Filed under : Scitizen >> Earth & Environment >> Climate Change >> Look Under the Hood of the Climate Negotiations
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climate change negotiations
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Look Under the Hood of the Climate Negotiations
12 Oct, 2009 01:36 pm
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Reduce text sizeThe two-week global warming negotiations in Bangkok, Thailand are just wrapping up. There are five key elements to the Copenhagen Agreement.
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1) Strong leadership from developed countries with firm and aggressive emissions reductions targets in the near-term (e.g., 2020 and 2030) and strong signals that they will significantly reduce emissions in the medium-term (e.g., 2050).
2) Willingness of developing countries to undertake significant emissions reductions on their own that tangibly reduce the growth of their emissions in the near-term (e.g., to 2020) and lay the foundation for even deeper cuts in the medium-term.
3) Turning the corner on efforts to combat global deforestation
4) Properly designed and performance-based incentives from developed countries to encourage even greater developing country emissions reductions.
5) Support for adaptation to the impacts of climate change in the least vulnerable countries
Those five elements are the tires, the engine, the axle, and the frame. The car won't get you from point A to point B if all of those aren't working. The ride is smoother if they are all working together in a coordinated way and are well-tuned, but it can still get you from point A to B without being fine tuned. And it would make your trip a little nicer if the interior was in good condition and you wouldn't look like an outcast if your car had a good paint job. The exterior and interior aren't necessary to get you from point A to B, but they make the ride a little nicer. (Sorry for the car metaphors, but think of the Copenhagen Agreement as a plug-in hybrid and you'll follow my analogy for this post.)
So how does the 'Copenhagen Car' (i.e., the Copenhagen Agreement) look after this two week negotiation session? Is it running on fumes, running but with some rattles, or looking all nice and shiny?
It is running, but it has a number of rattles and dents. I'm still convinced that they can be tuned to make the car operate better but you can't hide the fact that there are rattles and the car looks a little dinged up. But when you actually look at the parts they are actually all in the car.
So let's look at the parts of the car (what is there to make it run).
Developed country targets:
Almost all developed countries have put forward more aggressive targets as a part of their commitment to continue to lead (as I discussed ). Recently the new Japanese government increased their target proposal and this had a positive impact on the negotiations in Bangkok. And just yesterday, the Government of Norway increased their target to 40% below 1990 levels in 2020 if there is an international agreement making them the country with the deepest target. This also gave a little last minute boost to the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. The largest unknown on this part of the car is the US Senate as I'll discuss under the rattle portion.
Developing country emissions reductions:
All the major emerging economies have provided a strong hint of the types of actions that they'll undertake to curb their global warming pollution (as I've discussed here). And during the Bangkok negotiations it became clear that the government of Indonesia had proposed to curb their global emissions, largely through deforestation reduction efforts.
As an aside I ran into a friend in the South Korean government and he was with his colleague from the South Korean President's office that is in charge of determining the final target that the government will commit to (as I discussed here). My friend jokingly told me to tell his colleague what number I wanted. Of course I told him the most aggressive target was the best. Even though he was joking, the fact that they are so close to taking on such a target is a pretty impressive shift from just a few years ago.
Efforts to support developing countries in taking further steps - the incentives & investments part of the equation:
Largely unnoticed, the US government took some steps forward by submitting a finance proposal. It made some significant moves in between the developing country negotiation position and that of the other developed countries. There are a lot more details that need to be fleshed out on this proposal but it provided a positive push to establish a credible and robust financing framework. A framework that will meet the needs of developing countries, ensure that developed countries have trust in the system so they'll financially support it in a meaningful way, and ensure that every dollar of investment is achieving the greatest reduction in global warming pollution and improvement in the ability for countries to adapt to climate change. And they made a small but positive proposal on technology which would help developing countries better access and deploy clean energy. More will be needed on the technology front as this is a small step forward, but a positive one nonetheless.
Many of us and the developing countries had been advocating that the US provide more clarity on the technology and finance piece of the Copenhagen so this is a welcome step forward. Now we'll just need to fill those frameworks with more detail and the financial support to make them truly effective. But the finance is shaping up to be an end game portion of the agreement (after the Senate has given the US negotiators the tools that were in the House climate bill as I discussed here).
And just the other day there was another high-powered group calling for the US to support efforts for developing countries to cut there global warming pollution from deforestation (as you can see here). So there is some very positive momentum behind our efforts to address deforestation and to provide the necessary investment.
Now lets look at the rattles and dents in the "car".
Lack of US Senate action:
Achieving strong commitments in Copenhagen requires leadership from the US by capping its global warming pollution. For eight long and painful years the international process waited for the US to lead. Now is the time! That action alone will have a large impact on reducing the rattles in the 'car'. The process took the next step forward with the release of the "clean energy jobs bill" released last week (as we discussed ).
US Proposal for Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification:
Despite the “heat” surrounding the US proposal on monitoring, reporting, and verification there are elements of it that will legitimately improve the actual environmental outcome of the international agreement (as I discussed here). Ensuring that this leads to a strong international agreement that provides robust assurance that a country will live up to their objectives will require filling in some more detail on the undefined portions over the next couple of months. And there are a lot of rattles around this proposal so the US will have to readjust their strategy just a bit. But remember this is a negotiation so some of the public reaction is also posturing.
There is a lot more explaining on the implications of this proposal and acceptance of what it means for the international agreement. The rhetoric around the implications is pretty strong at this stage, so let's hope both sides move a bit more.
Negotiation, negotiation, negotiation:
This is probably the biggest rattle.As I mentioned the other day, this is first and foremost a negotiation. Granted it is the most important negotiation that any country has undertaken as the impacts of global warming will impact us in profound ways. The atmosphere in the formal portions of the negotiations is tense with any small misstep making other countries take two steps back. That dynamic can change quickly and it must!
Tuning the car and taking out the dents can still be accomplished in order to secure a strong international agreement to address global warming. The parts of the car are there. Some are lying on the ground and need to be secured into place with the right bolt. Others are there, but they need a little tightening and grease. And it definitely needs a new paint job afterwards.
One important thing needs to be done by all leaders around the world -¦look in your driveway and decide if you like how your car is running and how it looks. What is it that you are offering as a part of the effort to get a strong global agreement? And then ask yourself, are you going to be the mechanic and find the ways to tune the car? Are you going to find the tools to fix it? They are in your hands and as we found out from the IEA this week, the benefits of taking action far outweigh the costs of action so this is one repair that will pay for itself.
World leaders you decide what road we head on from here. But remember it isn't just your car that you are responsible for. You are also responsible for the future of your country, your children's children, and so many other things that we all care deeply about.
There are a lot of people around the world that will support you if you get this car running properly!
Originally published on Global Warming is Real
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Although apparently brief, the suspension of the Copenhagen climate conference after a walkout by the Group of 77 developing countries confirms that the talks are as much about money as about healing the world's climate. It's not just that the G77 wants the Kyoto limits on the emissions of developed countries enforced, while leaving their own emissions uncapped; it also wants the developed world to kick in sizable sums--much bigger than the 2.4 billion Euros per year offered by the EU--to cover the improvements in energy efficiency and renewable energy that would enable them to tackle the growth of their own emissions. There's a solid argument there, though it is not the guilt-based logic of "carbon debt" that I explored a few weeks ago.
In spite of the recent weeks of roller coaster-like expectations for a positive outcome from the COP15 climate conference that got underway Monday, the sense of urgency is keenly felt here at the Bella Center, home of the climate negotiations and exhibitions for dozens of NGO's and observer organizations.
Forget 80% by 2050 and 17% by 2020. Time to stop fixating on 450 ppm vs 350 ppm. As UN climate talks kick off today in Copenhagen, Denmark, there's only one number really worth the world's attention: $10.5 trillion. That's the additional investment required between now and 2030 to put the world's energy system on a lower-carbon path, according to the world energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.
I'll discuss the willingness of developing countries to undertake significant emissions reductions on their own that tangibly reduce the growth of their emissions in the near-term (e.g., to 2020) and lay the foundation for even deeper cuts in the medium-term.
Have you heard that we're getting new neighbors? Demographers expect that the number of people living on earth - now about 6.8 billion - will grow to between 8 and 11 billion by 2050. Whether population tops out at the high or the low end of those projections will have a huge impact on climate change. So population control is again claiming a place on the environmental agenda.
Last Thursday, an editorial in the Wall St. Journal referred to a paper in the latest issue of Science entitled, "Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error", which concludes that the manner in which the greenhouse gas impacts of biofuels are currently assessed fails to account for significant emissions that occur outside the envelope normally drawn around an ethanol or biodiesel plant and the farms that supply it with feedstock. And if that omission weren't glaring enough, I ran across another instance in which regulators appear to be turning a blind eye to the full impact of another popular option for addressing climate change, electric vehicles.
Even "moderate" cuts in greenhouse gas emissions may be sufficient to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, says new MIT study. But only if those moderate cuts start now, not in 2020, where many emissions targets take initial aim. Without swift action, even more aggressive cuts may not be enough to stop extreme climate disruption.
I feel like an idiot for not seeing this one coming from either China or India. It's so painfully obvious, in hindsight, that I have to wonder how anyone who follows energy and environmental issues closely could have failed to predict it. What am I babbling about? China is now saying that the endlessly discussed target of keeping global warming below 2°C is not such a big deal.
Yvo de Boer closes Bonn talks with stark warning that the current pace of the Copenhagen negotiations remains far too slow.
A recent survey found that there was a significant interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but that investment decisions were made without close attention in the emissions trading scheme market. Rather, investment decisions were guided by expectations about the long term development of overall energy costs.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported late last week that research by Australian National University scientist Andrew Macintosh indicates that, based on most industrialized nations' stated mid-term commitments, limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius simply "won't work."
Researchers working on a joint World Agroforestry Centre-United Nations Environment Programme project suggest that integrating agroforestry in farming systems on a massive scale would create a vital reservoir for carbon storage. No less than a billion hectares of developing country farmland is suitable for conversion to carbon agroforestry projects, according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates.
An important recent paper looked at the links between economic prosperity and carbon footprint.[1] It compared the average emissions per head in 73 different countries at all different stages in development. Unsurprisingly, it showed that richer countries have much higher greenhouse gas outputs. The interesting and somewhat depressing finding is that a country with 10% higher GDP per head than another will generally have emissions about 8% higher. The correlation is strong - very few countries diverge much from the norm for their level of income.
Proposals to reduce global warming through giant engineering projects or so-called geoengineering abound. Almost all are in the idea stage. But even if they were ready to deploy today, they would be dangerous for the planet, counterproductive for our energy future and unfair to the public.
Yesterday the International Energy Agency (IEA) released their much anticipated (and previously leaked) World Energy Outlook 2008.
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| [1] | Comment by Climate Change
- 12 Oct, 2009 04:29 pm OK, this shows the guidelines countries of the world must meet to prevent dangerous climate change. But how are we actually going to achieve this? It seems like we have discussed the issue of what must be done a thousand times, but these are just numbers on paper. Actions must be taken to achieve them. |
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| [2] | Comment by Red Craig
- 12 Oct, 2009 08:09 pm Climate Change, what you say is indisputably true, but not helpful. On your own web page the only actions you recommend are to (1) demand that the Prime Minister persuades more world leaders to go to Copenhagen and that he ensures the talks deliver a fair and safe deal for the poorest people and (2) send money to your own organization. To save the planet's habitability will take much more than demanding more attendance at conferences and supporting action groups. The world has to convert all its fossil-fired power plants to other energy sources, reduce motor-fuel consumption to a fraction of its current rate, and impose strict energy-conservation standards on buildings and industrial facilities. The dilemma we face is that while the whole world's future depends on effective action, no individual has an incentive to compromise his lifestyle aspirations or to pay out of pocket for climate-change avoidance. The same is true for individual countries. What we expect from Copenhagen is another set of voluntary targets which will result in more symbolic gestures. As the author of the article implicitly suggests, the challenge is to achieve enforceable standards. Before we write emails to politicians and donate to action groups, we first should decide what we're willing to give up. |
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