Climate governance, policy entrepreneurs and small states: Explaining policy change at the International Maritime Organisation

Accepted/In Press date: 12 December 2019

e-pub ahead of print date: 2 January 2020

Published date: 28 July 2020

Additional Information: Funding Information: de Brum’s vision was necessary for the RMI to act as a climate entrepreneur but it was not sufficient; the RMI had to develop domestic and regional capacity, create and realise opportunities, and re-define the key agenda. After being elected as ‘Minister in Assistance to the President’ in 2012 and Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2014 (for the third time), de Brum sought to enhance RMI’s technical progress in the UNFCCC negotiations, raise the state’s international profile through IOs (such as the security council) and other public and academic events, as well as to ‘make noise in the international media’. These strategies ensured that climate change was the central message of every diplomatic opportunity (de Brum 2014 ). In March 2015, a small team of academics from University College London (UCL), the University of the South Pacific and representatives from the NGO ‘Seas at Risk’, received funding from the European Climate Foundation to discuss shipping GHG emissions with the leaders of RMI, including the opposition (author interview). They were met with enthusiasm by de Brum and developed a strategy to push forward climate issues at IMO by building coalitions among small and vulnerable island states and gaining broader support, especially from large and rich European countries. With the endorsement from the Marshallese cabinet, de Brum decided to attend to the next MEPC meeting at the IMO. In May 2015, during the 68 th session of the MEPC, he arrived in London and gave an impassioned speech: Our islands lay just an average of two meters above sea level. Day after day, climate change and the resulting sea-level rise and tropical storms take grip on our homes, on our security and on our livelihoods. My colleagues here from our fellow atoll nation of Tuvalu can tell you what it looks like. And Minister Bule, here all the way from Vanuatu, can tell you how it feels to have 70 percent of your capital city wiped away by a cyclone whose winds were whipped up by the quickly warming Pacific Oceans. Any country here that lives an island existence or that has big populations living along low-lying coastlines can, and will increasingly be the victim of such events (IMO 2015 ). de Brum’s attendance at MEPC68 was significant on two counts: challenging the long-held protocol that IMO was a technical organisation where industry and technical professionals dominate decision-making; and calling for the international shipping industry, from whom RMI draws a large proportion of its revenue, to decarbonise to save small and vulnerable island states. An informed observer (author interview) noted three points of significance in this achievement: it challenged the protocol; showed the changing position of the RMI, however reluctantly; and highlighted that the political battle could be fought at a technical institution, like IMO. Foreign ministers rarely attend IMO meetings. de Brum was the first minister to address MPEC (Mathiesen 2015 ) and actively participated at the MEPC 68 th session. This was a historic moment for the organization. When he arrived at MEPC68, de Brum was confronted with a protocol issue: ‘We had some difficulty convincing the people who were sitting in our seats, literally, that we were the representatives of the Marshall Islands’ (Gibbs 2017 ); RMI had been represented by IRI at the IMO, and IRI was seemingly unaware of de Brum’s participation (multiple interviews), and might even have discouraged the government from sending a minister to the subsequent 2016 talks, by suggesting it was far too technical for a minister (Gibbs 2017 ). According to one delegate, de Brum’s attendance at the 68 th MEPC session, and the paper submitted by the RMI, transformed the IMO: (…) it’s difficult for all of us … ; the US delegation is mostly the US Coastguard … the UK delegation is mostly the Maritime Coastguard Agency with colleagues from other departments … the last meeting and the intersessional there was a whole different group of negotiators – the UNFCCC negotiators came to town. (Interview with a representative from a large European state) The composition of delegations, shifting in part from technical experts to climate change negotiators, was one indication of RMI’s impact. The disruption was intentional, as one other diplomat put it: Christiana Figueres [Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC] … [came] to the last negotiation, and she went and addressed the High Ambition Coalition. Things like that were particularly powerful because again it showed that this was no longer a closed-door, quiet, cigar-smoking lounge on the banks of London that people didn’t listen to, and that was important. (Interview with a representative of a small state) At the MEPC 68 th session, de Brum presented a position paper on behalf of the RMI: ‘Setting a reduction target and agreeing associated measures for international shipping’ (MEPC 2015 ). (…) for the Marshall Islands, I mean IMO was not going far enough. When they submitted that submission three – four years ago I guess, the – brought back the issue, right, in adopting – I mean stringent measures to reduce CO2 emission and it’s thanks to the Marshall Islands by the way, definitely. It’s Tony de Brum who brought back this issue here. (Interview with a representative of a small state). The position taken by RMI was rejected by MEPC (Baresic et al . 2015 , Marke 2015 ) for three reasons: it was a last-minute submission even though it was supported by Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands; the outcome of the Paris Conference was yet to be settled; in order to determine the contributions of ships to emissions, the data collection system that had been under debate for several meetings remained to be finalised (UMAS 2016 ). Moreover, as one observer noted (author interview), the RMI had not yet developed the political machine to support their initiatives. Despite the rejection, the call for decarbonisation brought the issue of reducing shipping GHG emissions back on the negotiation table at the IMO. To realise their ambition, and build regional capacity, RMI and the PSIDS had to generate political support for their position. Since 2012, the Marshall Islands had worked towards consolidating climate diplomacy in the Pacific region. In 2013 the leaders of the Pacific Island Forum, at a meeting in the RMI, signed the Majuro Declaration which committed them to ‘climate leadership’: 6 To lead is to act. In supporting this Declaration, a government, economic entity, company, civil society organization or individual commits to demonstrate climate leadership through action that contributes to the urgent reduction and phase down of greenhouse gas pollution (Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat 2013 ). Sustainable sea transportation was specifically mentioned in the declaration. That same year, Fiji, which was suspended in 2009 from the Forum due to its political situation, founded the Pacific Island Development Forum (PIDF). 7 Sustainable transportation was one of PIDF’s 10 priorities. In 2014, the S.A.M.O.A. Pathway, the outcome of the third UN conference on SIDS held in Samoa, included a provision on Sustainable Transportation (SIDS Action Platform 2014 ). In 2015, the Suva Declaration on Climate Change – an outcome of the third Pacific Islands Development Forum leaders’ summit – included the participating countries’ positions ahead of COP21 in Paris, and their wish to see sea transport included in the agreement: We the Leaders of the Pacific Islands Development Forum following consultation with and the agreement of all stakeholders at the Pacific Island Development Forum Third Summit therefore call for: (…) an integrated approach to transitioning Pacific countries to low carbon transport futures, in particular sea transport given its central role in providing connectivity for Pacific Small Island Developing States, including a regional strategy to advocate for and monitor implementation of sector targets through relevant UN agencies commensurate with the 1.5⁰C threshold (PIDF 2015 ). Later that year, at the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21), de Brum led the High Ambition Coalition (HAC), a grouping of over 100 countries demanding a binding agreement (King 2016 ). GHG emissions for the shipping and aviation sectors were not included in the outcomes of the conference. PSIDS had not previously acted as a grouping at IMO. Indeed, unlike other IOs, and with the important exception of the EU, the IMO has not had a culture of strong groupings (multiple interviews). As the above discussion highlights, technical knowledge rather than political clout was an important factor in IMO deliberations and so the voice of key individuals carried considerable weight, regardless of where they were from. In light of the statements and declarations by PSIDS, this was about to change as the group became more became active and organised at IMO. The PIDF helped coordinate between the positions of the PSIDS’s members, by providing briefing documents, guidance and a position paper before the UN COP sessions, as well as briefings for the IMO MEPC sessions, starting from MEPC69 (e.g. PIDF 2016 ). This organisation of the PSIDS at the IMO is consistent with a wider tendency of Pacific states to raise their profile inside IOs since 2009, such as at the United Nations in New York, where they secured a stand-alone sustainable goal on oceans (Manoa 2015 ). Publisher Copyright: © 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords: Climate mitigation, International Maritime Organisation, climate governance, creative diplomacy, policy entrepreneurs, small island developing states

Local EPrints ID: 436873

URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/436873

DOI: doi:10.1080/09644016.2019.1705057

ISSN: 0964-4016

PURE UUID: 3eb136fa-f95e-4d93-9fd8-7120eae58962

ORCID for Jack Corbett: orcid.org/0000-0003-2005-7162

Date deposited: 13 Jan 2020 17:31

Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:09