Millennium Development Goals and Climate Change
Governments and big business were not the only sectors to wake up to the threat of climate change during 2006 and 2007. The international development community finally absorbed the reality that strategies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are being stabbed in the back by the impact of climate change. For example, the
Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) belatedly added climate change to its list of core issues. This process of enlightenment culminated in the UN Human Development Report for 2007/08 (HDR 2007) which for the first time
focused on the impact of climate change on poverty. The Report is unequivocal in concluding that stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions is an "essential part of the overall fight against poverty and for the MDGs".
The interdependence is all too painfully obvious.
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, a section of the 2007 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), confirms that
freshwater availability and crop yields, the fundamentals of human development, will bear the brunt of climate change. Africa is not only the most vulnerable region but is also the one continent for which IPCC offers quantified predictions as early as 2020. It says that between 75 and 250 million people in Africa may experience water stress, whilst crop yields in some countries could be reduced by 50%. In Asia, glacier retreat in the Himalayas may lead to water shortages for about 1/6th of the world's population by 2050.
Pressure on food security and water resources will undermine development strategies for improving education, health services and opportunities for women. Shifting patterns of malaria may jeopardise efforts towards its elimination. The whole pack of cards assembled by the MDGs is built on shaky climate foundations.
Climate Justice
Research by the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development shows that the 100 countries most vulnerable to climate change together account for just 3.2% of global carbon dioxide emissions. It is inconceivable that any international agreements could be blind to the
injustice inherent in climate change - that the poorest countries suffer the greatest impact whilst being the lowest contributors.
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Flood victims in Mozambique
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"Adaptation" is the term given to remedial measures which might attract international reparations for the impact of climate change on poor countries, for example the provision of flood defences, improved irrigation, drought-resistant crop varieties - measures which many richer countries are increasingly adopting themselves at vast expense. The HDR 2007 estimates that adaptation in developing countries requires the sum of $86 billion pa, almost as much as the entire current global aid budget. The UN’s
new Adaptation Fund, which held its first meeting in March 2008, aspires to attract total income of just $300 million by 2012, a sum that a European country might contemplate for a single flood defence scheme. The UN-funded National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) prepared by each Least Developed Country (LDC) recognise financial realities by remaining extremely modest in scope, seeking only to identify immediate and simple steps that individual communities can take to combat a changing environment.
A frustration for poverty campaigners is the tendency for big ideas emerging in the climate crisis to create yet further injustice for poorer countries - none more so than the
craze for biofuels. These can be produced from crops such as sugar cane and maize and used as additives or substitutes for fossil fuels. Whilst developing countries could benefit from demand for new cash crops, ambitious biofuel targets announced by both the US and EU may have been conceived with minimal research either into the
potential impact on global food security or to verify dubious claims of net savings in emissions.
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Island nations and climate change
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There is further injustice in the concept adopted by governments and some campaigning agencies of a "line in the sand" - a tolerance threshold for global warming of 2 degrees beyond which the world steps at its peril. Whilst there may be an element of pragmatism in this suggestion, the IPCC 2007 report shows how the richer countries may be relatively unscathed up to this threshold - indeed
crop production in temperate zones will increase - whilst crops in tropical regions are already at their limit of temperature sensitivity. Small island states will also feel aggrieved by a tolerance of 2 degrees; the IPCC report states that, whilst more scientific investigation is needed, “sea-level rise will …. compromise the socio-economic well-being of island communities and states”. Related concerns about inundation of delta regions such as Bangladesh expose a further dimension of climate injustice - the status of people forced to leave their homes - will they be allowed the
same rights as political refugees? The UK Stern Review Report published in 2006 tentatively suggested a number of up to 200 million climate refugees by 2050.
Beyond the Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - the international treaty agreed at the Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit" in 1992 - did acknowledge the climate justice principle that rich countries alone should take initial responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These countries are known as
Annex 1 countries and it is they who are subject to legally binding targets under
The Kyoto Protocol which was negotiated in 1997 as a supplement to the UNFCC and eventually ratified in February 2005.
Although these countries in aggregate
should achieve the Kyoto target of a 5% reduction in their 1990 level of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, this is no more than a pinprick in the menace of climate change. The figures
exclude emissions from aviation and shipping – and they also exclude the US which accounts for about 20% of world emissions but refused to ratify the Protocol. Global greenhouse gases have therefore been rising sharply in recent years, defying the scientists who plead that the level must peak and start to fall before 2020 in order to stabilise the climate.
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Dr. Rajendra Pachauri © IPCC
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The key question for the future of global warming is whether the Kyoto Protocol will be followed by a more inclusive international agreement, whilst retaining the vital discipline of binding quantifiable targets. If there is to be a replacement after 2012, the details have to be agreed by the end of 2009 to enable the logistics of implementation. The purpose of the Bali Climate Change Conference in December 2007 was to obtain the agreement of all countries to a roadmap for the 24 months available for negotiations. The political environment for the Conference was relatively favourable in light of initiatives taken by California to pass a bill to cut emissions by 25% by 2020, the EU which has committed to 20% cuts by the same date and the UK which is considering legislation to cut by 60% by 2050. The year 2007 also witnessed the award of the Nobel Peace Prize jointly to the IPCC and the climate evangelist Al Gore, and the collapse of the last bastions of climate change denial.
Humiliating recantations by Exxon, the downfall of the Howard government in Australia and a U-turn by President Bush on the existence of global warming symbolise the end of two decades of obstructive abuse of power.
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Primary forest, Brazil, CFU000553 © Roberto Faidutti / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
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In the event the
Bali Conference did produce a roadmap for inclusive negotiations which recognises the need for “deep cuts” in emissions and in which developing countries acknowledge the need to take measurable “mitigating actions”. But the process was so tense and the wording so strangulated that doubts remain over the core distrust between the US and the developing countries currently exempted from Kyoto, each demanding prior firm commitments of the other. Talks will continue throughout 2008 leading up to the next crucial conference in Poland in December.
A more concrete outcome at Bali was the establishment of the
Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, a scheme to explore how 20 developing countries might be compensated for “Reducing Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)”, a vital need given its contribution of about 20% towards greenhouse gas emissions. Pledges of $160 million have been made towards a target of $300 million.
Technology Transfer
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A renewable future
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Apart from the soft touch of the Kyoto targets, there is concern about the methods, known as "flexibility mechanisms", by which the rich countries are permitted to ease their painful task. In particular the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) encourages Annex 1 countries to install modern climate-friendly technology in developing countries in return for carbon credits towards their own emissions targets.
In theory poorer countries can then leapfrog dirty and inefficient power technology in their energy evolution. But the CDM offers technology transfer as sufficient in itself, with no underlying reference to the real energy needs of developing countries. These needs are increasingly desperate with 1.6 billion people lacking an electricity supply, their schools without lighting and health centres unable to operate equipment. Whilst the Stern Review suggests a figure of $20-30 billion pa to meet this energy shortfall, CDM credits for efficient energy production amounted to only about $1 billion in 2006. Africa has qualified for only 18 out of 708 approved projects. Not surprisingly, the Bali Conference requested the CDM administrators to explore improvements to the scheme.
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Climate change strategies therefore need to accommodate a vision for energy-efficient provision of electricity to the world's people. Meanwhile, developing countries will continue to take the line of least resistance, represented by construction of coal-fired power stations. China plans to build one of these every week and will be doing much the same for its new friends in Africa. The latent demand for energy in the developing world is moving towards an exponential release of greenhouse gas emissions, exactly the opposite of the intentions of the Kyoto planners.
Carbon Neutrality
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Emissions trading © OneWorld.net /
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The mechanics of trading carbon credits under the CDM have been hijacked for the very different purpose of "offsetting" the emissions of corporations and individuals concerned about their carbon footprint. The apparently cheap availability of sufficient credits has enabled a succession of businesses and municipal authorities to
announce plans to become carbon neutral for a modest financial outlay and, perhaps, equally modest behaviour change. For individuals the dilemma of cheap flights is thereby "solved" whilst
BP provides an offset scheme, governed by the great and good of the UK environmental movement, which promises European car drivers that less than $50pa will neutralise carbon emissions.
This unregulated "voluntary market" in carbon credits is prone to buccaneering traders, bad science, philosophical anxiety and much confusion over its value either to global warming or to poverty reduction. The carbon offset market is viable largely because the extreme difference in spending power of currencies between rich and poor countries yields cheap credits. If offset payments are invested in renewable energy schemes in the home country, the mathematics is somewhat transformed.
China and India
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Poverty in rural China
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China and India present the great dilemma for post-2012 negotiations. Should they be classified as developing or industrialised countries? Both are host to hundreds of millions of desperately poor people yet India's industrial tycoons nowadays make takeover bids for major European companies whilst, according to some reports, China has already overtaken the US as the world's highest emitter of carbon dioxide. The issues are complex, not least that China's dominance of manufactured goods effectively imports carbon emissions from the consumer countries - in 2005 14% of China's emissions were discharged on goods destined for the US where they could have been manufactured in more efficient factories and without transportation costs.
Extrapolations from the current low per-capita consumption in these two high population countries create climate change scenarios more akin to disaster movies than a scientific basis for policy-making. Yet neither country is prepared for the foreseeable future to compromise economic development with enforceable emissions targets. Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, has said that social development is the first priority and that "the developing world cannot accept a freeze on global inequity". India's per capita carbon dioxide emissions are 1.1 tonnes per annum against 20 tonnes in the US.
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Glacial lake outburst site, Bhutan © Piet van der Poel
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An important influence on the politics could be the specific impact of climate change in these countries. Both face alarming risks from the thaw of Himalayan glaciers;
restricted flow into the River Ganges could impact 500 million people and 35% of India's irrigated land. Both are dependent on stable monsoon rainfall for agriculture and water supplies, stability which is already showing signs of breakdown. Both countries acknowledge the serious threat of climate change and have started to put in place institutional structures to address the issue, alongside some quantifiable energy-related objectives. Nevertheless there is no current prospect of either India or China being drawn into a post-Kyoto agreement which involves targets for carbon dioxide emissions, unless the Annex 1 countries make commitments on a quite different scale from those to date.
Carbon Citizenship
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Cuisine, Guyiang, China © Tamilla Held
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If the driving force behind apocalyptic Indo-Chinese emissions scenarios is aspiration to western lifestyles, then the surest solution is to modify them. Climate change is not the root problem; it is just one of several critical environmental symptoms attributable to unsustainable lifestyles. The remedy to climate change lies with the culture of personal behaviour.
In some developed countries there are signs of awareness of this reality at the level which matters most - that of ordinary citizens. Many people have come to realise that the fate of the planet lies in their own hands. They are disillusioned with feeble governments, self-interested businesses and ineffective campaign groups. They see through the
falsehood of structural measures of success - "economic growth" and profit.
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Solar panels at health centre, London © Peter Armstrong
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Such individuals are striving to meet their Chinese and Indian counterparts halfway - a vision in which poor families should not be denied the right to many of the comforts considered essential in wealthy countries, whilst the latter recognize that any correlation between happiness and consumption is at best doubtful.
The search is on for an underlying philosophy as well as practical mechanisms for such fundamental change. One helpful vision is of a lifestyle which consumes no more than a fair and equal share of the earth's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. In directly addressing the current injustice of climate change, the philosophy of carbon citizenship becomes the antidote to the imperfect world of carbon neutrality.
This Guide has been compiled primarily by reference to the OneWorld archive of climate change articles together with features currently published by OneWorld UK and OneWorld US
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