GLASGOW- When all is said and done at the U.N. climate talks, and the ink on the COP26 agreement is dry, one awkward question will remain: how enforceable will the deal be anyway?
In the last year, countries have announced a flurry of net-zero emissions pledges. The United States promised net zero by 2050, China and Saudi Arabia targeted 2060, and India 2070. Many other countries submitted formal pledges – known as “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs – to cut emissions this decade, ahead of this month’s U.N. climate conference in Glasgow.
Whether those goals are legally binding is for individual countries to decide.
The 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty, commits its nearly 200 signatory countries only to hold global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and aim for 1.5C. But the accord left it up to countries to set their own national contributions towards the overall Paris targets, and doesn’t require they meet them.
“The NDCs are voluntary measures,” said Lakshman Guruswamy, an international environmental law expert at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “There’s no way of implementing, imposing, or trying to enforce a non-binding agreement.”
Countries including Britain and New Zealand, and the 27-country EU, have fixed individual emission-cutting targets into their own laws. Most nations have not.
International treaties tend not to threaten penalties and instead rely on other political strategies and pressure tactics to ensure cooperation.
But some experts say they should mandate legally binding emissions cuts, given that decades of U.N. climate summits and voluntary pledges have so far failed to halt the rise in emissions and global temperatures.
“I don’t think we’re going to have significant progress unless there are legally binding emissions restrictions that are placed on developing countries and developed countries,” Guruswamy said.
Only once has a U.N. climate treaty set binding targets for individual countries. The 1992 Kyoto Protocol applied them to richer nations only and involved a complex process of national ratifications that meant it didn’t fully enter into force until 2005.
Making targets binding can also backfire.
When confronted with the final Kyoto agreement, US politicians balked and the country never ratified it. Canada withdrew from the pact in 2011, before its penalty regime took effect.
