Climate Change guide
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| Cyclone Sidr © IRIN News |
The global financial crisis has exposed the distorted sense of values prevailing in the modern world. None more so than the inference that it is five hundred times more important to rescue one discredited New York bank than to rescue developing countries from the prospective impact of climate change. The miniscule assets of the UN Adaptation Fund mock the reality that global warming will impact poorer countries harder and sooner than the richer countries which are responsible. Whatever the state of the world economy, this moral predicament demands international cooperation and resource transfer on an unprecedented scale.
Millennium Development Goals and Climate Change
The international development community has been very slow to absorb the reality that strategies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are being stabbed in the back by the impact of climate change. The influential UK economist, Lord Nicholas Stern, has estimated that neglect of the climate change dimension could add $100 billion to the cost of attaining the MDGs. The necessary correction was eventually marked by 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. The IPCC reports are the recognised point of scientific reference for international policymaking.
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 will suffer the greatest impact whilst being the lowest contributors.
"Adaptation" is the term given to remedial measures which might attract international reparations for the impact of climate change on poor countries. These include the provision of flood defences, improved irrigation, drought-resistant crop varieties - measures which many richer countries are increasingly adopting themselves at vast expense. The UN-funded National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) prepared by each Least Developed Country (LDC) largely focus on areas already identified in development programmes, portraying climate change as additional pressure on the existing causes of poverty.
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, set up in 2008, currrently holds just $50 million, a sum that a European country might contemplate for a single flood defence scheme. Establishing meaningful financial commitments for this fund will be a priority for climate justice campaigners.
There has been a consistent tendency for new ideas for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to impact negatively on poorer countries - none more so than the craze for biofuels. Whilst developing countries could benefit from demand for new cash crops, it is widely acknowledged that hasty biofuel targets announced by both the US and EU were partly responsible for spiralling food prices in 2008. The result is likely to see 100 million people added to the category of extreme poverty.
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 feel even more aggrieved by a tolerance of 2 degrees; the governments of Maldives and Tuvalu are already contemplating the mass migration of their populations to new countries. With displacement also predicted from low-lying delta regions such as Bangladesh, difficult questions arise regarding the status of people forced to leave their homes - will they be allowed the same rights as political refugees? The UN University has warned of the potential for up to 200 million climate refugees by 2050.
Beyond the Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty agreed at the Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit" in 1992. It acknowledges the climate justice principle that rich countries alone should take initial responsibility for mitigation, the reduction of 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.
Canada and Japan are almost certain to fall short of their commitments but the Annex 1 countries in aggregate should achieve the Kyoto target of a 5% reduction in their 1990 level of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. However, the calculation excludes emissions from aviation and shipping and there is no provision for the US which refused to ratify the Protocol. Global greenhouse gas emissions 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. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at its highest for 650,000 years.
The key question for the future of global warming is whether the Kyoto Protocol will be followed in 2012 by a more inclusive international agreement, whilst retaining the vital discipline of binding quantifiable targets. The timetable seeks to achieve final agreement at a conference due in Copenhagen in December 2009, working to a “roadmap” agreed in Bali in 2007. Progress is tortuous; the G8 summit in 2008 issued a statement contemplating 50% reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but there was evident disagreement on how to share the burden with developing countries, or even what should be the baseline year for calculations.
The December 2008 Conference of the UNFCCC Parties in Poland may be dominated by concerns that the global financial crisis could divert political will away from climate change. and hamper the ability of a new US administration to meet the Copenhagen deadline. Otherwise political momentum has been broadly swinging in favour of decisive action. The UK government has passed groundbreaking legislation which commits the country to an 80% reduction in emissions, including aviation and shipping, by 2050. The new US president, Barack Obama, has indicated similar intentions together with massive investment in clean energy. The EU is striving to reach a commitment to 20% emissions reduction by 2020. The year 2007 witnessed 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 symbolised the end of two decades of obstructive abuse of power.
Deforestation and Climate Change
The successor to the Kyoto Protocol is very likely to include substantial provision for action to reduce deforestation, now that there is greater scientific clarity that the loss of tropical forests contributes a massive 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. A 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)”.
Lord Stern has suggested a figure of $5 billion per annum for the 8 countries contributing 70% of forest-related emissions, just 5% of current foreign aid budgets. Addressing deforestation could be one of the most efficient and cost effective ways of tackling climate change whilst simultaneously delivering the many other valuable benefits of protecting tropical forests. Negotiations have focused on the very considerable logistical difficulties of measurement and verification.
Technology Transfer
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 for UN-certified 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. Estimates suggest a figure of $20-30 billion pa to address this energy shortfall, but CDM credits for efficient energy production amounted to only about $1 billion in 2006. And China has been awarded 70% of the value of all CDM projects despite having already achieved universal electricity coverage. By September 2008, Africa had qualified for only 27 out of 1150 approved projects.
In the absence of a robust strategy for global energy-efficient provision of electricity, developing countries continue to take the line of least resistance, represented by construction of coal-fired power stations. In 2006 China opened new power stations with capacity equivalent to the entire grid of UK and Netherlands combined, 90% fuelled by coal. Much the same is in the pipeline for China’s new friends in Africa. In choosing to finance the Adaptation Fund by a 2% levy on CDM payments, the UNFCCC is placing more faith in the future of the CDM mechanism that is merited by results to date.
China and India
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 the World Bank, China contributes 24% of global carbon dioxide emissions, well ahead of the US with 21%. 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.
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 400 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
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.
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. 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 recognise that any correlation between happiness and consumption is at best doubtful.
The search is on for an underlying philosophy of carbon citizenship. 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, thereby directly addressing the current injustice of climate change.
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| Eritrean farmers in Tsorona, Debub © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
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| Dr. Rajendra Pachauri © IPCC |
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 will suffer the greatest impact whilst being the lowest contributors.
"Adaptation" is the term given to remedial measures which might attract international reparations for the impact of climate change on poor countries. These include the provision of flood defences, improved irrigation, drought-resistant crop varieties - measures which many richer countries are increasingly adopting themselves at vast expense. The UN-funded National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) prepared by each Least Developed Country (LDC) largely focus on areas already identified in development programmes, portraying climate change as additional pressure on the existing causes of poverty.
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, set up in 2008, currrently holds just $50 million, a sum that a European country might contemplate for a single flood defence scheme. Establishing meaningful financial commitments for this fund will be a priority for climate justice campaigners.
There has been a consistent tendency for new ideas for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to impact negatively on poorer countries - none more so than the craze for biofuels. Whilst developing countries could benefit from demand for new cash crops, it is widely acknowledged that hasty biofuel targets announced by both the US and EU were partly responsible for spiralling food prices in 2008. The result is likely to see 100 million people added to the category of extreme poverty.
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| Addu Atoll. Maldives © Karin Afeef |
Small island states will feel even more aggrieved by a tolerance of 2 degrees; the governments of Maldives and Tuvalu are already contemplating the mass migration of their populations to new countries. With displacement also predicted from low-lying delta regions such as Bangladesh, difficult questions arise regarding the status of people forced to leave their homes - will they be allowed the same rights as political refugees? The UN University has warned of the potential for up to 200 million climate refugees by 2050.
Beyond the Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty agreed at the Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit" in 1992. It acknowledges the climate justice principle that rich countries alone should take initial responsibility for mitigation, the reduction of 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.
Canada and Japan are almost certain to fall short of their commitments but the Annex 1 countries in aggregate should achieve the Kyoto target of a 5% reduction in their 1990 level of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. However, the calculation excludes emissions from aviation and shipping and there is no provision for the US which refused to ratify the Protocol. Global greenhouse gas emissions 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. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at its highest for 650,000 years.
The key question for the future of global warming is whether the Kyoto Protocol will be followed in 2012 by a more inclusive international agreement, whilst retaining the vital discipline of binding quantifiable targets. The timetable seeks to achieve final agreement at a conference due in Copenhagen in December 2009, working to a “roadmap” agreed in Bali in 2007. Progress is tortuous; the G8 summit in 2008 issued a statement contemplating 50% reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but there was evident disagreement on how to share the burden with developing countries, or even what should be the baseline year for calculations.
The December 2008 Conference of the UNFCCC Parties in Poland may be dominated by concerns that the global financial crisis could divert political will away from climate change. and hamper the ability of a new US administration to meet the Copenhagen deadline. Otherwise political momentum has been broadly swinging in favour of decisive action. The UK government has passed groundbreaking legislation which commits the country to an 80% reduction in emissions, including aviation and shipping, by 2050. The new US president, Barack Obama, has indicated similar intentions together with massive investment in clean energy. The EU is striving to reach a commitment to 20% emissions reduction by 2020. The year 2007 witnessed 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 symbolised the end of two decades of obstructive abuse of power.
Deforestation and Climate Change
|
| Primary forest, Brazil, CFU000553 © Roberto Faidutti / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations |
Lord Stern has suggested a figure of $5 billion per annum for the 8 countries contributing 70% of forest-related emissions, just 5% of current foreign aid budgets. Addressing deforestation could be one of the most efficient and cost effective ways of tackling climate change whilst simultaneously delivering the many other valuable benefits of protecting tropical forests. Negotiations have focused on the very considerable logistical difficulties of measurement and verification.
Technology Transfer
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 for UN-certified 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. Estimates suggest a figure of $20-30 billion pa to address this energy shortfall, but CDM credits for efficient energy production amounted to only about $1 billion in 2006. And China has been awarded 70% of the value of all CDM projects despite having already achieved universal electricity coverage. By September 2008, Africa had qualified for only 27 out of 1150 approved projects.
In the absence of a robust strategy for global energy-efficient provision of electricity, developing countries continue to take the line of least resistance, represented by construction of coal-fired power stations. In 2006 China opened new power stations with capacity equivalent to the entire grid of UK and Netherlands combined, 90% fuelled by coal. Much the same is in the pipeline for China’s new friends in Africa. In choosing to finance the Adaptation Fund by a 2% levy on CDM payments, the UNFCCC is placing more faith in the future of the CDM mechanism that is merited by results to date.
China and India
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 the World Bank, China contributes 24% of global carbon dioxide emissions, well ahead of the US with 21%. 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 |
Carbon Citizenship
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.
|
| Solar panels at health centre, London © Peter Armstrong |
The search is on for an underlying philosophy of carbon citizenship. 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, thereby directly addressing the current injustice of climate change.
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Many important development issues are missing from our range of Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps as part of our efforts to improve understanding of the issues faced by developing countries. We receive no funding for the production of our educational resources. Every small contribution helps!
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