Post Copenhagen, new Avenues for globally just climate policy
Groenhuis, Brussels 30 January 2010 – report by Sophie Lin Tabak
Panel: Frans Alkemade, KNMI climate researcher + Environment Network GroenLinks, Melanie Müller, North-South commission Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Niels van den Berge, policy advisor climate & environment, Groenlinks; Michael Stimson, Green Party of England and Wales. Moderation: Jan Mertens, senior policy advisor Groen!
Key question: the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December offered the European Union an excellent opportunity to take up its global responsibilities by, apart from greenhouse gas reduction goals, pushing for a generous offer to enable developing countries to cope with climate change. The non-accord and rather passive role of the EU haven’t really helped to keep hopes high. How can we get out of the deadlock – and arrive at a globally just climate policy?
Strategies to be explored:
- Shift of approach from ‘guilt’- to ‘mutual interest’ based
- Reduce green energy costs by increasing green-energy R&D by a factor of 50. Costs: 100 billion or 0.2 & GGDP per year
- Shift focus from CO2-reduction targets to technology transfer by:
- helping developing nations to develop climate change technology, so they can offer the world mutually beneficial technology transfer contracts
- A Chinese-European Platform for technology development, proposed by the EU
Scrooge handing farthings
The round table started with a ban on pessimism by moderator Jan Mertens, who has years of experience in keeping up spirits on the issue. ‘We can’t afford wasting our energy by doing so’, he quoted his compatriot, the Belgian climatologist Van Yperzeel, and, quoting the South-African bishop Desmond Tutu: ‘we are prisoners of hope’. His attempt didn’t quite succeed: Niels van den Berge managed to get a ‘Copenhagen was a total failure’ through, and Michael Stimpson a ‘Sure they don’t pay, the rich countries, they still are as greedy as Scrooge handing farthings to beggars.’
Debt or self-interest?
That being said, roughly two options were on the table. The first: continue the battle for ambitious greenhouse gases reductions. ‘Which is possible, said Van den Berge. ‘In Kyoto we proved what we are capable of. And for a climate deal based on global justice there is growing support. Unfortunately the gap between the rich and the poorest gets wider too.’
Müller: ‘Talking justice, we should differentiate for the poor: emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil should also take reduction responsibilities, whereas countries like Bangla Desh need funds to adapt to floods, draughts and other consequences of climate change immediately.’ Stimson: ‘Indeed the rich countries should pay for the damage they caused.’ Alkemade: ‘I’d rather not talk about debt; avoiding climate change is self interest. The problem is global. If the rich don’t help the poor and emerging economies, they will suffer as well.’
Coalition of Willing
So much for Plan A, which failed in Copenhagen. What if rich countries fail to respond, and ‘deliver’ when meeting in Mexico in November? ‘Al energy should be renewable by 2030’ , stated the Scientific American in November. ‘That won’t happen’, said Van Alkemade, ‘because there simply is no political will. So we should always have a Plan-B.’
Or rather: several Plans-B. One option, proposed by Müller, is a ‘coalition of the willing’, or, as Mertens said, ‘a double strategy’ aim at ambitious targets in Mexico whilst pushing for voluntary agreements’ between countries that are prepared to go ahead. Müller: ‘’China, India and all others who’d like to, could start, and the trategy could be combined with bi-lateral agreements between the ministeries of environment of countries like Germany and in the diveloping world.’
400 new coal plants
Alkemade proposed a different approach: a focus on reductions rather than targets or, in other workd, on a calculation of how the European money is best spent. ‘What happens in countries like China and India is far more important for the level of CO2 than what the EU is prepared to reduce. A promise of 20 or 40 percent makes a difference politically, but in terms of reductions it is hardly noticeable. Countries like China and India on the other hand are developing very fast. They will fulfill their energy needs by using coal, of which there is enough for another 100 years.
Over the last 10 years the number of coal plants in China has has tripled, to around 200, and by 2020 the number will have tripled again. China might not want to pay an extra 20 % for its energy by applying coal gasification or carbon capture and storage. But if the rich countries would offer to cover the difference, it might be prepared to implement the technology.’
Mertens: ‘I agree, but still I think that it is important for the EU to show it is serious about its ambitions as well. That way it can put pressure on the US negotiations and show leadership.’
Müller: ‘I too believe we need global targets as well.’
Alkemade: ‘Sure. But my Plan B might help to lower emissions faster.’
Aids drugs
Q: ‘How would that serve the poorest countries?
Alkemade: ‘ The best way to serve them is, to avoid further climate change.’ Yet he proposed an additional strategy, involving TRIPS, the regulation for intellectual property rights concluded within the World Trade Organisation. ‘Its possibilities haven’t yet been fully exploited. With the aids drugs the developing countries have proved they can negotiate exemptions from paying high duties. In the case of clean energy technology that could work as well.’
Müller: ‘I don’t think it is complicated to bring wind technology to the least developed countries; last year we had a visit from a Nigerian delegation. It was very interested in clean energy technology, but in desperate need of funds.’ Mertens: ‘For technology transfer we already have the Clean Development Mechanism – which enables rich countries to realise part of their carbon reductions in developing countries. The mechanism is, however, hardly used in Africa, and where it is used, it is mostly for projects that would have happened anyway.’
Global Green dialogue
Comment (Øyvind Strømmen): ‘I’d rather bank on a transfer to renewables. Norway has managed to bring its emissions down that way, after 2001 its greenhouse gas emissions have gone down.’
Alkemade: ‘But I don’t see how we can stop China and India using their coal reserves now.’
Other proposals: • Organise, as Greens, a dialogue with developing countries about what they want, through the Global Greens (Inti Suarez) • Look also at small scale initiatives, which can make a difference on the local level (Sven Damman, involved in a local working group on climate change in Brussels) • Use ‘Greenhouse Development Rights [1] as a framework for effort sharing in fighting climate change (Müller) • Help developing countries to develop and market climate technology and know-how. [2]
[2]Proposed by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. Climate change technology development will benefit developing nations directly, the ICTSD states, by providing useful technologies, and bargaining power in negotiation of licensing and collaboration agreements, and indirectly by providing jobs and other spillover effects.To enable developing coutries to gain access to climate change technology, the ICTS proposes a two-pronged strategy:
The foundation is a climate change technology innovation strategy (CCTIS) in which they target climate change research in their universities and research institutions, strengthen innovation infrastructure to support their researchers, claim the economic value of their human capital as intellectual property (IP), and participate as owners in the growing global market for climate change technology. The funding and infrastructure deficit should be financed by international funding initiatives.
Once this foundation is built, mutually beneficial technology transfer contracts, should be aimed at, such as generally technology licences and development collaboration agreements.
[1]The world of Greenhouse Development Rights, in other words, is not merely a world divided between North and South. It is also a world in which both North and South are divided between rich and poor. Which has a very particular implication: developing countries must curb their emissions, but the global consuming class – the elites within the industrialized world and within the developing countries as well – must cover the costs and provide the resources necessary to enable an emergency global transition to a low-carbon economy. More particular, the Greenhouse Development Rights framework lays out an effort-sharing framework that is based upon a straightforward accounting of national responsibility and capacity, an accounting that takes explicit care to define both responsibility and capacity with respect to a “development threshold” that excuses the poor, wherever they may live, from any responsibility to bear the burdens of the climate transition. Link:
