The Road to Copenhagen after Poznan in View of the Global Financial Crisis
The Poznan Climate Talks
- WFC Chair Bianca Jagger in an interview with Climate TV
The Poznan climate talks were more about administrative matters to prepare for the decisive climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009 concerning a 2012 Kyoto follow-up protocol than about political content. Therefore, expectations by delegates and observers of significant breakthroughs were limited.
Despite low expectations, many participants still left the two-week talks in Poland in December 2008 with a sense of a mission not quite accomplished.
Many developing countries had arrived at Poznan with the understanding that climate change constitutes a global emergency. They had prepared proposals, and, in the case of countries such as South Africa, China and Mexico, national action plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In contrast, the developed nations failed to set an example by not going beyond the minimal goals agreed upon in Bali in 2007, citing the financial crisis and the spreading recession as reasons for the lack of progress.
This now leaves the some 190 signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with just a few months to negotiate economically viable global solutions in time for Copenhagen.
As a core requirement to generate these solutions, the WFC feels the industrialized nations need to provide immediate leadership with regard to targets, financial mechanisms and technology transfer. Only this kind of commitment can ensure equivalent long-term engagement from developing countries.
Since this goal is ostensibly hard to reach with funds made scarce by the global recession, the key question to be asked in this context may well be not whether we can afford to stop climate change now, but if we can afford not to.
Cost of Climate Change
- Nobel Prize laureate Al Gore supports the 350ppm target
The current level of greenhouse gases is at 381 parts-per-million (ppm). The UNFCCC goal is to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at a non-threatening level. But there is no agreement within the UNFCCC on what that level might be. The WFC concurs with climate experts that the idea of stabilizing carbon levels at 450 ppm by 2050 is dangerously insufficient and supports the call for a 350 ppm target.
Already, cost estimates by the UN and a variety of NGOs for adaptation measures alone range from USD50 billion to USD100 billion a year. However, the UNFCCC’s Adaptation Fund, financed by a two percent share of the proceeds from the trade of carbon credits generated under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), will raise at most USD5 billion per year.
While this already spells serious under-funding, it does not even consider the
potential requirements for humanitarian aid to alleviate the consequences of global
warming, desertification and deforestation such as civil unrest, armed conflict and
large-scale migration due to food and water shortages. Estimates, for example by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), suggest the cost for this could reach up to 8 - 20 percent of global GNP.
Summoning Political Will
- WFC Chair Bianca Jagger and Bill McKibbon at a side event promoting 350ppm
The financial crisis has seen trillions of USD literally evaporate into thin air while
spurning a global recession. Still, the vast majority of decision makers has no doubt that the current crisis will be overcome just as preceding ones.
With governments now investing heavily to revive their economies, climate and
financial experts, including the WFC, emphasize that this is the opportunity to leave the industrial and service revolutions behind and embark on a green revolution, or, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon terms it, a “green new deal.”
In addition, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates a USD22 trillion investment into energy supply and infrastructure will be necessary anyway over the next three decades. If these investments flow into traditional technologies, the UNFCCC estimates emissions would go up by 50 percent. If they flow into green technologies, as the WFC urges, emissions would go down by 50 percent.
However, green policies require more commitment and leadership, specifically by the developed countries, than is currently forthcoming. On the one hand, the European Union, whose much criticized “watered down” December “20/20/20” climate package is still the most specific measure so far enacted (a 20 percent drop in CO2 emissions beneath 1990 levels, a 20 percent rise in energy efficiency, and a 20 percent share of renewables by 2020), falls short of its own Bali ambition of a 40 percent reduction in emissions. It even remains questionable whether the package suffices to implement the 20-20-20 goals for 2020 already agreed at the 2007 Spring Summit.
On the other hand, US president-elect Barack Obama has assumed office on a commitment to cut US emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and to invest USD150 billion in clean technologies over the next decade.
Defining Measures
To prepare the ground for fast and decisive action, the WFC calls on the industrialized countries to finally accept their responsibility as the leading contributors to climate change and supporters of systems that institutionalize North-South imbalances:
- Developed countries should use policy framework changes made
necessary by the financial crisis to reshape the world financial, economic,
and trade systems in favor of climate and economic justice. These should challenge existing policy norms that result in environmental exploitation in developing countries and, thus, allow developed nations to internalize environmental costs. - Climate related money flows should be redirected under the auspices of the UNFCCC in support of emissions reductions by 25 – 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent globally by 2050.
- The Adaptation Fund needs to be provided with more funds by refining the CDM and adding other financing tools as well as up to one percent of
developed countries´ GNP. - Further revenues for mitigation and adaptation should be generated from
international sectors that are currently not regulated under the Kyoto
Protocol, such as the international aviation and shipping sectors. - International emissions allowances should be auctioned off instead of given away for free.
- Developed countries need to scale up cooperation regarding international
intellectual property rights and technology transfer in order to allow
developing countries to embrace a low carbon development path. - To show reciprocal commitment, big emitters from the developing world such as China need to commit themselves if not to economy-wide emissions reductions, then to carbon-intensity targets for specific industries.
- On a national level, policies such as carbon taxes, attracting private
finances, pushing renewable energies, public transportation, energy efficient building, sustainable agriculture, coastal protection and green technologies will help achieve emission targets while creating new industries and jobs.
WFC calls on Participating Parties to agree on Measures now
While many of the required commitments may appear painful today, the
consequences of inaction will be even more painful and expensive in the future.
Since the fates of the some 190 countries discussing a Kyoto follow-up protocol are interwoven with regard to the financial and climate crises, the need to find global solutions for both is overwhelming: Humanity will recover from an economic crisis; it will not survive a destroyed planet.
Thus, the WFC calls for an agreement on clear rules regarding mitigation, adaptation, financing and technology between the negotiating parties within the next six months. It is a matter of survival rather than of choice for Copenhagen and the post 2012 period.
You can also read this article on the magazine Forum Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) International's online platform.
