by Peter Emerson

The rules for decision-making in conferences like the recent COP29 in Baku were ‘agreed to’ in 1991.  The choice was either (i) majority voting; (ii) consensus, by which is meant everyone agrees; or (iii) consensus but, if it fails, simple or weighted majority voting as a last resort.  

To (iii), Saudi Arabia and its OPEC companions said ’no’ – it must be (their type of) ‘consensus’, with every country having a veto (the very opposite of consensus)!  And with huge encouragement from the US oil lobby, the parties ‘agreed’.  In a nutshell, everything was based on the principle (sic) of ‘either-I-win…-or-I-don’t-lose.’

Germany amongst others proposed a ‘double-majority’ process: so for example, if the small island states and the OPEC members both said ‘yes’ then, (like consociationalism in the GFA), ‘yes’ it would be.  

Everyone, apparently, likes the 4,500-year-old binary vote, and no-one, it seems, in the UN (or in Belfast) has considered the 2,000-year-old multi-option voting or, better still, the 250-year-old preferential vote.  And ‘no-one’ means none of the parties and, as far as I can see, none of the academics commenting on all this.  

So ‘consensus’ is the procedure, which means if “there are no stated objections to a proposed decision,” it is passed.  Or, in other words, decisions are subject to the veto, any country’s veto.

Then came the arguments, as in COP16 where it was argued, “consensus does not mean unanimity… one delegation does not have the right to veto.”  (https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-the-challenge-of-consensus-decision-making-in-un-climate-negotiations/).  But ambiguities remain.  Hence, in Glasgow’s COP26, there were huge arguments over “phase out” or “phase down” – as always, all very binary.   

Overall, just as politicians in parliament’s don’t like compromise, so too, countries in the COPs will not accept a decision-making procedure which almost guarantees the final decision will be a compromise.

But the COPs are (still) dominated by the oil lobby.  Hence the call for a World Citizens’ Assembly in The Ecologist.

–

Peter Emerson is director of the de Borda Institute, www.deborda.org