Sergio Abranches

Among the many reasons for concern about the near future of the global economy, markets are looking at food price inflation in China as a factor that might increase the likelihood of a world recession.

The world has actually been under a global food price inflation for a few years, mainly due to a sequence of extreme climate events affecting grain production almost everywhere: in China; in several Asian and African countries where the monsoon regime has been disruptive; in the U.S. and Canada; in Australia; in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Over the last three years, most of these countries have gone through severe droughts and floods, extreme winters and summers.

Read more here: National Geographic The Great Energy Challenge

Sergio Abranches

Lack of a Federal climate bill in the U.S. is likely to jeopardize Cancun’s climate talks.

In an interview with ClimateWire, U.S. chief climate negotiator Todd Stern said the Obama administration is “not backing away” from its Copenhagen pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels in the coming decade and more than 80 percent by mid-century. This is good news, but not enough to push Cancun’s climate talks beyond the Copenhagen Accord.

Stern has also tried to ease concerns that Obama’s failure to get Congress to vote an energy and climate legislation would impair negotiations at COP16, in Cancun.

“People who frame this all around whether there is U.S. legislation or not, that if there’s legislation we’re in the end zone … I don’t believe that. It’s not the magic bullet, and it’s also not the thing that sinks the ship.”

The above statement amounts to nothing more than good old diplomatic damage management. He knows that the without a legally binding domestic climate program the U.S. will hardly be able to play an effective role on global climate talks. Moreover, the lack of a clear political decision by the U.S. Congress on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation is likely to contribute to a deadlock in Cancun. A final global deal will probably be delayed for at least one year more.

Let’s talk plain politics: it is not possible for the U.S. to play a leading and decisive role on global climate politics without having in place a clear and legally binding domestic portfolio of actions on climate change. Every player needs a bill at home to back its pledges at the international level.

A recent BASIC meeting, in Rio de Janeiro, has showed that the major emerging economies are rethinking the nature and scope of their responsibilities regarding global climate change. They seem more prepared to move forward and turn most of the Copenhagen commitments into institutionalized global policies, provided the U.S. shows more concrete and effective commitments.

The Brazilian government remains the major exception today. It opposes any change of attitude from the BASIC countries. But India, South Africa and China are already more willing to admit the fact that they will have to assume more responsibilities in the near future. It is, however, unlikely that they’ll accept any change in the status quo, before the U.S. Presidency and Congress are able to give legal form to the country’s commitments in the Copenhagen Accord and signal they’re willing to go beyond that in the future.

Writing internationally assumed commitments into law will turn them into domestic obligations, and give them full credibility. An international protocol, like the Kyoto Protocol, without legal domestic backing means close to nothing.

Stern knows that. And because he knows it, after making the usual disclaim, he acknowledged that

“The fact that we don’t have it [the legislation] right now will certainly affect the atmospherics of the negotiations, but the fundamentals of it aren’t different. (…) The President has made it perfectly clear that he’s committed to energy and climate legislation, and we will press on.”

This means that the U.S. will arrive in Cancun with nothing more than Obama’s word that he’ll keep fighting for energy and climate legislation. Nothing very different from what has happened in Copenhagen, at COP15. As several negotiators have told Climate Wire they are compelled to trust President Obama’s word. But the fact remains that the U.S. will not have moved one single bit ahead after Copenhagen. On the contrary, in Copenhagen there was hope that the U.S. federal climate legislation would be forthcoming soon in 2010. Now it failed to pass, and the prospects for another try are unclear so far. The next move on climate legislation in the U.S. will very much depend on the results of midterm elections, and right now the outlook for the government’s majority is rather bleak.

The setback for climate legislation in the U.S. and Brazil’s refusal to support other BASIC country’s proposals for a change in the terms of negotiation will likely block any real progress in Cancun. If nothing changes until the end of November, COP16 is likely to be one more of an already long list of deadlocked meetings of the parties to the Climate Convention. That’s what diplomats and observers from Brazil, China and India are saying.

The U.S. is the key to unlock global climate talks. If Washington moves, than it is likely that the BASIC countries will move, and the probability of a legally binding accord increases significantly. The Brazilian government would have to follow suit independently of the outcome of the October presidential election. The Chinese government, already showing more propensity to change than the Brazilian, would not be able to resist the pressure. India and South Africa are already persuaded they’ll have to move forward.

To make it short and blunt: no U.S. climate bill, no global climate deal.

Sergio Abranches

The preparatory Climate Change meeting in Bonn has closed showing small progress. It should be clear by now that UNFCCC will never lead to a “grand accord”.

The best way possible is to build upon the Copenhagen Accord: targets and actions already filed represent 86% of total global carbon emissions. The sum total is still not enough. But it is far more than the Kyoto Protocol will ever be able to deliver. The task, now, should be to operationalise the Accord, design a mechanism to review the portfolio of national actions every two years, put REDD and the fast-track finance in place, and start working towards the long-term fund.

Many observers say that the major outcome from the Bonn preparatory talks was the climate of mutual engagement and trust that marked the meeting in spite of the rifts that remained. Yvo de Boer said that “countries started talking to each other rather than at each other”.

But the most significant political signal of the meeting was the veto imposed by Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and a few other oil-producing countries to the request by small island states for an update on the latest scientific evidence for global warming. The request was based on the fact that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not due to complete its fifth assessment until 2014 and doubts have been cast on some elements of its fourth assessment, published in 2007. It seems only sensible that  an update of all solid peer-reviewed scientific work should be consolidated under the IPCC umbrella to guide the climate negotiations. (See Mood thaws on climate change).

As Christiana Figueres has said a global, binding, meaningful agreement will probably never be possible within the confines of the UNFCCC. The only viable outcome would be an ongoing, always provisional, agreement to be revised and improved over the years ahead. The best we can hope is always a compromise that “would not meet all needs of everyone but at least meet the basic needs of everyone.”

A new look at the Copenhagen Accord would show that, in spite of all the frustration it brought against the backdrop of inflated expectations, it is the best outcome we’ve ever had from any global climate negotiation since the Rio ’92 meeting. To enforce the targets and actions all major carbon emitters have filed, and the commitments the Accord contains would be a much more concrete and definitive step, than keep investing on the unending phrase by phrase negotiation that would hardly lead to anything better than the Accord we already have.

Sergio Abranches

We should not expect too much from the first climate talks after Copenhagen, now taking place in Bonn. There are still some political obstacles to tackle before we can get any real further progress.Copenhagen was marked by excessive expectations and curtailed by the plot of a small group of nations to impose an agreement they had previously negotiated behind the curtains. The inflation of expectations has led to an almost general disregard for what has been effectively gained in Copenhagen. It has also made invisible to many some of the virtues of the Copenhagen Accord. The whole story of the “Danish document” has generated a crisis of confidence since the beginning of the talks. The lack of trust among the parties has irremediably contaminated the climate for climate change negotiations.

Copenhagen was rescued from oblivion by the massive amount of nations associating themselves to its terms and filing their mitigation actions. The Accord seemed to have been abandoned as a failed attempt, since the COP15 plenary only took note of it. But it could no longer be ignored after 125 nations have associated to it and 75 have registered their national mitigation actions/targets. The Accord has become the most important official portfolio of national mitigation actions, covering around 80% of global carbon emissions.

Altogether the mitigation actions in this portfolio fall short of what is recommended by the best science available. They are, however, a political breakthrough, a turning point after more than a decade of deadlock. All the relevant countries that have systematically refused to internationally commit themselves to mitigation targets have registered their actions under the Copenhagen Accord. Particularly relevant was the decision by the USA, China, India and Brazil to register their national actions. They were the decisive players at the final moments leading to the Accord. In other words, the stronger veto players that have contributed to a long sequence of deadlocked talks have become the key leadership to close the deal. And let’s not forget, they are full members at the top of the global high-carbon club.

There were also a few setbacks after Copenhagen. First, until now President Obama has failed to obtain a climate change law from Congress. This means that  actions the U.S. has filed under the Copenhagen Accord lack a legal domestic foundation. Secondly, the Brazilian government is delaying the adoption of enabling legislation that would allow the Federal climate change law to be properly enforced. Brazilian actions registered under the Copenhagen Accord also lack the necessary legal domestic foundation to be actually implemented. The government is additionally delaying the country’s emissions report. Without an updated inventory of emissions it is almost impossible to design effective sectoral and corporate policies to reduce emissions. Thirdly, China an India keep making contradictory political statements regarding global climate negotiations. At times it seems they are proposing to throw the Copenhagen Accord into history’s wastebasket. At other times it seems they are willing to move ahead considering what has been decided in Copenhagen as a done deal. The bright side is that both countries have adopted several important policy steps that will enable them to meet the targets they’ve registered under the Accord, if not to go beyond them. Among the BASIC nations, Brazil is clearly the laggard.

There has also been some progress on specific issues after Copenhagen. A case in point is REDD. After the Oslo talks we may be just a few steps from closing a deal on its initial architecture. To have the deal done should be one of the priorities in Cancún. But make no mistake, under the Climate Convention, nothing is closed until everything is closed.

For this year’s climate talks to succeed two major steps should be taken. On the one side, developed countries should take action to start the fast-track finance flow they’ve approved in Copenhagen. This is a sine qua non to restore confidence among the partners of the Copenhagen Accord, as well as among the Parties to the Climate Convention. It goes far beyond the money issue. It is about doing what has been agreed upon without further ado.  A good opportunity to do that would be the G20 Summit in Toronto, at the end of this month.

On the other side, organized civil society and political environmental organizations should concentrate efforts to ensure progress on domestic grounds. The priority should be to try to speed up climate change legislation in the U.S. and Brazil. European civil society should make every effort to see that their respective countries give support to Connie Hedegaard’s proposal for an unilateral upgrading of the European Union emissions reduction target. Such a move would also very much help confidence building among the relevant parties to the climate talks.

These initiatives would make a relevant and sufficient agenda for 2010. The “post-Cancún” challenge would be to create the necessary and sufficient political and diplomatic conditions for a binding global climate change agreement, embracing the Copenhagen Accord and expanding upon it. This task depends on these incremental advancements in 2010.

To embrace the Copenhagen Accord would mean to incorporate into the LCA working group proposal its architecture of annexes containing the portfolio of national actions. The path inaugurated by the Copenhagen Accord, “from domestic grounds to the multilateral forum” is far more conducive to a global agreement than the traditional UN path “from the multilateral forum to domestic grounds”. In other words, the “bottom up” strategy of the Copenhagen Accord is better than the “unanimous assembly of nations” approach of the Climate Convention. The idea that the decision by unanimity in the plenary of the Convention is the most democratic way is plainly wrong. It is simply the best way to empower intransigent minor veto players to block any meaningful progress desired by a large majority.

The endeavor to progressively adjust the portfolio of national actions to the necessary scientific requirements will more likely be accomplished between 2012-2015. This is probably the most friendly way to go in the political field. The pending political requirement is the effective implementation of the Copenhagen decisions. What the governing leaders have agreed last December must hold, otherwise no deal will be trusted. Political decisions need some maturing time before they can be adjusted to scientific needs. To try to subordinate politics to science is a shortcut to failure. The greatest progress we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the transformation of deniers imposing cross-cutting vetoes, into negotiators proposing ways to get out of the deadlock. Important mature and emerging powers, such as the United States, China, India and Brazil, have moved from denial to agreement even if yet a reluctant, conditional agreement. It really doesn’t matter. The real progress was to stop saying only “nay” and to start saying a few decisive “yea”. This was the essential gain in Copenhagen. Now, this “yea” has to be translated into domestic legislation and policy. Laws have yet to be enforced, policies have to yield effective, measurable actions. Decisions made in Copenhagen should be implemented immediately. This is the case of the fast-track short-term finance agreed upon last December.

Only after going through these preliminary steps can we start thinking about improvements upon what was accomplished in Copenhagen, taking further action and committing to higher targets.

Sergio Abranches

Climate-related risks and greening the supply-chain are common features of most presentations about sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Sometimes they are presented as “trends” or future threats. But they are not something that will happen in the future. They are already part of the daily affairs of most companies. And they are inseparable from each other.

Climate-related risks are a matter of present concern to every major insurance company (here, here and here) and to an increasing number of institutional investors. Green procurement is a key competitive factor today (here). Not a trend for tomorrow. Companies are looking deep into their supply chains not because of their view of the future, but because of present dangers to their business. They know they have to reduce their carbon footprint. WallMart Nike and Timberland banned beef and leather produced in the Amazon because of present consumers reaction to evidence that their procurement behavior was contributing to deforestation. Every company will have to account for GHG emissions caused by their demand for products and services as well as for the impact of what they sell on consumers’ carbon footprint. The time of the company that is clean and green indoors, but pays no attention to what it buys and to what happens to the goods it sells is over.

Going green is not easy. This is now a stock phrase. But, no matter whether easy or hard, going green has become a necessary and urgent step to every industry. To some industries, how to go green has a straightforward answer. It may be hard, but the knowledge base already exists. It will require leadership from the top; getting the right response from the corporate citizenry; better integration between procurement and finance; finding qualified people to lead changes; develop capabilities along the supply-chain.

Some industries still find greening their services a difficult and elusive task (here). On a recent roundtable at Cornell’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration, participants found that green standards for the industry are unclear and consumer’s views inconsistent. Hotels are reluctant to implement sustainable systems although they recognize the need to green their operations. It is a bit surprising to read that. From the standpoint of hotels’ supply-chains there are plenty of visible points where greening is possible and straightforward.

To anyone having a long view on what is happening now and of probable future trends, climate change-related risks are no longer a matter of doubt or probabilities. Probabilities are so high, that one can’t simply design a plausible “no climate change scenario”.  The long view tells us that the economy is already reshaping itself responding both to structural crises and risk-driven change. Greening the supply-chain is part of the present drivers of competition and innovative behavior. It is no longer a feature of future scenarios. Future scenarios are about things that go beyond a green supply-chain.

The ongoing process of corporate greening is at its beginning, but it is already visible. It is very likely one of the paramount factors that may lead to a new long-cycle of investment and economic growth, within less than a decade. Just think for a moment about the enormous dynamic push of leading companies at the top of the productive and commercial sectors greening their supply-chain. This movement forces all suppliers of major companies to also green their own supply-chains, if they want to stay in the economy’s major clusters. And their suppliers will have to follow suit for the same reason, and so on. The demand for green or low-carbon supplies where there are none, becomes an irresistible incentive to innovative startups. This movement goes from the global economic clusters, to the national ones, and to the sub-national ones.

There are already systemic movements visible in the global economy. They point to emerging processes and behaviors that will effectively reshape the corporate environment. Present production and consumption patterns that still appear to be dominant will inexorably be replaced. We are already riding the giant waves of a scientific, technological and behavioral revolution in every field of human activity. Overlooking these movements is accepting a present danger, not disregarding a possible future threat.

Now that China and India have formally adhered to the Copenhagen Accord, climate diplomacy has two different ways to go. And they’re not comparable, nor totally compatible.

Sergio Abranches

The Copenhagen Accord has become the most representative global climate political agreement since the Framework Convention on Climate Change, that entered into force on 21, March, 1994. It now has the formal adhesion of more than 100 countries, including all large carbon emitters of the world, except Russia, amounting to more than 80% of global GHG emissions. But it has no legal force. It depends entirely on the signatories’ willingness to hold to their promised emissions reductions.

The convention is, as its name says, a legal framework, not an operational treaty. The legal operational instrument is the Kyoto Protocol, signed on December, 11, 1997, but coming into force only on 16, February, 2005. The U.S. has never ratified it. The large emerging economies, China, India, and Brazil, have no obligations under the protocol. Only “Annex I Countries” have binding emissions reduction targets. Targets for the period of 2008-2012 were set too low: ~ 5% of 1990 global emissions. Although legally binding, the Protocol has no mechanism of enforcement. The legal consequence of Annex I countries’ noncompliance is unclear.

The Kyoto Protocol has broad support among environmentalists and G77 governments because it is legally binding. Legally binding, it is. Politically representative, it is not. Its targets are too small to make a difference, and there has been no agreement so far on its second commitment period.

The Copenhagen Accord is operational, although not legally binding. Its targets represent around 20% of 1990 global emissions to 2020. They are at least five percentage points below what would be necessary to barely meet the 2^oC limit. The U.S. pledge is far too low, representing a reduction of no more than 5% of its 1990 emissions to 2020.

The history of the major BASIC countries’ (China, India, and Brazil) formal support to the Accord is yet to be told. They’ve initially registered their voluntary targets, without formally and explicitly supporting the accord. The first Brazilian letter, confirming the country’s mitigation actions, was rather ambiguous about the country’s association to the Accord. Afterwards the government has sent a second letter stating its formal support more clearly. It took more time for India and China to follow suit. This delay has to do with Post-Copenhagen political discussions about the Copenhagen Accord between the BASIC countries and their unsupportive G77 partners. At the end of the day, the fact that the BASIC countries were among the Accord’s major brokers has prevailed.

India’s Environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, explained to the Parliament that the decision to officially support the Accord was taken “after careful consideration”. Reuters reports that he told MPs that: “we believe that our decision (…) reflects the role India played in giving shape to the Copenhagen Accord.”

The U.S. sees the Copenhagen Accord as the only way towards a future full climate treaty. Todd Stern, chief U.S. climate envoy has said on several occasions that his country will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He also said the Obama Administration would like the Copenhagen Accord to guide talks on a new treaty. The United States has urged further formalization of the Accord at the next major U.N. climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico, Reuters reports.

G77 countries, including the BASIC, consider the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol as a sine qua non to any further deals.

Climate diplomacy has, now, two ways to go. One would be to work towards a new Protocol to substitute Kyoto, having the Copenhagen Accord as a starting point. To achieve that, the G77 would have to be persuaded to abandon the Kyoto Protocol. The other way would be to adopt the “two-track” solution. This track requires the agreement on  a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, and the legal formalization of the Copenhagen Accord in Cancun, at COP16 or, more likely, at COP17, in South Africa, in 2011.

Sergio Abranches
Are we are moving backwards on climate change policy? The energy law in the US seems farther away today than at year end. IPCC seems to be at bay. Deniers seem to be having their heyday. The social movement seems to be too quiet. Support to the Copenhagen Accord has been at the best lukewarm. The countries pledges fall short of the 2oC target, they point to a 3.5oC scenario.Are we really losing ground? Or are we prisoners of a short-term view based on appearance only? Are we dealing with real trends or just bumps on the road ahead?

There is no serious regress on climate change politics. What we see is just a reiteration of the stop-and-go that characterizes complex decision-making settings. The climate change decision-making environment is almost as complex as the climate system itself. It conforms to what I’ve called the Asimov Paradox. In brief: with so many stakeholders, veto players and decision-makers involved, there are two ways to reach a sound and sufficient global deal. Either it gets a really massive amount of support and commitment, or building meaningful consensus will take a very long span of time. So, we’ve got to keep struggling to get enough support to trigger the needed political change. We don’t have time to spare. Meanwhile we should invest on other battlefronts of the climate change challenge, while we continue aiming at achieving a global climate change policy. We must achieve an effective curb on carbon emissions sooner than later, through local initiatives before we get to a binding global accord.

There is a well financed and well orchestrated political campaign by climate deniers and fossil lobbies to discredit the IPCC and climate science. The IPCC has made some important mistakes that must be adequately addressed. It is, perhaps, time for a formal “peer review” of IPCC’s present format and procedures. It surely needs change. If IPCC could move to a new stage of its institutional life, generating more transparent, error-free scientific assessments at shorter intervals and with less political interference, that could very much help the search for a global climate change policy framework. Finally, it also has a leadership problem. A new chair could bring fresh ideas; perhaps more scientific authority; and work to better balance science and politics. The present IPCC chair won’t likely recover from the loss of confidence and legitimacy.

Is the social movement too quiet? I guess not. All major NGO’s are busy evaluating what happened last year, and designing their new short and long-term strategies. They’ve probably had their best results ever in 2009 on mobilization, visibility, and influence. Yet COP15 was probably, also, their major frustration ever. They surely have some strategic review and redesign of their own to do. They’ll need a new agenda for action. But they should do it as fast and possible, to overcome frustration, and start seriously confronting the deniers’s campaign against climate change science, policy and politics.

We are not really loosing ground, but the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit has had a depressing effect on environmentalists, concerned analysts, scientists and most government negotiators. The realization that the expectations for a fully legal, ambitious, and working deal have not been met by the world’s most powerful leaders in Copenhagen has damaged somewhat climate politics. Is has also given deniers’s the motivation and the opportunity to launch their public opinion and political offensive, particularly in the UK and the US.  But let’s look to the brighter sides.

All major countries are implementing their own climate change agenda. In the US, the EPA, at the federal level, the states, and cities are working towards better and tougher regulation of carbon emissions. The energy law is not president Obama’s top priority yet. Nor is it the top priority of US society. So, it will probably go the hard and long way to be eventually approved, rather than enter into a fast track voting process. Local initiative has not loose momentum, nor has the Federal Government been paralyzed. China is leading global investment in green energy and pollution control, for its own sake. The Chinese government has been issuing new carbon regulations at an increasing pace. India is also starting to pursue low carbon targets of its own. No major emitter has abandoned the pledges made at Copenhagen. In other words: political commitment to action on climate change is holding and there are signs of further improvement. Legally binding policies have been enacted by the rulers of all major global emitters, and several other countries.

A greater threat to short-term climate progress comes from the fact that the world is facing a new shockwave of the financial crisis. European economies were hit before they could fully recover from the original one. The crisis in Europe is not confined to Greece. Spain and Portugal are also in trouble. It is a complex, and deep financial and fiscal disarray that has strong explosive power. Major EU and the US economies are still too weak to resist a contagion effect, if the present crisis goes out of control and spreads throughout the global financial market.

This means that unless the economic downturn and its collateral damage are not fully overcome, climate change will hardly become a significant global priority this year. Not a likely prospect. Climate change will remain on the political agenda of all major economies as a serious 21^st century challenge, but comprehensive action may be further delayed.

So, the gloomier view on climate change politics results from a short-term vision mostly, but not entirely, based on appearances. We are not moving backwards, but we are stalling again. Today the conditions for a fully legal treaty are slim, if not adversary. Countries are still tackling far more pressing short-term problems

This scenario of renewed economic turmoil and delayed concern for climate change requires some strategic thinking. It would be very important to prevent COP16 from becoming another major frustration. The future of global climate change politics depends on getting the best results possible, at Cancún, under the prevailing circumstances. There are several risks to manage for the world to succeed at COP16.

There are two opposite risks to avoid, looking first at expectations. The first one would be an inflation of expectations about a legal agreement like the one we’ve had about COP15. It seems very unlikely now, but should be prevented by all means beforehand. The other one would be a self-defeating radical deflation of all expectations. A risk we are already facing today. The third risk concerns agenda setting. Depending on how the economic scenario develops, especially during the first half of 2010, it would be very risky to set very ambitious goals for COP16. A set of realistic goals would help to prevent another frustration. If the scenario doesn’t improve considerably, the goal of a climate treaty should be explicitly postponed, before the beginning of COP16.

It would be better instead to work towards bringing the original “spirit” of the Copenhagen Accord into the framework of UNFCCC’s working documents, in both the Climate Convention (AWGLCA) and the Kyoto Protocol (AWGKP) tracks. To reconcile the original aims of the Copenhagen political accord and the UNFCCC legal process is doable, but will require long and hard negotiations. It would not be feasible to form the necessary consensus to effectively close a fully legal agreement this year. The goal should be to align the political and the legal tracks as much as possible. Having a treaty drafted, approved and signed does seem, at the moment, to be out of the reach of COP16. Another important goal would be to deepen major countries’s commitment to the political accord.

Strengthening the Copenhagen Accord could be an appropriate issue for the agenda of G20 and Major Economies Forum (MEF) meetings. Clearly, the first issue on their agenda will be, again, the economy. Leaders of this major league of countries cannot, however, disregard climate change and pending questions about the Copenhagen Accord. Climate change will very likely be on their agenda. The best way to deal with the Accord is to take it seriously. The Copenhagen Accord can yet gain greater political density. Targets can be improved or reviewed, within the next three or five years. Commitments could be clarified, helping to bridge the gap between the political and the legal tracks in the future. The BASIC countries’ association to the Accord is still lukewarm, and China has only declared to be “supportive”. US support could also be made more assertive.

Progress on the preparation for a legally binding agreement, and strengthening of the political accord, could be a realistic and relevant agenda for 2010 and COP16.

The Brazilian Wetland, the Pantanal is highly endangered by unregulated and illegal economic activities that lead to logging, wildfires, land clearing, water pollution, and erosion. Here a remainder of this endangered biodiversity treasure.

Sergio Abranches

While the U.S. and the European Union embraced the Copenhagen Accord with no reserves, the BASIC countries said the Accord is not legal. The only legal instrument they accept is the Kyoto Protocol. Does it really matter if they adhere and record their quantitative voluntary actions? Is this an important divide between developed and emerging powers?

I feel increasingly inclined to answer no to both questions.

Let’s be practical. The Kyoto Protocol is legal, but its targets were set so low that they became utterly ineffective. The U.S. didn’t ratify the Protocol. The BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) are “non-Annex I” parties, meaning they have no binding obligations.

As a result, the Protocol has a very partial coverage of total GHG emissions. Being legally binding made almost no difference to the trajectory of emissions or to the behavior of the Parties to the Protocol. To the BASIC countries, the legal character of the Kyoto Protocol serves only to make it sure they have no legal obligations, because they do not belong to the Annex I. The U.S. will never ratify it. There has been little progress in the negotiations regarding its Phase 2. The Post 2012 Kyoto Protocol will not have China, Brazil and India among Annex I countries, and without the U.S. as well, it will remain a poor instrument to tackle the global climate change threat.

Now, let’s look at the Copenhagen Accord. With the adhesion of the U.S., the European Union, Canada, Australia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa it covers most of the global GHG emissions. Add Japan and Russia, and it reaches the level of emissions that, if appropriately regulated, can do the job of preventing a climactic cataclysm. This select group of countries represent most of global political, economic, and scientific power as well.

The Accord is not legal indeed. It is political. With all these countries saying they’re politically committed to its terms, and publicly recording their voluntary actions to reduce emissions, it, nevertheless, gets substance and relevance. All of them are recording quantitative goals. To call them binding targets or voluntary actions seems so far a matter of lesser importance. Just look at what happened to Kyoto’s binding targets. To me it is more important that, for the first time, the U.S., China, Brazil, and India are making political commitments for emissions reductions. And they come with a number attached.

These targets still fall short of responding to scientific requirements. But the Accord also provides for performance reviews to conform actions to the requirement of maintaing global warming near 2^oC. This is already more than the Kyoto Protocol has accomplished. It has also resolved some decade long deadlocks on finance and technology transfer.

What the Copenhagen Accord lacks, the Kyoto Protocol also doesn’t have: a working enforcement mechanism. We are far from having an adequate framework for global climate governance. And we will have to eventually arrive at one.

The Copenhagen Accord can move forward along two different tracks. The first one, would be to enter the diplomatic track of the Climate Convention. Its terms and targets/actions would have to be transcribed into an official document tabled by the Working Group on the Climate Convention (AWG-LCA) to be unanimously approved by the plenary of 192 countries, hopefully during COP16, in Cancun, Mexico.

The alternative route would be to keep going on its own. The countries that have adhered to the Accord would continue to negotiate an appropriate and acceptable legal statute. Negotiations should also address the governance regime that would make this statute enforceable and policy-relevant.

The first road seems to be the harder one. The history of the Climate Convention has showed how difficult it is to reach consensus within such a large and heterogeneous group of countries.

The Copenhagen Accord has gained some new substance with the adhesion of the “carbon powers” of the world. A smaller group of countries, even if a polarized one, is more likely to reach a meaningful agreement than a large group of more than 100 nations with disparate interests.

The convention plenary is so divided that it is even hard to form polarized coalitions within it. What we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the fractionalization of previous clusters of countries, as the likelihood of an agreement increased. That’s how the G77 and China broke down, the BASIC, the AOSIS, and the African block replacing it. These three blocks have proved to be far more politically productive than the G77.

That the Accord is still alive, in spite of the frustrations it has raised at the dismal closing of COP15, seems a good omen. A global climate change deal is still possible.

Those who were imagining the IPCC was rethinking its views on climate change after Rajendra Pachauri’s statements to the Press about the stolen e-mails didn’t get it quite right.

Sergio Abranches

IPCC’s “Working Group I” that reports on climate science has issued a note condemning the whole affair and standing by findings that a rise in the use of greenhouse gases was a factor on global warming.

The note signed by Professors Thomas Stocker and Qin Dahe, co-chairs of WGI says:

Comments on blogs and in the media about the contents of a large number of private emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, have questioned both the validity of the key findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and the integrity of its authors. IPCC WGI condemns the illegal act which led to private emails being posted on the Internet and firmly stands by the findings of the AR4 and by the community of researchers worldwide whose professional standards and careful scientific work over many years have provided the basis for these conclusions.

The note also clears the mistaken view that a single research unit was feeding the UN body all the relevant data on global warming.

The key finding of IPCC AR4, “The warming in the climate system is unequivocal [...] “, is based on measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant changes on land, in the atmosphere, the ocean and in the ice-covered areas of the Earth. Through further, independent scientific work involving statistical methods and a range of different climate models, these changes have been detected as significant deviations from natural climate variability  and have been attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases.

The two spokespersons for the IPCC support not only the scientific evidence the WGI has relied on to issue their fourth assessment, but also the numerous scientists that have produced the body of work reviewed for the assessment.

The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists worldwide. The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges, many of whom have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of Lead Authors within the production of the series of IPCC Assessment Reports during the past 20 years.

The note concludes explaining the IPCC process of research coverage and reviews ensuring both the widest reach possible regarding all peer-reviewed published work within the period considered, as well as the scientific integrity of the assessment itself.

The IPCC assessment process is designed to ensure consideration of all relevant scientific information from established journals with robust peer review processes, or from other sources which have undergone robust and independent peer review. The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as by governments. Consequently, there is full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of published literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views.

As a result, “no individual scientist in the IPCC assessment process is in a position to change the conclusions, or to exclude relevant peer-reviewed papers and scientific work from an IPCC Assessment Report.”

In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientific community and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased, open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes.

This seems to eliminate any speculation about the quality of the science behind the IPCC work. What continues a subject of interest is who supported the hacking and who actually did it.