🌍 What You Can Learn From a 2015 Paris Agreement Negotiator

Today’s piece is a bit different. Peter Betts wrote his book, The Climate Diplomat, after receiving a terminal brain cancer diagnosis. He died in October 2023. 

Betts spent the majority of his career in government working on climate, including as EU Lead Negotiator at the 2015 Paris Agreement, and as the Director of International Climate Change in the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The book is a forensic assessment of climate diplomacy over a multi-decade horizon. Betts holds no prisoners on what people were like to work with, which countries impeded progress, and perhaps of most interest to a Policy Unstuck reader, how these countries obstructed progress and the roles of other actors in supporting them to do so. 

The book has a number of interesting dimensions to it, and some of you will be especially interested by Betts’ repeated critiques of NGOs–a taste of which I have included below. The book is well worth the read.

I’m grateful to Fiona MacGregor, Peter’s widow, for reviewing the edit, to Peter Jones at Profile Books for permitting me to reproduce the quotes (the subtitles are my additions), and to Charlie Ogilvie for the book.

Tom

If people change roles, they lose their most valuable currency: relationships

It is essential as a negotiator to listen carefully to one’s counterparts, and understand what really drives their position, and to accommodate their concerns while meeting one’s own. Obviously this is far more likely to be successful if it is supported by close personal relationships. All this is far more important than clever legal drafting or mastery of process. (p. 17)

[And yet, the] UK civil service constantly moves people around, particularly at senior levels. The longer the policy officials coming out from London had been in their roles, the more effective they were at helping to make the UK case. (p. 19)

Do you profoundly trust your opposite number?

The EU had formed ad hoc alliances with vulnerable countries at many points during the UNFCCC negotiations, reflecting the reality that we had many objectives in common. 

But the [Cartagena] Dialogue went much further than this. It did not just come together at the last moment at COPs: it had informal governance, an institutional structure, and, most importantly, individuals who trusted each other profoundly. This was a crucial reason for success in subsequent COPs from Cancún to Paris. (p. 93)

When your contributions to an outcome work to prevent it

A great deal of my time was spent not on substance but on thinking through how to prevent procedural disruption. It could be very hard to call out difficult countries for their procedural disruptions. This was for several reasons. 

First, NGOs and others would often be reluctant to criticise ‘developing’ countries. Second, procedural disruption by some emerging economies would be reported by the media as developing countries as a whole wanting something and being resisted by ‘developed’ countries. 

This was often flat-out wrong and many developing countries actually wanted progress and were as frustrated with procedural delays as the EU were. (p. 34)

Overall, campaigners and NGOs were dominated by what they see as a pro Global South agenda, but which in reality provided political cover for the emerging economies at the expense of the most vulnerable. (p. 55)

Ideology or progress?

The whole point of the [Cartagena Dialogue] was to try to understand each other, and find ways forward. I often worry about modern cancel culture, where unwelcome views are simply silenced. If we had applied such an approach to the Paris Agreement we would never have got anywhere. (p. 97)

[There] is a pressing need to focus on the pace of implementing policies to tackle climate change. The approach of some on the left who argue that a wealth of other global problems, not least the legacies of colonialism, should also be solved through the prism of climate change, may run the risk of impeding that pace. (p. 275)

Want to prevent progress? Prepare a massive text

The negotiating text going into Copenhagen was hundreds of pages long with multiple repetitions and was utterly impenetrable. A good editor could easily have simplified the document enormously by eliminating duplication, aligning similar proposals and bringing out specific options on issues where Parties disagreed. 

But sensible editing and synthesis was vociferously opposed by key delegations… meaning the text was essentially useless. (p. 57)

If you can’t work with them, go around them

[We] needed a new report as authoritative as [the Stern Review] had been, one that took account of technical and economic developments and showed that the short-term transition was affordable, practical and compatible with countries being able to prosper and address poverty at the same time… the idea was rejected by the Treasury. (p. 146)

How could we proceed, given the resistance of the Treasury? I had a discussion with Michael Jacobs who floated the idea of a Global Commission drawn from every part of the world who would submit the report to us.  

In other words, the Treasury could not block it or seek to shape it because it would be the Global Commission’s report, not ours. (p. 147)

Whose narrative are you narrating?

The popular TV comedy Yes Minister has in many ways served the [United Kingdom] badly…  [It] helped to create a narrative that the civil service only serves its own interests – a narrative which can even influence ministers. 

It is not the only source of this narrative. Think tanks have a vested interest in running down the civil service, because they are competing sources of advice. So too are the large consulting groups, which often provide a very poor service at much higher cost. (p. 213-214)

Be selective with who is in the room

It was decided that we would make a much longer presentation on climate to the whole of BEIS top management, starting with the science, and then going on to impacts of climate change in the UK and internationally, and finally commercial opportunities [...] 

Unfortunately, we spent almost the entire meeting with the BEIS director of finance questioning the basic science of climate change. It was saloon-bar stuff and meant we lost out on having our arguments and evidence property interrogated… It had been a complete waste of time. (p. 212)

You can buy The Climate Diplomat at Waterstones and Amazon.