not comply with the Kyoto Protocol's inadequate goals for reductions in emissions. Such issues are constantly discussed in the European researcher network of which she is a member. It is called Global Governance Project and includes researchers from 12 countries. Research focuses on forms of governance in society in general, and on environmental changes and sustainable development in particular. Three forms of governance are evident today.
- One form is legislation via the State. Another is the market which is also an important means of control. The third form is network governance with broader participation by many players in society. This also includes researchers as an important group, says Karin Bäckstrand.
Certified forests
While climate negotiations on international level follow one another, the interests of the forest are represented in another way. Here, it is mostly market forces and the broader engagement that drive development. Karin Bäckstrand has taken part in several workshops regarding forest management and environmental labelling of forests, for example the Forest Stewardship Council.
- Environmental labelling of forests is a good example of new forms of governance that have grown out of frustration that so little is happening on the multilateral level, she says. In Sweden we have seen yet another example of the softer forms of governance: Production targets and sustainability goals are now on an equal footing in forestry.
Increased emissions
Emissions in Canada, US and several European countries have increased by 15-20 per cent between 1990 and 2009.
One of the expectations for the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 is that agreement will be reached on halving the aggregate carbon dioxide emissions of the world by 2050.
The EU has set up the goal to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and by 30 per cent if other industrialised countries agree to do the same.