‘Culture cringe’: experts dismiss Coalition claims Chris Bowen cannot remain minister while leading Cop31 negotiations | Environment

Experts have rejected claims that Chris Bowen cannot remain a senior minister while playing a leading role in international climate negotiations, with one calling the argument evidence of Australian cultural “grinding”.

Australia has failed in its long-running bid to co-host the Cop31 climate summit with Pacific nations next year after Turkey refused to withdraw from the consensus process despite limited support.

During negotiations at the UN Cop30 summit in Brazil, an unprecedented agreement was reached whereby Turkey would host and run the event, including a major green trade fair, in the seaside city of Antalya, while an Australian – Bowen, the climate change and energy minister – would be appointed vice-president and “negotiations chair”.

Under the agreement, Bowen would be given “exclusive authority with respect to negotiations” between nearly 200 countries, effective immediately. His role will include chairing a pre-Cop31 meeting in the Pacific late next year.

The Coalition attacked the government on Monday over his appointment to Parliament, describing him as “President Bowen” and saying he would be “part-time minister, full-time president” when he should be focusing on cutting energy bills. Opposition leader Sussan Ley asked how long Bowen – who was away as he was still returning from Brazil – would spend abroad.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the “critical points” of negotiations would be set at the end of next year. He said Bowen’s role would be important for Pacific countries, where tackling the climate crisis was “the first, second and third priority”, because without it, “countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu would disappear”.

Climate experts said government ministers typically remained in their national roles while serving as president at the helm of the global summit known as COP (short for Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

Of the 10 Cops organized since the conclusion of the historic Paris agreement in 2015, seven have been led by serving ministers, one by a Prime Minister and one by a senior diplomat.

The 10th, in Glasgow in 2021, was led by Alok Sharma, who was UK Minister for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy when he was appointed chair of the Cop. He then left the ministry and became full-time president, but remained in the British cabinet.

Erwin Jackson, a veteran observer of climate negotiations at Monash University’s Climateworks centre, said Sharma’s role was more important than Bowen’s, as he was hosting the summit in the UK and the Glasgow conference was a “decision cop” that required the leader to spend the year galvanizing a global effort on new emissions reduction targets.

In comparison, Cop31 will focus on the implementation of commitments, as well as cohesion and construction of the fragile agreement reached in Brazil.

Jackson said Antalya would not be a major conference where countries would have to make important decisions as they did in Paris, Glasgow or Kyoto, where the first agreement to limit emissions was reached in 1997.

“Sharma was traveling the world trying to get countries to go carbon neutral. Bowen doesn’t have to do that,” he said.

Jackson said it was in Australia’s national interest to get the world to act on climate change and that suggesting an Australian minister could not lead negotiations was an example of “cultural cringe and tall poppy syndrome”.

“An Australian minister can absolutely do the job when ministers around the world have been doing the job for over 30 years,” he said.

“For the past 40 years of negotiations, Australia has been a climate pariah – ever since [Paul] Keating up [Scott] Morrison. The fact that Australia now has the support of the world’s most progressive climate countries, in Western Europe and the Pacific, is something we should celebrate.

“Let’s focus on whether the current minister is doing his job and debate on substance, not his agenda.”

Richie Merzian, chief executive of the Clean Energy Investor Group and a former climate diplomat, said Bowen could do both jobs, arguing that ministers had already juggled a number of roles, including as a local MP.

“The situation is not pretty because there is no precedent, but it is doable and if anyone could do it, it would probably be Bowen,” Merzian said. “It would be worse if a new minister arrived because we have to respect our commitments. [clean energy] transition.”

Howard Bamsey, Australia’s former special climate envoy and now an honorary professor at the ANU’s school of global regulation and governance, said that while Australia had taken the lead in climate negotiations – an important foreign policy task – that role should have domestic support.

He said Bowen had “an exceptionally demanding domestic role and an exceptionally difficult task” internationally, and that his success would depend on the support he received from his cabinet colleagues and the bureaucracy, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It could be helped by the government appointing a “quasi-ministerial representative” who would report to the minister and manage a significant part of the negotiations.

“Don’t underestimate the scale of the challenge for Australia,” Bamsey said. “This will require a dedicated whole-of-government effort. »