Is America Ready to Return to the World Stage on Climate Change?

Squinting into the bright June sun in the White House rose garden, President Trump gripped the lectern and declared that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and “terminating” the Green Climate Fund. The global condemnation of the President’s 2017 decision was swift, as were the negative consequences for the fund, which was soon thrown into disarray.

As of November 4, 2020 the United States is officially out of the agreement, as President Trump promised. Yet today, both the Paris Agreement and the Green Climate Fund live on. While neither instrument is perfect, 189 other nations have stayed in the accord, and 28 have pledged almost $10 billion to the fund to help developing countries respond to a changing climate.

The world has not been waiting for America in order to take action on climate change. China’s September surprise at the United Nations announcing the country would be carbon-neutral by 2060 certainly underscored that.

According to the current and former U.S. officials New America’s Resource Security team interviewed over the past year, it’s not too late for the United States to step back onto the global stage when it comes to climate change, including in a leadership role. The United States could still call on shared commitments and values to work with the European nations, India, and other partners and allies, and even approach climate change as a shared interest and even confidence building measure with China. It would help, however, if America got its own house in order first. To do that, the Federal government’s climate foreign policy system needs an upgrade.

Realistically, one presidential candidate was always far more likely to embrace climate foreign policy reform. Back in 2017, President Trump said he would propose a new, better climate accord, but his subsequent comments suggested otherwise. Trump also slashed climate budgets, buried climate research, sidelined key officials, appointed climate skeptics to key roles, and repeatedly requested cuts to the State Department. The Biden campaign, on the other hand, released a climate plan that vowed to “fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategy.”

As it stands now, the U.S. government is not well structured to support that kind of reform agenda. Responsibilities for climate change are spread across numerous agencies, with no single agency clearly in charge, and weak links to connect them. “Process is substance,” declared one former official. “Good process doesn’t guarantee a good result, but bad process will all but guarantee it.”

What will it take to build a better climate change process for the U.S. government? Washington insiders typically react to proposals for reorganizing the Federal government with an eye roll, given how hard it is to implement big changes. In addition to requiring a dig through the self-protecting sedimentary layers of bureaucracy, some of the structure of Federal agencies is statutory, requiring Congress to enact legislation to make changes. Even without the current partisan rancor, Members of Congress -- and more to the point, their constituents -- are generally more interested in passing new laws than stripping out the old layers of legislative varnish. Yet, President Trump has shown that a president can make significant changes to Federal agencies without the help of Congress. Moreover, it won’t necessarily require tectonic shifts to have a better Federal capacity for climate policy.

The former and current government officials we interviewed agreed that creating an entirely new climate change agency is not the answer, given the practical difficulty of assembling the pieces scattered across the government and the expense of creating a new bureaucracy. President-elect Biden’s proposal for “ARPA-C”, a new agency for low-carbon energy technology development, could succeed as an independent agency with a focused mission. But beefing up support for ARPA-E or projects with the Department of Energy is another way to leverage the U.S. government’s strength without the hassle of creating a new agency.

Instead, climate change could be integrated into the existing federal infrastructure, with stronger links between agencies. A first step to fixing that systemic problem is to establish leadership, with a clear chain of command and accountability. It would help to have one clear lead office in the White House and clear agency leads for domestic and foreign policy.

Who should lead?

When it comes to foreign policy on climate change, the officials we spoke with said the State Department should be the designated leader, overseeing and guiding all aspects, including the foreign engagement at other agencies, such as Energy and Agriculture. Though we were specifically looking at how the Department is set up to work on climate change, most of the individuals we spoke to -- civil servant, political appointee, and foreign service alike -- thought the agency itself was encumbered with an outmoded bureaucracy and what amounts to a personnel caste system. Former officials noted that the Department is not well equipped to move fast or to embrace an issue such as climate change that cuts across bureaus. The next secretary will be inheriting a particularly full plate of policy issues, so a better bet for serious reform may be Congress. One model could be the Packard Commission and subsequent Goldwater-Nichols legislation that reformed the Defense Department in 1986.

More specifically, the officials we spoke to had a range of views about how well the State Department is set up to work on climate change. Right now, the Office of Global Change under the Bureau of Oceans and Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) oversees climate diplomacy and policy. In previous administrations, there has been a separate office for the Special Climate Envoy. The Special Envoy’s office traditionally operated outside of the State Department system, with high deliverables (an international agreement) and workarounds for bureaucratic hurdles, such as direct access to the Secretary of State and a dedicated budget. While these advantages expedited the negotiator’s work, former officials noted that the separation between the policy bureaucracy and negotiator was problematic, in terms of resources, attention, and unity of effort. At the same time, many suggested that the job of climate negotiator requires a high-level position, and does not leave much room for other policy duties. A further complication was an energy bureau at the assistant secretary level that had a different and at times conflicting remit. Separating the two climate change roles has its pros and cons, but it may well be that either process will be fine, as long as the roles and missions are clearly articulated. With due deference to that former official, good process is necessary, but personality is everything. If there are three separate offices, led by individuals all working toward their own glory, policy outcomes are likely to fall short.

There will certainly be important and complicated climate negotiations in the coming years, starting with the next Conference of Parties (COP 26) follow-on meeting for the Paris Agreement in November 2021. There are entirely new accords to forge, as well, such as international rules for geoengineering, or the possibly risky manipulation of the Earth’s atmosphere to limit the greenhouse effect. All of that will require deft diplomacy at a high level, traditional strengths for the Department of State.

At the same time, the world is running out of time to act on climate change. The U.S. needs to focus more on “operationalizing” climate policy, investing in projects for carbon reductions, innovation, and resilience around the world. While that will benefit the recipients of U.S. investment, there are also competitiveness and trade benefits for the U.S. economy, and larger gains in limiting the destructive effects of climate change.

Any new, more operational approach will depend on the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and it’s unclear if USAID is currently up to the task. USAID supports development projects across the world, investing in humanitarian relief, public health, clean energy, and governance, but the agency has been dwindling in size and influence since the end of the Cold War. The agency also has a reputation for being guarded when it comes to collaboration with other agencies and very complex in its operating style, according to the former officials we spoke to. The Trump Administration has wreaked further structural and personnel dysfunction on USAID, trying to slash the agency’s foreign aid budget and cutting programs such as Predict, which surveilled dangerous animal viruses, such as the novel coronavirus, to prevent their spread. The agency’s mission, under Trump, has shifted toward promoting self-reliance.

Nonetheless, some programs promoting renewable energy and resilience to climate change have continued to function, such as SERVIR and Power Africa and the new Energy and Natural Resources Management framework. And climate change is still incorporated into development projects, albeit quietly. Even in its relatively weakened state, USAID remains the world’s largest source of bilateral aid and an agency with expertise in project management. If the U.S. is to combat climate change by investing in clean energy, infrastructure, resource management, and economic development, USAID is the expert the U.S. government needs. In the Obama Administration, there was an effort to incorporate climate change across all of USAID’s portfolios, and that approach has considerable merit and could be strengthened. But the agency will first need to be rejuvenated, with oversight of climate policy at a higher level within the agency, along with more resources.

In fact, the resources to support climate policy should go beyond USAID’s own appropriations. The Federal financial agencies, mainly Treasury, the Export-Import Bank, the U.S. Trade and Development Authority, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the Development Finance Corporation, influence through policies and loans how money moves out of the United States to global investments and development projects by the private sector. While less well-known than USAID as a development agency, the Development Finance Corporation (formerly called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation or OPIC) provides financing for private development projects in low and middle-income countries, managing $23 billion in assets in 2018. The money agencies and the development and foreign policy community need to work on communicating and coordinating to leverage their massive amount of capital and operationalize a cohesive climate strategy.

One former official suggested a concept of clustering to make the most of the funds available. So, for example, USAID can bring grant money to a specific project in a developing country, which the Development Finance Corporation and the Millennium Challenge Corporation can then leverage to bring much greater financing and broader impact. Grouping agencies this way could bring together their relative strengths and prevent turf battles when their missions are complementary. There are other less obvious partners for such clusters, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has a Food for Progress program aimed at building agricultural capacity and markets in developing countries.

Another important cluster should revolve around information. The Intelligence Community, Department of Energy (including the national laboratories), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA, all play a role in climate science and analysis, risk assessments, and modeling. A former intelligence official noted that there is not enough capacity, though, when it comes to environmental information. The next administration should increase climate analysis capacity in the intelligence community, as well as fully implement recent legislation creating a Climate Security Advisory Council to bring together intelligence analysts and civilian scientists. The creation of a National Intelligence Officer for Environment and Natural Resources would further help prioritize climate analysis and improve coordination.

Last but not least, there is the Department of Defense. The department employs more than two million people, manages over $700 billion annually, with a presence in every country in the world. DoD has hundreds of bases around the world, including coastal and arid bases highly vulnerable to climate change. The agency is the center of gravity in the Federal government, dominating all discretionary spending, but that does not mean DoD should lead on climate change. DoD’s core mission is to fight and win the nation’s wars, and the force of arms is not much use in meeting the challenge of climate change. At the same time, the Pentagon should be doing more to build resilience to the effects of climate change on its property, and should definitely be incorporating climate change into how it plans for the future. There are also specific military missions that climate change will increasingly shape, such as search and rescue, humanitarian and disaster relief, and freedom of navigation, especially in the Arctic. Moreover, many key U.S. partners and allies place a high priority on climate change, particularly the nations of the European Union. In an era of what the Department of Defense has called “great power competition,” keeping allies close and cultivating partners will be critical for U.S. strategic interests and prosperity, and that will mean engaging more on climate change.

Indeed, one of the many challenges President-Elect Joe Biden will face in his presidency is rebuilding global trust in the United States. Given the historic U.S. commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, active U.S. participation in global efforts to deal with climate change will be an important part of rebuilding that trust. Moreover, efforts within U.S. cities and states to promote decarbonization and disaster resilience will never be sufficient without parallel global action, particularly from China and India. Going forward, foreign policy is climate policy, and better Federal capacity will be an important means to the end.