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 Six years earlier, countries had bitterly walked away from global
climate talks in Copenhagen without a deal. The decision to
reassemble in Paris to try again at getting almost 200 countries to
sign a pact on cutting carbon emissions was a gamble: another
collapse could the end world’s ability to forge a common approach to
dealing with climate change.
And no political leader wanted his reputation stained by a repeat of
the debacle in Copenhagen.
So there was no detail of hospitality too small for the French hosts
this time, no country negotiator who would go unflattered by Laurent
Fabius, the French foreign minister who presided over the
conference.
Fabius had been the youngest French prime minister in history in the
1980s; now he was an elder statesman looking to carve a bigger place
in it. Over two weeks under the global spotlight, his sonorous voice
and relentless optimism would come to define the public tone of the
proceedings.
 But behind the scenes, the talks witnessed the confrontations and
five-past-midnight compromises to be expected when sleep-deprived
negotiators from almost every country in the world are supposed to
come to a consensus.
They ultimately found it, remarkably only one day later than
planned. But the path to the standing ovations at the end was strewn
with disputes over money, the emergence of an effective new climate
coalition of states, and hours of wrangling over what “should” or
“shall” be done.
FRENCH WAYS
For the survivors of Copenhagen, the key to success in Paris would
be preparation.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon complained that the political
leaders had not been well-prepared for the Copenhagen meeting, and
this time he and the French conducted extensive advance work to get
other leaders personally engaged.
They also decided that, if leaders were to come to Paris, they would
do so at the beginning to lend the talks some political oxygen,
rather than arriving for a scramble at the end.
So on Nov. 30, the sprawling conference hall near the Le Bourget
airfield on the outskirts of Paris hosted world leaders, who were
supposed to deliver three minutes of encouragement. Fabius wandered
the conference center before they arrived, tapping microphones and
checking the video monitors under a podium made of recycled wood.
“Ah, we have Prince Charles,” he said to an aide, consulting the
speakers’ list.
The opening day speeches were seen as a success. UN officials were
relieved at the relatively cooperative tone from Russian President
Vladimir Putin who was among several leaders who assured Ban
privately before the outset that Russia would not block a deal, UN
officials said later.
Fabius pulled together a team of officials and diplomats from across
the French civil service to facilitate the talks. “He treated it
less like a climate negotiation and more like a trade deal,” said
one UN veteran of past climate talks.
He also constantly praised delegates for their hard work and
insights, before telling them exactly what schedule of debate they
had to follow to finish by their self-imposed deadline of Friday,
Dec. 11.
He gave the job of writing the accord’s preamble to Venezuela’s
minister Claudia Salerno, whose country had been perhaps the
harshest critic of the Copenhagen process that was seen as a
collusion of big powers dictating to small countries, making her
personally vested in finding compromises.
Not all developing countries were easily won over, however. A
central sticking point throughout the talks was the degree to which
the agreement would be legally binding on countries, especially the
rich ones who are expected to provide the hundreds of billions of
dollars in funding to cover the transition to a low carbon future.
The differences were expressed in wrangles over wording. Hard,
legally binding commitments were proceeded in the text as items that
countries “shall” do.
Those items that were simply good intentions fell into the “should”
do category.
HALF A DEGREE CLOSER
Facing unbudging demands to put their financial commitments into
legal language, U.S. negotiators knew they had to break the poor vs.
rich country divide. Their tactic was to sign up to a loose
coalition of countries called the High Ambition Coalition.
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The European Union takes credit for starting the group as far back
as 2011, when it was a loose alliance between the EU and small
island states.
As Paris approached, it expanded to include African, Caribbean and
Pacific nations, developing an agenda that included the goal of
keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7
Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels by the end of the 21st
century.
The number had almost been banished from serious discussion ahead of
Paris. But the American decision to “join” the High Ambition
Coalition brought the 1.5 goal back into play, sweetened with
pledges of hundreds of millions of dollars to help island and
developing states mitigate the ill-effects of climate change.
Although the promise is only aspirational, the re-emergence of
references to 1.5 degrees in the Paris text brought several
influential developing countries into the U.S. camp. Soon Canada
joined, then Australia and Brazil, a collection of wealthy,
heavy-polluting western countries marching into the plenary hall
alongside the Marshall Islands.
China’s negotiators dismissed the High Ambition Coalition as a
stunt. “This is a kind of performance by some members,” said Liu
Zhenmin, deputy head of the China delegation. But the solidarity of
the developing nation bloc was broken.
LAST BRIDGES AND HICCUPS
Climate change summits have developed a particular theater of their
own. In one moment, it was possible to see actor Alec Baldwin
expressing his fears for the planet to journalists, across from an
Indonesian pavilion hosting a party to show off its pilot green
energy hospitals.
But much of the real work was done by people not even at Le Bourget.
After visiting at the start, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese
President Xi Jinping discussed roadblocks by telephone, and the two
countries appeared to be mostly on the same page.
Other housekeeping of the text was taken care of. Negotiators
insured that a specific reference to climate effects on “occupied
territories” was taken out to keep the politics focused on climate
issues.
By Saturday, Fabius the pieces were falling into place. “I think
we’re done here,” said a happy Marshall Islands foreign minister
Tony de Brum on Saturday morning.
There was to be one last hiccup. The final text had settled on 143
items prefaced by “shall,” 40 with “should.” But in one section, the
words appeared to have been flipped.
Suddenly, there was a delay in the hall where delegates had convened
amid smiles and air kisses to seal the deal.
Fabius and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left the room,
replaced by rumors of trouble. But then the French minister was
back. A technical glitch, he explained, brought on by the fatigue of
a drafter.
The organizers announced corrections to a few typographical errors,
and tellingly switched one last “should” for a “shall” before Fabius
swiftly brought the gavel down.
(Writing by Richard Valdmanis and Bruce Wallace; Additional
reporting by Alister Doyle, Valerie Volcovici, Barbara Lewis, David
Stanway and Nina Chestney in Paris; editing by Anna Willard)
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