Sergio Abranches

Why the Durban Platform is a political breakthrough, but a dismal outcome in the light of climate science?

The second part of the question is far easier to answer. Negotiators in Durban have agreed to review the pledges for emissions reductions in the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and Cancun Agreement by 2015 in the light of the fifth assessment report on the state of science, to be released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from September 2013. However, as the IPCC said on a press statement about COP17, “in its fourth assessment report published in 2007, the IPCC showed that a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius could have a damaging effect on water supplies, biodiversity, food supplies, coastal flooding and storms and health.”

Additionally, the IPCC also states that:

“The fourth assessment report shows that emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming must fall by 2050 by 50-85% globally compared to the emissions of the year 2000, and that global emissions must peak well before the year 2020, with a substantial decline after that, in order to limit the growth in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

From the standpoint of science Durban has decided on too little too late.

In the political realm, though, COP17 was a watershed. First of all, it closes a whole chapter of negotiations on commitment periods under the Kyoto Protocol. There will be only a second one, with fewer ratifiers than the first. COP18 will still have to decide whether it will end by 2017 or 2020. There has been no consensus on the end date, and the alternatives ended up within brackets. But the main point has been resolved: it will be replaced by a new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”, no later than 2020. That’s the core decision contained in the Durban Platform.

The above expression is a political breakthrough, one that has been progressively taking shape since COP15, in Copenhagen. There, for the first time ever, the United States and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) have agreed to offer quantified pledges for emission reductions under the United Nations Climate Convention (UNFCCC). They were voluntary, not legally binding, but they have been formally registered with UNFCCC”s Executive Secretariat. It was a major first step and, at the same time, a frustrating decision.

Much more was expected from the leaders of both developed, and emerging world powers. Besides, the leaders left abruptly, creating an authority gap, between the political summit and the official Conference of the Parties. A weak COP presidency and the resulting authority gap led the plenary to only “take note” of what the leaders had agreed. The Copenhagen Accord was noted as a political decision, but did not become an “official” agreement under the track of the Convention.

The second step towards the breakthrough was made in Cancun. The pledges under the Copenhagen Accord were adopted by the Cancun Agreement, that has also made official several other decisions made in Copenhagen, as well as some that were left to be finalized by COP16, in Mexico. In Cancun, the voluntary commitments became official ones, under the umbrella of the Climate Convention.

In Durban, negotiators from the United States, the BASIC group, and the European Union underlined the official nature of the Cancun Agreement, as a preparation of the groundwork for the Platform to launch the process leading to the new universal agreement with legal force applicable to all parties to the Climate Convention. In a nutshell, it was acknowledged by all relevant parties that these commitments are legal, although not binding. The difference: the Kyoto Protocol, besides being a legal instrument, explicitly states that the targets for the countries (“industrialized countries”) listed on its Annex I are mandatory. The Cancun Agreement is part and parcel of the Climate Convention, therefore it has legal status, but the commitments registered by the parties are voluntary, not mandatory.

Finally, the Durban Platform takes the decisive step: it commits all major emitters outside the Kyoto Protocol to the negotiation of a new agreement with legal force, under which all commitments will have the same legal treatment, although they could be quantitatively differentiated on the basis of each party’s capacities.

This is not an easy decision to make. Even before it is formally adopted it is likely to cause the countries to start planning domestic actions to enable them to meet the targets yet to be defined. It is unrealistic to imagine, as some environmentalists do, that a “top down approach”, by which a decision under the Climate Convention would bind countries to take actions, would ever work.

Even the Kyoto Protocol praised for its “legally binding” status has no enforcement mechanism. What enforcement mechanism could lead Canada to meet its targets for the first period of commitment next year? None at all. Even with UN officials stating that although outside the Protocol it still has the obligation, Canada will likely fail to meet its Kyoto target, and there will hardly be any consequence to its noncompliance.

Politics hardly moves ahead of the facts. It is not a proactive process. It is a responsive one. Politics responds to active interests in economy and society. It seldom reflects even the “inactive majority” or the majority of “public opinion”. Political decisions respond to “active interest groups”, to economic constraints and inducements, and to the domestic correlation of power. Countries that show greater ambition of emissions reductions also have greater active political support from domestic economic and social forces to policies aiming at coping with climate change. Their domestic policies are usually more ambitious than their multilateral commitments.

If one looks at China’s domestic policies to reduce emissions and other forms of pollution, one will easily see that they are far ahead of what Chinese lead negotiators are willing to commit to at the Climate Convention.

Politics, in this sense, consolidates what countries are ripe to commit to at the multilateral level. The approach that really counts, and leads to progress in the negotiations under the Climate Convention is the bottom up one.

What is meaningful and relevant about the Durban process is that over the last three years major developed and emerging countries have become readier to admit to the possibility of a single climate change regime encompassing them all. The US, China, India, and Brazil said that much several times during COP17, and signed into it at the end. This outcome was not guaranteed at the outset of the climate talks. It was the result of intense negotiation and consultation. Negotiators have likely had to obtain a specific mandate from their leaders, in mid-game, to go as far as they’ve gone.

What will happen next will depend on what happens inside each of these countries. The focus of pressure should be domestic politics, rather than diplomatic undertakings. Not that the COP process doesn’t matter. It does, very much. But its main function is not to shape climate change policies to be adopted domestically. It is to consolidate progress on domestic climate change policies at the multilateral level, adding cross-country constraints and global transparency to the agreed actions. This enables, for instance, a network of domestic and global civil society organizations to join forces to act as watchdogs, to ensure that policies are in line with targets. It does make a difference to have a global accounting system for greenhouse gas emissions, and to have a global registry for quantitative targets for emission reductions. These outcomes would strengthen the multilateral regulatory system, and would also give more punch to domestic pressure from civil society and opposition parties in overseeing their government’s implementation of climate change policies.

The year 2015 has become a new milestone for global climate change politics. Two crucial decisions shall be taken at COP21, if the Durban Platform is to be completed. Firstly, the review of the emission reduction commitments to seek coherence with the 2 degrees Celsius target. As pointed before, it is absolutely sure that the new IPCC report will show a serious gap between committed actions and warming trends. If parties are to take their commitments seriously, they’ll have to revise their targets upwards for the period 2015-2020. Secondly, they’ll have to decide on the new “protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties” to be adopted no later than 2020.

The political engine is set to move. The pace and destination it will take will depend on the evolution of domestic economic and social forces over the next three years. Another important factor will be the domestic interplay of interests, and the power of pressure and advocacy groups. Bilateral and multilateral politics do have a role, but never a dominant one. Competition and coalition among nations and groups of nations, also help in shaping decisions. They’ll help to pave the way to future outcomes. But they do so by responding to domestic interests and projecting them on the global arena.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides policy-makers with the current state of climate science, has issued today a statement on the Durban outcome. It shows concern about the decision to “adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not later than 2015, to be adopted and come into force from 2020.” The Durban agreement reinstates the decision to review the Copenhagen/Cancun pledges to reduce emissions in the light of the IPCC next report, to be released in 2013. The IPCC has been asked what impact these agreements will have on global warming.

The statement says that the IPCC is due to publish the first part of its next assessment report, the fifth, in 2013. But in its fourth assessment report, published in 2007, it already showed that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius could have damaging effects. It also says that greenhouse gases must fall by 2050 by 50-85% globally compared to the emissions of the year 2000, and that global emissions must peak well before the year 2020.

The IPCC says that “the series of agreements reached on Sunday by nearly 200 countries in Durban lays a foundation for the global community to tackle climate change.” But it warns “that action must be taken swiftly to cut emissions to prevent a damaging rise in world temperatures.”

See the full text of the statement.

Statement by the IPCC

13 December 2011

Action must be taken swiftly to cut emissions to prevent a damaging rise in world temperatures, Climate Panel findings show

The series of agreements reached on Sunday by nearly 200 countries in Durban lays a foundation for the global community to tackle climate change.

Governments meeting at the annual climate conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decided to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not later than 2015, to be adopted and come into force from 2020. At the same time they recognized the need to raise their collective level of ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep the average global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been asked what impact these agreements will have on global warming.

The IPCC, which provides policy-makers with the current state of climate science, including the impact of climate change and what can be done to tackle it, is due to publish the first part of its next assessment report, the fifth, in 2013.

But already in its fourth assessment report published in 2007, the IPCC showed that a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius could have a damaging effect on water supplies, biodiversity, food supplies, coastal flooding and storms and health.

The fourth assessment report shows that emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming must fall by 2050 by 50-85% globally compared to the emissions of the year 2000, and that global emissions must peak well before the year 2020, with a substantial decline after that, in order to limit the growth in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In the near term, by 2020, emissions from industrialized countries (listed in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol) need to be reduced by 25-40% below 1990 levels, while substantial deviations from the current trend in developing countries and emerging economies will also be required

This must be borne in mind in the package. The earlier action is taken, the cheaper and more effective it will be.

Sergio Abranches, from Durban

The documents still circulating at COP17 show notable political progress, but fall short of adequately meeting the risks already pointed out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — IPCC — fourth assessment of climate science. They are still under discussion, and final decision may still be significantly different. It is likely, however, they will keep the general thrust of the documents.

Politics is rarely moved by the science on the issues requiring policy decisions. Politics is moved by interests, interactions, power competition, alliances, and conflicts. All that play a strong role to shape the global politics of climate change. At the political level there are unprecedented moves reflected on documents not yet approved by COP17 plenary.

Perhaps the most important one is the support from the United States, China, India and Brazil of a a “process to develop a Protocol or another legal instrument applicable to all Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”. This process, says the draft document, shall “begin immediately and be conducted as a matter of urgency”, so that the new working group the plenary should create can “complete its work as early as possible but no later than 2015, in order to adopt this legal instrument” at COP21. It “shall raise levels of ambition and be informed, inter alia, by the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the outcomes of the 2013-2015 review”.

In short this means that by 2020 there should be a common legal regime on climate change encompassing all parties to the climate convention, that this legal instrument could even be a new protocol, thus legally-binding, it would have quantified mitigation targets for all major emitters. The new instrument should be ready to be adopted by 2015, at COP21. The quantitative targets should in line with the new IPCC assessment report, that should be used to guide the review of the commitments made in Copenhagen and reaffirmed on the Cancun Agreement.

The other breakthrough is the formal admission that there is a “significant gap between the aggregated effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emissions pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding warming below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

In other words the document formally notes, and with grave concern, that there is a gap between the commitments to reduce GHG emissions and the commitment to keep the chances of warming below 2°C or 1.5°C. The 2°C is the target approved under the Copenhagen Accord, and the Cancun Agreement. The 1.5°C is a demand from the small islands states, the African Group, and the Less Developed Countries, admitted by the Cancun Agreement.

These hard to make political steps forward are a sine qua non for a more ambitious, science-based, rule-based future global climate change policy.

Global warming is showing no signs of slowing down and further increases are to be expected in the next few decades, shows a new study published today, in the Environmental Research Letters.

They tried to capture “the true global warming trend” by analyzing the five leading global temperature data sets, covering the period from 1979 to 2010, to factor out three of the main factors that account for short-term fluctuations in global temperature: El Niño, volcanic eruptions, and variations in the Sun’s brightness.

Removing these short-term fluctuations, the researchers from Tempo Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research showed that the global temperature has increased by 0.5°C in the past 30 years. In all of the five global data sets, 2009 and 2010 were the two hottest years. In the average over all five data sets, 2010 is the hottest year on record.

“Our approach shows that the idea that the global warming trend has slowed or even paused over the last decade or so is a groundless misconception. It shows that differences between the five data sets reside, to a large extent, in their short-term variability and not in the climatic trend. After the variability is removed, all five data sets are very similar,” said co-author Stefan Rahmstorf.

By bringing together and analyzing the five records – three surface records and two lower-troposphere records – the researchers were able to clarify the discrepancies between each one and, when factoring out the naturally occurring variability, show the excellent agreement between all five data sets.

The three surface temperature data sets analyzed by the researchers were from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Hadley Centre/Climate Research Unit in the UK. Data representing the lower troposphere temperatures was based on satellite microwave sensors.

“The unabated warming is powerful evidence that we can expect further temperature increase in the next few decades, emphasizing the urgency of confronting the human influence on the climate,” says, lead author Grant Foster.

Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, shows study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

The article ‘Rapid growth in CO₂ emissions after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis’ was published online by Nature Climate Change yesterday. The study is a part of the Global Carbon Project, and shows that fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol. On average, fossil fuel emissions have risen by 3.1 per cent each year between 2000 and 2010 – three times the rate of increase during the 1990s. They are projected to continue to increase by 3.1 per cent in 2011.

Total emissions – which combine fossil fuel combustion, cement production, deforestation and other land use emissions – reached 10 billion tons of carbon in 2010 for the first time. Half of the emissions remained in the atmosphere, where CO₂ concentration reached 389.6 parts per million. The remaining emissions were taken up by the ocean and land reservoirs, in approximately equal proportions.

Last year’s high growth was caused by both emerging and developed economies. Rich countries continued to outsource part of their emissions to emerging economies through international trade. Contributions to global emissions growth in 2010 were largest from China, the United States, India, the Russian Federation and the European Union. Emissions from the trade of goods and services produced in emerging economies but consumed in the West increased from 2.5 per cent of the share of rich countries in 1990 to 16 per cent in 2010.

In the UK, fossil fuel CO₂ emissions grew 3.8 per cent in 2010 but were 14 per cent below their 1990 levels. However, emissions from the trade of goods and services grew from 5 per cent of the emissions produced locally in 1990 to 46 per cent in 2010 – overcompensating the reductions in local emissions. Emissions in the UK were 20 per cent above their 1990 levels when emissions from trade are taken into account.

“Global CO₂ emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100,” said co-author Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia. “Yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events.”

Glen Peters, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, and lead author said: “Many saw the global financial crisis as an opportunity to move the global economy away from persistent and high emissions growth, but the return to emissions growth in 2010 suggests the opportunity was not exploited.”

Are people who write about climate change and environmental issues destined to become doomsayers?

This question returned to my mind while I was reading the World Meteorological Organization’s review of 2010 significant weather and climate events. I was looking for a broader context to comment on the major weather-related tragedy on record that happened in Brazil. Three weeks ago more than 1,000 people died from flash floods and mudslides in three cities located on the hills near Rio de Janeiro, where I live.

I was startled by the number of extreme weather events listed. Individually, they were no news to me, but together they provided a larger, more dramatic picture of the encounters between human populations and the wild forces of nature.

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Sergio Abranches

The mistake about the Himalayan glaciers meltdown deserves a stronger statement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC. The case is not central do the core evidence on climate change, but it is not a minor issue either.

Let’s begin with the facts. Several geologists contested the inclusion in the latest report of the IPCC of a highly contentious claim about the speed at which Himalayan glaciers are melting. The mention on a paragraph of the report was based not on peer-reviewed research, but on a quote of a New Scientist story in a document issued by the NGO World Wildlife Foundation, WWF – “An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China”:

The New Scientist magazine carried the article “Flooded Out – Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities” in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region “will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming”. The article also predicted that freshwater flow in rivers across South Asia will “eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages”.

The use of “grey information”, that is, not peer-reviewed, was a mistake in itself, attributable to the lead author or authors of the section on glaciers to be later used in the report. Besides, the text should have been checked by a referee prior to its final acceptance.

The Indian government published a study – Himalayan Glaciers: A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change, by geologist V. K. Rayna, dismissing the claims of such a rapid meltdown of the glaciers. The Guardian’s Adam Vaughn says that IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri dismissed the report as not peer-reviewed and added:

“With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”

Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings of The Sunday Times report that Graham Cogley, a geographer from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, traced the IPCC claim back to the New Scientist. Cogley contacted Fred Pearce, the author of the original NS story, who re-interviewed Hasnain. The scientist confirmed that his 1999 comments had been “speculative”. Pearce published the update in the New Scientist.

According to the Times, Cogley said:

“The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough. But they are not wasting away at the rate suggested by this speculative remark and the IPCC report. The problem is that nobody who studied this material bothered chasing the trail back to the original point when the claim first arose. It is ultimately a trail that leads back to a magazine article and that is not the sort of thing you want to end up in an IPCC report.”

The Times story also got the reaction of Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report. He told the reporters he would only recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped:

“If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”

The New Scientist quotes Murari Lal saying he “outright rejected” the notion that the IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers. “The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them,” he said to NS’s Fred Pearce. He also told Pearce that “we relied rather heavily on grey [not peer-reviewed] literature, including the WWF report.” His conclusion is that “the error, if any, lies with Dr Hasnain’s assertion and not with the IPCC authors.”

That’s a strange notion of responsibility by a scientist playing the role of lead author for a section of the world’s most important official scientific statement about climate change. Any good journalist would tell him, that “the error of one’s source is one’s error too”, since one has the obligation to verify the validity of one’s sources. Not to mention the quality of one’s choices of sources.

Hasnain, interviewed by the Times of India, said:

“I am unnecessarily being dragged into the controversy. The IPCC did not even consult me or ask me for my research papers for inclusion in the fourth assessment report”.

Hasnain is now a Fellow with The Energy and Resources Institute, TERI. TERI’s Executive-director is Rajendra Pachauri. TERI displays on its site news about Hasnain’s opinion on glaciers meltdown here and here, for instance.

The IPCC has finally issued a bland, bureaucratic, statement admitting the error:

It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of “the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report”. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.

There are three orders of concern IPCC scientists should have about this role affair. The first one is the circumstance under which the error has been exposed.The second one is that the IPCC is part of a delicate architecture of climate change politics already in crisis. This architecture depends critically on its credibility and accountability. Finally, climate science has to be the foundation of both a global climate accord and global climate change governance.

The circumstance is very negative. The CRU hack incident was hardly over. The “deniers” campaign against what they call “warmism” is hotter than ever. The inclusion of the mistaken paragraph on the IPCC report revealing that the proper validity checks have failed is obvious fodder for further attacks on the soundness of climate science and the reliability of the IPCC itself. The circumstances are pretty bad for the IPCC side, and warrants a far stronger reaction that the bland statement issued by the Chair.

It is clear that the lead author was reckless. It is also clear that the document he was responsible for was not reviewed adequately by qualified referees. It is also clear that the IPCC resisted looking more carefully at the issue when faced with initial criticism. Those directly responsible for these blunders should be formally impeded to participate in the making of AR5.

The credibility issue is a major one. The global climate accord is crumbling due to a serious confidence crisis among the Parties to the Climate Convention. Science should be the stalwart of the system. It has to contribute to increase confidence in the system, not to add to confusion and discredit.

Climate science has to be the guideline of collective decisions, and that role forces it to be extremely rigorous with itself.

I was far more comfortable with the answer I got from Richard Betts, Met Office’s head of climate change, on the CRU Hack incident. He told me in Copenhagen that they will rebuilt CRU’s data bank from the scratch on a transparent and verifiable way, to eliminate any objection to the data’s validity. He also said these procedures are to make science clearer and still more credible, despite their total confidence on the integrity of scientific procedures and quality of its findings. That’s how issues of credibility should be dealt with. I hope they’re doing it.

The role system of global climate governance will require sound science and checks and balances to ensure accountability and confidence-building. Science should be teaching how to build credible procedures for monitoring, verifying and reporting, beginning with its own production.

These are major political and intellectual considerations deserving a proper response from the IPCC and the global climate science community.

One should not also neglect the fact that the Himalayan meltdown is a major geopolitical concern. Himalayan glacial waters are a crucial source for millions in the region. It is also, a matter of regional water security and political stability.

Although not a decisive issue regarding the validity of the core evidence on climate change in the IPCC assessment, it is a major climatic and environmental issue in itself.

Sergio Abranches

My computer screen showed climate militants marching and facing police blockades over the streets of Copenhagen and in the neighborhood of Bella Center. On the TV screens spread all over the crowded Media Center journalists could watch a plenary session of COP15, where government delegates discussed the most pressing global threat of the 21^st Century.

I pushed my chair back and looked at the numerous long tables, each seating around 40 journalists of all parts of the world, of all possible kinds of media. One glimpse revealed it all: government delegates debating their differences, the NGOs marching, peacefully trying to make their way into the negotiations, and the media watching, reporting, commenting.

And, yes, tweeting. About 7 out of 10 computers had Twitter opened on a window. With the right hashtag one could follow what journalists were reporting on Twitter in their languages. Several would tweet in their native languages and in English or French.

This was only one of several dramatic days. While in the plenary sessions delegates defended principled points, in the negotiation rooms intense, tense, and extensive negotiations were in progress. Or, sometimes, in regress. Militants marched protesting for access to the Conference and demanding that negotiators take meaningful action to respond to climate challenges.

Journalists jumped from one press conference to another; looked for exclusive info or insight talking to delegates.

This momentary view of the three international critical players of current climate politics simultaneously in action, like in a movie, made me start taking notes in a frenzy. They were gathered around the same agenda, but to play very distinct and relevant roles: governments, NGOs and the Press. They address climate issues from very different angles. Differences are central not only among these three sets of players, but also within each one. Individuals in each think in different languages. Groupings within and among them reflect diverse social, economic and political backgrounds. They display widely varied degrees of concern, knowledge and engagement regarding climate change.

To a professional political analyst and a journalist this was a very rich situation, a brain-storming event.

Arriving early in the morning every day at the Bella Center, I would immediately start to tweet many ideas about what was happening. Over the twelve days I was there, I posted several pieces to my blogs Ecopolitica and Ecopolity. I also made daily commentaries for the Brazilian radio network CBN. And I took notes all the time, to later help me think and write about the Copenhagen meeting, its aftermath and what’s to be done.

Back home, after some rest, I started reading my notes and browsing some books in order to design an analytical framework to organize my observations. But those intense 12 days of COP15 kept bringing back fragments of memory, snapshots of meaningful moments.

There was a sharp and annoying contrast between the aloofness of my academic readings and the liveliness of these fragments. The first book I picked was about the new transnational activism. For more than 40 pages all I could read was an endless conceptual argument. Academic minutiae seemed to obliterate a sense of relevance. I can’t see how it really matters whether an NGO such as Greenpeace should be called an NGO or something else; whether it is an international, transnational or global organization.

Form has replaced meaning. Formality is mistaken by precision. To be more formal doesn’t mean to be more accurate.

I am too fond of books to abandon reading them, though. I browsed, selected, dropped the useless, and kept reading what seemed relevant to me.

Like Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Browsing it, I stopped at the paragraph below, on chapter 7, “Cosmopolitan Contamination: Global Villages”.

People who complain about the homogeneity produced by globalization often fail to notice that globalization is, equally, a threat to homogeneity. (…) (H)omogeneity, though, is the local kind. (…) In the era of globalization – in Asante as in New Jersey – people make pockets of homogeneity. (…) And whatever loss of difference there has been, they are constantly inventing new forms of difference: new hairstyles, new slang, even, from times to times, new religions. No one could say that the world’s villages are  – or are about to become – anything like the same.

To anyone who spent about 16 hours a day in the Bella Center, for 12 days, as an “embedded journalist”, covering every aspect of the Climate Summit and interacting with all the different tribes that crowded the conference site, Appiah’s contention is crystal clear and couldn’t be more accurate.

It describes and explains the contradictions of globalization, the encounters, exchanges and diversity that it entails. The Bella Center had become a “global site” gathering very different tribes, some with antagonistic interests, to deal with a major global issue.

We could see an NGO militant on a crash-demonstration in the passageways of Bella Center, marching over the streets of Copenhagen, debating technical issues with delegates and lobbyists, or passing the results of intelligence work to journalists.

This role differentiation develops while these organizations grow, become stronger, wealthier, and more influential. They diversify their political roles as they get more expertise, more organizational capabilities and enlist people with different skills, aptitudes and backgrounds. Through this process, these new actors of global politics are creating a global civil society even before the first pieces of what will become a system for global governance are put in place. Formal international politics, having governments as the main actors, is far behind, particularly as far as global climate politics is concerned. And we saw plenty of evidence supporting this hypothesis there.

Although the different tribes interacting at the Bella Center theater had the same agenda, it was their different approaches to this common agenda that mattered most. Differences were paramount. They allowed critical actors to play very different roles: as militants, negotiators, reporters, analysts, commentators, doing intelligence or sharing information. Differences were a source of diversity as well as a fuel to contentious politics. Diverse actors expressed distinctive perceptions of climate change as a threat, an opportunity, a hindrance or a hoax.

At the end, diverging interests were stronger than commonalities and the deal was watered down. This end to the summit has by no means diminished its historic dimension. Formal politics has stayed behind, but made a few steps forward. Civil society got out of there stronger and more enlightened about what to do next.

My own perception is that interests, conflicts, and different views became more visible and recognizable in Copenhagen. Like when the small and threatened Tuvalu confronted the giant and threatened China.

I can’t say whether other global meetings on other issues have gained the same political magnitude as COP15 did. What I know is that the Copenhagen Summit was unprecedented in all counts, when compared to the other COPs: the number of NGOs, the size of national delegations, the scale of media presence and coverage, or the number of chiefs of states and governments present to the last 2 of the 12 days of the Conference. This was beyond any doubt the larger and more cosmopolitan climate meeting ever.

It was, by far, the major display of strength, technical expertise and political capability by the global environmental movement in recent history. Large and small NGOs became critical actors in the negotiations. They had expert people doing serious policy advocacy. They fiercely confronted lobbyists and greenwashers. They aptly transmitted to the media technical information and intelligence on what was being negotiated within closed doors.

As far as climate meetings go it was the first time ever that the components of a future cosmopolity were assembled in full. What we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the first full scale emergence of a cosmopolitics that will very likely become a dominant feature of 21^st Century global life.

Cosmopolitanism was clearly visible as the main element of climate politics at the Bella Center meeting. One could see Timothy Brennan’s “polychromatic culture” live at the atrium, passageways and rooms of the Center. Brennan is right when he says this multiverse culture is “a new singularity born out of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents.” The quote is from the essay “Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism”, published in Daniele Archibugi (editor) – Debating Cosmopolitics.

And it was possible to discern the seeds of cosmopolitanism as global governance in the dramatic exchange of visions, demands, interests and principles. The strength of global civil society, in situ and all over the world directly connected with their counterparts in Copenhagen, is clearly building momentum for the emergence of this sort of cosmopolitanism.

The unprecedented presence of world media and the width of media coverage, will certainly help to broaden the scope of cosmopolitan politics.

Finally, the unprecedented attendance of more than 100 heads of states and governments, among them the leaders of the major mature and emerging powers has contributed to give this first experiment of climate cosmopolitics strong political significance.

The citizenship of this future system of global governance is emerging before any new element of effective global governance is in place. Building such a governance regime will be a daunting endeavor. Its complexity should not be underestimated. It is not about building a world state, or a global government. There is too much risk for freedom and human rights in such a notion. It is about global governance without global government. It requires a considerable amount of institutional innovation and experimentation.

Ben Block from the World Watch Institute, pointed correctly that despite disappointment, the Climate Summit marks a high point for the activist movement. This part of global civil society has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

The two-week U.N. conference may have ended in disappointment for most climate activists, who travelled from nearly every continent, but the gathering marked a historic high point for a movement that has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

An estimated 45,000 people attended the climate negotiations. This included greater participation from government delegations, business groups, and academics, in addition to larger turnout from campaigners. The “youth” delegation, representatives of the below-30 age group, increased its presence at forums that were once attended only by bureaucrats and scientists. Youth organizers said that their volunteers registered some 1,000 attendants, twice the participation compared to a year ago.

The activist crowds were relentless: they raised their voices during negotiation sessions, press briefings, and lunch breaks; they scattered in the corners of conference rooms and gathered in mobs to block passageways; and they screamed loudly for adaptation aid, among other demands. Activists also made subtle suggestions about the ineffectiveness of carbon offsets, for example by using tricks to show airplanes vanishing magically in the same way that carbon offsets make emissions “disappear,” they said.

Negotiation leaders acknowledged that the demonstrations captured their attention.

This history in the making gives full support and deep meaning to Jonathan Watts’s opinion that

Copenhagen will shape our lives for years to come.

The Copenhagen climate summit could end by breaking a decade long deadlock that has been blocking any real progress on global climate change politics and policy. If that happens, this outcome should not be underrated.

Sergio Abranches

The fundamental issue about large scale risk is the uncertainty about the probability of the chain of events that will trigger the transition from the status quo to another, very different and more hostile, state. The core of climate change risk is this combination of the identification of the possibility of a catastrophic risk and the uncertainty about the likelihood of its realization within a given time frame.

Events with high probabilities are not technically risks. They are dangerous or hazardous events with high probability, hence low uncertainty. Risk emerges out of uncertainty. Harmful unexpected surprises pose a risk worse than well-known, highly likely, dangers. The reason is that uncertainty may breed complacency and inertia, whereas present and visible dangers tend to stimulate preparedness.

As the negative consequences are formidable, that science says there is a small chance it will happen should be reason enough to take strong action to try to prevent it from happening or to reduce its intensity. All controversy about probabilities, model accuracy, data quality is academic and scientific and should not be stopped. It is a prerequisite for the advancement of knowledge. Science advances through doubt and contestation. Certainty stalls scientific inquisitiveness.

At the practical level, however, once the existence of risk is asserted beyond a reasonable doubt, there is ground for action. Societies cannot afford to wait until uncertainty is eliminated to take action against catastrophic risk. They should act under uncertainty to prevent the worst scenarios. A decade long political deadlock has been impeding the world from taking effective global action to face climate risk. The knot is political, not scientific. If the politics is not solved, there will be no incentive to develop innovative policy that meets the scientific requirements to manage global climate risk. No adequate regulatory framework to provide inducements and constraints to the markets to look for new technologies and new patterns of production will be defined without previous global and domestic political accords.

Let’s consider the following quote from Mark New, Diana Liverman and Kevin Anderson’s “Mind the Gap”, just published by Nature:

While adapting to a 2°C temperature rise may mostly involve adjustments of existing practices, a world at 4°C presents large and complex challenges that are likely to require fundamental socioeconomic and technological transformations, rather than adjustments assuming such transformations are achievable through planning at all. Moving from 2 to 4°C would also bring, for any particular location, an accumulating load of increasingly severe impacts. While one or a few impacts considered in isolation may be manageable, a ‘perfect storm’ of multiple severe impacts may be catastrophic.

It is a synthesis of scientific evidence beyond reasonable doubt in spite of an important degree of uncertainty about the specifics – the CRU Hack episode notwithstanding – that points to a catastrophic scenario.

The conclusion is rather straightforward:

The challenges involved in reducing emissions soon and fast enough to have even a small chance of keeping temperatures below 2 °C are much larger than most people realize, requiring unprecedented collective will among the governments of both the developed and developing world. Ongoing climate negotiations offer little to suggest that sufficient collective will currently exists to meet this mitigation challenge. Yet aiming to reduce emissions to keep the average temperature below 2 °C remains a crucial political objective. To try and possibly fail at achieving this goal is better than to renounce the effort, as the larger the gap between the 2 °C target and the final temperature change, the more catastrophic the consequences. The risk of allowing the world to experience 4 °C of warming this century demands both accelerated efforts at effective mitigation and serious planning for adaptation to changes that may be larger than those usually considered.

COP15 is about breaking the political deadlock that is impairing a more consequential global discussion about global policy mitigation and adaptation action. There is a clear imbalance between the politics and the science of climate change. While the science has become clearer over the next decade, the politics has been deadlocked by a decade of denial. The first political step to make the politics of climate change to converge to the scientific requirements for mitigation and adaptation is breaking the deadlock. The Copenhagen summit should focus more on the binary and extraordinarily difficult political operation of switching from “Nay” to “Aye”, from political denial to political engagement.

This shift requires hard political negotiation, facing strong lobbies both domestically and globally by all major developed and developing powers. It will bring about a power shift from old high carbon coalitions to emerging low carbon coalitions. It requires an enormous feat of political engineering. I don’t think we should underestimate the possibility of this happening in Copenhagen. If so, it will be the first and crucial building block for a new political architecture of climate politics.

]]> http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/12/04/the-big-deal-breaking-the-deadlock-on-global-climate-change-politics/feed/ 0 http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/10/30/are-we-heading-to-a-skeleton-agreement-for-a-piecemeal-climate-policy-in-copenhagen/ http://www.ecopolity.com/2009/10/30/are-we-heading-to-a-skeleton-agreement-for-a-piecemeal-climate-policy-in-copenhagen/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:37:46 +0000 sabranches http://www.ecopolity.com/?p=374

Only 37 days before COP15 in Copenhagen, pragmatic proposals for a new framework agreement leaving detailing to be negotiated ex-post are gaining force.

Sergio Abranches

On October, 27^th IPCC lead writer, economist Graciela Chichilnisky wrote on The Ecologist, that she reads “the smoke signals [about a Copenhagen deal] positively”.

“My prediction for Copenhagen is that nothing will happen until the 11½ hour. This is because the stakes are so high – involving the use of energy and the economic growth of nations – that no nation wants to move first. At the end, reaching a deal will focus everybody’s attention.”

On her view there will be “an agreement in principle – the details worked out over a year or so and a process agreed for this.”

Earlier, on May, Climate Policy, a blog project of the American Meteorological Society, published a post by economist Scott Barrett, of the  Johns Hopkins University International Policy Program, on “How to Prevent Climate Change Summit from Failure”, where he argues that:

“It is more realistic to aim to negotiate a skeleton agreement in time for Copenhagen, to save face, with the details being finished later—a Copenhagen bis agreement (bis is Latin for “a second time”). Though many people emphasize the need to act quickly, it is much more important that the US develop an institution that will work, a foundation for making incremental improvements over time.”

He contends that “there is a feedback between domestic negotiations in Washington, and the negotiations in Copenhagen and beyond.” Hence his focus on what the US negotiators should do to save the climate summit.

“My recommendation for the US would be to negotiate a skeleton agreement in time for Copenhagen, and follow up with supporting agreements focusing on individual gases, sectors, and R&D efforts. Success in Copenhagen should not be defined by setting goals that lack domestic support and that cannot be enforced but by laying a foundation for making incremental improvements over time.”

A recommendation that does not differ too much from Chichilnisky’s. But this coincidence of views is only partial, if not superficial. On her article, she also defends the maintenance of the Kyoto Protocol. She is co-author of the book Saving Kyoto. Her argument on why we should keep the Kyoto Protocol is a practical one:

“Why keep the Kyoto Protocol? We must bound global emissions and decrease carbon in the atmosphere – no matter what. Most people agree on this. But this is the first thing the Protocol does. So if we scrap the Kyoto Protocol we will have to start in the same place and do more of the same – so at the end we would have a Kyoto Protocol by another name. It took 13 years to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. Why spend precious time reordering the chairs in the Titanic?”

I have written a piece defending the opposite position. That we should abandon the failed Protocol and work towards a new treaty. Graciela Chichilnisky doesn’t think Kyoto is a failed experience.

“The Kyoto treaty was faulted because greenhouse gas emissions rose under its auspices. But the rising emissions of the last 13 years came mostly from nations that never ratified the Protocol. The Protocol is not at fault for those who refused to obey its limits.”

She does, concede, however, that “Kyoto is only a start and requires improvements”. She also comments the difficulties, political, and geopolitical, the US faces to ratify Kyoto, she thinks could be overcome.

Scott Barrett holds a different view on Kyoto. He considers Kyoto be be both a failure and a risk.

“It is easier to define failure. Most climate watchers would define failure to mean lack of an agreement by states to “commit” to limiting their emissions dramatically. I would define failure to mean repeating the mistakes made in Kyoto in 1997. The worst outcome would be for the United States to “commit” to meet quantitative targets and timetables of emission reduction without being sure that these obligations will be approved by Congress.”

He doesn’t even think that targets and timetables are workable pieces of a viable treaty.

“Targets and timetables are also difficult to enforce. We know this because Kyoto established economy-wide targets and timetables and has been ineffective. This is the mistake we must not repeat.”

Scott Barrett prefers a mechanism more similar to the Montreal Protocol, that was far more effective in reducing CFC’s emissions.

“Montreal has several important features that are not shared by Kyoto. First, it not only limits production (like Kyoto); it also limits consumption (defined as production plus imports minus exports). Second, it not only requires industrialized countries to limit their emissions (like Kyoto), it requires developing countries to reduce their emissions, too. Third, while Kyoto’s limits apply for just five years, Montreal’s cuts are permanent. Fourth, under Montreal, industrialized countries finance compliance by developing countries.”

That’s why he prefers a series of ex-post supporting agreements focusing on individual gases, sectors, and R&D efforts.

“An alternative approach is to address these sectors at the global, rather than at the national, level. New technical standards should be negotiated, creating a new “level playing field.” These can then be implemented in the same way as the Montreal restrictions.”

Although disagreeing on what to do about Kyoto, and even on what did Kyoto really mean to the global endeavor towards and effective climate policy, they both point to a practical way to prevent failure in Copenhagen. To negotiate a political framework, leaving the operationalization and technical detailing for subsequent negotiations after Copenhagen. Some countries are already proposing a “Copenhagen 15.5”, an additional Copenhagen meeting in early 2010.

They may both be right about what appears to be possible to achieve in Copenhagen. Their very disagreement shows how far we are from solving what I called the Asimov Paradox. The Paradox tells us that to change a planet full of people either we get as broad a consensus as necessary, involving as many people, or if consensus fails, far more time for change must be allowed.

I’d like to see those who advocate piecemeal, incremental changes to be more explicit about the risks involved. I am not persuaded that we have the time necessary for policies gradual enough to elude the lack of consensus.

Yet, it doesn’t seem likely, even at the 11½ hour, that world leaders will be able to reach consensus on an ambitious, far-reaching new Protocol to replace Kyoto.

If a bold agreement becomes impossible, an even worse outcome would be to let Copenhagen fail outrightly as some are advocating. We can’t afford to begin again from the scratch. That would only consume time we don’t have. If it comes to a solution like Scott Barrett and Graciela Chichilnisky’s we should, at least, work towards two partial outcomes.

First, that the agreement includes some warranty that we’re not deciding only to muddle-through (Kyoto amounted to a muddling-through compromise). It should contain the terms necessary to achieve significant progress on the details on how to reduce GHG emissions and concentration on the atmosphere.

Second, that brainpower and money are invested in assessing the risks we are taking with an incremental solution, and how to best manage those risks.