Blog

Weekly Blog - 21 December 2024 - Negotiation Outcomes

Two successes and three missed opportunities: assessing the results of the recent UN and G20 climate change, biodiversity, plastic and tax negotiations.

 

Negotiation outcomes

The end of 2024 saw several major international negotiations that Arise members took action around.  These were the G20 in Brazil, UN Tax Agreement talks, climate change negotiations in Azerbaijan, biodiversity talks in Colombia and UN Plastic Treaty negotiations in South Korea.  In our latest blog we look at the outcomes of these summits.

 

Biodiversity COP

In late October and early November the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 16) took place in Cali, Colombia.  The last talks, two years ago, saw a major breakthrough agreement, when nations agreed to halt and reverse the current shocking rate of biodiversity decline by 2030.  This really matters.  The fresh water and food we need to survive, the clean air we need to breathe, the clothing we wear, the natural resources we use to build our homes and on which our economy is based – all are dependent on a healthy and diverse biosphere.  The crucial agreement made at the last talks two years ago was that 30% of all land and seas should be official designated as protected by 2030, a massive boost for conservation.  Two years later, the story is very different.  By the end of the conference only 44 out of 195 nations had submitted concrete plans setting out how they would achieve this, as they were supposed to.  Efforts will have to be redoubled and focused pressure applied in 2025 to the remaining nations to come up with their own serious plans for protecting land and sea in their territories.

 

Climate COP

This year’s UN climate change negotiations in Azerbaijan in mid-November were all about the money.  Developing countries that have done the least to cause global climate change are getting hit first and hardest by it, through droughts, flooding, more intense storms, growing deserts, more unpredictable weather etc.  In addition they are now being asked by developed nations not to use fossil fuels to drive their economic development (something every wealthy nation did in its own development) and instead to power their economies by clean renewable energy.  Developing countries want to play their part, but they need help, both to fund the rapid transition of their economies to clean renewable energy and to help them respond to the negative impacts of climate change.  The UN talks ended with an agreement that the world would provide $300 billion a year in climate finance.  This sounds like a big number, but it is well short of the $1.3 trillion experts say they need.  Also on closer inspection it is not to be delivered until 2035, another 10 years away, and much of it will be private sector investment (something that will happen anyway) not the badly needed additional public money.  Developing nations left the negotiations feeling desperately angry and betrayed.  However, it is a small step forward even if massively insufficient, and the agreement did include a commitment to keep talks open on this with the aim of reaching that $1.3 trillion goal.  So taking this commitment, but rapidly seeking to grow it further will be key for negotiators and campaigners in the months ahead.

 

G20 & UN Tax Agreements

When the G20 met in Brazil in mid-November they agreed to take further steps to work together towards a common global agreement on tax transparency and levels of taxation and to “engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.”  They agreed the proceeds generated should be used to tackle climate change and reduce poverty and inequality.  These are really important steps which must be built on further as part of further momentum toward a global tax and spending agreement, something Arise is calling for as part of our 4 Shifts campaign.  At the end of November, the UN General Assembly also voted overwhelmingly to begin negotiations on a new UN framework convention on international tax cooperation.  These negotiations will run from 2025 – 2027.  A global tax agreement would dramatically increase tax transparency and take major strides towards taxing extreme wealth, preventing tax avoidance and tackling tax havens around the world, which it is estimated will otherwise cost nations $5 trillion in lost tax over the next decade.  That is money that is desperately needed, especially in the world’s poorest developing countries, to provide essential services like education and healthcare.

 

UN Plastics Treaty

Finally, the INC5 negotiations on a UN Plastic Treaty to end plastic waste took place in South Korea at the end of November.  This was meant to be the end of a two-year negotiation period when a deal should have been reached.  Unfortunately, as so often happens with international agreements, the different nation states could not find enough common ground and the talks ended without a final agreement.  However, this does not mean they have collapsed, rather they have been rolled over into the new year and will resume in 2025.  A global treaty is badly needed.  Plastic pollution is a huge issue around the world.  Plastic waste is having a devastating impact on ecosystems.  In developing countries 2 billion people have no access to proper waste management systems and are left with no choice but to dump, burn or bury plastic waste – none of which are good options, and all of which have huge negative environmental and health impacts.  Much plastic ends up in rivers, and from there into the seas and oceans creating the huge problem of marine plastic.  Despite this deeply frustrating outcome to negotiations this is one of the rare occasions where no deal is better than a bad deal that locks in very limited watered-down outcomes on reducing plastic waste.  This way the talks, which do have momentum, can continue until a better solution is found next year.

 

Conclusion

As ever, the progress of global negotiations moves slowly.  This is always the case.  Getting 200 different nations to agree is always a huge challenge.  It takes time, and there are many compromises along the way.  Yet it is far better than the alternative of giving up entirely on being able to address these global challenges.  A major finding from the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world, is just how important international negotiations are, and the importance of keeping on working through them, no matter the setbacks and frustrations (Arise Manifesto, pg 272 – 275). 

In this latest round of negotiations we saw breakthrough and progress in the tax talks at the G20 and UN, but major disappointment and missed opportunities at the biodiversity, climate change and plastic waste talks: two successes and three missed opportunities.  The current global context of increased instability, ongoing financial challenges, social unrest in many nations and the rise of a probably far more isolationist US government under President Trump has had an impact on ambition levels in these latest talks.  In this context banking some progress is good news.  But the world will have to re-double its efforts in 2025 to take forward all these crucial issues.  It’s not impossible.  Ultimately it will get done.  Now is the time to press on with hope.

 

Find out more

Arise Manifesto – Find out more about the crucial role that international summits and negotiations play in our world in the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. 

Latest news – Latest news from the Arise movement.

Sign up – Found this blog online, or sent it by a friend?  Sign up to receive weekly blogs from Arise directly.

Join The Movement!  Sign up here