Turkiye's Climate Policy: Aligned with International Climate Politics.

• Author: Ari, Izzet
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of this century. (1) Global climate change is causing extreme weather conditions, increases in average surface temperature, heavy and irregular rainfall, floods and landslides, droughts, and forest fires. International efforts are being made to address the problems posed by climate change, as tackling global climate change requires global cooperative actions. The mitigation actions of all countries, both developed and developing, are essential to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement are core multilateral climate agreements that address these aims.

The UNFCCC is the main multilateral platform that aims to stabilize Green House Gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. Mitigation of GHG emissions and increasing the number and volume of emission sink areas are essential measures being implemented at the global level. Both developed and developing countries have their arguments to supplement global efforts to reduce GHG emissions mitigation and scale up financial resources. More than 75 percent of the parties to the UNFCCC are developing countries whose GHG emissions have been rising in line with their growing populations and increasing economic activities. The main source of emissions in these countriesis energy systems, including power generation, industry, transport, waste, and housing. Developing countries produce the majority of GHG emissions.

Thus, mitigation actions are required there. In Turkiye, GHG emissions (C[O.sub.2] eq.) reached 523.9 Mt in 2020. (3) As Figure 1 presents, Turkiye's total emissions increased by 138.4 percent between 1990 and 2020. (4) The majority of its emissions come from energy (70.1 percent), which includes power generation, transport, buildings, the manufacturing industry, etc.; agriculture, industrial process, and waste follow the energy sector.

Turkiye, as a developing country located in the Mediterranean region, is adversely affected by global climate change and has contributed to tackling climate change according to its national capacity, reducing 1.4 billion tons of GHG emissions between 1990 and 2007. (5) Although Turkiye's current emissions comprise only about 1 percent of global emissions, it occupies a challenging negotiation position. Because Turkiye has lower historical responsibility for global emissions than both several OECD members and Group of 77 countries. However its classification as an OECD member during the drafting and adoption of the UNFCCC in the early 1990s, Turkiye was listed among developed countries Annex. Although Turkiye requested to be in a more equitable position, its request was hindered or rejected many times due to the nature of multilateral climate agreements. Over the last three decades, Turkiye has implemented its own national climate change strategy and action plan. It has prepared and submitted its GHG emissions inventories and National Communication report pursuant to substantive provisions of the UNFCCC. While complying with the international climate agreements, between 2000 and 2020, Turkiye progressed in mitigating carbon intensity from 63.1 to 59.5 C[O.sub.2] per carbon dioxide per terajoule (TJ) in total primary energy supply system. (6) The utilization of renewable energy sources (7) and progress in reducing energy intensity from 7.7 to 6.1 gigajoule (GJ) per $ thousand in 2015 (8) are two prominent measures of these achievements. Turkiye's total renewable energy installed capacity is currently more than 53,000 Megawatt(MW). (9)

The hypothesis of this study is that Turkiye's climate policy has been implemented through domestic actions inalignment with international climate politics since 2021. One of the supporting arguments of this hypothesis is a distinctly historic moment for climate policy in Turkiye in 2021. After ratifying the Paris Agreement in October 2021, Turkiye embarked upon using net-zero emissions (NZE) terminology and reoriented its climate policy toward achieving carbon neutrality in the long run in alignment with the Green Development Initiative or Revolution approach. This approach is unique to Turkiye in the international climate policy discussions. To attest to its willingness to achieve this goal and consistency in its approach, Turkiye reiterated the NZE target in its first National Climate Council and in its follow-ups.

This article aims to analyze Turkiye's national climate policy in the context of international climate negotiation positions and arguments. This study focuses on the dynamic, multilateral climate negotiation process, as well as the agreements reached through that process and Turkiye's expectations and position in terms of multilateral climate policy development. This article is structured as follows: After this brief introduction, section two presents international climate change agreements such as the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement and the status of their ongoing negotiations. It includes an overview of critical historical milestones in multilateral climate policy. Section three analyzes Turkiye's climate policy framework under the UNFCCC. In this section, the road to the Paris Agreement and its implementation are the main focus areas. Finally, the conclusion provides an overview of all these national climate policies, particularly Turkiye's NZE targets, and provides recommendations for better implementation of the multilateral climate agreements.

Multilateral Climate Negotiations and Agreements

Climate change is a global threat and a growing risk for all countries. Almost 50 years have passed since initial steps, such as the UN Human Environment Conference at Stockholm in 1972 to discuss the issue beyond national boundaries, and 30 years since the first international agreement, i.e., the UNFCCC. (10) The nature of multilateralism entails a lengthy process of making decisions and taking action. For a multilateral climate agreement to be successful, arriving at a consensus decision is an essential requirement for the adoption of collective decisions. Even to amend such an agreement, a three-fourths majority vote of the parties is a prerequisite for the ratification, approval, and acceptance stages. (11) While climate diplomacy plods forward according to its lengthy procedures, climate change continues to accelerate, and the price of inaction or failure to take essential actions has become more costly. (12)

Historical Milestones

Since the early 1970s, several steps have been taken globally to combat climate change. The First World Climate Conference met in 1979 and announced that emissions due to burning fossil fuels posed a danger. Nine years after this conference, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established as an international scientific platform to provide assessments on climate change, its implications, and potential risks. (13) In the same year, the issue of climate change was brought to the UN for the first time with the establishment of the Global Climate Protection agenda. After the IPCC was institutionalized, the Second World Climate Conference was convened in 1990, and the Declaration of Ministers was adopted as part of an international framework convention. In 1991, the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC) compiled the collective opinions and positions of countries to draft a legal document. In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Summit) adopted the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC, which aims to stabilize GHG concentrations, entered into force in 1994. According to the UNFCCC, parties will protect the global climate system based on equity, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), and respective capabilities (RC). (14) The UNFCCC has two Annexes: Annex-I and Annex-II. Annex-I countries that mitigate climate change and GHG emissions are OECD-1990 members, Economies in Transition (EIT) and Turkiye, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Cyprus. Annex-II countries are OECD-1990 members. Their responsibilities are GHG emissions reduction and providing financial resources and technology development and transfer to the developing countries. The remaining 150 countries are called 'non-Annex;' these include China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. Their responsibilities are not explicitly written as Annex-I lists.

After the UNFCCC entered into force, its parties agreed on the preparation of a protocol, namely the Kyoto Protocol, to set a quantifiable GHG emissions reduction target of 5 percent below 1990 levels for Annex-I countries for the period 2008-2012. (15) The Protocol was prepared under the auspices of the UNFCCC. The percentage of emissions reduction depended on Annex-I parties' conditions. For instance, the European Union and Switzerland decided to reduce 8 percent of their emissions, while New Zealand, Russia, and Ukraine offered to keep their emissions level rather than increase them. In other words, the EIT countries in the Annex-I category, such as Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine committed to changing from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. (16) The Kyoto Protocol provided certain flexible mechanisms, such as Joint Implementation (JI), (17) the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), (18) and the International Emission Trading System, (19) to achieve cost-effective emissions mitigation targets. (20) These mechanisms opened up a new area in which carbon emissions reduction credits are treated as a market commodity. In 2005, the Kyoto Protocol entered into force. However, the Kyoto Protocol's emissions mitigation target was inadequate to achieve the overall objective of the UNFCCC. In addition, rising emissions from developing countries requirethat all countries participate comprehensively and broadly with the aim of emissions...