Grist.org
Monday 17 December 2007
The Bali meeting, and the lessons learned.
It's important, this time, to draw conclusions, and to do so publicly. Because Bali has taken us - barely and painfully - over a line and into a new and even more difficult level in the climate game we'll be playing for the rest of our lives. In fact, it's not too much to say that, with the realizations of the last year and their culmination at the 13th Conference of Parties, the game has, finally, belatedly, begun in earnest.
First up, we knew going into Bali that if the old routine continued without variation, we'd really be in trouble. The timing of this meeting alone made this clear. Here we were, after the skeptics, after the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, after Gore's (and the IPCC's) Nobel Prize. We know now how grave the situation is. So it's with great relief that I'm able to say that, judging at least by Bali, the game has indeed changed - except, of course, for the United States.
The most important change was that the G77, the South's negotiating bloc, did not put its unity above all else. This unity was always easy to understand, for the South is weak and the G77's members know all too well that when they don't hang together they hang separately. But it's been clear for years now that the G77's unity can itself be a terrible problem, one that allowed its most retrograde members (the Saudis come to mind) to override the interests of weaker parties (like, for example, the Alliance of Small Island States). So Bali, the COP where China, South Africa, and Brazil stepped forward to announce their willingness to take on binding "commitments or actions," was a real breakthrough, not least because the attached condition - "measurable, reportable and verifiable" assistance from the industrialized to the developing countries - was so widely understood as being both just and inevitable.
Not that we didn't already know that, without southern support for rapid action, there won't be any. But the G77's "flexibility" gave us a different kind of knowledge, concrete knowledge of a deal made and a way forward. While it didn't change everything, it changed a great deal.
Second, there's the matter of money. Money for adaptation. Money for technology transfer. Money for capacity building, and money, most of all, for development, which must go on, albeit in new ways, even in this climate constrained and otherwise strained world. We knew about the money, too, of course. How could we not? But not like we know it today, when the need for rapid global emissions cuts of at least 50 percent has, as Bali made absolutely clear, become the consensus position.
Case in point: Nicolas Stern, who only a few days before the Bush delegation's humiliation at Saturday morning's overtime plenary (see here for a vivid account), heartened the attendees of a small, poorly attended side event by telling them that the rich countries would have to not only make sharp domestic reductions, but would also have to finance parallel reductions in the developing world. This because, as he put it in a published commentary called "now the rich must pay," "even a minimal view of equity demands that the rich countries' reductions should be at least 80% - either made directly or purchased." Moreover, and significantly, Stern went out of his way to note that the needed financing would not result from a regime in which equal per-capita emissions rights were taken as proxies for the necessary rich-world financial commitments. "Contraction and Convergence," he said, is "a very weak equity principle," and something stronger would be needed.
Third, Bali saw the long-overdue encounter between the climate movement and the global justice movement finally pass beyond its scattered preliminaries. These are still early days, of course - for a quick review of how things played out in Bali see this article by Walden Bello - but it's already clear that neither movement will ever be the same. Even mainline climate folks talk often about equity now, and this is new. Moreover, they do so even though they fear its implications, which, frankly, they're right to do: Taken seriously, climate equity has the potential to raise the stakes visibly and dangerously high, so high that both our politicians and our populations would tend to balk. That's all the more reason to admire the ground crossed, because fewer and fewer people within the climate movement can imagine a future without justice, and for the most part they do not wish to try.
Nor will the greens be the only ones transformed by this encounter. Global justice activists will also have to shed old skins for larger, more capacious frameworks and approaches. There's much to say here, but the key is that a "radical" movement - which has, to this point, made its mark by exposing the charade of the Clean Development Mechanism and then going on to oppose all market mechanisms - is now visibly confronting a larger challenge in which mere opposition is not enough. If it would speak effectively for the poor and the vulnerable, then it must find a larger frame. The question now is motion, very rapid motion, and if false solutions are a terrible danger, so too is the illusion that by exposing that danger we have done all we must, all that we are called upon to do.
This too was clear at Bali. Or so at least it seems so in the final statement of the grassroots groups that joined together in a "Solidarity Village" near the Bali conference center. That statement says that, "By climate justice, we understand that countries and sectors that have contributed the most to the climate crisis - the rich countries and transnational corporations of the North - must pay the cost of ensuring that all peoples and future generations can live in a healthy and just world, respecting the ecological limits of the planet."
In any case, global emissions must peak, and very soon. In the face of the astonishing arrogance and duplicity of the Bush administration, the final Bali Action Plan (PDF) did not make this explicitly clear, but there are at least clear references to the Fourth Assessment Report, and they will do. Everyone knows what they mean. If we're to bend the emissions curves as we will need to, we'll have to start soon, and we'll have to create new understandings and institutions as we go. It's not enough to oppose false solutions. We need real ones.
So Bali was perhaps as great a success as could be expected under the shadow of today's Washington. The negotiations are go, and we shall fight another day. And we'll do so within a framework that - by the insistence of the G77! - calls for measurable, verifiable, and monitorable progress on finance and technology. To be sure, this is not a concrete success. Bali did not lay out national obligations, or even a global target, and its outcome is easy to criticize. I could do it myself, no problem. But the truth is that Bali was never going to lay out the details, or even a comprehensive framework. And it did manage to lay down the challenges, to be faced again in the real battle, the one that will be fought in two years time. Bali is all that was possible, and it's enough.
Moreover, we are wiser now - and, hopefully, more ready for the coming rounds. They will be vicious indeed. And I must add that, from here on out, they will not be won with frameworks and good intentions. We now need to step beyond the conditions of possibility of a fair and viable global accord, and spell out the thing itself.
When we get down to cases, we'll have no choice but to face the details of an extremely daunting reality. Fortunately, Bali brought good news on this front as well. Not just the fact that, a few skeptical dead-enders notwithstanding, the threat was taken all around as justifying emergency action. But also that, at least as far as I could tell, people were ready, if not actually eager, to connect the dots.
That, at least, is the conclusion I draw from the warm reception afforded to one of our own graphs, one embedded in a slide deck we prepared for our Greenhouse Development Rights project and presented in a number of side events - one that almost seemed to "go viral" to the point that, by the end of the COP, we were encountering it in other peoples' presentations. We would find ourselves listening as others they displayed, and spoke to, our "subtraction slide." Which looks like this:
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The story here is the story of the future, and it's as simple as it is significant. Think of it as one that involves a little bit of science, little bit of conjecture, and a little bit of arithmetic.
The blue line is the science, which is to say it shows what the science is telling us our global emissions trajectory must be if we want to preserve a reasonable likelihood of keeping the warming below 2°C. It's a global emergency pathway, and there is no denying that it is extremely ambitious - it sees emissions peaking by 2020 and declining 80 percent by mid-century. Yet even this - a pathway that would require an unprecedented global mobilization - implies considerable climate risks. It would leave us with a probability of exceeding 2°C of roughly 20-35 percent, which is vastly better than doing nothing but somehow not tremendously comforting.
The red line is the conjecture, which is to say that it isn't entirely far-fetched to suppose that the developed countries will accept their obligation to make very, very ambitious cuts in the North. Suppose that they all managed to reduce their emissions as quickly and deeply as Al Gore, for example, has called for in the U.S. The red line shows this 90 percent reduction in emissions (below 1990) by 2050, across all of the Annex 1 countries. Thus, it shows us the portion of the available global carbon budget that the North would consume if it were to follow a very ambitious course of emissions reductions.
Now, if the North managed this, what would it imply in the South? Here's where we come to arithmetic. The yellow line shows how much of the limited remaining global carbon budget would be left to be consumed by the South. And it's not much. In fact, the South, even though on average its people are still quite poor, would need to somehow develop along a path that peaks and declines very, very soon indeed: by 2020. And this is precisely the challenge of climate stabilization in this divided world. This is where the tension between climate protection and development comes in. This is where the global climate policy impasse resides.
The truth here is more than inconvenient. It's shocking, even terrifying. Because what it tells us is that we're going to have to get this right, and soon. And that the battle of 2009 will be a doozy. And that there will be no way to win it without both trust and technology, and both of them on a grand scale. And that before we get either we'll need breakthroughs in financing and, of course, burden sharing. And that we'll also need to step outside the climate negotiations to fight for "policy coherence," in which the institutions of trade and investment are brought quickly into line with the imperatives of the climate regime.
And that we'll need justice. For without it there will not be cooperation, or solidarity. And without global solidarity, we will fail.
Bali Climate Deal Marks a Geopolitical Shift
By Peter N. Spotts
The Christian Science Monitor
Monday 17 December 2007
Developing countries flexed their muscles in unprecedented ways at the climate talks, suggesting the old north-south power equation is changing.
Nusa Dua, Indonesia - In a tumultuous, overtime finale that capped two weeks of intense talks, ministers from more than 180 countries headed home this weekend with a framework for negotiating a new global-warming agreement by 2009.
In the process, the talks appear to have sealed a major shift in the geopolitics of climate change.
In part, this change has come about because the US is now more intensely involved in talks than at any other time during the Bush administration, says Artur Runge-Metzger, who heads the European Commission's climate-change programs.
But the big shift has come from developing countries, known collectively as "the G-77 plus China."
Led by China, South Africa, Brazil, and other rainforest-heavy countries, the group is beginning to flex its muscles in ways observers here have not seen before.
In the past, analysts say, industrial countries cut the deals and essentially presented developing countries with the results. No longer. Nowhere was the change more apparent than on the unplanned 13th day of the conference.
At issue was wording on adaptation, technology transfer, and financing. Developing countries offered text changes that the US had opposed throughout the talks on the floor of the final plenary session.
When the head of the US negotiating team, Paula Dobriansky, took the floor, she said the US couldn't support the change. Since decisions here must be made by consensus, it looked as if the US would derail the process.
Developing countries were already fuming that, due to US insistence, the road map was confining scientific recommendations on necessary emission cuts by industrial countries to a footnote.
They also took umbrage at a comment made by a senior member of the US delegation at a press briefing Wednesday. James Connaughton, head of the President's Council on Environmental Quality, told reporters that "the US will lead" on global climate change, "but leadership requires that others fall in line and follow."
Dr. Dobriansky's "no" met with a chorus of boos. Other developing countries took the floor to support the change and roundly criticize the US.
South Africa said that the US position "was most unwelcome and without any basis." Then Kevin Conrad, who headed Papua-New Guinea's delegation, rose and turned Mr. Connaughton's comment on its head.
"We seek your leadership," he said. "But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way."
Meanwhile, Europe threw its support behind the change. Japan remained noncommittal. Canada and Australia, which ratified the Kyoto treaty earlier this month, sat silent. The last three had supported the US position for much of the talks.
Confronted with the prospect of overwhelming isolation, Dobriansky relented, saying, "We will join the consensus."
Many longtime observers say it was the most stunning reversal they had ever seen at one of these meetings. And it showed that the old north-south divide at climate talks may be eroding, given the alliance between Europe and the G-77 plus China on the issue.
"They caved!" said an astonished Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group, based in Washington. He suggests that in the end, the White House had too much to lose. A US-triggered collapse of talks here would likely have led European countries and others to boycott President Bush's Major Economies Meetings next year, Mr. Clapp says. If that were to fail, he continues, the administration risked handing Democratic candidates a powerful twofold criticism ahead of the 2008 elections: They could claim that Republicans stymied the UN process and that the president's own efforts had failed.
Bargaining on Emission Cuts
Hard bargaining over the past two weeks, as well as the last-minute theatrics, point to the tough bargaining that lies ahead. The aim is to approve a new agreement at talks in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009 and get enough countries to ratify it so it can take over in 2013, when the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period expires.
The road map also sets out guidelines for working on issues dear to developing countries - adaptation, transfer of technologies that will help their economies grow without loading up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and, finally, the setting up of financial arrangements to help pay for both of these. And key for industrial countries, the road map aims to look for ways to engage developing countries more fully in greenhouse-gas mitigation efforts.
But it emphasizes, albeit in a footnote, the magnitude of the challenge. According to the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in order to hold global warming to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, industrial countries must make a downpayment by reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Developing countries will have to achieve a substantial but unquantified "deviation" from their business-as-usual emissions by then as well. To stay on track, industrial-country emissions will have to fall by between 80 and 95 percent by 2050. Developing countries will have to continue to ramp up their emission-reduction efforts during the same period.
The US had strongly objected to including those numbers in the road map's nonbinding preamble. As a compromise, a footnote refers to the volumes and page numbers where these figures appear in the IPCC reports.
Tackling Adaptation Early On
Since 2000, global-emission rates have outstripped all but the highest IPCC projections. Some global-warming effects are showing up earlier than models have projected. And energy demand, particularly in developing countries, is burgeoning.
As negotiators begin their work on a new agreement, the order in which they tackle issues will be important, says Yvo de Boer, who heads the office overseeing the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the first year, he says, it might be most useful to focus on adaptation and on what countries can do "from a technical point of view," to reduce emissions. "Once you know what you can do, in the second year you can focus on the technology you need to make that happen and the money that you are going to need to pay for the technology."
Putting the first-year focus on adaptation and mitigation, he continues, allows a new US president to enter the process with a better idea of what's possible as long as the technology and financing are available. Setting emission targets would cap the process.
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