- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --

As hopes for reaching a binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the Copenhagen summit die, climate negotiators could learn useful lessons on how to structure the negotiations from the multiple rounds of trade talks within the GATT/WTO framework.

Climate negotiations are about limiting carbon dioxide emissions, but the negotiators are also hammering out a complex economic instrument that will define the distribution of production, energy use and income in the next few decades. It is the agreement's profound economic effects that are making it so hard to reach a final deal.

While the stalled negotiations on the Doha Round might make it seem likely an unlikely role model, the GATT/WTO process has successfully created a legal framework for liberalising world trade through eight successive rounds of increasingly complex negotiations, as well as a dispute settlement system accepted by all major countries.

In the process, negotiators have already had to resolve many of the difficult issues bedevilling attempts to reach an emissions deal:

* How to obtain treaty commitments from a huge range of countries at different stages of economic development.

* How to handle negotiations with the United States, given the peculiar nature of that country's constitutional arrangements.

* How to ensure countries live up to their commitments and resolve subsequent disputes about treaty implementation.

Climate negotiators could usefully apply many of these lessons to their own agreement. As Copenhagen falters, they may need to rethink the "road map" for talks to improve the chance of bringing them to a successful conclusion.

FRAMEWORK AND DETAILED SCHEDULES

The 1947 General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) established a legal framework and general principles for trade liberalisation. But detailed tariff reductions as well as commitments on subsidies, dumping and technical barriers were left to a later series of trade rounds. These commitments were then turned into schedules of concessions for each member country and incorporated by reference into the central treaty.

Negotiations started with a series of limited tariff reductions that were gradually made more ambitious. Part IV of the GATT, added in 1966, guaranteed developing countries "special and differential treatment" to encourage them to become involved in the tariff-reduction process and make their own binding commitments.

For each round, political leaders set broad objectives at the outset, but the detailed exchange of "concessions" was handled by lower-level officials in a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC).

Something similar is needed for the climate talks. President Barack Obama has already backed a "two-step" process. Political leaders would aim for an "operational agreement" at next month's summit while leaving a legally binding agreement until 2010 or later. [ID:nSP280582] The aim is to ensure agreement on the big issues is not held hostage to myriad disputes over the details.

It might make sense to separate an agreement on the broad framework (including establishment and review of targets, trading emissions allowances, technology transfer, funding, and dispute settlement) from the details (including specific reduction targets and how much developed countries pay their developing counterparts to help mitigate the costs of technology upgrades).

It might also make sense to agree fairly easy reductions in the first round, then hold further negotiations in coming years to make targets more ambitious, using salami-slicing tactics rather than a big-bang approach. This would also allow developing countries to adopt modest emissions cuts in round one, with the aim of toughening them further in subsequent talks.

But for a two-step process to work, political leaders must give clear instructions to lower-level officials responsible for detailed negotiations (including clear scope for eventual concessions). If not agreement will become bogged down over relatively small differences in percentage reductions, as the Doha Round has become stalled over farm subsidies and tariff cuts for developing countries.

THE PROBLEM OF SENATE RATIFICATION

Trade negotiators are already used to the idea that an agreement is subject to a "double lock." Deals require approval at international level and by the U.S. Congress (either by a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate if the deal is presented as a treaty, or a simple majority in both houses if the deal is presented as ordinary legislation).

The existence of this double lock confers an advantage on the United States since other countries have to negotiate twice -- once with the administration and then again with Congress. Having given one set of concessions to the president's officials to secure a deal, other countries may have to make even more concessions to get the deal approved by U.S. legislators.

To encourage countries to make meaningful concessions without fear the final deal will be re-opened, U.S. presidents have often been required to obtain "fast-track" negotiating authority binding Congress to a straight up-or-down vote within a set time on the results of a trade round.

Negotiations are usually structured as a "single undertaking" in which every commitment or concession is part of a whole and indivisible package and cannot be agreed separately: "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."

In terms of sequencing, trade negotiators have usually sought to reach an international agreement first and then presented the deal for congressional approval.

Until now, the climate negotiations have been using the opposite approach. The Obama administration has sought to obtain an ambitious climate bill including cap-and-trade from Congress (HR 2454, S 1733) and then use this to persuade developing countries such as China to offer significant emissions reductions at the international level.

But experience with trade negotiations suggests that an international deal precedes U.S. action, and does not come after it. It is unlikely Congress will agree to stringent targets without some assurance other countries will follow suit, including large future emitters such as China and India. So the international track may need to move first, or at least in parallel.

The Obama administration needs to harvest a number of provisional commitments from its international partners to have any hope of getting a climate bill through the Senate. If it is structured as a single undertaking, the various parties would offer tentative commitments. Once a deal is done, it would be taken back to the Senate to be incorporated into U.S. law.

The only question is whether the president would need to obtain some sort of fast-track authority. This is probably not necessary as long as the president's Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress with comfortable majorities.

But it does set a deadline for a deal. Negotiators would need to reach agreement by next summer, well ahead of the 2010 mid-term elections, unless the Democratic Party appears on course to retain comfortable majorities, in which case negotiations could take longer and still reach a successful conclusion.

DISPUTES, NULLIFICATION, IMPAIRMENT

U.S. lawmakers are already suspicious that other countries will not adopt meaningful targets or will cheat on those they do agree. So any climate deal will need a mechanism for settling disputes. If not, countries are likely to retaliate unilaterally against partners they believe are not living up to their commitments, which could unravel the whole system.

From the beginning, GATT Article XXIII allowed a country to request formal consultations with another treaty member if it believed expected benefits under the agreement were being "nullified or impaired," and this has been worked up into an increasingly formal and effective dispute settlement system.

If emission targets and aid packages are structured as part of a mutual exchange of concessions among treaty signatories, so one country's targets are conditioned on other countries meeting their own, the climate treaty will need a similar dispute mechanism.

Rather than attempt to create one from scratch, it would probably be better to use the WTO system as a template and modify it to take account of the climate accord's unique characteristics.

The following is a guest column by Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters.

“Do unto others”

It’s a simple standard my mom taught me when I was a kid – yours probably taught it too. It isn’t always easy, but in business it's a good guiding light if you don’t want your company to be evil.

Recently there has been a rising crescendo of finger-pointing, shrieking, braying and teeth-gnashing about the future of the news. In the last couple of weeks there have been many comments on the AP’s proposals, Attributor’s proposals, Ian Shapira’s story and fair use.

After some of the AP commentary, I posted a tweet directed at Jeff Jarvis that prompted some members in the community to ask me to be more outspoken, asking me to be blatant about it, to post a public statement. For those who know me, I usually don’t need to be asked.

To start, yes the global economy is fairly grim and the cyclical aspects of our business are biting extremely hard in the face of the structural changes. But the Internet isn’t killing the news business any more than TV killed radio or radio killed the newspaper. Incumbent business leaders in news haven’t been keeping up. Many leaders continue to help push the business into the ditch by wasting “resources” (management speak for talented people) on recycling commodity news. Reader habits are changing and vertically curated views need to be meshed with horizontal read-around ones.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

A better approach is to have a general agreement among community members to treat others' content, business and ideas with the same respect you would want them to treat yours.

If you are doing something that you would object to if others did it to you – stop. If you don’t want search engines linking to you, insert code to ban them.

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories -- it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.

I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others' original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.

Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines. Let’s get online publishers, search engines, aggregators, ad networks, and self-publishers (bloggers) in a virtual room and determine how we can all get along. I don’t believe any one of us should be the self-appointed Internet police; agreeing on a code of conduct and ethics is in everyone’s best interests.

Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open, diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism – call it journalism 3.0. Let’s identify how we can birth it and agree what is “fair use” or “fair compensation” and have a conversation about how we can work together to fuel a vibrant, productive and trusted digital news industry. Let’s identify business models that are inclusive and that create a win-win relationship for all parties.

This is not code for some hidden agenda – it is an open call for collective problem solving. Let’s do it wiki-style and edit it in the public domain. Let’s define the code of conduct and ethics we would all like to operate under.

My suggestion is we start with “do unto others” as our guiding spirit – I bet it would make all of our mothers proud.

Post your comments below (good, bad or ugly) or send me an email. You can reach me directly at chris.ahearn@thomsonreuters.com or via twitter @cjahearn.

Moody's debt analyst John Puchalla analyzed the state of newspapers today. Conclusion: The sun rises in the east, usually in the mornings. In other words, newspapers are still doomed.

Despite the report's obvious conclusion, it's worth reading for Puchalla's analysis of the cost structure that newspapers deal with. Here's an excerpt from the press release announcing the report:

Currently, a structural disconnect exists in the newspaper industry's cost structure. Just 14% of cash operating costs, on average, are devoted to content creation -- the primary value creation activity -- while about 70% of costs support the print distribution model and corporate functions. The remaining 16% of cash operating costs relate to advertising sales -- another critical task that drives the majority of newspapers' revenue. The overall imbalance limits the industry's flexibility to overcome competitive threats. ...

Most newspaper companies have moved only slowly away from in-house print production and distribution, said Moody's. Thus, high operating leverage for the industry remains, and is creating intense pressure on cash flow as revenue declines.

"Ultimately, we expect the industry will need to reverse the vertical integration strategy through cross-industry collaboration and outsourcing print production and distribution processes," said Puchalla. "Although newspapers may lose some of their in-house control over press time, they would also release resources to beef up investment in content and technology."

While Moody's does not anticipate a widespread shift by issuers to an online-only business model as the revenue loss is too significant at this point, such a change would meaningfully lower operating costs. Reducing the frequency of print editions is a hybrid approach that may result in cost savings while preserving newspapers' value-added service for advertisers, said Puchalla.

The upshot? Newspapers must "monetize" their online content (can we think up a real English word instead of "monetize?") at the same level as print and keep cutting costs, or else their credit ratings will suffer and more of them will shutdown.

This seems to leave managers with only one way to stay in business for now. If you want your credit rating not to fall further, lay off a few hundred or thousand more employees and make sure the newspaper features a bunch of under-edited news, lame stories and mostly wire copy. Repeat process as often as possible until shareholders and bondholders have a chance to cash out. Then look for another job, maybe as a McKinsey-style efficiency consultant.

(Photo: Reuters)

Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, and a man who believes that 2009 will be a “dangerous year”, will be speaking on March 31st and has agreed to take questions from Reuters readers.

Zoellick has been outspoken during the current economic crisis predicting the first shrinking of the economy since the ’30s, warning that increased government spending will simply create a ‘sugar high‘ until banks’ toxic assets are dealt with properly, and urging a tougher stand against protectionism.

But the World Bank’s primary focus is on helping developing nations and alleviating  poverty. Earlier this month it published research showing that the spreading crisis will push 46 million more people into poverty in 2009 on top of 130-155 million pushed into poverty in 2008.

With the London summit of the Group of 20 nations on April 2nd fast approaching what do you want to know about the World Bank’s role in shoring up the world economy and helping poorer nations? Use the comments section below, or use the #askwb tag on Twitter, and I’ll get as many of your questions to Robert Zoeliick as possible.

UPDATE: This event has now taken place and you can view the questions we put to Robert Zoellick in the player below. We have no means to pass on any further questions to the World Bank but you are welcome to add your comments on the discussion thread below.

By Daniela Kroslak, Deputy Africa Program Director, and Andrew Stroehlein, Communications Director, of the International Crisis Group, Any views expressed are their own.

Pirates, Islamists, refugees, anarchy, civil war — not much good news has come out of Somalia in the last couple of decades. With warlord replacing warlord over the years and transitional governments constantly hovering between extremely weak and non-existent on the ground, the temptation will be to view this week’s election of a new Somali president with an eye-rolling, “so what?”

Yet there is a chance, albeit a slim one, that this moment will mark the start of some small progress for the shattered country. That is, if the international community plays the next few months very carefully and does not let ideology trump pragmatism.

The first reason to feel any hint of optimism is that Ethiopian troops, who invaded Somalia in December 2006, are now leaving. Ethiopia’s occupation was an unprecedented disaster. The last two years have been among the worst since Somalia descended into anarchy in 1991, with huge displacement of civilians, a massive humanitarian crisis and grave violations of human rights.

The Ethiopian military campaign, combined with US bombings of suspected militant hide-outs, also set in motion a chain of events that in mid-2008 culminated in the recapture of much of the country’s south by the hard-line Islamist insurgent group, Al-Shabaab. They used the Ethiopian presence to rally support from and recruit amongst those marginalised by the transitional government, and they radicalised the Islamist movement.

The way Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed was elected president of Somalia — a title representing more hope than actual authority over the fractured country — inspires little confidence in itself. A reformulated Somali parliament in exile, part of UN-sponsored reconciliation efforts known as the “Djibouti process” after the city where it resides, chose him from a list of 14 other bickering leaders, and the vote only happened because of external pressure from the UN, AU, EU and US. These Somali actors have generally been living in a “Djibouti bubble”, out of touch with what is unfolding back home and enjoying little credibility among Somalis.

Still, the situation on the ground hands Sheik Sharif a few good cards to play. As a moderate Islamist himself and former chairman of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), an alliance that ruled southern Somalia for six months in 2006, he could be well placed to win over other Islamist elements outside the process and undercut support for the extremists of Al-Shabaab.

Sheik Sharif’s installation is significant as he is the first Islamist leader to become head of state with Western support in the Horn of Africa, hopefully reflecting a pragmatic shift in Western attitudes towards political Islam and efforts to contain militant jihadism. But Sheikh Sharif is in danger of being outflanked by the radicals in his camp. He will have to strike a difficult balance between Ethiopia’s tight embrace and a still hostile opposition, and he will have to weight carefully Somalia’s complex regional interests and clan loyalties.

If Sheik Sharif had clear and substantial backing from the international community in these efforts, including renewed Saudi support to engage with Al-Shabaab, it would make success more likely. In practical terms, this would mean politically and financially supporting a number of steps and encouraging the UN Special Representative, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, to facilitate them.

First and foremost, Sheik Sharif and the international community have to make use of all intermediaries and back channels to reach out to the insurgent groups currently outside the Djibouti process, including Al-Shabaab, as well as the Asmara-based leaders of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia. They must be prepared to draw in to the negotiations members of groups which have control on the ground, even if their current leadership refuses.

The point is to get as many more radical groups and individual leaders on board for the negotiation of a comprehensive ceasefire as a step towards expanded Djibouti talks. Once a credible ceasefire agreement has been reached, each faction should be left to administer its respective territory temporarily and be invited to participate in talks intended to lead to the restoration of a legitimate government. The parties could then establish smaller sub-groups to negotiate issues such as: drafting a new constitution; integrating all armed forces into a common army and police force; planning for a national referendum on the new constitution; and establishing transitional justice processes to address the needs of national reconciliation.

If participants in the Djibouti process encourage influential clan leaders, business community leaders, clerics and civil society to create momentum and grassroots support for that process, its prospects for success will be improved.

The biggest obstacle to peace in Somalia this time may in fact not be Somalis’ infamously fractious politics but the reluctance of the international community to engage with the Islamist opposition. However, if there is going to be a lasting settlement that returns even a semblance of stability to the country, Islamists cannot be excluded.

If they are kept out of the process, the extremist Islamists will maintain the upper hand and, quite simply, there will be no process. In that case, peace would, yet again, remain a distant illusion for Somalia’s suffering population.

The credit crunch has left little of the globe unaffected and few sectors of the world economy untouched. The interlinkages between economics and finance are at the core of discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Reuters News asked delegates for their analysis of the roots of the problem and prescriptions for recovery.

I ran a story on New Year's Eve about the opportunities and perils that could face struggling newspapers if they end up surviving because of government help. I opened the story with the tale of Connecticut state lawmakers and a state commissioner who are trying to find someone to buy two Journal Register-owned dailies and several weeklies that are going to be shut down in January if they can't be saved. From there, I explored the ramifications of government aid to newspapers.

The story got plenty of attention, though it looks like misinterpretation was rife. Many bloggers and news sources portrayed the Connecticut situation as a bailout, leading to plenty of ire directed at the lawmakers and the story. (Some conservative bloggers hinted that we deliberately omitted the lawmakers' affiliation. For the record -- they are Democrats. Also for the record: I had that in there, then deleted it, intending to put it somewhere else in the story. Then I plum forgot. No hidden agenda.)

So here's what I'm expecting next and here's what I still don't know or understand. I'm eager to hear from folks who care about the future of newspapers in the United States to add their thoughts in the comments section.

• My sources in the journalism world tell me that the U.S. newspaper business won't be pushing federal lawmakers for a bailout like the auto and finance industries. Why? They don't like the idea of having the government as a shareholder when their job is to expose what the government does as a way of keeping it honest. Still, the story might change. If anyone hears about something like that in the works, please tell me. I'm anxious to find out.
• Will the situation in Connecticut be replicated elsewhere around the country? I wonder.
• The politicians whom I spoke to emphasized that this is not a bailout, but an attempt to lure business with tax breaks, the same way other businesses get courted. Still, I wonder: If you award tax breaks as a way to get publishers to keep a newspaper from dying, isn't that shifting the tax burden to others? And if that is so, then how is that different from essentially handing over money? I don't know, but I'm curious.

Folks, this may be a big culling year for U.S. newspapers. Debt is heavy, ad revenue is down and it may be the end of the line for newspaper journalism in this country as we know it. It'll be an often depressing story to cover, but it also will be exciting and strange. If you're an employee of a U.S. newspaper and you hear that something is going on, we want to know about it. Drop us a line. Thanks and "Happy" New Year.

PS - Journal Register has gone stone cold silent about its restructuring, its newspapers and any attempts to survive. And the whole company is still worth less than my little house in Jersey City.

(Photo: Reuters)

Media coverage of the U.S. presidential race has not so much cast Democratic candidate Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed Republican opponent John McCain in a negative one.

That' s the verbatim conclusion of a new report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that analyzes the way the press has covered the campaign.

The report shows that negative stories about Arizona Sen. McCain has been decidedly unfavorable and has worsened over time, with negative stories about him outnumbering favorable Obama stories by more than three to one.

That and many more interesting details are available in the 35-page report, but what caught our attention, being a business-oriented news service, was a graph charting the tone of press coverage devoted to both candidates and how it changed after the bankruptcy filing of investment bank Lehman Brothers.

When Lehman collapsed, the percentage of negative stories about Obama plunged from 30 percent that week in September to just under 10 percent a week later. It scooted back up to 45 percent by early October and has been down again since then. Negative stories about McCain eased to 50 percent from... well, just a bit over 50 percent. Since then it's surged to nearly 70 percent.

After Lehman collapsed, the reported noted that McCain tried to seize the initiative on the economic crisis.

According to the report:

In doing so, he became a dominant actor in the campaign drama, generating more coverage than any other presidential or vice presidential candidate for the first time in the general election season.

But as McCain did so, the media narrative about him grew increasingly negative.

There's no doubt numerous factors could have affected the tone of the media's campaign coverage, but it looks like Lehman's collapse had at least some effect, at least according to the PEJ's data. What do you think?

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (McCain and Obama at the 2008 Alfred E. Smith dinner)