In the 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, it was a timely discovery earlier this year when an early edition of the Magna Carta, belonging to the town of Sandwich, was found lying forgotten in a Victorian scrapbook in the archives of Kent County Council.
Much has been said in recent times of the significance of the Magna Carta, some of it overblown, but as a legal document it no doubt took some negotiating, and undoubtedly the barons and bishops had their work cut out dealing with a grumpy King John.
The final document was in small and tightly written Latin text, and according to the British Library bears many traces of haste, as well as evidence of long-standing grievances.
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Admittedly it is by a somewhat circuitous route, but this brings me to present days, and the latest round of climate talks in Bonn, which came to a close on Thursday last week (11th June).
These talks were part of the extended run up to the crunch talks in Paris in December, when a “grand charter” for the world’s climate needs to be finalized and adopted, to take effect from 2020 when current emission reduction commitments expire.
The draft text of a possible deal is now in play, but it runs to nearly 90 pages, and that’s a cumbersome document by any lawyer’s standards, especially a medieval one.
The editing and distillation of the various optional clauses, into something that all 195 countries can potentially get behind, is a vital task and must happen before the Paris talks begin on November 30th if there is to be any chance of a deal getting agreed.
So, these latest Bonn talks were very much about how to consolidate a long document into something more focused. The final outcome of the talks was agreement for the co-chairs who have been steering the negotiations, to go away and come back in late July with an edited text for approval.
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Not a startling outcome by most people’s reckoning, but these are global climate talks, and in relative terms this is huge progress. This could just be evidence of willingness on all sides to move forward, and a level of mutual trust noticeably lacking in recent years.
What of the substantive issues?
Here, progress has been painfully slow, with one of the key stumbling blocks turning on semantics and the meaning of “differentiated”.
Not the legal playground this first sounds. ‘Common but differentiated responsibilities’, or CBDR if you want the acronym, is shorthand for recognition that combating climate change is a common objective of all countries, yet those with developing economies should not share the same level of responsibility as those with developed economies.
However, with the emergence over the last decade of the powerhouse that is the Chinese economy, now the second largest economic power (and second only to the US in scale of emissions), this distinction is becoming increasingly blurry, and that’s making the negotiations very tricky indeed.
But there was one area where substantive progress in Bonn was achieved, and that is deforestation. Forests act as carbon “sinks”, extracting from the atmosphere and holding huge stores of carbon. According to UN scientists, deforestation accounts for 10% of global GHG emissions, and is a particular issue in developing countries where land degradation for development, and so-called “slash and burn agriculture’, is on the rise.
The breakthrough in Bonn came with agreement on key details of a scheme called REDD+, another acronym meaning Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. This should make likely agreement in Paris on more funding to compensate developing countries for forest protection and land management schemes.
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A deal on REDD+ has been beset by problems, not least how to work with indigenous communities to ensure they are not deprived of their land rights and economic livelihoods.
Which brings me back to the Sandwich Magna Carta. This version was particularly noteworthy because it was found (albeit with a third missing) alongside an original “Charter of the Forest”, making it one of only two pairs known to exist (the other owned by Oriel College, Oxford).
The Charter of the Forest was a complementary charter to the Magna Carta, and provided rights for commoners to access royal forests and other lands, reversing actions of some of the early Plantagenet kings who had prevented commoners from living off increasingly greater areas of land.
Some parallels then with the climate talks, and perhaps another example of the lasting legacy of the Grand Charter of the Liberties.
* Andrew Whitehead is Senior Partner at Birmingham headquartered law firm Shakespeare Martineau