Book giveaway: A climate diplomat tells the COP story

The Climate Diplomat by the late Peter Betts was written

This is a rich, incisive and informative book. You will learn a great deal from reading it. It is most of all a story about the world’s struggle to contain the epic threat of climate change, told by a peerless guide.

This is a book that describes “what the risk of climate change is all about, how climate-change diplomacy developed from the late 1980s onwards, how climate negotiations work, and why the Paris Agreement was so important,” Todd Stern said in his foreword to The Climate Diplomat by Peter Betts.

• Read a full excerpt of the book here

Stern goes on to underscore how difficult multilateral climate negotiations are.

“Addressing climate change inevitably affects wide swathes of every country’s economy; countries, especially developing ones, have consequently been hesitant about taking action they believe might limit their growth; and, as if all of that weren’t enough, decisions in the Conference of the Parties (COP) require consensus, meaning, in principle, that all countries have to agree.

“So, it is no wonder that, in the nearly 20 years leading up to the Paris conference, countries had not succeeded in agreeing on an effective, operational accord.”

As your guide, Betts brings to the table a deep understanding of the issues and strategic challenges; a clear grasp of how addressing climate change looks to different groups of countries; a recognition that diplomacy is based on the art of the possible; and an instinctive capacity to blend all-out commitment to effective climate action with the pragmatism needed to make concrete progress. Along the way, you’ll meet a broad array of characters from around the world who were players

In the drama of the negotiations leading to Paris, often for the good, sometimes not.

It also delves into a strategic initiative in 2010 that was one of the most important that the author undertook.

“In the spring of that year, not long after the searing and tumultuous Copenhagen conference, he was instrumental in bringing together a new coalition of progressive developing countries and willing developed countries called the Cartagena Dialogue,” writes Stern.

“It was dedicated to constructive engagement outside the often acrimonious reality of the annual COP meetings themselves, with the intention of making those meetings more effective and less susceptible to attempted roadblocks.

“Five years later, a much-expanded High Ambition Coalition of over 100 countries, with the Cartagena Dialogue as its foundation, took shape in Paris, with Pete once again instrumental. That new coalition became pivotal to the landmark success of the Paris conference.”

Betts also argues for improvements to climate ambitions and strategies to get there, including through finance mechanisms.

Betts also implores his readers to avoid the culture wars that have long undermined progress in multilateral climate discussions, even now.

“In the final words of his impressive book, Pete delivers one last plea that people in and around the climate world should take to heart. ‘I urge people of goodwill on all sides to pursue the art of the possible rather than turn climate into a culture war issue. It is simply too important for that.”