The Devil’s in the Details

Agreement - Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice

In a previous blog post, I discussed the need for a “moral compromise” between the developed and developing countries of the world in order to reach an agreement on climate change. Though I identified three points of compromise that most people would consider “fair”, this does not mean it is easy to act on them – as the students of our Mosaic and another class learned firsthand in a mock climate negotiation devised by Climate Interactive.

This simulation divided us into the representatives of individual countries that comprised three different blocs: developed (USA, EU, UK, etc), rapidly developing (China, India, Brazil, etc), and less developed (Sudan, Middle East, small island states, etc). We were not given countries based upon our knowledge, and most students did not know much at all about theirs; I was assigned the European Union, which I only coincidentally knew about from some previous policy research. This arrangement meant that we all identified more closely to our bloc than our individual nations (for a  discussion on the effects this had on the exercise, see this post by one of my classmates).

I went into the simulation ready to “make the developed world finally do its part”, and my Mosaic colleagues also had a strong desire to actually resolve the problem we have been studying so extensively. This optimistic collectivism, however, soon began to falter as we started to immerse ourselves in the details of negotiations. The process was deceptively simple: each bloc just had to decide by what percent it would cut its emissions by 2050, while the rapidly developing countries had options about limiting deforestation and planting more trees. The developed countries also had to determine how much money to provide as aid to the rest of the world for cutting their emissions and adapting to climate change. A computer model would then take all of these choices and calculate the results for global temperature increase and sea level rise (with more cuts making both less serious).

Despite our predisposition to compromise, we found ourselves getting very heated over exactly who should be doing how much and of what – we agreed that developed countries had to take a bigger share of the cuts, but did that mean a 30% decrease or a 75% decrease? Developed countries admitted deforestation was a problem, but is a 60% reduction “reasonable” to expect from them? Is $800 billion USD per year for climate adaptation being generous, or a cheapskate? Faced with these details, our collective will for a resolution quickly gave way to protecting our individual interests from perceived exploitation. We all wanted a fair distribution of responsibility for climate change, but “fair” had at least as many definitions as there were blocs at the table; compromise did not translate smoothly from theory to action. And this was just our oversimplified version of negotiations, where political reality was largely suspended.

Ultimately, we did come close to reaching a final agreement, though it still would not have been enough to prevent considerable temperature increase and sea-level rise, and we all felt like we were giving away too much to the other parties. As a Law & Policy major, I am used to taking an objective, analytical approach to problems like climate change, so this firsthand experience in the role of diplomats provided valuable insight into the human dimension of the issue that gets in the way of compromise – even when that is what we all sincerely hope to achieve. This simulation has not destroyed my hope of the real negotiations making progress, but it has deepened my understanding of why so little has been done thus far. Agreement is possible, and I hope this new insight we gained will contribute to making it a reality.

C-LEARN - Individual Decisions, Collective Impacts