Le Monde
Wednesday 12 December 2007
On Tuesday, December 11, two senators, Socialist Claude Saunier and the UMP's Pierre Laffitte, members of the Parliamentary Office of Scientific Choices and Techniques, made public a report devoted to the collapse of biodiversity. The authors talk about a coming "biological shock," comparable to the "climate shock."
"The biodiversity of ecosystems, a support for humanity's development, is heading for a nosedive," they note. They present the figures scientists advance: for two centuries, the rate of species extinction has been ten to a hundred times higher than the natural rate. Overfishing, forest exploitation, the transformation of natural into urban regions, the introduction of invasive species and climate change figure among the principal causes of the phenomenon.
According to these elected officials, this issue was inadequately treated by the Environment Roundtable [la Grenelle de l'environment]. They propose "to go further" and formulate recommendations. The most immediate of these concerns biofuels: Messrs. Saunier and Laffitte demand a European moratorium on the development of those crops (the European goal is to incorporate 5.75% biofuels into gas and diesel between now and 2012).
Many studies have recently warned against the perverse effects - notably on biodiversity - of the development of these petroleum substitutes.
Contentious Question
"The spread of palm oil plantations in recent years - their oil intended as biofuel exports - should alarm us, all the more so as they are situated in areas of high biodiversity concentration," write the senators.
The biofuels question was one of the most contentious during the Environmental Roundtable. The government followed the demands of farmers and the French objective (7% incorporation between now and 2010, 10% from now to 2015) was not modified.
The senators deplore that the "environmental services" rendered by biodiversity - pollination, pollution filtration, flood prevention - were never taken into account in the economic calculations. They recommend the creation of a "compensation market for the destruction of natural spaces," where units of biodiversity would play the same role as tons of CO2 on the carbon market.
With respect to GMO, the senators note that they are "not conducive to the maintenance of biodiversity," but they say they are in favor of the development of drought-resistant transgenic plants.
Climate, Difficult Planetary Management
By Philippe Martin
Libération
Monday 10 December 2007
The climate is the archetype of what economists call a global public good. Consequently, it seems logical a priori that the management of this public good should take place at a planetary level, and that is, in fact, the point of departure for the Bali conference on climate change.
To a global problem, a global solution. In theory, that solution would occur through a global agreement to reduce CO2 emissions, specifically with a global tax on those emissions or other instruments - also established at a global level - such as a pollution-rights market like the one that exists in Europe. The problem with a "global" negotiation is that while 20 countries (the rich countries and a few big emerging countries, specifically Russia, China and India) are the source of 80% of emissions, the victims will be concentrated in the poorest countries.
Consequently, climate change represents a failure of market mechanisms at the planetary level, since those who emit CO2 are not the ones who will "pay." The other problem is that, in the absence of a binding global institutional body, it's in everyone's individual best interests for someone else to make the emission-reduction effort. The inaction by the United States and the big emerging countries, and even Europe's mixed results, can be explained by this problem specific to global public goods. If a tax or any other binding reduction instrument is impossible at a world level - what economists call a first line solution - what would a second line solution look like? What can be done to motivate the countries in the "Kyoto space," those who have implemented instruments to decrease their emissions, to do more and what to spur the other countries to emit less CO2?
One possible instrument is the establishment of a tax deducted at Europe's borders on the CO2 content of imports from countries outside the Kyoto space. That was proposed by the French government as a "border adjustment mechanism." Such a tax would have both a climatic and an economic objective. By increasing emitting countries' cost of their CO2 emissions, it would motivate them to reduce those emissions and indirectly to join the Kyoto space. Increasing the cost of emissions and reducing their absolute level this way should be the instrument's principle objective.
The second is to fight what Nicolas Sarkozy calls the environmental dumping practiced by countries not committed to the fight against global warming. That's the competitiveness argument. Studies suggest, however, that - with the exception of one or two sectors - outsourcing is not linked to differences in environmental regulation. If this tax has an ecological, rather than an economic, legitimacy, it is to approach the "true" price for CO2 emissions at a global level. Yet, it's the competitiveness argument that's always advanced. It carries the seeds of a - partly intentional - confusion between a CO2 tax at the borders and protectionism against low-salary emerging countries, China in particular. Consequently, there is legitimate mistrust about this tax, both from European countries opposed to protectionism - with the United Kingdom in the lead - and from emerging countries that see it as a means to curb both their exports and their development. They rightly note that, collectively, rich countries account for 70% of the CO2 emitted since the beginning of the industrial revolution. China has certainly overtaken the United States and become the biggest CO2 emitter today, but one American still emits five times more CO2 than one Chinese. Even if it is clear that the climate change problem cannot be solved without the involvement of the big emerging countries, the latter do not want their exports, and consequently their development, to be the principal victims of our prior mode of development. To avoid the dangerous confusion between an environmental tax and protectionism, proposals exist; for example, to transfer the income from these border taxes to the countries taxed to finance clean carbon technologies, or to reduce tariffs on other imports from those countries. If the CO2 border tax finds no key defenders other than industrial lobbies and protectionists, one can be sure it will never be implemented.
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Philippe Martin is a professor at the Université Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne and a researcher at the Center for Socio-Economic Teaching, Research, and Analysis (Ceras-CNRS).
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