Architect of the Paris Agreement, this figure of climate diplomacy knew how to bring the world around the table in 2015. However, she could be at the origin of a rupture within the NFP, still looking for a name for Matignon.
Tubiana or not Tubiana, this is the question that divides the New Popular Front (NFP). After the Socialist Party’s refusal to endorse the president of the regional council of La Réunion, Huguette Bello, as candidate of the alliance of the left for the post of Prime Minister, the counter-proposal of the PS (supported by the ecologists and the communists) relaunches the showdown, Tuesday July 16, within the fragile coalition. Economist and diplomat, from civil society, chairing the European Foundation for the climate since 2017, Laurence Tubiana, 73 years old, does not convince the fourth component of the NFP, France Unbowed.
LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard, interviewed on the set of “4 Vérités” on France2, judges this proposal “not serious”because she comes back has TO DO “get the macronists back in through the window”. As evidence: a column published on July 11 in The World andt signed by Laurence Tubiana, calling on the New Popular Front to “reaching out to other actors on the Republican front”.
Lack of majority in the hemicycle, the program carried by the NFP in the legislative elections must be “Le starting point” discussions, but “will not be the end point in all areas”, note its authors. Compromise with Macronie? Diplomat’s reflex? Among those who have worked alongside her during a long career in the service of the climate cause, many see her ability to dialogue as an asset.
In an interview with World In 2020, Laurence Tubiana willingly defined herself as “a woman of the left and an environmentalist”. But it was socialists who first sought the expertise of this trained economist, who specialises in climate issues and global governance.u turning point of the last century, the academic thus became the sustainable development advisor to the socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. At a time when leaders were discovering the destructive potential of a climate crisis, she warned about the social aspects of environmental issues. Laurence Tubiana was “among the first people” to be forwarded to Dominique Voynet “the conviction that the climate issue will be an economic upheaval”, Lionel Jospin’s former Environment Minister told franceinfo last year.
Author in 2000 of a report on sustainable development in France’s foreign policy on behalf of Matignon, she then called on France to “defined[r] a long-term national policy consistent with the sustainable development goals”laying the foundations of an Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, IDDRI, which she founded in 2001. Her successor at the head of this structure, Sébastien Treyer, today boasts a “tireless advocate of greater ambition in social matters, in the face of the multiple fractures that run through our society.”
Friederike Roder, vice-president of the international anti-poverty organisation Global Citizen, highlights the “recent efforts” by Laurence Tubiana “to reform international taxation and introduce taxes on the ultra-rich and the most polluting sectors.” Measures included in the NFP programme.
For Sébastien Treyer, “Laurence Tubiana is known for her ability to listen to everyone”at point “find solutions to blockages that seemed insoluble.” For those who have worked with her, nothing illustrates this skill better than the outcome of COP21, the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015. In the documentary produced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the behind the scenes of the Paris agreement, Laurent Fabius looks back on the asset that represented Laurence Tubiana at the head of the host delegation: “Because she knows how to listen well, because she knows how to take into account the other person’s point of view, She manages to convince and that is a great quality.”
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Since renamed “architect of the Paris Agreement”Laurence Tubiana is seated to the right of the minister when he announces the signing of this agreement which, by committing 160 countries to differentiated objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, has relaunched climate diplomacy. “Laurence has the ability to bring people together who are not necessarily there to talk about a very complex subject,” supports Benoît Leguet, general director of the Institute of Climate Economics (I4CE) and colleague of Laurence Tubiana within the High Council for the Climate (HCE).
A member of this body since its creation by Emmanuel Macron in 2019, the negotiator regularly defends her independence. She also denounces to the World THE “abysmal gulf between words and actions” of the executive. This “inconsistency”which she judges “intolerable”, even convinces the diplomat of the superior power of the “citizen mobilizations” on “a government casting”, she explains.
It is in this context that she accepts to co-chair the organizing committee of the Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC). The initiative, convened by Emmanuel Macron, was born in the wake of the “yellow vest” crisis. It brings together 150 citizens, called to debate for a year, with a view to submitting to the president a series of measures that reconcile, according to the established formula“end of the world and end of the month”. When environmental activist Mathilde Imer asks her, Laurence Tubiana accepts “immediately to participate in this adventure of participatory democracy”explains this voice from the associative world. “Because for her, ecology and democracy go hand in hand, especially if we want a socially just ecology”.
“She was so happy that there was a CCC that she thanked Macron, but that doesn’t mean she is subservient to the president,” agrees Claire Burlet, member of the convention and municipal councilor in Cambrai (North), who is positioned on the left wing of Renaissance. For her, Laurence Tubiana “remains someone who is fundamentally socialist.” “During the CCC, she was surrounded by people from all sides, but always in the right place, she is someone who knows how to do the exercise,” continues the elected official.
By wanting a negotiator as Prime Minister, are the PS, the ecologists and the communists implicitly acknowledging their renunciation of a left-wing government? The survival of the movement depends on this urgent question: a horizon even closer than that of the end of the world and the end of the month. This time, it is a question of reaching an agreement by the end of the week.