After a fast-track approval of the climate change bill, its enabling legislation is deadlocked at the Civil Household. The bill was rushed through Congress for president Lula to arrive in Copenhagen with the law already signed. But without the enabling legislation it is useless, and emission reduction targets cannot be enforced.

The Civil Household filters and process all government proposals before they are taken to the President. While Chief of Civil Household, Presidential candidate Dilma Roussef commanded all aspects of government policy but foreign affairs with a very strong hand and an outstretched arm. She has never been very enthusiastic about climate change policies.

Sources who have been involved in the decision-making process told me that conflict among government representatives responding to different sectoral interests have become almost intractable. A majority among them resists mandating any carbon curbing action other than reducing deforestation. There is strong resistance to any emission reduction targeting for the industrial, energy, and transportation sectors.

There are several sources of veto to sectoral actions on climate change. The officials in charge of climate policy at the Ministry of Science and Technology are against any carbon reduction policy other than curbing deforestation. They claim Brazil already has a low carbon economy. Scientists who work at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), under the Ministry of Science and Technology umbrella, strongly disagree. They are among the most active advocates for fast and encompassing climate change regulation. The Development, Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture ministries also oppose adopting targeted sectoral actions. To them any delay on regulation would be welcome, especially in the pre-electoral and campaign seasons. It is obvious to anyone with a minimum knowledge of the Brazilian economy that it belongs to the high carbon family. It will move faster towards higher levels of carbon intensity, if nothing is done.

Since Dilma Roussef’s times the Civil Household has resisted climate change-oriented policies. The two first Environment ministers, Marina Silva and Carlos Minc, have always had to fight for their policies, often clashing with other ministers, and frequently failing to get them approved by the President.

In one of the fiercest confrontations around policies for the Amazon region, Marina Silva, now an opposition presidential bidder, has resigned. She was replaced by Carlos Minc who, through confrontation and concession, was able to get Lula’s approval to the policy now filed under the Copenhagen Accord.  Minc left the Ministry to run for the state of Rio de Janeiro’s House of Representatives.

The incumbent minister, Izabella Teixeira, does not have the leadership nor the experience required to break this deadlock. The present Chief of Civil Household also lacks expertise and leadership. Without President Lula’s direct intervention it is unlikely regulation would be adopted anytime before this year’s elections.

This places Brazil far behind its two major partners in the BASIC group, China and India. After the BASIC and President Obama brokered the Copenhagen Accord, both China and India have been very active in adopting new policies that would enable them to meet the targets they’ve registered on the Accord’s Annex.

Extreme natural events may be a source of huge human and economic losses, although they are not, in themselves ‘disasters’. A disaster happens when an extreme natural event reaches a populated area.

Often the extent of human losses depends on the vulnerability of the population affected as well as on the degree of preparedness, and the quality of resources for disaster prevention. A poor country will suffer more. The poor wherever they are also will suffer more. Economic losses are greater where there is more property to be damaged, especially valuable economic assets such as industrial plants, commercial buildings, crops or large residential areas.

Munich Re’s NatCatService collects data on fatalities and economic losses caused by ‘natural disasters’ – a misnomer. It shows that, from 2004 to 2009, 543 thousand people have died from natural geophysical, and climatic/hydrological events. Economic losses amounted to US$ 753 billion, and insured losses to US$ 256 billion. Geophysical events are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Climatic and hydrological events are storms, floods, landslides, extreme temperatures, droughts, and wildfires.

Losses were caused by a total of 4,725 extreme events. Geophysical events represented, on average, 11% of the total over the last six years. But, they were, on average, the cause of  47% of human losses. There were three major deviations from this average. In 2004, that category of extreme events provoked 95% of total fatalities, because of the earthquake and tsunami in South Asia and East Africa, killing 220 thousand people. In 2004, it represented 90% of fatalities. An earthquake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan killed 88 thousand people. In 2007, however, geophysical events accounted for only 5% of the fatalities. The deadliest events were cyclone Sidr, killing over 3,775 people in Bangladesh, and floods in China, killing almost 6,800 people.

Climatic and environmental events accounted for 89% of total extreme events registered. Storms were 41% of the total; floods and landslides averaged 31%; waves of extreme temperatures and wildfires, 17%. They were also the main source of economic losses, accounting, on average, in the period, for 81% of such losses. Storms were, by far, the costliest events, explaining around 58% of economic losses. (Click for larger image)

Both human and economic losses vary greatly year by year, depending on the incidence of extreme events in more populated areas. As the chart shows, the greatest fatalities have occurred in 2004, due to the earthquake, particularly the tsunami in South Asia and East Africa. The second deadliest year was 2008 because of the fatalities caused by the earthquake in China, killing more than 70 thousand people, and cyclone Nargis, in Myanmar, killing almost 85 thousand people. (Click for larger image)

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.

Sergio Abranches

It is an extensive and complex law with many stakeholders. During the legislative process a few amendments have improved it to some extent. One of them, for instance, has included the emissions reduction targets as a “voluntary contribution” from Brazil to the global fight against climate change.  There were also a few important setbacks, however. President Lula has vetoed three articles. One on constitutional grounds, the other two conceding to pressure from his Minister of Energy.

Lula vetoed the provision that the country should gradually abandon fossil fuels. As there was no time frame, nor any description of actions that should be taken to that end, it amounted to no more than a future policy indication. But the Minister feared that by maintaining it, an enabling decree could make provisions that would do harm to the fossil energy industry. He only accepted that priority should be given to renewable energy sources.

The Minister of Energy has also persuaded President Lula to veto article 10, that restricted government incentives to small hydropower plants, wind, solar, biomass and other alternative sources. He argued that it would impede incentives to large hydropower plants.

The veto damaged the economics of the new law, by removing the structure of incentives to promote non-fossil energy.

There is some room, however, for improvement and correction through carefully drafting the enabling decree. The law can only be enacted after this enabling legislation is published. It can de done through a series of presidential decrees. Presidential decrees are not reviewed by Congress and can be enforced immediately.

The battle around the enabling decree is about to begin. An official source has told me today that they will not try to write all enabling rules at once. They’ll selectively pick the issues and areas they deem to be the most important and try to set the rules to allow their prompt enforcement. Some issues are almost certain to be in this first batch, because they are instrumental to the implementation of the emissions reduction targets that will be offered as the Brazilian contribution to the Copenhagen Accord.

This strategy of partial enablement aims at reducing the scope of conflict of interest and infighting to prevent a decision-making paralysis.

Another source told me they’ll also work on other parts of the enabling legislation with a longer-term perspective, leaving the groundwork done for the next Administration, to take office on January 1^st ,2011.

People at the Environment and Science and Technology ministries want to expedite the approval of the enabling decree, because ministers and higher officials who will run for elective office on October elections will have to leave the government within the next two months. They want the same people who negotiated the Law of Climate Change to lead the deal on the enabling legislation. It is very likely that Lula will replace his political ministers by technical and managerial people who lack the political savvy to tackle the complex and contentious issues the decree will have to address.

A source told me the ideal timing would be to have the enabling legislation approved by right after Carnival.

Sergio Abranches

The world will have to manage an altered human health environment resulting from climate change, says an important report on the health effects of climate change issued by the medical journal The Lancet, and the University College of London Institute for Global Health Commission.

Effects of climate change on health will affect most populations in the next decades and put the lives and well-being of billions of people at increased risk.

Management of the health effects of climate change will require inputs from all sectors of government and civil society, collaboration between many academic disciplines, and new ways of international cooperation that have hitherto eluded us. Involvement of local communities in monitoring, discussing, advocating, and assisting with the process of adaptation will be crucial. An integrated and multidisciplinary approach to reduce the adverse health effects of climate change requires at least three levels of action. First, policies must be adopted to reduce carbon emissions and to increase carbon biosequestration, and thereby slow down global warming and eventually stabilize temperatures. Second, action should be taken on the events linking climate change to disease. Third, appropriate public health systems should be put into place to deal with adverse outcomes.

Many situations of high risk to human society also entail significant benefits from the endeavors to manage and prevent probable hazards. This is the case of health risks associated to climate change. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), tells how and why on her article for The Lancet commenting the results from the report “Managing the health effects of climate change”. Environmental events such as climate change are not quirks of nature, she argues.

Instead they are markers of massive failure in international systems that govern the way nations and their populations interact. The contagion of our mistakes shows no mercy and makes no exceptions on the basis of fair play. For example, countries that have contributed least to greenhouse-gas emissions will be the first and hardest hit by climate change.

Health consequences of climate change are no longer a matter of scientific uncertainty. They have been identified and their projections are anything but uncertain.

Several health consequences of a changing climate have been identified with a high degree of certainty. Malnutrition, and its devastating effects on child health, will increase. Worsening floods, droughts, and storms will cause more deaths and injuries. Heat waves will cause more deaths, largely among people who are elderly. Finally, climate change could alter the geographical distribution of disease vectors, including the insects that spread malaria and dengue. All these health problems are already huge, largely concentrated in the developing world, and difficult to control.

This correlation between climate change and collective health hazards calls for linking climate and health security goals globally.

Most of the mitigation measures for climate change investigated (including cleaner household-energy sources, less dependence on automobile transport, and reduced consumption of animal products in developed countries) would bring public health benefits. In many cases, these benefits are substantial, and would help to address some of the largest and fastest growing global health challenges and the greatest drains on health-sector resources, such as acute respiratory infections, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, and diabetes. While the climatic effects of mitigation measures are long term and dispersed throughout the world, the health benefits are immediate and local, making them more attractive to politicians and the public.

Mitigation and its side benefits

As a political agreement on global climate policy seems now more likely to be reached in Copenhagen than it was a few weeks ago, we should start looking at the benefits of taking immediate action, and what to do to make it happen.

The issue now is not whether climate change is occurring, but how we can respond most effectively. The first steps are clear. In the short term, strengthening health systems, and widening coverage of proven and cheap public health interventions to control climate-sensitive diseases, would accelerate progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals and save millions of lives. In the long term, the same actions would also reduce vulnerability to climate change. Responding to climate change is not a distraction from the business of protecting health: it is part of the same agenda.

The Lancet has also published a series of articles dealing with the relationship between climate change and human health.

A group of academic and government health and energy specialists led by Paul Wilkinson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine developed an interesting model to examine the possible health gains from reducing green-house gases emissions of household energy use. The model shows that mitigation strategies bring benefits to health for both high-income and low-income households.

The broad conclusion is clear—that in both high-income and low-income settings there is a set of abatement actions with appreciable potential overall benefits to health. In the contrasting examples we investigated, the health benefits seem especially great for the populations of India that rely on inefficient combustion of biomass fuels for household energy. Evidence from many studies shows that women, children, and men in such settings are exposed to very high concentrations of particles, gases, and other noxious pollutants that are often at least an order of magnitude higher than the health-protection values set by national and international agencies. Further, these populations might be especially vulnerable to the health consequences of breathing such pollution because of poor nutrition, poor access to health care, and other risk factors.

Climate change and urban transport

Health and transportation professionals used comparative risk assessment methods to estimate the health effects of alternative urban land transport scenarios for two settings—London, UK, and Delhi, India.

We developed separate models that linked transport scenarios with physical activity, air pollution, and risk of road traffic injury. In both cities, we noted that reduction in carbon dioxide emissions through an increase in active travel and less use of motor vehicles had larger health benefits per million population (7332 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] in London, and 12 516 in Delhi in 1 year) than from the increased use of lower-emission motor vehicles (160 DALYs in London, and 1696 in Delhi). However, combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give the largest benefits (7439 DALYs in London, 12 995 in Delhi), notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from ischaemic heart disease (10—19% in London, 11—25% in Delhi). Although uncertainties remain, climate change mitigation in transport should benefit public health substantially. Policies to increase the acceptability, appeal, and safety of active urban travel, and discourage travel in private motor vehicles would provide larger health benefits than would policies that focus solely on lower-emission motor vehicles.

Their conclusions are both far-reaching and clear. There are concrete advantages from linking policies addressing urban transportation hurdles to the reduction of GHG emissions. A climate change perspective enriches and strengthens urban policies. At the end of the day it yields direct health benefits to citizens and financial gains to households’ budgets and taxpayers.

Important health gains and reductions in CO2 emissions can be achieved through replacement of urban trips in private motor vehicles with active travel in high-income and middle-income countries. Technological measures to reduce vehicle pollutants might reduce emissions, but the health effect would be smaller. The combination of reduced reliance on motorized travel and substantial increases in active travel with vigorous implementation of low-emission technology offers the best outcomes in terms of climate change mitigation and public health. In many cities, the increase in use of cars, motorcycles, and HGVs, with the resulting increase in road danger has meant that many individuals who can afford to are changing to private motorized transport. An increase in the safety, convenience, and comfort of walking and cycling, and a reduction in the attractiveness of private motor vehicle use (speed, convenience, and cost) are essential to achieve the modal shifts envisaged here.

Low-carbon power

A study on low-carbon electricity and public health concludes that reduction of particle air pollution emissions from coal-fired power plants have highly positive effects on health in developed regions like the European Union, or emerging countries, such as China and India.

Changes in modes of production of electricity to reduce CO2 emissions would, in all regions, reduce PM2·5 and deaths caused by it, with the greatest effect in India and the smallest in the EU. Health benefits greatly offset costs of greenhouse-gas mitigation, especially in India where pollution is high and costs of mitigation are low. Our estimates are approximations but suggest clear health gains (co-benefits) through decarbonizing electricity production, and provide additional information about the extent of such gains.

The gains are greater, the more coal-intensive electricity generation is. But even “cleaner” fossil energy would have an incrementally positive effect on health.

This study indicates that some health benefits will result from changes in the means of electricity generation in response to a 50% CO2 reduction target by 2050. Estimates indicate savings in years of life that will be greatest in India, followed by China. If in 2030 changes were made that were consistent with the 2050 reduction targets, gains in India and China would be about 1500 and 500 life-years per million people, respectively. In the EU, the benefits are expected to be more modest, at around 100 life-years per million people in 2030. The modest improvement in Europe expected in a carbon-mitigated future compared with that in a business-as-usual future is mainly the result of the existence of already clean methods of electricity production from fossil fuels. These methods are projected to become cleaner in the business-as-usual setting. This is also the case, but to a lesser extent, in China.

The food system

What about land use change and agriculture? It is well known that the food system is a major contributor to global greenhouse-gas emissions, “from farming and its inputs through to food distribution, consumption, and the disposal of waste.” The major challenge would be to link improvements on agriculture with GHG emissions reductions and redirecting production to the provision of a balanced and healthier human diet.

We (…) used these data to model the potential benefits of reduced consumption of livestock products on the burden of ischaemic heart disease: disease burden would decrease by about 15% in the UK (equivalent to 2850 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] per million population in 1 year) and 16% in São Paulo city (equivalent to 2180 DALYs per million population in 1 year). Although likely to yield benefits to health, such a strategy will probably encounter cultural, political, and commercial resistance, and face technical challenges. Coordinated intersectoral action is needed across agricultural, nutritional, public health, and climate change communities worldwide to provide affordable, healthy, low-emission diets for all societies. (…)

Inadequate policies, social inequality and a distorted structure of market incentives and disincentives lead to a pattern of food production and consumption that is unfit to human health. Correcting these factors would lead to both a cleaner food production system and greater supply of a more balanced diet.

[A] strategy to reduce production and consumption of foods from animal sources would help to prevent dangerous climate change from greenhouse-gas emissions and benefit the health of adults in countries consuming high amounts of animal products. (…) An important challenge in public health is to balance the need for adequate population intake of animal-source protein and essential nutrients with reduced consumption of saturated fat. Almost a billion people have protein-energy undernutrition, most of whom are also undernourished in micronutrients, especially iron and zinc. Adequate protein, energy, iron, and zinc can be obtained from a plant-based diet. However, the consumption of a small amount of animal-source foods per day in low-consumption populations could help to alleviate the burden of undernutrition. At present, agricultural production is mismatched with the provision of a diet that is balanced in terms of foods from plant and animal sources. Globally, production per head of energy, fats, proteins, and micronutrients has increased and is sufficient to meet global population needs, but the benefits have not been distributed evenly across countries and regions. A wide range of factors affect the supply and demand for animal-source foods; some policy levers offer potential approaches to change consumption patterns in populations.

Pollution

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants emitted from fuel combustion account directly or indirectly for a large proportion of present global warming as well as for most of the direct damage to human health from energy use worldwide.

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants include gases such as the directly health-damaging carbon monoxide and non-methane volatile organic compounds, and others responsible for ozone creation in the lower atmosphere such as methane. Aerosols of short-lived greenhouse pollutants include sulphate, organic carbon, and black carbon particles, which have differing climate implications: the first two cooling, but the third strongly warming.

Short-lived greenhouse pollutants need to be controlled in addition to regulating carbon dioxide emissions because they collectively create a substantial proportion of all human-contributed global warming and directly damage health. Importantly, control of some short-lived greenhouse pollutants may lead to quick reductions in global warming.

An agenda for human advancement

This collection of papers together with the full report offer us a wealth of reasons to see cuts of carbon emissions as a developmental issue and not as a limiting factor to human well-being.

The finding of generally positive health effects of mitigation shows that strategies promoting a low greenhouse-gas emission economy can also have potential to improve public health. It also provides a rationale to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that is not wholly confined to the achievement of climate change mitigation. Some commentators suggest that many features of climate change are now irreversible and that the most important objective is to try to adapt to it and other global environmental threats. However, the case for mitigation is greatly strengthened if it has direct collateral benefits in addition to restriction of climate change.

Mitigation strategies can be designed as development strategies. Investment in emissions reduction can also result in less expending in health and nutrition. Changing energy and transportation strategies should not be viewed as limits to growth, but rather as a contribution to better urban living, lower overall costs, and new opportunities for investment and employment.

If societies change their energy systems in ways that improve outdoor and indoor air quality, change their methods of transport in ways that encourage physical activity and social contact, and modify intensive food production practices and consumer choices in ways that reduce dietary risks to health, then many positive health consequences will result. Despite uncertainties about the magnitude and timescale, health co-benefits from mitigation can be anticipated. Therefore, commitment to mitigation actions producing many such benefits becomes very appealing, especially if (as is likely) the health gains entail substantial national cost savings as an offset to the costs of the mitigation actions. The strategic significance of this issue is potentially great. If the health co-benefits from mitigation activities in lower-income countries were sufficiently large, it would strengthen the rationale for achieving convergence of mitigation schedules between low-income and high-income countries.

These studies add strength to an argument I use to guide most of my writings on global warming: the climate change agenda is an agenda for real human progress. It should be, from now on, the guiding principle of every public and private policy-making agenda.

Sergio Abranches

President Obama had already decided to only accept internationally binding mitigation commitments that were already voted by Congress. Although EPA has a broad mandate, the Executive felt it still needs a Federal Climate Change bill approved by Congress to fully define its range of action at the global arena.

It is unlikely that Congress will approve a climate change bill within the next 20 days. Without it the US would not help designing a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen.

The problem is that without a definition from the US, China will hardly play all the cards it has prepared to take to Copenhagen. The US and China are the two pivotal players to seal a global climate change deal.

The fate of the Copenhagen Summit now depends on a tree-way dilemma, a variation of sorts of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game. Obama will only commit the US internationally to what Congress writes into law. China will only move forward after the US plays its hand. As Congress stalls the climate change bill, Obama retreats from his own personal pledge to lead an ambitious climate deal, and China also holds its hand. This amounts to both the US and China defecting from a deal in Copenhagen.

Enters the solution of a “politically binding”, rather than a “legally binding” agreement. It helps Obama to save face, and gives him more time to wrestle with a recalcitrant Democratic majority and a hardline Republican opposition to get a climate change bill voted. But it also breaks the momentum that has been building up towards sealing a meaningful deal in Copenhagen.

China had made an important move at the New York Summit, announcing it was prepared to decide on a relevant reduction of the carbon intensity of its GDP by 2020. The details of what a “relevant reduction” would mean were left to be laid down at the table in Copenhagen. The condition was that the US also made a significant commitment. The European Union has already made a concrete commitment. The Japanese prime-minister Yukio Hatoyama stated that the new government he leads is committed to deeper emissions cuts than his predecessor had approved. Brazil announced, for the first time, its own commitment to a quantified target for emissions cut, just a few hours before president Lula took the presidential plane to visit his French colleague.

Why should all, now, step backwards, just to come into line with the US? Is the fact that president Obama’s domestic leadership has not been strong enough to get Congress to act reason enough for a regress? Should we loose momentum so arduously gained over the last months to keep waiting for Obama’s own momentum?

What would this compromise solution look like anyway? How different would it be from simply redrawing the “Bali Roadmap”?

Denmark’s Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, also chairman of the climate conference, flew to Singapore on Saturday for an emergency meeting to help answer this question.

As Jonathan Weisman reported for The Wall Street Journal, this Sunday, what he said was:

“Even if we may not hammer out the last dot’s of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come.”

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Rasmussen laid out in some detail his goals for the Copenhagen summit. He said leaders should produce a five- to eight-page text with “precise language” committing developed countries to reductions of emissions thought to be warming the planet, with provisions on adapting to warmer temperatures, financing adaptation and combating climate change in poor countries, and technological development and diffusion. It would include pledges of immediate financing for early action.

That doesn’t sound much different from the “Bali Roadmap”, and we should be reminded that the Roadmap led us nowhere but to the same deadlock we were before. Remember the Poznan dismal ending.

Mr. Rasmussen was also very much concerned to make it clear that his idea does not serve to save face:

“We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook,” Mr. Rasmussen told the leaders. “We are trying to create a framework that will allow everybody to commit,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

Helene Cooper, writing from Singapore for The New York Times says  Michael Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs has explained that:

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen, which starts in 22 days.”

Nothing that secretary Clinton had not said prior to the APEC meeting. Most of the difficulty now lies on the side of the US, not of other pivotal players that could lead the Copenhagen talks towards a real deal.

The US government keeps talking about a remote future on vague terms. Typical diplomat’s escapist phases were rapidly learned by Secretary of State Clinton to adorn the US pledge for more time. At a news conference earlier this month, she warned that the parties to the climate summit could not

“let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress.”

She also said that

“if we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen and that would be a stepping stone toward full legal agreement.”

This sounds pretty much like what has been done in Bali. In Poznan, the world agreed to wait until president Obama’s administration fully took hold of affairs so that it could make its pledge at COP15, in Copenhagen.

Most of the nations have already moved a step forward regarding both COP13 and COP14. Only the US remains basically where it was since Obama’s inauguration. Would it not now be the time for the US to get some speed of its own?

President Obama could surely use a “framework agreement” (Secretary Clinton has never used the term “politically binding”) as a powerful resource to persuade the Democratic majority to vote more swiftly the climate change bill, before next year’s midterm elections. But that would come at the cost of another year lost.

It should come as no surprise that president Obama choses the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting to state the US  position about what is feasible to do in Copenhagen.

It is well known that the US and China have been discussing a common strategy for Copenhagen for some time now. Although they are not playmates entirely at ease with one another, the fact that China conditions its own commitment to the US’s perfectly suits the Obama strategy. Obama needs to seem to be leading the US into a meaningful attitude at the climate talks, to differentiate himself from the Bush era climate diplomacy. He doesn’t want, however, to commit to any concrete action before knowing what Congress has approved. A “framework agreement” suits him well, and he expects China to follow suit.

Their interplay has, however, already raised some strong reactions among other pivotal leaders in Copenhagen. Presidents Sarkozy, of France, and Lula da Silva, of Brazil, reacted to the US-China entente by declaring they would push for a complete deal in Copenhagen. President Lula went as far as raising suspicion that the US and China were trying to create “a G2” to impose their common interests to the rest of the world.

It is unlikely that the United States and China could solve all their conflicts of interest to form an alliance to play a two-party hegemonic role in world affairs. It is true, nevertheless, that the two are the key players regarding many critical global issues, climate change being paramount among them. It is far better that they try to work together, than to build a new bipolarity as the one between the US and the USSR, during the Cold War, that plagued most of last century’s international relations. But this maneuver to delay an agreement in Copenhagen clearly deviates from the endeavors of several other players.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Michael Froman interpreted the decision as meaning that “Copenhagen would be the first step to a legally binding agreement.” This two-step doctrine was also behind the Bali Roadmap, to no avail.

We need far more than that to break the deadlock. If a political agreement is the only way, it cannot be drafted on such vague terms as US authorities have been using. It has to point to concrete political solutions to the hurdles that are still holding back a treaty.

The scientific and technical details for such a deal are well known and there is not much room to deviate from them. It is the political groundwork that is still lacking, and most of what is lacking must come from president Obama and the US.

In other words: it would have to be far more of a “politically binding” agreement, than a “framework agreement”. The US would have to commit to far more real action than it has been willing to do so far. And it would still be a second best, or suboptimal, outcome.

The deadlock and the divide among countries are set into political, not technical grounds. This is a fact. Another roadmap for future talks is not a solution to this political deadlock, only its reiteration.

Copenhagen has not been politically saved yet. It is up to the other world leaders to urge the US and president Obama to come up with a more substantive response. After all we are still talking about the world’s largest emitter.

Sergio Abranches

The major contribution to this deviation from a BAU trajectory of GHG emissions will come from reduction of deforestation and degradation, around 25 percentage points. The remaining will come mainly from agriculture, and a ban on the use of charcoal from native forest logging by pig iron mills. Contributions from the manufacturing and transport sectors will be very modest.

Real emissions reductions will depend on the baseline adopted and on the assumptions used to project the future trajectory of emissions. Part of the conflict between the so-called “developmentalists” led by Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef and the “environmentalists” with Environment minister Carlos Minc at the front was over the rate of future growth used for the estimates.

Original projections from the Secretary for Climate Change of the Environment Ministry used a yearly 4 percent average GDP growth as reference, already higher than the average economic growth of the last decade. The projections were then rerun using 5 percent and 6 percent growth averages, that seem highly unlikely to obtain in the near future. Higher growth figures tend to overestimate both the physical values and the pace of increase of emissions associated to the percentages.

Another important issue the government has yet to clear regards the emissions data used in the projections. The only official figures publicly available for emissions date from 1994. An explanation is still due for how government experts have calculated the future trajectory of emissions, without a series of actual emissions for the last 14 years.

Structural change since currency stabilization, commercial opening, and privatization have totally reconfigured the Brazilian industrial, agricultural and transport sectors. The auto industry has more than doubled output from 1994 to 2008. Commodity exports have increased dramatically. The manufacturing, transport, agribusiness, and energy industries are totally different today compared to their condition in 1994. All this structural change has deeply affected the distribution of GHG emissions among the different areas of activity.

The current coefficients for all sectors ought to be very different from those of 1994. Deforestation, for instance, averaged 20,700 sq. km for the period 1994-1996. The average for the last 3 years came down to 14,800 sq. km. The government has used an average of 19,500 sq. km to set the target of 80% reduction to 2020. This means that to meet the target, actual decline in logging will have to be far less steeply than if the government chose more recent figures as a baseline. This lower figure will, however, also contribute to lower the five-year average for the next period. The target is defined by periods using a five-year moving average.

This week the government has announced the smallest estimate for annual deforestation since measurement began: 7,000 sq. km. If this number is confirmed, and can be sustained after recession is gone, it means that half the target set for 2020 would have already been met, due to the high starting point chosen to define the goal.

Contribution of deforestation to GHG emissions was much higher in 1994, than it is today. The contribution of the transport and energy industries has increased significantly. Over the last 8 years most of the new electricity added to the Brazilian grid came from fossil fuel fired power plants.

How seriously this target will be taken by the government remains to be seen. It could well be no more than an act of electoral marketing. One of the reasons to suspect that much is that the center stage was occupied by president Lula’s appointee to run for president next year, Chief of Staff Dilma Roussef. She was clearly not at easy defending the same environmental issues she has opposed during all her tenure at the government.

To gain credibility the government has to publish, the sooner the better, the model and the data base used to project future emissions, the scenario assumptions, and the coefficients for the contribution of each sector to the reduction of emissions. Transparency and independent review of the data and projections used to set these goals will be a necessary condition for a credible commitment.

Depending on the data used for the projections, the announced policy could represent a reduction between 10% and 20% of 2005 emissions.

The final GHG emissions cut resulting from the policy notwithstanding, the fact remains it is a major political shift. After years denying any responsibility to mitigation and rejecting the idea of committing to a quantified goal, the government has finally decided to present a quantifiable and verifiable mitigation action at COP15.

Once the diplomats officially announce the target, Brazil will become accountable for it. The country will have crossed a point of no return. Whether it is legally binding or not is just a formality. Politically it will make the government accountable.

From this point onwards it will be a matter of refining and enlarging the country’s commitment. The next step will likely be for the new administration to take office in 2011 to substitute this deviation from a projection of future emissions with a target based on real emissions for a base-year, probably 2005.

The state of São Paulo, whose governor, José Serra, from PSDB, the main opposition party, is a likely presidential candidate, has already written into law a reduction of 20 percent of 2005 GHG emissions, by 2020. A far more concrete and incontrovertible goal.

This move from Brazil, together with the likely cooperative attitude from China, and depending on what the US will do could well change for the better the prospects of a meaningful political deal in Copenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

The convenient official answer is: a branch of the grid was damaged by a thunderstorm, with heavy rain, strong winds and lightning discharges. The Center for Weather Forecast and Climate Research (CPTEC) of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) could not find any evidence of such a storm at the time and place the failure happened.

The incident revealed repeated mistakes of national energy policy as well as the systemic risks that endanger Brazilian energy security. Energy planning has been poor for decades. Long-range planning has been abandoned. The 10-year government program has a bias towards high carbon solutions. The system is too dependent on power from huge hydroelectric plants. Grid control is too centralized. Grid management is poor. The system is unable to isolate a faulty line, it has no efficient mechanism to rapidly identify failures, it takes too much time to relaunch.

Brazil faces a different type of energy dependency: it is too dependent on hydro sources. The system is, thus, vulnerable to droughts that are becoming more frequent and more severe. Wrong policy choices led to an increase of fossil fuel fired thermoelectric plants. This choice has significantly increased the level of carbon emissions from the power sector, once one of the world’s cleanest. Wind and photovoltaic sources are neglected, so are biomass alternatives.

The regulatory framework prevents decentralized small and medium scale self-generation by blocking its integration to the grid. The system has to work with a large amount of surplus supply to reduce risk of shortages. Every single point of the country depends entirely on the same sources of supply.

Energy authorities seem totally ignorant of the contemporary views on energy security. Even the best experts dismiss too easily any smart-grid solutions. There is a paradigmatic obstruction to renewable sources other than hydro, always deemed “too expensive, and too small scale” to be worth considering.

This “small scale” wind alternative has, for instance, reached 13.240 MW in China, almost the same amount the largest Brazilian hydropower plant (the second largest in the world) Itaipu yields. Wind power in China is on track to beat the government’s target of 30.000 MW by 2020.

It doesn’t look like a small scale option. It looks more like policy blindness or an organized interest barrier to these alternatives in the Brazilian energy policy-making process.

The hydro bias has moved the electric power frontier to the Amazon. Building huge hydropower plants in the Amazon, apart from their environmental impact, only increases the costs and risks to the grid. These plants require huge transmission lines to reach large consumption centers in Southern Brazil, crossing enormous tracts of dense jungle, using very high towers. Servicing of these lines is costly, very difficult and prone to accidents. These lines face higher risk of being damaged by heavy thunderstorms, tornados, and lightning.

New power outages are likely to happen again. This last one was a clear result of systemic failure, and grid fragilities. In the past, energy rationing resulted from a prolonged drought that emptied the reservoirs of the major plants.

Energy plans do not consider the country’s enormous wind and solar power potential. These sources could increase energy security, by diversifying the electric matrix. They would contribute to reduce its carbon intensity, increased by the addition of fossil fuel fired thermoelectric plants. Wind and photovoltaic plants could decentralize power generation, and serve as an alternative to Amazon-based power plants. The Amazon option has greater environmental impact, higher costs (when transmission lines are accounted for) and increases systemic risk.

Sergio Abranches

Even the most unyielding European leaders now admit that a new comprehensive and legally binding treaty is unlikely to be attained in Copenhagen.

All are now converging towards the  conclusion that the nations should cut a political deal at COP15. A high level political commitment to set the parameters, rules, and the procedural terms for a new treaty to be detailed over 2010.

Is this such a bad outcome as to conclude that Copenhagen is likely to flop? Isn’t there a way to cope with the signs of failure and flip the cards the right side?

The US will be the pivotal actor among the great powers in Copenhagen to this effect. If Obama does get a climate law, he can still make a substantial difference. Even a political agreement would be more credible, deeper and encompassing with a firm commitment from the US, especially if Obama does make it to Copenhagen.

There is an enormous difference between a political agreement negotiated and signed by heads of governments, and one made by diplomats. Diplomats can negotiate treaties. Political commitments are an affair for chief political officers.

I’ve heard questions in Barcelona about whether this political accord would have numbers on it.  I’ve also watched delegates in Barcelona being asked whether what the US Congress is discussing wouldn’t fall too short of what should be demanded from the US. Many doubt Obama could really to take a leading role in the negotiations with such dismal numbers.

They would amount to something between what the House has already approved -17 percent below 2005; 4 percent below 1990;  and what the Kerry-Boxer bill proposed in the Senate – 20 percent below 2005; 6 percent below 1990. Greens and the G77 will probably say it is not enough.

But are these first figures really as important as getting the US in the playing field? I think not.

Obama will be more at easy to discuss financing figures and technological terms, than emissions figures. After years of denial and vetoes at global summits, it is only natural that the politics of a first bill be that hard to tackle. Let us remember that EU’s numbers are relatively new. The first European figures were nothing very impressive either. The US is late. It really is. Blame it on George W. Bush.

More important than the US numbers in themselves would be the breadth of the legislation. If it is able to alter the structure of incentives in the economy, it may trigger investments that will make the R&D pipelines for clean technologies and renewable energy to move faster. It could also stimulate companies to move ahead and go deeper with their sustainability and low carbon strategies, to gain a competitive edge given this new set of incentives.

There is also the demonstration effect to take into account.

It is hard for politicians, under the crossfire of lobbyists, to discuss cost and benefits at an abstract level, or looking at simulations that vary from one set of assumptions to the other. Green lobbyists would show simulations pointing to smaller costs and higher benefits, while the lobbyists for the high-carbon industries would show simulations pointing to high costs and low benefits.

Once the bill becomes law, and companies start acting within the new framework of inducements and constraints it sets, actual costs and real benefits start to show. The correlation of forces among organized interests starts to shift in the direction pointed by the new gains and benefits generated by the new rules of the game. Politicians start to see more clearly what really is feasible, and how to proceed.

This process tends to be fast, depending on how dynamic the economy is. I’d say that in the US it could take from 2 to 5 years. More to the lower end, because of the competitive structure of the economy, the progress already achieved in several states and large cities, and the unique role venture capital has in accelerating R&D in the US.

With the economy already moving in the right direction, these initial targets can be easily overcome and the bar can be set higher at a much lower political cost.

Another important point is that not all the difficulties are related to the US standing. The G77 said in Barcelona it will not support any agreement unless industrialized countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That won’t happen. And that is not a necessary and sufficient condition for a global climate treaty to be effective.

Some of the G77 demands are more workable. One of its spokesperson said that “an equitable agreement can be reached in Copenhagen” provided that the industrialized countries make “a firm commitment of reduction of emissions; a firm commitment on finance; and a firm commitment on technology”. Quite right, and fair enough. To set 40 percent over 1990 as a sine qua non is to deny any possibility of agreement. Several countries, the US first among them, will not arrive at that in the short run.

Obama will not commit to what he cannot get approved by Congress. Midterm elections are nearing and if he looses the majority, or it narrows downs, it will become even harder to deal with Congress. He is only too realistic to promise only what he can agree with Congress.

The US needs time for experimentation with the first Federal climate change bill ever, before it moves ahead. This is not a dreamworld, it is the real world we’ve got to cope with.

The conditions spelled out by G77 in Barcelona also included that the agreement “remain within Kyoto.” This is a good example of mixing opportunism and ideology.

Why Kyoto? Because it has the Annex-1 and nothing else. Such a demand generates immediate polarization. Representatives from Japan and the EU immediately answered they do not see why “non-Annex-I” countries should not commit to binding emissions cut themselves. Kyoto is not a relevant issue any longer.

The statements and demands of the G77 mix some fair points (criticisms of the uncertainty about industrialized countries’ commitments) to opportunism and ideological prose in unequal proportions.

The real fact is that it is too heterogeneous to legitimately speak with only one voice for all its members. First of all they are 130 members. Secondly, countries like China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Qatar and Bahrain – to name a few – should admit they do not belong together with Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, and so many other poorer nations. Even more so when discussing high carbon emissions. They are using the poor opportunistically, as shields to elude their own responsibilities.

They belong to an “Annex-II” with binding though differentiated commitments. They would still be eligible to financial and technological assistance, but at different conditions when compared to the poor countries.

The poor developing world is entitled to a greater financial assistance for adaptation, and all help in developing low-carbon development plans.

Emerging powers should be asked to present mid and long-term plans to cut emissions and build a low carbon economy. To do that they would be entitled to special financing mechanisms for mitigation and technological partnerships to develop low-carbon alternatives.

Another major obstacle to a new ambitious treaty lies on the the rules of the Climate Convention. They turn every player – rich or poor, relevant emitter or not, oil producing or oil consuming, large or small – into a veto player: one who is decisive to whether or not a decision will be made. All have the same power, because decisions are by unanimity.

This is only apparently a fair rule. In fact it treats very unequal actors very equally, feeding opportunism, and leading to a deadlocked situation that inevitably gives room only to muddling through, incremental policies as outcomes. It leads to a typical opportunistic situation in which a player maneuvers to shift the burden of deadlock to other players and to appear as the most righteous among the players.

Copenhagen is not flopping. It couldn’t deliver what it has been expected to deliver. But Copenhagen could successfully cope with the major obstacles preventing us to make real progress. Coping the right way with divergence and asynchronous national situations among the industrialized and the emerging powers we could still make progress towards the scientific requirements to prevent the worst case scenarios. Coping might be the only way to scape the BAU syndrome: the business as usual straightjacket were in.

First, it is in our powers to converge toward short and mid term objectives, and on accelerating rates dynamically adjusting the outcomes to the scientific requirements.

Second, we can try to solve once for all the financial hurdle that keeps several developing countries from playing the cooperative game. We have the expertise, and the resources to do it.

Third, we could do the same thing with the difficulties to get a firm technological commitment. The US technological partnerships with China and India are a good starting point that could lead us into a general model for technological cooperation in critical areas for mitigation of carbon emissions.

Fourth, countries need to be better, and positively, discriminated. The industrialized countries are correctly under one set of commitments proportional to their historical contribution, and their present level of nominal and per capita emissions.

Large emerging powers should agree to a different set of commitments proportional to their present nominal and per capita emissions and the trajectory of their emissions under BAU for the next decade.

Poor countries should be asked no emission cuts, but assisted in designing low-carbon development programs, to lead them to the new pattern without sacrifice, and at the same time enabling them to eradicate misery along the way.

This could be written into firm a political agreement, with the necessary elements for a new treaty to be negotiated and detailed over 2010. Meanwhile the large emitters – industrialized and emerging – could cut a deal of their own, sometime between next year and 2012, to establish national policies in line with their commitments written into the political agreement.

This is in our power to do, and Copenhagen could yet deliver such an outcome. So let’s hope we can have a COPEnhagen, not a FLOPenhagen.

Sergio Abranches

The decision was postponed to November 14. Meanwhile government officials will try to agree on a set of actions and figures that go beyond the commitment 80% reduction  of deforestation by 2020.

The new commitment would include the agricultural sector (land use change), by means of a program of quality and productivity gains to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The program could include new production practices, increasing non-tillage farming, and direct seeding; changing use of fertilizers; fighting agricultural wildfire, especially on sugar cane plantations; and recovery of spoiled land to move the agricultural frontier without forcing deforestation.

Another action considered almost fully approved is to ban wood from deforestation in the production of charcoal for steel mills. Government officials are labeling it “green steel”. President Lula has recently criticized private giant iron ore mining company Vale, for not producing steel for export. He and his Chief of Staff (also his presidential candidate to be) Dilma Roussef are staunch supporters of steel production.

Some sources have told me there wasn’t too much conflict over goals or over the idea of an enlarged commitment to be taken to Copenhagen. Most of the divergence centered on figures and procedures. The meeting was adjourned so that the different ministries could get together and agree on both.

The major source of opposition to an extended commitment continues to come from the Foreign Ministry. They argue that the Kyoto Protocol does not impose such obligations on Brazil. President Lula’s political advisors, however, are reported to have said that there is great expectation in the Brazilian society about a new attitude in Copenhagen. The president was apparently sensitive to the argument, because he is very fond of his domestic popularity, and also because he is already looking at the 2010 presidential elections.

Brazil would present a new and more ambitious set of NAMAs – Nationally Appropriated Actions, that, although not considered technically as legally binding commitments, are “quantifiable, reportable and verifiable commitments.”

Although there are those who say the government has already decided to commit only with the 80% reduction of deforestation in the Amazon, I heard from more than one official source that the president wishes to go beyond that.

The expectation is that actions and corresponding quantitative figures, consensually supported by all ministers involved, should be finally evaluated with the president next November 14.

President Lula’s last words were “let’s move ahead, but bring me a consensual policy with figures all of you agree with.”