Welcome to "Febs Talks", the podcast of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. I am Thomas Fröhlich and I work with the Climate Environment Program here at FEBS. Our guest today is Dr. Steven Mieners. He's a professor of law at Peking University's School of Transnational Law. He has a background in law and international relations.
His research and education took him from the University of Melbourne to Fudan University in China and the London School of Economics and Kings College London. He's a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law and Steven is also the author of the recent book "Climate Progress in the EU and the World" published by FEBS. Welcome to "Febs Steven". How are you doing today? Well, thank you very much, Thomas. It's great to be here. I'm very welcome. Thank you for being here.
Let's start off our conversation on a personal note. How did you personally get involved into the climate policy sphere?
Well, I first learned about climate change as a university student and as someone who'd always been interested in a basic way in nature, this appealed to me as a topic to work on, particularly when I learned about how important it was and later about the very real consequences that climate policy had for people, especially people who were less well off, who were more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
So over time, I found it to be something that I've worked on in various professional capacities. And I decided at a certain point that this was something that was worth focusing on, including during a PhD and since then. And it's certainly a topic that offers numerous opportunities for people with different backgrounds, different skills to apply themselves and certainly somewhere where we need as many people as possible working for strong and ambitious and progressive outcomes. Very good.
So since you're an expert on the topic and personally involved in it, could you give a short overview of international climate initiatives and policies? Climate change has been on the international agenda for a long time in a serious way, at least since the late 1980s. It was really the creation of the United Nations Climate Convention in 1992 that launched this very regular process of negotiation and everything that has come from that.
So in the late 80s, early 90s, the international community recognizes collectively that climate change is a problem. It's still something which is on the horizon. It's not really the felt experience of most communities or certainly most leaders at that time, but nevertheless, as part of a period of environmental lawmaking at the international level, the Rio conference, the Convention on Biodiversity, this new climate change framework agreement.
And quite soon after that, the Kyoto Protocol, where of course the European Union and its member states and some other major developed economies such as Japan and Canada, accepted quantified emissions targets, greenhouse gas emission mitigation targets for the first time at the international level.
And that of course was not the end of the story because you had major economies like the United States, which never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but also the large emerging economies such as China, India and others without themselves taking on obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
So this long process, which ultimately results in the Paris Agreement in 2015 and a universal climate agreement applicable to all countries developed and developing with of course important differences in responsibilities according to different national circumstances.
And this now has become central is perhaps overstating it, but very much near the top of the international agenda because most countries and also institutions recognize that an adequate response to climate change also means economic transformation and touches so many other areas of international life and national competitiveness. Very well. I think we will come back later to the questions of just transition, economic transition and economic opportunities of climate action.
But the term that is very well known that every one of our listeners probably is familiar with are the COP conferences. Could you maybe outline for our audience what the process behind these COP conferences is? Absolutely. Well, when the Climate Convention was agreed, it established another number of institutions and the COP is one of them. The COP is the conference of parties.
It's the place where all of the parties to the Climate Convention and now the Paris Agreement can meet and take decisions. And I say parties rather than states because the EU is also a party alongside its member states.
So the process involves the COP meeting once a year for about two weeks and taking what are now literally dozens of decisions across all the areas of implementation of the Climate Convention and the Paris Agreement from adaptation and mitigation to financial support, technology transfer, carbon market mechanisms, etc., etc. These have become very important places for the parties to agree on the international
rules that are required to meet the goals of the Climate Convention and the Paris Agreement. But they have also become beyond the negotiations themselves. There are also other places where global communities of interest involved in climate change can present their work, form initiatives, make proposals, and of course lobby the parties themselves.
So we're talking about civil society, NGOs, business, finance, academic and research professionals who are presenting their research and how that relates to the practical development of climate policy. All of these non-negotiators who have long become themselves very important elements of climate negotiations, even though they're not negotiating themselves. And of course the media is there to cover it.
And particularly in more recent years, younger people, students from school as well as university students are there as well to present their very serious concerns. Since you are part of the EU team in the EU and climate conferences, you have been part of these COP meetings. Could you share your personal experience? How is the atmosphere at COP's? And some of our listeners might be aware of the photos of the big huddles of the pre-COVID times conferences.
What is the atmosphere there, Stephen, and will the huddles come back? Well, they have come back and the poster COVID times. So perhaps this is not ideal from a public health perspective. But my very personal observation is that these are concentrated periods of hard work for everyone who is there to negotiate. And if we're doing it right as negotiators, of course we are there representing the interests and the positions of our parties, whether that's the EU or any other party.
But it's also about participating in the collective work to advance climate action. So you talked about the huddles. Very often as we get towards the business end of these negotiations and it becomes necessary to achieve some kind of outcome, outcomes can only be achieved in this process by consensus. There isn't the capacity to get 51% of the votes of the parties there.
So inevitably compromise and finding proposals that the vast majority of parties present can live with are how we get to outcomes. And in a huddle, it is simply a group of people standing in close quarters, sharing their positions, their concerns, but also making proposals as to what might bridge the positions of different parties. And this is ultimately expressed in text, black and white English language text, which will either be adopted or not as the outcome.
And the huddle is one of the most visible ways of this happening. It also happens with people sitting at big tables. But the huddle has been used to break log jams. And it speaks to the fact that negotiators are party representatives, but they're also colleagues. They typically know each other very well. And they're comfortable negotiating also in such an informal format, which can become formalized when outcomes are adopted. It doesn't always work, of course.
What are the international dynamics of these negotiations beyond the huddle? You mentioned that a lot of the negotiators know each other. Are there, for example, established positions of certain countries? Are there coalitions and alliances and so on? What are these international dynamics? Yes. The main fault line running through climate negotiations is between developed countries and parties and developing countries.
So right from the very beginning, 1992, the climate convention distinguished between categories, countries which were seen as wealthy countries and had to take the lead in their domestic response to climate change, but also to provide financial and other support to developing countries. And developing countries themselves and so-called economies in transition, which were the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
They were also recognized least developed countries, so the very poorest countries with the greatest challenges and also, in many cases, the greatest climate challenges and small island developing states, who in addition to other developing countries face the existential challenge that the climate change presents to their physical survival as well as the viability of their economies.
So even to this day, that basic distinction between developed and developing countries is there, but there are also smaller groups of countries that negotiate together. The African group of nations, certainly not a small group, but a subset of the developing countries which will have its own positions on certain topics.
For example, the EU is negotiating as a block, as a group, so individual member states do not speak in their own capacity in the climate negotiations, and other groups which are more or less formal, which might come together in certain agenda items, but not in others. But all of these groups just there for the obvious fact that one's voice is stronger in these negotiations if one is not there just as an individual country, but is representing a co-activity. That is very interesting.
I wonder how much the individual government of a certain country affects the position of that country, that any given country in these negotiations. It sounds like that these groups that you outlined have very stratified interests, but a government change as we have seen in 2016 with the US government change led to a stark change in this policy. Are there other examples like that? Absolutely.
The composition of government is very important for the position that countries will take to international climate negotiations. In some countries, the change is more obviously felt than others. You mentioned, of course, the election of President Trump in late 2016. I actually found myself at the Marrakesh climate conference when the result of that election became known.
It had an extraordinary chilling effect on the whole gathering because just after the Paris Agreement had entered into force, here was a new US president coming who was committed to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and reneging on financial commitments of the United States. All of that came to pass.
I think as we look towards that election, but also other elections, clearly voting matters in terms not just of national policy, but to the positions that countries take to international negotiations. In the European Union, we see this dynamic, of course, where perhaps in the fortunate position that at least in the center of the political spectrum from center left to center right, there are not likely to be these dramatic swings as President Trump might present.
But nevertheless, it is clear that ambition in climate change and the social commitments that go along with that do vary from political party to political party. This is part of democratic life in a democracy and of course climate change is not immune from that as an area of policy. Since we're here part of the progressive family in Europe and you also outlined this in the second half or second part of your book, what is the progressive take on climate action?
Well, it's challenging to sum up, but I think at the core of a progressive answer to climate change is to take bold and radical climate action to meet the demands of the climate crisis whilst bringing society with us and in particular answering the needs of the most vulnerable members of society so that climate change is not creating new inequalities or exacerbating the inequalities that we already have.
And that's why the notion of a just and fair climate transition has become central to progressive climate policy. I think for most of the periods since the climate convention entered into force, climate policy has been perceived as a trade off between environmental and economic outcomes. So climate mitigation, taking climate action was always seen as something of a sacrifice. Now today, of course, things have changed.
We see also the opportunities of building the new climate economy, new prosperity, new jobs, but we also know that this will be a challenge for a lot of people. So if there is a particular progressive or social democratic offering, it is not to slow down the climate transition, but it is to work with social partners to achieve that transition in a way that does not provoke backlash and ultimately make climate policy brittle because it is socially unsustainable.
So you have already touched upon two very important concepts. On the one hand, the just transition question and on the other hand, the economic opportunities of climate change mitigation or of a new climate, clean climate economy. Let me go back to the concept of a just transition. How would you define this idea and maybe also give a few examples how this concept has already translated into politics?
Yeah, to deal with climate change and in a sense, we're focusing on mitigation, but this is also relevant to adaptation. To deal with climate change requires systemic transitions in the energy sector, in the transportation sector and also to an extent in the agriculture sector and many others. Now the insight of the concept of just transition is that we can make those transitions in a way that does not leave behind workers, communities and regions.
So we acknowledge that certain people in certain communities will lose their jobs and lose major current hubs of economic activity due to this climate transition, but we are not abandoning these people to their fate. We are providing policy. finance and programs that in a practical way address the needs of communities affected by the climate transition.
Whether that is retraining at the individual or workforce level, whether that is working in a particular region to create new economic activity, new investment, and so on and so forth. So the just transition is a concept that was in many ways a product of the trade union movement, which on the one hand recognize the necessity of climate policy, climate action. The unions never wanted to stand in the way of the climate agenda.
But at the same time, of course, had the varied real need to represent the interests of their members and to say the climate transition should not be at the expense of the average worker. And then of course, due in large part to the social democratic family, but also to other people of goodwill, this just transition has become an important pillar of EU climate policy and also has achieved some prominence at the international level. But I should always add the caveat that the work is not done.
The just transition policy settings we have now are not set and forget they are a foundation to be built upon going forward. That is I think a very important point. And to the political trade off that you implicitly mentioned that that that we might face a risk of losing the support of large populations for these policies. You have a very interesting quote in your book by Mariana Mazzucatu from University College London.
And let me briefly read this division behind achieving carbon neutrality has been a feature of many progressive governments, but also a reason why the subsequently lost elections. Thus, having a vision is not enough. It is essential to engage with citizens about it. So when I read this quote, I see two points of it on the one hand, the communicative aspect of politics.
But on the other hand, actually a transformation in our representative democracies actually going back handing power down to to bottom up processes. In your point of view, are we doing enough on both ends, the communicative aspects and are there good examples for this transformation to bring power back to to the vote. The voters in the end. I think we can always do better on both counts. A lot of climate policy gets lost in the communication of it.
Climate policy is inevitably complicated and inevitably involves a lot of stakeholders and is very difficult to distill into a compelling narrative. But we can do better. I sometimes think to myself that a giant like Martin Luther King did not stand there and say, I have a mission statement, or I have a draft regulation. He said, I have a dream.
And I think we're never going to approach a communicator like that, but we can learn some lessons about presenting a future to people in which they can see themselves in which climate policy is not threatening. It's not the structural adjustment with a green tinge that results in downsizing people losing their jobs. But is it is a way to reinvigorate communities whilst also dealing with this clear and present danger to planetary boundaries.
And I think that's connected to the other element that you mentioned, which I sometimes like to think about as climate democracy, that climate change should not be imposed as a policy upon people. But it is actually an opportunity to reinvigorate local decision making through things such as energy communities, for example, energy collectives. Some of the social justice asks of the movement of the squares, for example, who felt oppressed by austerity policies.
There is some way that the new economics of climate change can at least in part meet social demands and help people to create their own sustainable economic futures within the context of national and EU policy, of course. So I think we have opportunities there. But whatever the area of climate policy, we need to communicate in an impactful way. And there are clearly opportunities to do better.
Talking about this question of climate democracy, the next conference of the parties, the next COP will be held in Azerbaijan. And the following one in Brazil, what would you expect from these two conferences, one in a more and in a less democratic country? Well, you have to remember that these conferences are held in the context of the United Nations. So in a sense, the process is agnostic to the political character of a government, including a host government.
When we go to Baku or to Brazil or and to wherever is beyond that, perhaps in the Asia Pacific, we have to get the best possible outcomes. And that includes working closely with the presidency host country. In terms of what I see coming out of these next couple of cops, it's no secret that a major focus of COP 29 in Baku will be the climate finance agenda. And particularly the setting of a new collective quantified goal for climate finance under the Paris Agreement.
Some listeners may recall the ambition of mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020, which was one of the outcomes of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, which is obviously a very long time ago. So parties have set the task of agreeing a new climate finance goal at the international level. And this is, of course, very challenging and includes questions like first of all, how much money, who pays, who is included in that.
What about non state sectors or non state sources of money, private private sector, etc. Sub goals for particular topics. So all of that is to be discussed, of course, and has been discussed. But Baku is a major milestone there.
And then looking beyond that Baku, but particularly Brazil the following year, the need to strengthen the ambition and the practical implementation of national climate policies are referred to as nationally determined contributions and particularly the need for countries to communicate new or updated nationally determined contributions before COP 30 in Brazil. So the context for this, of course, is that we've made a lot of progress since the Paris Agreement in bending the emissions curve.
But we're still not where we need to be to meet the Paris Agreement targets of keeping global average temperature increases well below 1.5 degrees Celsius since the pre industrial level. The COP in Dubai last year, COP 28 said very important targets triple renewable energy, double in energy efficiency by 2030. But we need to turn those high level political targets international plans that can actually be implemented. And next year will be a major opportunity to achieve that.
So let's hope that this will actually materialize. But coming back to climate finance, which is, as you mentioned, the hot topic of the day of the year, this this COP 29. It always appears to me when we're talking about climate finance that if only we throw enough money at the problem, we will be able to solve it. Would you agree with that? Money is rarely the full solution to any problem.
I think it's clear that we need more money to be thrown at the climate problem, but we also need projects, activities and policies that would benefit from that money can absorb that money in a productive way. So the the finance gap, in a sense, has two sides to it, the sources, but also how the money is used.
And I think current discussions are an opportunity to work with both sides to both raise new sources of climate finance and to strengthen climate flows from existing sources, but also to set frameworks which help to translate those climate investments into effective interventions in the climate problem.
So it's it's perhaps a little known fact that the Paris Agreement next to its climate mitigation and climate finance goals understood in a in the sense of public finance and next to its adaptation goal sets this additional goal of making all finance flows consistent with climate mitigation and adaptation.
So we're not just talking about government a or development Bank a providing climate finance to development, developing country be we're talking about transforming debt finance at the international level, investment equity, all of this has to be consistent with climate outcomes and it's incredibly difficult to do.
But this is one of the things that the EU has prioritized in the international level, just as it has at the level with the ever growing sustainable finance package, you know the taxonomy disclosure, etc, etc. Because of this recognition, it's not just about public monies. It's about all monies, and they need to add up to investment in solutions, not more investment into climate problems.
You mentioned the climate problems. One one figure that is prominently featured in your book is the level of subsidies into fossil fuels, which is at at a level of hundreds of billions US dollars or euros annually. That is a big subsidy for a climate problem. Can these international frameworks provide regulation to actually get away from it or is that fundamentally left to the national states.
The experience suggests that most countries are not likely to phase out fossil fuel subsidies because they've been asked to do so by an international conference. I think this is an area where at the international level, the carrot rather than the stick is a more practical approach. And what I mean by that is helping countries to create and bed down clean energy solutions so that they don't have to throw so much money at fossil fuel subsidies.
We know the tremendous political sensitivity of energy of electricity and and transport right so fossil fuel subsidies are not something that's happening somewhere else. They're happening everywhere, including here in the European Union. And what we need to do is to create a new economics of clean energy under which fossil fuel subsidies are simply unnecessary.
That's incredibly difficult, but of course we're making progress and all of the work to ramp up renewable energy storage to firm renewable energy so batteries, etc. All of that is making progress new energy vehicles, for example. But the idea that the COP will the conference of parties will tell countries to take off fossil fuel subsidies and countries will actually listen. I think that would be a heroic assumption.
You actually I am an endless optimist and you mentioned that we can we should that we need to build this new clean energy policy framework which, as we all know energy policy obviously has has geopolitical implications. And I'm wondering if if this is the right time in in history with with wars coming very close to Europe, for instance, but also instability in the broader international system. If this is a conducive environment for for this new energy policy.
One of the policy lessons of this period, this period of of war has been that clean energy is the best friend that energy security hats. These are not policy alternatives to be traded off.
We've often spoken in the past about the energy trilemma, and it has a great value as a heuristic. But what we have seen is that over reliance on important fossil fuels constitutes a risk geopolitically as you mentioned, and a limitation on the ability of countries to determine a sovereign foreign policy, which expresses democratic values human rights and the rule of law.
So I think, obviously, war is a terrible thing and we all want it to stop. But one of the lessons to take from that is that the old 20th century notion of the fossil fuel international economy imports and exports will continue to play a role. But as we strengthen our domestic renewables, domestic clean energy and storage, we will be less reliant on certain countries, and that will have a political dividend, as well as an economic in terms of trade dividend.
We can only hope that this opportunity of creating a new energy paradigm will actually lead to this stabilization of the international context. But we have advanced significantly in our time here. I would like to ask you one final question, again, a very personal question, personal about you as well. What gives you hope that we can still prevent the climate collapse from happening?
One of the advantages of my work in climate change is I get to speak to a lot of people who are contributing to climate solutions, and I can see the tremendous intellectual energy, practical energy applied, applied enthusiasm backed by knowledge to deal with this problem.
And it's clear to me that there is tremendous progress which is happening. We haven't won by any means, but nor have we lost. And I think the coming several years, it's all to play for in terms of our collective response to climate change. So I do have hope. I'm not necessarily an optimist, but I think there's no reason to despair, and there's every reason to redouble our efforts and our commitment to this agenda, because so many people are relying on us to get it right.
Dr. Steven Minas, thank you so much for this. More insights into climate progress in the EU and the world can be read in this wonderful book from the FEPPS Prima series, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again here at FEPPS. Well, thank you very much, Thomas. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you. [Music]