US EditionUN Climate Talks Are Built on Consensus. That's Part of the Problem.
The consensus rule grants every country veto power, blocking voting reforms favored by fossil fuel producers, and has contributed to a 40% rise in emissions since the 1990s, experts say.
- On November 7, COP30, the U.N. climate conference in Belém, Brazil, reignited debate on whether participants should be allowed to vote at U.N. climate talks, a procedural issue delegates understand well.
- The UNFCCC's rules of procedure include bracketed voting language because oil-producing countries blocked voting provisions, making consensus the default decision rule.
- In practice, delegates first gather for a plenary session, then work through breakout groups and final-hour ink revisions, while facilitators like Christine Peringer urge holdouts to 'stand aside' and Patricia Espinosa overruled a last-minute objection to adopt the Cancún Agreements.
- Consensus has translated into weaker, lowest-common-denominator outcomes, with annual greenhouse-gas emissions up 40 percent since the early 1990s and pledges projected to cause up to 3.1 degrees C warming.
- Experts argue formal voting adoption is unlikely, so Mexico and Papua New Guinea's three-fourths majority proposal stalled, while Erika Lennon and other advocates suggest smaller coalitions and trade measures despite alienation risks.
11 Articles
11 Articles
UN climate talks are built on consensus. That's part of the problem.
When Christine Peringer attended her first United Nations climate conference in 2019, she was not exactly impressed. As a professional facilitator and a member of Mediators Beyond Borders International, she said she was “appalled” by the “lack of sophistication in their methods of running the meetings.” She described the typical rigmarole: First, delegates gather for a plenary session, where they can deliver surface-level position statements ab…
At the UN Climate Conference, nearly 200 states will negotiate how global warming can be contained. Federal Chancellor Merz said in Belém that climate action required social acceptance. However, sociologist Dennis Eversberg from the University of Frankfurt sees a new general social consensus against change.
Un Climate Change Conference: the World's Dumbest Climate Policy – and Its Catastrophic Consequences
From China to Canada, from England to Australia, a pragmatic climate course prevails. Only Germany is sacrificing its economic future for an illusionary climate neutrality. How the federal government could be lured into a trap.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the COP30 opens in Belém, in the heart of Amazonia, in a climate emergency. States will have to revise their commitments by 2035, accelerate the release of energy...
Lisa Badum, Climate Policy Spokesperson of the Green Party, on the success prospects of the World Climate Conference and necessary steps in the further fight against climate change.
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