What we will find inside COP21 final deal.

We are almost there. After yesterday’s version of the agreement, and after two sleepless nights that saw our heroes engaging in endless negotiations, another day  and night of intense working has started in Paris.  The final outcome is expected for tomorrow, but, at least on their public stands, countries still look pretty divided over several pivotal topics.

Next week I will update this blog with an analysis of the final outcome. As for now, I will try to make some forecasts on what there will happen tomorrow, based on what I have read about this conference in the past days. In a few days we will see how precise they are going to be.

First of all: is there going to be an agreement at all? I am pretty sure this will happen. Several important countries have invested so much into this conference, that  their citizens and public opinions are expecting a compromise. Take China for example. Now that it has decided to go green, in an effort of shifting attention away from the not-so-exciting state of its economy and in order  to act against the unsustainable pollution that is affecting its main cities, China has a lot of reasons for getting to a final agreement. Or the United States of president Obama. Clearly, in his last year of presidency he wants to be protagonist of some climatic milestones for which he will be remembered and will base his legacy on. And Paris is a perfect chance for this. Furthermore climate change is a topic that deeply divides Republicans and Democrats, and a success in this field will certainly become an asset for Hillary Clinton’s future campaign. And then green is considered trendy all over Europe. This is a push factor for EU leaders to show their electors how good they are in caring about climate and about future generations.

Now, the question is: what is going to be inside the treaty? One of the focal points is about the reduction of carbon emissions, as a function of the maximum world temperature rise that should be allowed in the next decades. Every person who has read a newspaper in the last weeks, knows by now that the goal before Paris was to set at a maximum rise of 2 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial era level. Now, in the past days, some countries have proposed to further restrict this bracket, setting the new limit at 1.5 Celsius. What the actual value will be, it will be decided in the next few hours. The most interesting part, however, will be reading the final document with particular attention to the wording used. The winners and losers of this compromise will in fact come out not just by the eventual stated value, but also about how biding these provisions will be. In a good compromise everything is connected, and there is always a trade-off between how ambitious a treaty is supposed to be and how strict compliance and enforcements rules are. The Kyoto protocol is the perfect example of this.

In this sense, I believe that the final outcome will be essentially “political”: full of nice words and intentions that will allow presidents and head of states to show how good they were and how much effort they put into these negotiations. But at the same time, nothing will be seriously biding, therefore allowing them not to commit to these previsions in a serious way and to keep doing business as usual.

In a couple months everything about Paris will be forgotten. The United Nations will start organizing and promoting the next climate conference and in two years from now we will be back to today’s situation. Like, perhaps it has happened in the past two decades, from RIO 1992 until now.

This is my cynical, pessimistic view. At the same time, I am perfectly aware that I don’t hold any experience or qualification in order to give some authority to these ideas. I am just a young student eager to learn and understand how our complex world works.  It’s therefore possible and probable (and to a certain extent, I hope so) that facts will prove me wrong. We will see.