Cheers, tears and people (almost) dancing in the aisles: the joyful scenes that greeted the gavel coming down on the Paris climate agreement in 2015 were such that no one who was there will ever forget the feeling. After more than two decades of tortuous talks under the UN, and many false starts, the world finally had a global treaty compelling governments to act on the climate crisis.
That it all came together, on a Saturday night in a former airfield on the outskirts of Paris, was a testament to the patient, grindingly hard work put in over the course of several years by a small cadre of climate negotiators. While world leaders and smiling politicians took the credit in front of the cameras, the bureaucrats trudged off to their hotels, most of them determined only on a hot meal and, at last, some sleep.
Peter Betts, who has died of a brain tumour aged 64, was one of those key civil servants who helped draft the Paris agreement and shepherded it to safety through months and years of careful craft. A veteran of the British climate team, he acted as chief negotiator for the EU – the main force behind the Paris agreement, for all that the US and China stole the headlines.
Betts was a quiet, unflappable, steadily smiling presence at the UN climate negotiations. A trim figure in short-sleeved white shirts, he was an old-fashioned civil servant, of the sort schooled in the need to speak truth to power, but to do so courteously, with frank, clear and impartial advice while recognising that the elected politicians make the decisions.
He spent 35 years in various branches of the civil service, retiring a few years after Paris, in 2018, though returning briefly to an advisory role on the UK’s hosting of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021.
Betts was born in Battersea, south-west London, to George, who worked for the Salvage Corps, part of the Fire Brigade, and Joyce (nee Pedder), a social services welfare worker.
He attended the local Emanuel grammar school, where he coasted a little and frequently played class joker, but not enough to stop him getting to Mansfield College, Oxford, to study history.
After graduating in 1982, he worked through a series of odd jobs – including a brief stint as a volunteer journalist on the East End News (1982-83) – before moving into the civil service in 1984. Fast-tracked from the outset at the Department of the Environment, he got a posting to Brussels for three years from 1994.
His move to the UK’s climate team came in 2008, when he took the title of director of international climate change at Defra (the Departmentt of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). Later that year climate change was moved to the newly created Decc (Department of Energy and Climate Change), and from 2016 it came under BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy).
Betts viewed the Paris agreement as the crowning achievement of his career, and most close observers of the talks would agree that he played a vital role in the summit’s successful outcome. Throughout a fortnight of tense, exhausting talks, success had never been certain.
Countries baulked at commitments they had previously signalled assent to, some schemed to water down the stipulations, others resurrected old controversies. Up to the final moments, few were willing to trust that a serviceable and strong agreement would be the outcome.
Hours were expended by Betts and his colleagues over phrases to be placed in square brackets, on the placement of semi-colons, footnotes and the substitution of verbs.
On that snowy Saturday night in Paris in 2015, those of us allowed into the hall took our seats expectantly in the late afternoon, told that an agreement was imminent. But after nearly two hours had passed, it was clear something was wrong. It seemed terrifyingly possible that the pact could fall at the last hurdle.
As we later found out, what had happened was that in the draft of the 27-page document presented to governments, one clause had been transposed as a “shall” instead of a “should” – an important difference, in international law. The mistake was rectified by the negotiating teams, new documents were printed, and the deal was signed off. But the incident demonstrated how vital tiny details can be, and the extraordinary tensions that negotiators such as Betts work under.
After leaving the civil service, Betts took on several advisory and academic roles, including at the Chatham House thinktank.
He met Fiona McGregor, now chief executive at Regulator of Social Housing, in 1990; they married in 2006. She survives him, as do his parents and a sister, Susan.
• Peter George Betts, civil servant and climate negotiator, born 3 March 1959; died 20 October 2023
