Treaties and Agreements

Social cohesion, or the strength of a country’s social fabric, is often raised in discussions of security. The World Bank describes it as “fundamental for societies to progress towards development goals,” and for making countries more resilient to bloodshed. In Mexico, policymakers argue social cohesion is both a casualty and a solution for reducing violence. To measure these ties, the think tank México Evalúa constructed the Neighborhood Social Cohesion Index (ICSV). They canvassed four housing complexes scattered throughout Mexico—many isolated, without public services, and composed of poorer households with limited education. The residents were asked to rate their communities on a low to high scale of one to ten in terms of social identity, trust between neighbors, a sense of belonging, and engagement in the community. The four ratings were averaged to produce an aggregate score. Social cohesion in all four communities ranged between 5.1 and 5.4 on the index, indicating that Mexico’s social fabric is not entirely broken, even in these difficult surroundings. In every community a strong sense of belonging and shared identity persisted, even when community engagement lagged. The polls found hope for the future, with nearly nine in ten neighbors saying that if encouraged, they would be “willing to work for the benefit of their community.” The survey also explored the causal links between social cohesion and perceptions of insecurity. Those communities that were rated more cohesive tended to feel safer, and vice-versa. Perceptions of insecurity were high overall: only 12 percent of residents said they would let their children walk alone in their neighborhood, fewer than a third would walk themselves alone at night. One of the pillars of the Mérida Initiative, the main vehicle for U.S.-Mexico security cooperation over the last decade, focuses on building “stronger and more resilient communities.” On the ground, this money has gone to after school programs, citizen watchdogs in law enforcement offices, and creating and expanding drug treatment courts, among other programs. México Evalúa’s survey suggests that expanding basic public services and cleaning up public parks would strengthen communities, as would actively recruiting neighbors to get involved in local events and activities. The Mexican and U.S. governments should use measures such as the Neighborhood Social Cohesion Index both before and after they invest more in fragile communities, to help determine which of the dozens of potential programs actually make things better.

Mi Lin is an intern for Global Health Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations. On March 9-10 and March 16-17, two sections of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines (UNGSAM) were held in London and Johannesburg, respectively. These two conventions were launched in response to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call last November to “find solutions to the lack of access to medicines.” This was the first time such a high-level panel on access to medicines was made open to the public.  Though the two dialogues, one in a developed country and the other in a developing country, had different conversational dynamics, issues surrounding intellectual property (IP) rules in free trade agreements (FTAs) were frequently raised in both sections. Health advocates have long argued that stricter IP provisions in FTAs is a main barrier to access to essential medicines for populations in developing countries. As the recently signed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) adds the latest development to this decades-long debate on trade and health, issues around TPP and its potential effects on global access to medicine also arose frequently at the panel. The IP chapter has long been a key part of international free trade agreements. The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requires a patent life for inventions of at least twenty years (art.33), which applies to both products (e.g., medicines) and processes (e.g., methods of production). TRIPS also specifically recognizes the protection of test data (art.39.3), which is deemed essential to discovering new drugs and proving them safe and applicable. However, such data protection will delay the marketing of generics, which are much cheaper than their patented counterparts. In order to protect public health, developing countries are allowed to have certain exemptions to the free trade agreement’s IP provisions. Still, many countries have found it difficult to exercise TRIPS flexibilities, as the language in TRIPS is vague and general. To the extent that the TRIPS agreement emphasizes the protection of undisclosed test data, the final TPP text also subjects participating countries to protection of disclosed data if it is used for new compounds or for new clinical information (e.g., a new use of a known medicine or its use in a new population, such as children). Marketing exclusivity—banning generic drug-makers from entering the market to compete with pharmaceutical companies who own patents—for new uses of old medicines could be considered a form of evergreening, defined as the strategies used by producers to extend their patents over products that are about to expire. The TPP requires countries to choose one of two possible evergreening models to incorporate into their laws—either extend marketing exclusivity at least three years for new clinical information, or extend it for at least five years for known pharmaceutical products combined with new chemical entities that have not been approved previously. In many cases, such new combinations render little clinical effects but serve to help pharmaceutical companies get patents so that they can sell their products at higher prices. Off-label drug use, or new uses of known medicines to treat another disease, offers an alternative to the access to medicines problem, because it allows doctors to prescribe equally or relatively effective, but cheaper off-label drugs to low-income patients.  However, according to the final TPP text, countries will have to make off-label drug uses illegal within the extra three years of patent period. This law, in practice, will only affect developing countries whose internal patent laws are looser than TPP’s requirements. If the agreement is implemented, low-income patients in developing countries will either have to pay more for the same drugs they had been getting previously, or will no longer be able to afford them during those three patent period years. That said, the concern that TRIPS-plus FTAs might drive up essential drug prices is a prediction based more on logic than on evidence. As CFR’s Tom Bollyky recently pointed out, new data drawing from fifteen of the seventeen countries that have bilateral TRIPS-plus FTAs with the United States shows that drug prices have not increased significantly due to the implementation of these trade deals. One reason for this unexpected finding, he explains, is that countries implement trade agreements in their own manner to protect public health, differing from outside analysts’ interpretations. Indeed, back in the negotiations of TPP, many developing countries raised “exceptions” or “leeway” to full compliance with TPP’s IP policies according to their national conditions. For example, five TPP countries currently have no patent protection for biologics at all. Vietnam and Peru are granted a ten-year grace period and Mexico is granted a five-year period to change legislation in compliance with TPP provisions; Malaysia and Brunei are granted the “access window” system. “The ‘access window’ system,” explains Mr. J Jayasiri, Malaysia’s chief TPP negotiator, “means that our patients will have earlier access to new innovative drugs. Otherwise the innovator can wait until almost the last day of his patent and then come and file for data protection and he can get a much longer period of protection.” While some developing governments did try to exercise TRIPS flexibilities to protect public health, as exemplified by some TPP countries, a group of Asian voices at the Johannesburg Dialogue raised practical difficulties to putting flexibilities into effect. They also pointed out the inefficiency of current mechanisms such as voluntary licensing—big patent-holding pharmaceutical companies voluntarily give away their market exclusivity privileges and allow generic drug-makers to compete with them—in controlling drug prices. A Thai speaker noted that flexibilities were traditionally underutilized—between 1995 and 2003, only thirteen compulsory licenses were issued in middle-income countries due to lack of mechanisms and fear of retaliation. Another speaker said that Thailand’s issuance of compulsory licenses in 2006 and 2007 for HIV/AIDS, heart disease, and cancer medications led to resistance and pressure from large pharmaceutical companies and Western governments, and as a result, Thailand was placed on the United States special 301 report, an annual report by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) identifying countries that do not provide "adequate and effective" protection of intellectual property rights. In light of these realities, they called for a more holistic impact analysis in assessing the legitimacy of IP chapters in FTAs. As far as trade policy is concerned, there are four leading principles: health, human rights, trade, and IP. IP is important, but the pursuit of IP should not sacrifice health and human rights. As noted by health economists William Hsiao and Peter S. Heller, market failures in the health sector could frequently occur and pose tremendous hazard if due caution is not held. In the pharmaceutical and medical-device markets, though patent protections have been established for sound social and economic reasons, they have nonetheless impaired the competitiveness and efficient operation of markets. As the UN has transitioned the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals, the future of global governance is heading towards a more equitable world. In the current development framework, it is unrealistic to expect developed and developing countries to be on an equal footing when it comes to enforcing IP. Standing with the weak might harm some rights of the strong. However, if we are going to achieve the SDGs, it is always wise to be wary more of the claims of the strong.

The tiny Southeast Asian nation of Brunei remains almost totally dependent on petroleum for its growth, to provide its lavish social welfare programs---and to help reduce any possible opposition to the ruling sultan. Today, about 95 percent of Brunei’s exports are either oil or in some way related to oil, according to the Diplomat. Brunei’s oil has helped make it the fourth-richest country in the world by GDP per capita. But with low global oil prices, and Brunei’s oil reserves predicted to run out within the next three decades, the sultanate is desperately looking for ways to diversify its economy. It has pledged to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, partly to help boost foreign investors’ interest in the country. In a conversation with World Politics Review, I discuss Brunei’s economy and the implications of the TPP for the sultanate. Read the conversation here.

Latin America’s corruption scandals of the past two years are moving slowly toward resolution. As they move forward, it is interesting to note that in a region that has been particularly protective of its sovereignty, foreign cooperation has played a significant role, whether it is via bilateral exchanges between prosecutors, mutual legal assistance treaties, or even United Nations support, as in the case of Guatemala’s International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG). But these various forms of international cooperation may soon be joined by another international anti-corruption effort that is less well understood in Latin America: prosecution by U.S. attorneys. The Petrobras scandal has so far touched down in Argentina, Peru, Panama, Brazil, and the United States, making it a truly hemispheric corruption case. I was therefore taken aback when a well-informed colleague from the region suggested to me that in his view, the United States would never prosecute Petrobras, because doing so might harm U.S. foreign policy interests. In reflecting on this remark later, I think that he meant that a U.S. government that seems to be trying hard to mend fences in the region would be loathe to be seen as violating national sovereignty or acting in ways that could cast the United States in the familiar role of an avaricious exploiter of Latin American resources. This perspective has deep roots. Brazilian academics have argued that the United States seeks to limit Brazil’s energy self-sufficiency as part of its broader geopolitical strategy of hegemony. A Brazilian senator echoed this perspective in floor debate last week, noting that, having weakened Petrobras, investors were now seeking a reduced role for the oil company that would hand “the future of Brazil to Shell.” Meanwhile, other prominent Brazilian politicians have shown little understanding of the independence of their own national prosecutorial office, and therefore may not be ready to accept that the discretion of U.S. prosecutors is also significant, even when foreign policy is on the line. Domestic legal calculations also play a role: Brazilian prosecutors, for example, have been very careful to paint Petrobras as a victim rather than a target. There are many reasons for this prosecutorial caution: there is doubt about the culpability of many of the firm’s directors, Brazil’s Clean Company Law is new and untested, and there are a variety of more attractive targets for prosecution. Furthermore, there may well be trepidation about the political costs of taking down the the crown jewel of Brazil’s state-owned companies: most Brazilians are up in arms that Petrobras has been so violated by graft and gross mismanagement, but they understandably do not want to see it further damaged. On the U.S. side, however, the big question is not really whether U.S. prosecutors are going to prosecute wrongdoing, but when. Given the sharp drop in Petrobras’ market capitalization—from a high of $380 billion to $23 billion today—the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may have little option, given that its mandate is to curb behaviors that cause damage to shareholders and stock market integrity. Already, Petrobras has taken a write-down of more than $17 billion for overvalued assets, including $2 billion associated with corrupt acts, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and SEC have announced investigations. News reports suggest that Petrobras could be the target of the largest ever penalties ever levied by U.S. authorities in a corporate corruption investigation, exceeding the record-breaking $800 million paid by Siemens in its 2008 agreement with the DOJ and SEC. If such fines came to pass, they would have a shocking effect on a Brazilian public already reeling from more than their fair share of bad news. A former Brazilian Supreme Court justice predicted that for those who are unaware that it is coming down the pike, a U.S. prosecution will be a “humiliation and a devastation.” U.S. prosecutors will also be keen to understand kickbacks and corruption that may have taken place on U.S. soil, as in possibly fraudulent refinery purchases, or that might have passed through U.S. banks via offshore accounts in Panama or Switzerland, as Brazilian investigators allege. There are a variety of potential avenues for enforcement, ranging from SEC administrative sanctions through a full prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), made possible because Petrobras is publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and made more likely by the DOJ’s recent efforts to ramp up FCPA prosecutions. Prosecutions could be led by state prosecutors, the DOJ, by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office has been aggressive in prosecuting violations of corporate malfeasance, or by some combination of all of these autonomous actors. Potential oversight bodies could also include an alphabet soup of agencies involved in asset forfeiture and money laundering, in the DOJ and U.S. Department of Treasury, as well as state governments. And of course, Petrobras is already facing civil litigation in the United States, as well as the legal costs associated with nearly 300 foreign business partners who are also potential targets of investigation. In sum, the international dimension of Latin America’s corruption saga is only just getting underway. Legal action by the United States may not be greeted with acclaim across the Brazilian political spectrum, but together with Brazil’s enthusiastic prosecution of the case, it brings the hope that the regional compliance environment may change for the better.

Over the next few days, Net Politics will countdown the top five developments in cyber policy of 2015. Each policy event will have its own post, explaining what happened, what it all means, and its impact on cyber policy in 2016. In this post, the WSIS+10 process.  In October 2015, twelve nations from Asia and the Western hemisphere that account for nearly 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product concluded negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Over a decade in the making, the TPP is one of 2015’s most significant policy developments for trade and other areas, including cyberspace. The TPP includes a chapter on electronic commerce, which the U.S. Trade Representative called “the most ambitious trade policy ever designed for the Internet and electronic commerce.” But the TPP’s importance to cyber policy extends beyond its e-commerce provisions. For the United States and other participating countries, the TPP has strategic significance. With trade liberalization stagnated at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the TPP offers a way to liberalize trade as a source of global economic growth and interdependence. With China’s rising influence, the TPP establishes benchmarks for trade and investment regimes in a time of increasing geopolitical competition. Thus, TPP provisions relevant to cyber policy serve purposes greater than increasing cross-border data flows. Further, the prominence the TPP gives to digital dimensions of trade elevates their importance to the TPP’s strategic goals. In substantive terms, the TPP’s centerpiece for cyber policy is the groundbreaking chapter on e-commerce, which I examined in an earlier post. But, the agreement has other provisions that underscore the importance of cyber technologies to twenty-first century economic and commercial activities. The TPP: Reduces tariffs on exports of information and communication technology products; Liberalizes trade in software and Internet-provided services; Includes protections addressing intellectual property challenges associated with software, digital technologies, and the Internet; and Covers investments that involve making cyber-oriented products or providing cyber-based services. The e-commerce chapter and other cyber-relevant provisions fall within the TPP’s rules on dispute settlement between states, meaning case law interpreting them and their relationship with other rules, such as exceptions to obligations, is likely to develop. Further, investors in cyber-centric sectors can use the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism if they believe the host government has violated protections for investments the TPP includes. As CFR’s Edward Alden has argued, the TPP’s geographic and economic scale and ambitious content give it the potential to catalyze and shape future bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements, including what such agreements contain concerning e-commerce and provisions on trade in cyber-associated goods, services, and intellectual property protections. Much as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did for the Uruguay Round negotiations that created the WTO and subsequent bilateral and regional agreements, the TPP can influence the direction of future trade and investment regimes. This impact will be most likely in areas, such as e-commerce, where the TPP represents the cutting edge for policy and law. Even the controversies associated with cyber-relevant TPP provisions highlight the significance of this development now and in the future. Experts have attacked its provisions on e-commerce for potentially threatening privacy, criticized its intellectual property protections for digital technologies, complained that trade and investment liberalization and TPP’s dispute settlement mechanisms will override public interest regulations, and questioned whether certain provisions pose a threat to cybersecurity. In the short term, such controversies will inform whether the governments of the TPP countries approve the agreement. In the near term, these and other critiques will be used to evaluate whether the TPP’s implementation produces outcomes that vindicate the critics or the champions of the agreement. If accepted by participating countries, the TPP will become an important regime for global cyber governance. The Obama administration has stressed the need for norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, but, for various reasons, a number of efforts to promote such norms have encountered difficulties or produced results of questionable importance. By contrast, the administration’s leadership on TPP has helped create norms negotiated by developed and developing countries around the Pacific rim that have the potential to stabilize, strengthen, and sustain global governance for economic cyber activities. In that sense, the TPP connects with the administration’s success in promoting a norm against governments engaging in economic cyber espionage. By being anchored in private-sector trade and investment, TPP-based governance can support efforts to maintain a multistakeholder approach to Internet governance and foster Internet freedom through a global, free, and open Internet. The TPP’s fate will be determined in 2016 when participating countries decide whether to accept it. In the United States, this decision will take place amidst a presidential campaign in which the TPP has already become a political lightning rod. The Obama administration’s desire for Congress to vote on the pact early in 2016 produced skepticism from the Senate majority leader that a vote would happen before the November elections. Although the TPP has implications for cyber policy, its cyber aspects will not, in all likelihood, be at the forefront of the political fights in the United States the TPP has yet to face.

LE BOURGET, FRANCE – The Paris climate summit (also known as COP 21) has adopted a new “Paris Agreement”. The agreement has the potential to mark a laudable and historic shift in how the world negotiates cooperation on climate change. It does not justify the over-the-top claims that some are making – that it spells the end of fossil fuels or assures that temperatures will rise no more than two degrees – but those who negotiated it never believed it could. Nor does it deserve to be pilloried (a rarer but still real reaction) for failing to save the planet – an entirely unreasonable expectation. Instead it begins to set up a framework for transparency and review of countries’ nationally driven emissions-cutting efforts and a process for encouraging stronger efforts over time. In doing so it meets the modest but important goals that were sensibly set for the negotiations. Only time will tell, though, whether the full promise of the Paris Agreement is achieved. Why the New Architecture Makes Sense The world has come a long way from the vision that animated United Nations (UN) climate negotiations for most of the 1990s and 2000s. That vision centered on a firm division between developed and developing countries. Negotiations focused on dividing up responsibility among developed countries for cutting emissions and assigned them each targets. Those were to be enforced through international law. The Paris Agreement is fundamentally different. All countries, not just developed ones, are supposed to curb emissions. Negotiations did not focus on dividing up that responsibility – instead each country developed its own plans based on its national circumstances. Rather than enforcing these through international law (which has proven to be toothless for climate) the Paris Agreement aims to mobilize political pressure. It does that mainly by mandating a set of transparency measures and a process for regularly and publicly reviewing each country’s progress (though much of the detail on each remains to be developed). It also establishes a process under which each country is supposed to put forward stronger national emissions reduction plans every five years. Nothing in the agreement actually compels countries to do this. But the experience of the past two years suggests that the specter of Paris, where countries were similarly expected to present new emissions cutting plans, spurred meaningful efforts in most major emitters to develop more substantial emissions cutting agendas than they had before. It’s not unreasonable to expect that the twice-a-decade cycle set up under the Paris Agreement could catalyze a similar ratcheting up of ambition on a regular basis. All of this is much more in tune with the underlying political and economic reality of dealing with climate change than most previous international efforts were. The main barriers to strong action are domestic, not international, so letting the process of setting goals play out within each country, rather than around a negotiating table, makes eminent sense. Countries are not yet prepared to pursue tough punishments for counterparts that don’t follow through on their goals. (If they were, then anticipating that, each country would probably ratchet its goal down, itself problematic.) Given that, the best an international agreement can do is boost the political prospects of serious climate efforts in each major country, and strengthen countries’ technical capacity to deliver. The Paris Agreement is a push in that direction. Mandatory transparency and international review, pursued properly, should highlight successes and shortfalls in each country, empowering not only international pressure but, at least as important, domestic political forces that favor stronger and more effective action on climate change too. It’s Too Soon to Fully Judge the Agreement Yet we have, in important ways, been here before. The Copenhagen Accord, agreed to by every major economy at the 2009 UN climate summit, appeared to dissolve old distinctions between developed and developing countries, requiring everyone to reduce emissions and allowing commitments to policies rather than just to emissions targets; it seemed to include provisions for both transparency and for international review of countries’ efforts; it looked like it had left the Kyoto Protocol in the past. But within days after negotiators departed the Copenhagen summit, itself a procedural mess that ended in spectacular acrimony, prominent parties were disavowing each of these elements. When the next UN summit convened in Cancun a year later, almost every major element of the Copenhagen agreement was relitigated, almost as if the Copenhagen summit had never happened. Indeed many of the core debates at the Paris talks remained the same as those at Copenhagen. Why Paris Could Last and Where the Deal Falls Short But two big positives set Paris apart. There are also some areas where it underwhelms. Updating Emissions-Cutting Efforts The first is the agreed process for ratcheting up countries’ emissions-cutting efforts. Every five years, beginning in 2020, each country will be expected to contribute a new national plan for reducing emissions. Ideally this will mean that, rather than dissipating most of their energies fighting over the architecture of a global climate agreement, countries will focus productively on their emissions-cutting initiatives instead. In principle, then, the Paris Agreement could last decades, only with new emissions-cutting efforts every five years. Not since Kyoto has a UN climate agreement been structured this way. Limits and Weaknesses There are other novel elements in the Paris agreement that will draw broad attention, most notably an aspirational goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, and a promise to grow financial support for poorer countries beyond $100 billion after 2020. These were essential to the diplomatic bargain that sealed the Paris Agreement. But they are so disconnected from the forces that will actually shape policy that they do not rank among the substantively important parts of the deal. There are also elements that the deal would be better off without. One cannot help but be struck by the repeated invocation of “common but differentiated responsibilities” – often used by developing countries to argue that they are subject to weaker obligations than developing countries – in the text. There are, similarly, many places where the demands on developing and developed countries are qualitatively different. Some of these make substantive sense: one shouldn’t expect, for example, India to assist poor countries in transitioning to low-carbon economies in the same way that Europe ought to. But most of these are vestiges of an old way of thinking and are a sign that some fundamental debates aren’t yet resolved. This is particularly worrying in the section on transparency, and may presage intense battles to come. Fortunately, though, sharp differentiation between developing and developed countries is largely absent where it matters most – particularly in most of the basic contours of the process for promoting transparency and scrutinizing countries’ national efforts. Public Perception The second big distinction from past agreements is the way that the Paris Agreement was concluded. Expectations were kept modest, in line with what might be reasonably expected from an international climate agreement, rather than ratcheted to the stratosphere. The negotiating process was far smoother than the one in Copenhagen, and indeed less contentious than any in recent memory. (That doesn’t mean that there weren’t serious fights – this was, after all, a negotiation.) Negotiators were pleased enough with the process to largely dispense with the usual leaks and often-nasty attacks that typically characterize UN climate summits. The deal concluded also contains many legally binding elements. That may not matter much as a matter of substance (countries violate legally binding international agreements all the time) but it is a stamp of seriousness in many countries that matter. All of this should sum up to make the Paris Agreement appear more legitimate in peoples’ eyes, and thus tougher for countries to backtrack on. What to Watch to See if Paris Really Succeeds Still no one should judge the Paris Agreement too quickly. Its first test will be in the coming days and weeks as leaders and major media around the world talk about the deal. What leaders say will signal how much they see the Paris deal as settled and how they interpret the language that treats developed and developing countries differently. How the media describe the Agreement will shape how the broader public views it, and hence how much of a penalty leaders might face for later backtracking or spinning what the deal says. Its next trial will be at the next UN climate summit in November 2016 in Morocco. Part will be substantive: How will countries flesh out the provisions for transparency, review, and updating of national efforts that are outlined in the Paris Agreement? Part will be more fundamental: How many of the fights that the Paris Agreement appears to resolve will be refought? The biggest test will come in 2020 when countries are supposed to contribute new emissions-cutting plans. Will they actually do that? The Kyoto Protocol was supposed to be a lasting structure for climate cooperation. Countries initially made commitments for the 2008-2012 period and were supposed to extend those to a second “commitment period” around 2009, allowing the Protocol to evolve. When most decided not to do that, Kyoto was effectively dead, and negotiations proceeded to focus on rewriting the entire climate regime. Paris is the result of that process. Like the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement aspires to be an enduring framework for international climate cooperation. If countries follow the Agreement and come to the table in 2020 with serious new climate efforts, Paris will have succeeded where Kyoto failed, and will establish itself as a more enduring international framework. The Bottom Line The ultimate test of any climate change effort, of course, is whether it substantially reduces the risks of dangerous climate change. We will not know whether Paris meets this test for a long time. The Paris Agreement could survive as an international framework even as national actions on climate change turn out to be woefully inadequate to dealing with climate change. This could be the case even if the Paris Agreement were perfect (which it is not) since it is national politics and policies, not international agreements, that are the prime drivers of emissions-reducing actions. Paris looks like a success in part because, understanding that national politics and policies are paramount, its organizers wisely downplayed expectations for any deal. No one should forget that it is these modest expectations that Paris has largely met. For the time being, though, the Paris Agreement deserves applause. It is a far sounder substantive foundation for international climate cooperation than the Kyoto Protocol ever was, and appears likely to enjoy much more legitimacy and thus staying power than the Copenhagen Accord ever managed. Foreign policy should be judged against the realistically available alternatives – and Paris, whatever one might reasonably say about what it doesn’t do, looks like a success against that measure. Now the hard work of building on it, within each country and internationally, begins.

The UN climate talks in Paris are just one part of the international climate policy regime, write Stewart Patrick, director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, and Research Associate Naomi Egel. In this post, part of our ongoing guest series on the Paris summit, they note other institutions contributing to the climate policy process and highlight several climate policy options from CFR’s Global Governance Monitor. As important as the ongoing Paris climate talks—officially, the twenty-first Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—are, the UNFCCC process is just one part of the global climate change regime. The recently updated Global Governance Monitor: Climate Change, published by CFR’s Center for International Institutions and Global Governance, assesses the scope of global warming and its stakes for the planet, weighs the major multilateral initiatives that have been launched to combat it, summarizes pressing policy debates, and offers concrete recommendations for policymakers on how best to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Combating climate change is the most complicated collective action challenge humanity has ever faced. But the pace and scale of the global response are both increasing, as the world recognizes that we cannot wait—and that we have tools at our disposal to respond. Who’s Doing What? Notwithstanding the importance of the UNFCCC process—which involves all UN member states—much of the action in mitigating and adapting to climate change takes place outside the UNFCCC framework. Flexible is one thing; Effective is another In contrast to the UNFCCC, many of these initiatives are flexible, voluntary, or informal, and involve a limited number of players. This, however, does not necessarily make them more effective. Case in point is the Major Economies Forum, which was established in 2009 as a venue for the world’s seventeen largest emitters—responsible for about 80 percent of global emissions—to overcome institutional blockages in the UNFCCC system and lead the way on promoting clean energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The MEF’s design is reminiscent of the G20’s but unlike the G20, the MEF has not produced concrete outcomes and remains a talk shop rather than a global leadership body. More effective alternatives to the intergovernmental system include the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a private-public partnership designed to curb short-lived pollutants and their associated health risks, and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. Since 2005, the C40 has been a venue for cities to share best practices and take action to reduce their emissions, recognizing both cities’ contributions to climate change and their capacity to make meaningful reductions in their emissions. New and Evolving International Institutions Intergovernmental bodies are also taking action on climate change. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) was founded in January 2009 as the first international body specifically mandated to advance renewable energy, and has been highly praised for its innovative approach in identifying best practices and developing new tools. Climate change is also increasingly addressed by a host of other international organizations whose mandates have evolved to include this challenge. Within the UN system alone, some twenty agencies work on this issue through their own specific lens, including the United Nations Environment Program, the Global Environment Facility, and the United Nations Development Program. Additionally, the World Bank has incorporated financing for mitigation and adaptation projects into its activities: at present, 21 percent of the Bank’s funding is climate related, totaling $10.3 billion a year. And in October 2015, the Bank pledged to increase its climate financing to up to $29 billion annually by 2020. Although the multitude of actors seeking to combat climate change is, on whole, a positive development (given the immense scope of the challenge), a lack of coordination among myriad initiatives can lead to redundancy. Nevertheless, this reality exemplifies the inherent complexity of climate change, which affects nearly all sectors, including development, finance, public health, energy, and security. Recommendations Of course, these are just a sampling of the many important initiatives outside the UNFCCC framework working to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Global Governance Monitor also recommends several ways to further strengthen the global regime to combat climate change. Create a global mechanism for monitoring emissions reductions Nongovernmental groups are already tracking how states’ INDCs stack up against the scale of the challenge. But reliable monitoring is also needed to determine whether countries are actually fulfilling their emissions reduction commitments. At present, the UNFCCC relies entirely on self-reporting from countries as to whether they are meeting their INDCs. A neutral, independent monitoring mechanism under the UNFCCC framework would build the institutional credibility needed for countries to commit to more ambitious INDCs in the future. The UNFCCC could draw lessons on the best approaches for monitoring and verification from other international organizations that engage in analogous tasks, such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Develop a voluntary system to encourage compliance post-Paris Left unclear is whether the Paris agreement will include a binding compliance mechanism. One worry is that unaddressed cases of noncompliance could undermine the credibility of the UNFCCC process. Voluntary mechanisms to encourage states to meet their INDC pledges could help fill this gap. Accordingly governments should explore alternative arrangements, outside but supportive of the UNFCCC framework, to further encourage compliance. Such a system could take the form of clubs that confer on their members some additional benefit for their participation. An alternative would be to make country’s progress toward meeting its INDCs a precondition for certain forms of financing. Make combatting climate change a G20 priority Although the Group of 20 (G20) has made tentative forays into the climate field, such as pledges to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, the group could do much more to support the UNFCCC process and catalyze more aggressive emissions reductions and climate financing efforts. In this regard, the recent leaders’ communique from its summit in Antalya, Turkey, was disappointing. China should use its chairmanship of the G20, which begins in December, as a leadership platform to encourage the world’s most prosperous economies to make even more ambitious commitments to reducing emissions, as well as funding clean energy investment. The G20 should also implement the recommendations of the G20 Climate Finance Study Group report, and use the G20 as a body to coordinate collaboration among climate funds, as well as stimulate private investment in financing climate strategies. These are simply a few of the issues we examine in the Global Governance Monitor, which also provides historical context for many of the issues currently under discussion in Paris. For more information, visit the monitor itself.

The much-anticipated Paris climate summit opens today in Paris. But does it matter? The answer isn’t obvious. Any Paris agreement will include only voluntary emissions-cutting goals. And scientists have already concluded that, even if each country makes good on its promises, Paris won’t remove serious risk of catastrophic climate change. But Paris does matter – a lot. The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a symposium on the Paris talks last week. At the outset of the second session, which focused on climate efforts beyond the United Nations talks, I asked each panelist a question: There are host of climate efforts – national, multilateral, non-governmental – other than the Paris climate talks. How important is Paris compared to the rest of this broader universe? You can watch the session to hear the panelists’ answers. (All links to the symposium in this post take you to complete video and transcript.) Here’s mine: Success in Paris is essential given how it’s been built up in the public and political consciousness – if Paris is seen to fail, it will sap energy from efforts to curb emissions worldwide, whatever those are. (The first session of the symposium, focused on the Paris talks themselves, made clear that there is considerably more agreement than there was heading into the Copenhagen summit, but still stumbling blocks to clear.) But success in Paris is far from sufficient: unless the window that success in Paris opens is used to pursue further efforts to curb climate change, the entire process will rightly be dubbed a failure, having failed to spur (or at least not impede) the policy actions that ultimately matter. The third session of the symposium, an immensely entertaining one-on-one discussion with former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, was a clear reminder of how challenging the politics of that follow-through will be – but also of how much opportunity exists. Last week I posted a guide to following the Paris talks. It encouraged readers to tune out most of the drama over the next two weeks but reinforced the bottom line that Paris has become too big to fail. At this blog, rather than hyperventilating over the controversy-of-the-day over the course of the conference, we’ll be hosting guest posts from a range of my CFR colleagues who bring expertise on critical countries across the globe – the places where policies that shift the world to lower-carbon energy actually need to materialize, and where the impact of climate change is inevitably felt. We’ll also have something to say about the developments that actually matter. Stay tuned.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s visit to the United States was cut short this week. Jokowi decided to return to Indonesia less than halfway through his trip to America in order to deal with the haze crisis in Indonesia. Parts of Sumatra and Kalimintan have been devastated by the haze, which is closing businesses and causing hundreds of thousands of respiratory ailments. Jokowi will “possibly fly directly to the haze-devastated provinces of South Sumatra or Central Kalimantan…He made the decision [to cut the trip short] after he received news that conditions in these provinces had deteriorated over the last two days,” the Straits Times reported. However, during his shortened visit Jokowi did make several important announcements. In Washington, he met President Barack Obama and delivered several important messages as part of Jokowi’s attempts to woo the U.S. business community and convince investors in general that Indonesia is becoming a more attractive climate for business. At the White House, the two leaders affirmed their commitment to combating climate change, and discussed closer maritime security cooperation. Jokowi attended a dinner for him hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. More notably, the Indonesian president announced that Indonesia intends to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership---a supposed sign that, under Jokowi, Indonesia will be open for business. “Indonesia is an open economy and with a population of 250 million, we are the largest economy in Southeast Asia,” Jokowi said at a meeting in the Oval Office. Joining the TPP would force significant economic reforms in Indonesia, and if Jokowi could follow through on his pledge, it might also consolidate the president’s power and quiet the doubters who believe he does not have the political skills to run Indonesia. Joining the TPP also could prod other Southeast Asian nations that have been considering joining the TPP, such as Thailand, to follow Indonesia’s lead. But while Jokowi promised Indonesia would join, it remains unclear whether he can deliver on that vow. Both Indonesian and foreign businesspeople might dispute the contention that Indonesia is an open economy. Red tape, corruption, and economic nationalism remain significant challenges to business in Indonesia; the country ranked 114 out of 189 countries on the World Bank’s most recent Ease of Doing Business Report. (Indonesia came in even lower in the World Bank’s subcategories for Starting a Business and Enforcing Contracts---among the lowest rankings in the world.) It also ranked a lowly 107th in the world in the latest installment of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Since August, when Jokowi shook up his Cabinet and seemed to put some distance between himself and some of his party’s leaders, he has promised a raft of economic reforms, to be delivered at a rapid rate, the way he used to push through fast changes as mayor of Jakarta. But as I noted earlier this month, it could take years to implement Jokowi’s reforms, as Indonesia’s processes for approving investment need to be totally overhauled. Although Jokowi also has suggested he take other steps to loosen the rules for allowing foreign investment, and (before he shortened his trip) had planned to meet CEOs on a jaunt to the U.S. West Coast, most of the largest foreign investors in Indonesia are not convinced---they are waiting to see whether the first round of Jokowi’s proposed reforms actually occurs. What’s more, if Indonesia was serious about joining the TPP, Jokowi might face significant opposition from the Indonesian public and from many political and business leaders, including leaders of PDI-P. Economic nationalism and suspicion of trade deals have always been potent forces in Indonesia, dating back to Sukarno, founder of the nation. Jokowi himself has, at times, proven a champion of protectionism and of Indonesia’s mostly underperforming state enterprises, which might be forced to liberalize if Indonesia joined the TPP. Jokowi’s administration, for instance, has overseen increases in tariffs on some 1,000 types of imported products. Joining the TPP would require Indonesia to drastically upgrade intellectual property protection and enforcement, change many local content regulations, reduce tariffs, and possibly dismantle some state enterprises, all steps that could alienate some of the most powerful politicians and tycoons in the archipelago.

I have an op-ed in the international New York Times with Brent Harris and Jen Harris arguing that President Obama has a special opportunity to help Indonesia cut carbon emissions from deforestation. I encourage you to read the whole thing at this link. But I wanted to highlight one element here because I think it applies more broadly. Discussions of international climate politics typically frame the dynamic as one where countries pressure each other to cut emissions. This leads naturally to questions about what sort of leverage countries have, how to make international agreements binding, and so forth. But that isn’t the only way in which international interactions can drive down emissions. In the present case, Indonesia is facing a public health nightmare stemming from illegal forest burning. That burning happens to also release an enormous amount of carbon dioxide. (Sane estimates peg current emissions from Indonesian fires as higher than total emissions from the U.S. economy.) The ongoing fires have created domestic pressure on the Indonesian federal government to crack down on forest burning. This is not a place where U.S. pressure has a big role to play in getting Indonesia to cut emissions. There isn’t much one could imagine the United States doing that would create more pressure than what’s already been generated domestically in Indonesia. What the United States can do, though, is help Indonesians who want to cut fires and emissions actually follow through. That support is both technical and political – we go into it in some detail in the op-ed. This sort of international interaction, in which countries help each other deliver transformations that they both want but that are technically or politically difficult to accomplish, is fundamentally different from what many people usually think about when they think about climate change. Leverage becomes less important than capability; whether an international agreement is “binding” or not becomes less consequential. This model won’t replace the traditional one of leverage and pressure, but in many cases, it will be more effective. The more strategists think this way, the more that climate diplomacy will accomplish.

The United States and eleven other countries have concluded negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact that will cover 40 percent of global trade spanning Asia and the Pacific Rim, including some Latin American countries. It represents a subset of the countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and one can anticipate that other APEC members may elect to join the TPP in the future. While China, the largest economy in Asia, has not been part of the negotiations, it has “welcomed” the agreement. The Japanese prime minister has indicated that Chinese membership in TPP would aid “Asia-Pacific regional stability.” Back in June, President Barack Obama said that Chinese officials had been “putting out feelers” about joining. So where is India? India has not yet indicated whether it has interest in pursuing TPP membership down the line. This is because no clear consensus has formed in India on whether expanded market access will help the Indian economy grow, and whether the gains will be worth the potential costs to some still-protected Indian industries. To think about possible TPP membership, India would have to prepare itself for more significant market opening as well as enhanced standards than it has committed to in the past. Indian officials will need to decide whether they wish to position their country for the increased trade flows that participation in a major regional agreement would provide. Of course, a negotiation separate from the TPP has been underway in Asia: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP. India and China participate in this negotiation centered around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Seven countries—Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam—are participating both in the TPP negotiations as well as in the RCEP. Trade experts generally assess the RCEP process as less demanding than the TPP. In addition, within Asia, major economies like China, Japan, and India as well as emerging economies have been pursuing bilateral and regional trade negotiations among themselves. China and India have negotiated free trade agreements (FTAs) with ASEAN to advance their own, and ASEAN’s, interests. Both have separate bilateral agreements with Singapore. Looking across the Pacific, China has FTAs with Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. India has been negotiating an FTA with the European Union for nearly nine years, completed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan in 2011, and is in the process of negotiating Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements with Australia and with Canada. In a study released in September, C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argued that India could gain as much as $500 billion in exports by joining an expanded TPP. For a government interested in boosting the country’s exports and creating jobs at home, that certainly sounds like compelling logic. India has become more vocal internationally about its unambiguous interest in joining APEC, a necessary stepping stone for TPP membership, but here it appears New Delhi has some further work to do to convince its partners, including the United States, that it is ready. While the U.S.-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean Region released in January 2015 welcomed India’s “interest in joining” APEC, no follow-up statement from the United States emerged from the September meeting between Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, nor did any of the numerous documents released following the first U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue include it. In his joint press conference with Obama following their September 28, 2015 meeting in New York, Modi said he looked “forward to work with the U.S. for India’s membership of Asian Pacific Economic Community.” Modi’s statement had no echo from Obama. I’ve argued elsewhere that it is in U.S. interests to develop a more ambitious vision for U.S. economic ties with India, and to work closely with Indian officials on a roadmap toward that goal—with APEC a good start as a nonbinding trade promotion forum, and then discussion of a free trade agreement in the longer-term or Indian membership in TPP. But for that to become possible, India will need to decide whether it wants the benefits that will come from expanded trade in a more open arrangement than those it has previously joined—and whether it is willing to make the hard choices at home to do so. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa 

After the Obama administration’s victories in Congress the past two weeks, it appears far more likely that the United States will become part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Bilateral negotiations are still taking place between some of the countries negotiating the TPP---the United States and Japan still have major issues to resolve---but the chances of these bilateral hurdles being resolved, and the final agreement being negotiated, have risen substantially now that President Obama has gained fast track authority. As the TPP’s chances rise, more countries in Asia appear ready to join the negotiations, most likely as members of the second round of nations joining the deal. The Philippines’ trade secretary last week indicated that the country wants to join the TPP. “I want to state clearly and irrevocably that we want to join TPP,” Philippine trade secretary Gregory Domingo told a conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the Aquino administration faces significant hurdles to joining. The Philippines’ state enterprises, while not as much of a challenge to trade talks as the state firms in Malaysia and Vietnam, are still likely to wield their influence in an attempt to prevent the Aquino administration from moving forward with TPP negotiations and possibly being forced to liberalize sectors of the economy dominated by state companies and other monopolies. In addition, the Philippines---unlike Vietnam, Brunei, or Malaysia---is a democracy, and one in which the public generally does not have a favorable view of trade deals. Although President Aquino, like all presidents of the Philippines (the executive only gets one term in office), is a lame duck, he still wants to use his influence to support his party’s preferred successor---which now appears to be Senator Grace Poe---in winning the presidency. Negotiating to join a trade deal likely to be unpopular with the public and with key segments of elite opinion---church leaders, many NGO leaders---is not going to help Aquino pass on whatever popularity he has left. Thailand has repeatedly expressed interest, in theory, in joining the TPP, though the Thai government has been assessing the costs and benefits of the TPP for Bangkok for at least three years. In theory, Thailand is better equipped to join the TPP than the Philippines. The country is likely to remain under authoritarian or pseudo-authoritarian rule for several years, so public sentiment about a trade deal would matter less, and the Thai economy is slightly more open than that of the Philippines. But Thailand’s contentious domestic politics have made it difficult for the Thai government to focus on anything other than drafting the new constitution, suppressing dissent, and ensuring the military’s sustained influence. With Thai politics in such turmoil, it is hard to imagine Bangkok focusing its energies on the TPP. South Korea has repeatedly expressed interest in joining the TPP but has not formally committed to joining negotiations. Although some in Congress are wary of South Korea joining the TPP, because they view the United States-South Korea bilateral deal as having not delivered enough benefits to the United States, South Korea is in a far stronger position to join the TPP than Thailand or the Philippines. A recent survey by the Korea International Trade Association shows that South Korean companies strongly support Seoul joining the TPP. Notably, small and medium-sized Korean firms, as well as large companies, expressed support for entering the TPP. Taiwan also reportedly has expressed interest in joining the TPP, after the current parties to the negotiations agree on terms and launch the free trade area. Taiwan is solidly positioned to join the TPP, though the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei recently noted that the Taiwan government would have to modify some regulations on sectors including medical devices and some areas of e-commerce to harmonize these regulations with the standards likely to be adopted in the TPP. However, even though Taiwan relies on trade, and President Ma Ying-jeou has called for an “all-out effort” to make the island ready to join the TPP, presidential elections loom early next year. It remains unclear whether the opposition, if it wins the presidency, will be as committed to joining the TPP.

With Tuesday’s vote in the U.S. Senate to give President Obama fast track negotiating authority on trade deals, the president is likely to be able to help complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the United States in the deal, by the end of the year. With fast track authority completed, the United States will be positioned to resolve remaining bilateral hurdles with Japan, the key to moving forward with the TPP. Four Southeast Asian nations—Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia—currently are negotiating to be part of the TPP. (The Philippines has expressed interest in joining the negotiations.) Singapore and Brunei were two of the founders of the predecessor to the TPP, long before the agreement was enlarged and the United States decided to join negotiations, and Vietnam decided to participate in TPP negotiations very early on. These four countries’ economies are extremely varied. Unlike a potential free trade deal involving the United States and countries in Europe, the TPP contains both developed and developing nations, including Vietnam, which has a GDP per capita of less than US$2,000. For Singapore and Brunei, joining the TPP negotiations was a no-brainer. These are countries with miniscule domestic markets, no significant agricultural sectors, and highly open economies. Singapore in particular is one of the most trade-dependent economies in the world; when the 2008-9 global financial crisis hit, Singapore’s economy suffered one of the worst contractions of any developed nation, though it eventually bounced back. And although the Singaporean population has in recent years become more skeptical of high immigration into the city-state, most Singaporeans understand that the city is dependent on trade, and there is little antitrade rhetoric in Singapore. Yet because Singapore is already so open, having been at the forefront of regional and bilateral Asian trade deals, it has less to gain from the TPP than a more closed economy like Vietnam. In fact, according to some analyses, Vietnam would benefit the most from the deal of any of the countries currently involved in negotiations. Vietnam would gain tariff-free access to U.S. and Japanese markets for its rice, seafood, textiles, and low-end manufactured goods. Vietnamese officials and academics also are convinced that more liberal members of the leadership in Hanoi see the TPP as a way to force the reduction of loss-making state enterprises and to open sectors of the Vietnamese economy. Hanoi used WTO accession in a similar fashion, to help push forward economic reforms. Although Vietnam has recovered from the slowdown in growth that began in the late 2000s, it has not returned to the same turbocharged growth rates it posted in the early 2000s, and bloated state enterprises remain a major drag on the economy. Because Vietnam is run by a highly repressive regime, it is very difficult to gauge public sentiment on any important issue. However, from anecdotal conversations with Vietnamese opinion leaders, there seems to be less of the sentiment that state enterprises must be preserved as national champions than exists among Chinese opinion leaders; Vietnam’s state companies, with a few exceptions, are not global giants like China’s biggest state firms. In addition, a recent Pew poll of Vietnamese suggests that the Vietnamese population views the TPP more favorably than people in any other country negotiating the deal—far more favorably than Americans view the TPP. Malaysian leaders, of all the four Southeast Asian nations, face the toughest test in negotiating the TPP and then convincing the Malaysian public to accept it. Vietnam is an authoritarian regime, as is tiny Brunei; in Singapore there is significant public support for trade. But Malaysia is a hybrid regime, and the Malaysian government has sold TPP to members of the ruling coalition—and conservative Malay supporters—in part by repeatedly assuring them that the government will essentially protect certain state enterprises and programs to support ethnic Malays, even if these protections violate the norms and rules of a free trade deal. With the ruling coalition having gained a relatively narrow victory in the 2013 elections, and now splintering amidst a public fight between Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, it will be very difficult for Malaysian negotiators to return from TPP talks without securing these protections—which they are unlikely to obtain. Fortunately for Najib, the opposition also is in disarray, its unwieldy coalition split apart at the federal level over differences around religious and social issues. However, the opposition, and Malaysia’s vibrant online media, has raised questions about whether Malaysia has done a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the deal before joining TPP negotiations. So, in addition to a group of conservative Malays skeptical of the TPP because of fears it will endanger pro-Malay affirmative action policies, the agreement may not have strong support among urban, liberal Malaysians—the bastion of the opposition. In the Pew poll, a large percentage of Malaysians simply said they did not know enough about the TPP to have an opinion, but the percentage of Malaysians who viewed the TPP favorably also was lower than in most other TPP nations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Najib, fighting for his political life, has gone from voicing staunch support for the TPP to announcing that the government’s trade negotiators will only accept a deal “on our terms.”