Being a successful negotiator

I had a more serious post planned out, but I can't resist this instead. Serious posting tomorrow! Today, an excerpt from a chapter on culture and custom in diplomatic practice, which quotes Erasmus (1546) on how to behave so as not to embarrass yourself at table, a common theme (!) in early treatises on diplomacy:

When you spit, turn your back so that you do not dirty anyone else; do not spit on the table.

Do not blow your nose in the tablecloth; it is to wipe your greasy fingers on.

Do not blow your nose with the same fingers with which you reach into the common dish.

Do not use both hands in the dish. Do not dip half-eaten morsels in the common sauce a second time.

Vomiting is no disgrace provided one does not dirty others.

So now you know: complaints about double-dipping are at least 500 years old.

What am I?

In some ways, it's very hard for me to find "my literature." What I'm interested in is how countries get each other to cooperate to do things they want each other to do. I often refer to this as international negotiation, but actually, if you search on "negotiation" or "international negotiation" in the literature, you tend to get a lot of very details-oriented process-based stuff. Sometime that can be interesting, but it's a little peripheral to my interests; I tend to think that most of the outcomes of actual negotiations are predetermined by the time negotiators get to the table - by prior maneuvering, domestic-level interest aggregation, and background conditions.

On the other hand, if you try to take a step back and look at a higher level, much of the literature becomes too distant, too abstract. There's a lot of international relations literature that wants to abstract international behavior to very basic drivers, like the distribution of power. In a lot of these strands of literature, treaties just don't matter much at all; they're epiphenomenal.

What I want is a strand of literature that presumes treaties matter - ie, that countries do care about deal-making and will put efforts into obtaining deals they want, and that subsequent behavior will differ depending on whether a deal is or is not obtained - but doesn't focus on the often rather quotidian details of actual negotiation conferences and so on. What I care about is stuff like the prior maneuvering, domestic-level interest aggregation, and background conditions, and how countries manipulate those (or fail to) such that when they come to the table they get the deal they want (or fail to).

(There's a branch of literature on pre-treaty preparation, but from what I've seen it's small and not very good - not really what I'm looking for, more focusing on bureaucracy and agenda-setting - in other words, the pre-treaty version of the existing negotiations literature - though I'm not fully up on it.)

LNG

Recall how I said that Qatar is a bit geographically screwed, with large natural gas reserves but no stable countries between it and Europe through which to build a pipeline?

Guess who's leading the world in production of (shippable) liquified natural gas (LNG)?

Trade requires buyers, so who will they ship to? I took a very rough look at this based on Wikipedia's list of regasification terminal locations; the list has the usual Wikipedia lack of accuracy guarantee, and there's an additional issue that not all terminals have the same capacity. But percentage of existing terminals probably provides a rough cut of commitment to using LNG:

ASIA: 54%
EUROPE: 23%
NORTH AMERICA: 19%
SOUTH AMERICA: 5%

Adding in planned terminals, we have:

ASIA: 50%
NORTH AMERICA: 24%
EUROPE: 22%
SOUTH AMERICA: 4%

But that likely understates Asia's plans, because China has recently planned a bunch that aren't listed in the Wikipedia article, I believe. Incidentally, a huge chunk of Asia's existing terminals in the Wikipedia list are in Japan: 32 of 43 existing terminals (though with only one planned terminal listed).

In a way, it would be much better for the world if LNG was the primary form of trade in gas. For all you hear talk about the "oil weapon," it's virtually impossible to use effectively. A big slow-down in production by OPEC can boost prices worldwide for everyone, but that's a VERY blunt weapon. Embargoes on specific countries are essentially impossible; oil is so tradable that they just buy it elsewhere or through middlemen, which boosts prices for everyone a bit, but is quite survivable. Non-LNG gas, though, because it trades in one-to-one trading arrangements with huge sunk costs attached and low ability to quickly shift quickly to other fuels, makes a darn good weapon. Like any weapon, it's used at a cost, but it's very effective if you decide you want it.

Negotiation systems

It really can be shockingly hard to force oneself to skip over articles or chapters one knows are of no earthly use or interest, but which are on the general topic one is researching. "Maybe I should just skim the first lines," one thinks. "Sure, it doesn't look interesting, but maybe that's just because I don't yet understand this really important chunk of the literature.

The best thing I found today was a quote:

...once it is part of a system [of international negotiations], a negotiation has to respond to the needs and demands of that system. The main demand is that it should contribute to the stability and growth (optimization) of the system.

--Victor Kremenyuk, "The Emerging System of International Negotiation", International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues (2002)

I find this a bit overstated, but I think it's basically true. The international negotiation structure is biased toward protecting and stabilizing consolidated parts of itself. Thus, for instance, everyone knows that one possible way to force emissions mitigation commitments from reluctant countries would be to tie them to trade - no commitments, no favorable trade terms. But it's a non-started, because there's a whole, existing, relatively stable chunk of the international system built around the idea that most of the nations have agreed not to pull stuff like that. Nobody seriously talks about messing with the WTO in order to push climate change action. A big part of that, of course, is that there are sets of countries that have, or believe they have, individual interests in preserving that chunk of the system. But I do also think there's a big psychological and institutional inertia as well. The WTO has a kind of normative and structural precedence because it is stable and settled.

Of course, if you didn't buy that a priori, how would I prove it to you? How would I separate out effects of individual interests from effects of normative stability?

Treaty theory - applied systems analysis

Today I read on treaty theory, which is a fancy way of saying that today was a kind of boring day. The treaty theory in question called itself Applied Systems Analysis. What might that mean? Good question. In practice it seems to mean an approach that is quite broad in scope (looks at all sorts of aspects from two-level negotiation problems to agenda-setting, issue linkage, and negotiators themselves - rather than focusing on a particular aspect assumed to be most important) and takes an attitude that is more pragmatic and descriptive (that is, more interested in describing actual practice than deriving it from principles) than many sectors of IR theory. That's about as specific as I can get.

If my implication that this approach doesn't strongly define itself seems at all dismissive, consider this quote on the history of the formation of the (international, West-Soviet cooperative) institute from whence the book issued. The author

"hesitatingly suggested to the founding negotiators the title 'Applied Systems Analysis.' That caught on because no one had a previous conception of what it really meant. It was what I call 'creative obfuscation,' a technique that was used at several junctures in the writing of IIASA's charter. Another example of creative obfuscation: since we got hung up on the term advanced societies, we substituted the term modern societies, and again no one really knew what that meant."

--Howard Raiffa, "Contributions of Applied Systems Analysis to International Negotiation." International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues. Ed. Victor A. Kremenyuk. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Heh.

The work thus far is a clear illustration of the central analytic trade-off in international relations; if you try to take a pragmatic, descriptive approach, you find yourself doing work that either does not generalize or (as in this case) becomes quite vague in expression - at best a set of recommendations about general issues and tradeoffs that ought generally to be considered when approaching a specific problem. Works that make simplifying assumptions and attempt to reduce political behavior to a more manageable set of principles allow the analyst to make observations that seem much more powerful and pointed - but at the price of becoming ever less plausible as descriptions of real-world behavior.

Anyway, the reading today tangentially got me thinking about the relationship of bargaining to the size of the negotiating pool. It seems intuitively likely that the complexity of "horse-trading" - that is, bargaining where I offer concessions in an area you care about but I don't in return for different concessions in an area I care about but you don't - goes up as the number of discreet parties to a negotiation increases. This would suggest that the more parties you have to a negotiation, the more likely you are to have to default to a solution built around equity - the same outcome for everyone - as opposed to trying to horsetrade among 50 different parties. (This would be unfortunate because "everyone gets the same thing" solutions are less complex but also generally less efficient.) But is it so in practice?

Two energy systems

This is a quick thought rather than a big post - something that's stated very nicely by Arati Prabahkar at the GTL conference some of you may remember me linking to. It's worth keeping in mind something that's obvious once you hear it, but easy to forget. I may talk about the "energy system", but in fact right now we have two energy systems: one for electrical power and one for transportation.

These systems don't always have the same interests and incentives attached. For instance, the US is basically energy-independent when it comes to electrical power. But it's highly dependent when it comes to transportation power - given our current system. That's one different driver right there (and it varies by country; for instance, much of Europe is energy-dependent in both systems - the exceptions being France and I think some of the Scandinavian countries). The infrastructure/sunk costs issues are different; the constituents and interest groups involved are different; and so on.

Major Players: Cancun update

So the major players in climate negotiations are the US, China, the EU, Japan, India, and Russia. Of these, the US refused to sign Kyoto, while the others all did. However, as I've mentioned, Kyoto didn't require any emissions reduction commitments from developing countries (China and India) and to date those countries have refused to discuss making such commitments. Russia did commit to "emissions reductions" but its target was so utterly inflated by "hot air" for a variety of reasons that it's promise was essentially meaningless. Russia signed Kyoto because fulfilling it was no burden, and in return, it got EU support on entry to the WTO.

Where do things stand for the majors after Cancun?

US: got most of what it wants. People were so disenchanted with China after Copenhagen that the US got a bit of a break, I think; and it played its cards very wisely in Cancun, going after a useful procedural goal (measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV).) Not much shift in the US's position. Obama's negotiators continue to maintain that the US can meet the 17% reduction pledge we made at Copenhagen, in spite of complete failure to craft a legislative emissions solution.

China: Softening... I think. In Cancun, China tried to play nice, and made some concessions on stuff like MRV. It also offered a stop-gap solution on reduction commitments: to put a voluntary pledge, backed by domestic legislation, on paper in the Convention. I don't think it would have done even that much a few years back. This makes sense though, because there are two new drivers in China. One is the growin green industry that China has been pushing hard on. That's starting to materialize in a real way, and China has to realize that once it has a green industry, it would be best if the world had a climate treaty to drive that market. Additionally, China has already set and continues to set internal goals to reduce emissions intensity*. Thus far, it's pretty solidly on track to meet them. At the point that it's setting and meeting goals internally, why not garner goodwill by acknowledging them formally in the international arena?

* Near-term emissions reduction goals for developing countries aren't usually proposed as absolute cuts - they're typically downward deviations from projected baseline - reductions in energy intensity per capita or per unit GDP, but not absolute reductions.

EU: Very, very quiet at Cancun, given that Europe has traditionally spearheaded this stuff. I don't know - maybe it felt spanked at Copenhagen? It basically played support on stuff, and was willing to extend Kyoto if other people did, but didn't insist one way or another. I think Europe is taking a wait-and-see-and-do-what-we-can-internally approach right now.

Japan: As noted in my last post, most of the drama around Copenhagen revolved around Japan's steadfast public refusal to consider extending Kyoto. It's in Japan's best interest to support a treaty that drives a market for its green technology industries (particularly efficiency technologies) but it isn't in its interest to have a treaty that effectively includes only Japan and Europe - the two most experienced green-tech players, trying to sell to each other. The market it really lusts after is manufacturing efficiency tech in China; so what it really wants out of a climate treaty is commitments from China. I also can't help wondering what, if any, was the back-channeling with the US on this. It was very convenient for the US that someone was pushing hard for commitments from developing countries without things turning into another round of US vs. China. I don't know enough about the US-Japan relationship right now to have an opinion on that, though. Maybe it was just convenient.

India: Made waves by being surprisingly supportive in this round. Previously India has been pretty adamant that climate change is the developed world's problem. This round it materially helped get MRV fixed, and started talking about maybe making reduction commitments in the future.

Russia: I doubt Russia will under any circumstances commit to a real (not hot air) reduction pledge, unless it's getting something very big in exchange, and Europe already played the WTO support chip. An extension of Kyoto isn't in Russia's best interests and, surprise surprise, they were one of Japan's two big supporters on not extending. Probably more because they thought it would be the best spoiler tactic than because they think a new, more comprehensive treaty could be negotiated if we ditch Kyoto.

Bolivian Drama Coverage: near the beginning of the conference the Bolivian ambassador was quoted referring to climate change as "genocide." Near the middle he was quoted referring to "ecocide." By the end, he was calling it "genocide and ecocide."

Cancun

Okay. Let's try this again.

So, Cancun. What does it all mean?

Some very brief background. Climate negotiations are carried out under the UNFCCC framework. That's United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The idea is that the Convention represents a regular, rules-bound forum for nations to meet and negotiate over draft texts of agreements relating to climate change. Most meetings produce some sort of text or texts that are formally accepted into the Convention. Sometimes these are minor tweaks; sometimes they've very important milestones, like the Kyoto Protocol. The meetings (and the major treaty texts produced at them) are named for where they take place. Hence "Kyoto Protocol" and last year's "Copenhagen Accord".

The Kyoto Protocol grouped signatories into two groups - basically, developed nations and developing nations. It contained a list of emissions reductions targets, one for each of the developed nations, which they committed to meeting by 2012 (the "first commitment period"). Most of these were baby-steps targets. It did not require developing nations to commit to any emissions reduction targets (though the hope was that eventually, they would, and in the meantime, Kyoto contained mechanisms - ultimately not very successful ones - for funneling aid to developing nations to support emissions reduction and low-carbon growth).

Because the first Kyoto commitment period runs out in 2012, and there are no existing targets beyond that, the goal of Copenhagen, last year, was supposed to be to come up with a new set of targets and get everyone to commit to those targets, creating a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol framework so things could move on. That didn't happen; negotiations fell apart. At the last minute, negotiators tried to salvage things with the Copenhagen Accord, a document which records voluntary pledges from any nations willing to make them, for whatever amount they're willing to promise. About 80% of the world's nations - including many developing nations - have made voluntary pledges at this point. That sounds great, right? The problem is that the Copenhagen Accord is totally non-binding. In fact, it isn't even formally accepted into the UNFCCC framework. (Why? Because the UNFCCC works by consensus, and there was one nation at Copenhagen that refused to consent to accept the Copenhagen Accord. Bolivia, in case you're wondering. They did it again at Cancun.)

So what happened at Cancun? Depending on who you ask, there were three major strands of conversation going on. These were as follows:

1) Incremental Progress on Multiple Related Areas

The establishment line, basically, promulgated by the UN and lots of secondary powers. From this perspective, Cancun was about rebuilding trust between negotiators following Copenhagen. This was to be done not by trying to come up with a major breakthrough or negotiating a new round of emissions targets, but by making solid if limited progress on several subsidiary issues, including deforestation, establishing mechanisms for technology transfer to developing nations, and coming up with a framework for administering the Green Fund promised by developing nations at Copenhagen. Progress on these would rebuild confidence and set the stage for a renewed attack on core problems at the next meeting.

2) Transitioning Away from Kyoto?

However, a more pointed argument quickly blew up when Japan announced at the beginning of the talks that they would not under any circumstances sign on to an extension of Kyoto through a second commitment period. They felt Kyoto was unfair (because it required commitments from developed but not developing nations) and wanted to ditch it entirely and reopen negotiations on a new basis, perhaps the Copenhagen Accord, that didn't assume from the outset that developed countries alone must necessarily make mitigation commitments.

The problem is that for many developing nations, Kyoto has great weight - newspapers' favorite phrase was "totemic status" - and so this caused an unholy fuss. The Japanese were joined by Canada and Russia. They were opposed by most of the developing world, including at least two specific factions. On the one hand, a radical group led by Bolivia that threatened walkouts if Kyoto was abandoned. On the other, China, which also took a strong line against abandoning Kyoto, but suggested that a two-track negotiation was possible, in which Kyoto was renewed, but some kind of second track of negotiation around developing country commitments could take place in parallel.

The Japanese refused to budge throughout most of the meeting, in spite of supposedly quite a lot of diplomatic pressure from pretty much everyone.

3) MRV and Expansion

Basically, this was what the US went in wanting. Two things: first, the establishment of a mechanism for measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of emissions reductions amongst participants (to keep everyone honest). Second, a continued push to expand emissions reduction commitments into the developing world. This second is of course sort of what the Japanese wanted, but the US was being much less specific and aggressive about what form this should take than Japan was.

Who got what they wanted?

Well, (1) was the most obvious winner. Incremental progress was made on all the areas the UN was pushing to make progress on, though personally I think only time will tell how useful the specifics are; for instance, although there is now a UN technology transfer mechanism, it has no formal power to enforce transfer; it acts entirely in the advisory/encouragement/networking/facilitation sphere.

(3) was also a winner. There is now language in the Cancun texts calling for MRV, and China was apparently less obstructionist about this than expected. Moreover, although the US pooh-poohed it and perhaps I'm being naively optimistic, it seems to me that both China and India are thinking hard about ways to commit to reductions in some acceptable way, even if they avoid a formal binding promise. A psychological shift, if you will.

Nobody really got what they wanted on (2). The Cancun texts ended up using ambiguous language that essentially came down on nobody's side, and failed to settle the issue.

Does Cancun provide reason for optimism?

Lately, people ask me this as soon as they hear what I'm researching. This review hasn't changed my initial opinion: basically, the answer is, very very cautious optimism. Cancun didn't end in failure. That's important. And it did take some baby steps forward. That's good. And I do think there are signs of a psychological shift on reduction commitments from the biggest developing players. That's also good. But psychological shifts, even if real, can take years to play out. And the next steps climate negotiations have to take are more like leaps: getting a second round of reduction commitments (under whatever framework works), figuring out where the funding that now has a mechanism will be raised from, seeing if we can really solve tech transfer in practice. The fact that we successfully took baby steps at Cancun is nice, but it doesn't prove we're ready for leaps.

Tomorrow: a quick rundown on where I think the individual key players stand, following Cancun, and where there are shifts.

[Sigh. Just had a truly epic post about Cancun eaten by the posting interface. Will rewrite tomorrow.]

Whither China?

Following holiday and illness-induced hiatus, I'm back! Damaged rib and all.

What I'm starting with this week is a review of the Cancun negotiations that took place in the first week of December. Possibly it's sort of heresy, but I don't tend to follow these UN rounds very closely while they're actually happening. I find it much more useful to do a full sweep all at once after it's over; when I get it in dribs and drabs day by day, I feel like it's too easy to give uneven attention to the news from one day over another (either by paying more attention on one day or by being more impressed by the news from a particular day). Reading it all at once, I get a sense of the sweep of things.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing. It's not finished yet, but here's the question I want to answer: has China moderated its position, and if so, how? A few entries back, I suggested that China and the US were in similar positions - relatively rich in fossil fuel resources, and with partially developed but still weak green industry sectors. My impression, though, is that China is drifting more toward a middle ground, one in which its fossil fuel resources drive it less (because they can't, alone, keep up with its needs) and its growing green industry drives it more (China is pushing hard on green technology; this means it has ever-higher incentives to make sure a robust market exists globally for those products).

So - is this true, and if so, will it show in China's negotiating stance? Check back, oh, late on the 4th!