Reading the Subtle Signs of Doha – A Cognitive Lens on Climate Diplomacy

   

Much has been written about the latest round of global climate negotiations at COP 18 in Doha. Much of the blogosphere has expressed its disappointment with the Doha Gateway, complained about the weakness of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, worried about the slow speed of the ADP and wondered about the potential of the new kid on the block – Loss and Damage. Here I would like to draw attention to some developments that many political analysts might dismiss as the usual but unimportant drama on the sidelines. First, AOSIS chair Sai Novoti made demands labeled as non-strategic when he asked for a five-year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, called for firm climate funding pledges, and requested higher emission targets for the EU. Second, the lead negotiator of the Philippines Naderev Sano broke down on the plenary floor in an undiplomatic expression of emotion and appealed to his colleagues not as a diplomat but as a human being to take urgent action on climate change.

These incidents have one thing in common: they break the unwritten rules of the diplomatic game. They are interventions of passionate and feeling human beings rather than well-functioning and polite diplomats who quietly work the system to find compromise. Most importantly, these first cracks in the diplomatic façade of the UNFCCC mark the beginning of something new, and I believe that they are likely to grow wider and more numerous in the years to come. Beyond carrying significant implications for future negotiation dynamics, the increasing willingness of negotiators to step outside the current boundaries of climate diplomacy is a reflection of the state of the planet – intensifying climate change impacts are changing life experiences and political thinking today.

Before trying to explain Novoti’s and Sano’s unexpected behavior with the help of a little bit of cognitive science, international relations theory and ethics, let me summarize why these gentlemen’s behavior raised some eyebrows.

Novoti’s “aggressive demands” were seen as non-strategic because they were unlikely to be fulfilled and risked breaking the new alliance between the EU and AOSIS. AOSIS was believed to have no bargaining leverage for these demands and remaining isolated would waste its moral high ground. Further, the “radical” stance was open to exploitation by players who sought to stall the negotiations. Hence, making such demands was not rational.

Sano’s breakdown was a reaction to the tragedy that typhoon Bopha had left in its tracks across the Philippines a day before. It was an unusual demonstration of vulnerability and emotional suffering experienced by an individual on behalf of his countrymen. Even more unusual than his tears in a formal negotiation setting was Sano’s appeal to his fellow negotiators to act not in their national interest, but for the benefit of all human beings on the planet: 

“The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want. It is about what is demanded of us by 7 billion people.”   

To some extent both Novoti and Sano temporarily disregarded the behavioral conventions of multilateral negotiations. One asked for things outside the currently available room for compromise; the other questioned the most basic rule in international relations: states protect their national interests. Neither individual human beings nor humanity as a whole play any role in this system of states – they have no representatives, no rights and no obligations.

Cognitive science and ethical theory offer an interesting explanation for these observations. The hypothesis is simple: Because island state representatives like Novoti and Sano think and feel differently in response to climate change information than other climate negotiators, they are occasionally compelled to act differently too.

The key difference between the thoughts and feelings of island negotiators and other diplomats in the UNFCCC lies in the type and timing of climate-related harm individuals anticipate. First, it matters whether individuals expect costs for themselves or for others. Second, a distinction between present and future risks has implications for someone’s sense of urgency. The third dimension along which beliefs of negotiators differ is the quality or type of the harm they expect from climate change. Fundamentally different ways of ethical reasoning are associated with different types of expected harm.  

Representatives of low-lying island states perceive climate impacts as an existential threat to themselves – literally threatening the existence of their home state due to sea-level rise, the existence and identity of coastal communities or entire cultures, and the survival of large numbers of people due to extreme weather events. Climate impacts are an immediate threat in the sense that they can happen any day as Bopha painfully demonstrated. This threat perception evokes strong emotions of dread and fear and triggers what is called deontological reasoning: ethical frameworks that use a certain normative standard of right and wrong. Collective climate action becomes simply the right thing to do for the international community because it can prevent major harm to some of the deepest human values: survival, identity and a home.

In contrast to such emotionally intense ‘hot’ threat perceptions of island state representatives negotiators from less vulnerable states have far less emotive, ‘cooler’ cognitive patterns. They often perceive climate change as something distant, expecting climate impacts to affect economic development at some point in the future rather than today, and in other countries than their own. Instead of being deeply concerned about climate change impacts they are worried about the costs that a response to climate change could impose on their countries – climate action poses an immediate threat to their own economic and material wellbeing. Some cognitive science suggests that this type of material risk assessment is associated with consequentialist thinking – a concern with the costs and benefits of different paths of action – which results in a rational reluctance to act today. This type of thinking is dominant in the UNFCCC process and fits the expectations of many scholars of international relations who use a rational choice framework to understand the political dynamics.

Consequently there are at least two starkly different cognitive patterns that are clashing with each other in the climate negotiations. Some negotiators believe, and more importantly feel, that regardless of the costs involved everything needs to be done to prevent certain types of future climate-related harm, e.g., the disappearance of island states. Inaction is a fundamental moral failure of humanity. Others believe that only some actions are justified based on a rational assessment of costs and benefits, leaving open the possibility that some harm – including the loss of island states - might not be worth preventing. The former belief system focuses on humanity as a reference point for shared values and responsibilities; the latter remains locked in state-based thinking. 

So far the ‘hot’ thinkers have been in a powerless minority, frustrated by the general lack of urgency in the UNFCCC process. Novoti’s and Sano’s behavior can be interpreted as first signs of desperation after years of running into the walls of a system created for the protection of sovereignty and national interests. But what does this increasing level of desperation signal for the future of the negotiation process?

·      2012 marks the year when a first small group of actors is beginning to break under the weight of domestic climate change impacts, resulting in short glimpses of human vulnerability through the thinning armor of diplomatic formality. Climate change politics are no longer about “Saving tomorrow today” as COP 17 host South Africa framed it. Instead they are about fixing today what we did not prevent from happening yesterday. A fundamental shift in temporal thinking is necessary to recognize that climate change is a present and not a future problem.

·      Over time the negotiation process could become more erratic, because increasing intensity and geographic distribution of climate impacts will increase the number of negotiators willing to challenge and break the rules of a system they experience as unresponsive to their most fundamental concerns. The reality of climate change will start to wreck havoc with the politics, mediated by cognitive processes.

·      Although many people already experience the negotiations as contentious, frustrating and personally taxing, the process could become increasingly confrontational with a growing division of participants into at least two groups with very different beliefs and emotions, diminishing mutual understanding and possibly mutual respect over time.

·      Finally, these observations raise the question whether the international system, based on rules of sovereignty and national interest competition, is incapable of addressing climate change. Multilateralism in its current form might have hit is limits. Are there alternatives? Can and should we start to think about a system that can represent and protect the interests of humanity rather than that of states, industries, or other small but resource-rich interest groups?

Reading the signs early can help avert some of the most undesirable trends. Most importantly it can open an important time window to create awareness among the negotiation participants of the cognitive-emotional drivers of different negotiation behavior, and to open a discussion about the practical limits of conventional UN diplomacy in the face of an unconventional governance challenge.