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.”

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting to the Climate Change Convention in Durban is taking place in Panama, since last Saturday. Negotiators will attempt to arrive at feasible drafts to be tabled at the next session of the Climate Convention, COP17, in Durban, South Africa. The signs are that an agreement on the core issues deadlocking conversations is unlikely to happen.

A radical polarization between developed and developing countries emerged since the first preparatory meetings, early this year. This was somehow surprising. COP16, in Cancun, seemed to have restored confidence among parties, and to point towards a more cooperative dialogue. No party or observer would really imagine that a major deal was possible this year, or even next year, especially after the worsening of global economic conditions with a new turn of the financial crisis. But there was some hope that a few meaningful strides would be possible, until conditions were ripe for a final deal.

It seems unlikely that global climate negotiators will be able to solve conflicting views on the core issues that are deadlocking climate talks in this climate of sharp polarization. The present situation seems to indicate that countries have moved backwards to the old veto politics that impeded any significant global climate deal for one decade.

This persistent deadlock threatens the credibility of the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) as the multilateral instrument to negotiate a future, substantive and encompassing global climate deal. A deal that is binding to all major emitters, setting emissions reduction targets that meet the scientific consensus about the minimum levels necessary to achieve relative climate security.

The divide between developed and developing countries seems to have increased over the last months. On the one side developing countries say there will be no broader deal prior to the approval of a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol. The first period ends in 2012. Developing countries argue that they are already committed to reduction goals proportionate to their historical obligations, and commitments from developed countries are still lacking.

It is true that the aggregate commitment from developed countries is still behind scientific requirements. The goals set for the United States in Copenhagen are too low for the major developed emitter. There is little  room in most developing countries to implement emissions reduction policies without substantial financial and technological support from developed countries. But this is definitely not true for the larger emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and several others. These countries are doing less than they could and should, particularly when we take into account their future emissions, and the pace their emissions is increasing as their economies grow.

Insisting on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol seems increasingly less credible as a strategy to achieve a meaningful global climate deal. The countries that owe more on the side of further commitments to reduce their emissions are all outside it, namely the United States, China, Brazil, India, and a few other G20 members.

It is more plausible to say that their concern is not really with the future of global climate change policy, but with the immediate impact of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ending, without a decision about a second one. The focus of concern is what would happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms under the Protocol and to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that allows for investments in emissions reducing ventures in developing countries to be used as offsets by developed countries.

The negotiators for the European Union said, on a press briefing in Panama, that CDM projects would continue to be accepted as offsets within EU’s own cap and trade framework, even if Kyoto Protocol’s commitments are not renewed.

While developing countries insist on placing the Kyoto Protocol on center stage of negotiations, developed countries are playing it down. U.S. chief negotiator, Todd Stern has been clear in all his statements that his country is out of it, and has no intention to approve it in the future. The U.S. stance has not changed in Panama. The representative from Japan reiterated his country will not be a party to a second commitment period. New Zealand said that they remain prepared to take on a second commitment period only in the context of a comprehensive global agreement that contains legally-binding emission reduction targets for all major emitters. Australia’s position is more or less the same, if not a bit more direct in the sense of only accepting a successor to Kyoto that reaches all major emitters at once.

A second commitment period seems far away, unless there is enough progress on the “long-term” negotiations (AWG-LCA) aiming at a concomitant and comparable deal that encompasses all large emitters, developed and emerging, especially those outside the reach of the Kyoto Protocol.  This global deal, however, is nowhere in sight.

The Kyoto Protocol has very few virtues as far as necessary climate change mitigation is concerned. It is the only legal framework we have. It helped to create a carbon market. But, alas, in spite of being legal, it reaches about a third of  the global emissions encompassed by the pledges registered under the Copenhagen Agreement. It is legal, but it is hardly binding, because there is no enforcement mechanism in place. Its compliance instruments are either lacking or too weak to make a difference. If what counts is the moral and political constraints of being a signatory, than it does not differ too much from the Copenhagen Agreement, especially after its main elements were approved into the Climate Change Convention framework in Cancun. The carbon market has so far failed to prove itself as a working mechanism to effectively reduce emissions, and is far from becoming a global institution.

UNFCCC’s executive secretary, Christiana Figueres, reported progress on the design of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Technology Executive Committee (TEC), but she raised concerns about the need for progress on monitoring, review and verification (MRV). She has also said that negotiators are for some time working against the clock under the Kyoto Protocol. On the motivational side, she said that Durban needs to address further commitments for developed countries under the Protocol and the evolution of the mitigation framework under the Convention for developed and developing countries. That is precisely the key for the deadlock.

Informally what is already under negotiation is a transition regime once the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. The major concern is what will happen to the financial and technological cooperation mechanisms created by the Protocol and with CDM. It doesn’t seem too difficult to foresee that a legal extension of these mechanisms beyond the Protocol’s first commitment period is far more probable to happen than the approval of a meaningful second period. This transition rule and progress on the institutional design of technology cooperation and of the Green Fund seem to be the feasible goals for Durban.

The institutional rules that govern the UN’s decision-making process feeds cross-cutting vetoes and has a clear bias towards the status quo. Usually the only viable exit from a deadlocked status quo is muddling through, or accepting piecemeal, minimal changes at a time. The unanimity rule precludes substantial consensus-based decisions leading to a change of regime. This is particularly true for the global climate change regime. If unanimity is to be enforced in absolute terms, no substantive consensus would be possible in this heterogeneous assembly of 193 countries, that ranges from oil producers to small islands threatened to disappear; from giant emitters, developed and developing, to poor countries that have very low emissions. Some of the smaller emitters show nevertheless a far more consequential disposition to find a new path towards low-carbon development, than most of the fast growing large emitters.

In Copenhagen, the application of the absolute interpretation of the unanimity rule led to the collapse of a deal based on a large consensus among all relevant players. It was defeated by the veto of a handful of ideology-orientated countries, largely peripheral to global politics, and to global climate policy. In Cancun, a more relativistic interpretation of the unanimity rule allowed the waiver of a small minority’s whimsical veto, and the approval of the Cancun Agreements.

If negotiators fail to find a way to solve the gridlock within the next few years, the UNFCCC risks loosing its credibility and legitimacy. It will come to be seen as an irrelevant segment of climate politics, one dominated by diplomatic fencing. The sustainability of the Climate Convention will be in jeopardy. But, much worse, if the logjam extends beyond 2012 the danger increases of the world loosing the possibility of maintaing unavoidable climate change within relatively safe boundaries.

Sergio Abranches

Moving from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy entails replacing the global energy and industrial high-carbon infrastructure over the next decades. UN’s recent Economic and Social Survey 2011 – The Great Green Technological Transformation estimates replacement costs at $15-$20 trillion, or between one quarter and one third of global income.This is a herculean task. One that has been interpreted more as an insuperable obstacle than as a great opportunity. The cost and magnitude of the shift seems, at first glance, to be a formidable barrier. It takes diverting a large chunk of global savings and investment towards this task. If we do it as fast as science has been asking us to to, we’ll leave unexploited a wealth of high-carbon, relatively low cost resources. But look again. Using these resources represents an unaffordable climatic and environmental cost. The huge mobilization of monetary values to invest in new activities, new materials, new energy sources, new technologies could feed a long boom cycle of economic activity over several decades. Income and profit gains will more than compensate for the cost of replacement. We could start a long cycle of global growth that would add up to one of history’s longer-lasting periods of increasing prosperity.

Because climate change is a global phenomenon, the shift towards a low-carbon economy has to be a global one. It creates distributive risks and advantages. Leaders of several developing and underdeveloped nations argue that it represents a burden they cannot afford. They also say that since they’re not responsible for the GHG emissions that caused the problem, they have no obligation to act. This reasoning corresponds to the “insurmountable obstacle syndrome”. Seeing change as a hindrance impossible to overcome is self-defeating, especially when there is no viable alternative. Besides there is no opting out for anyone.

Obstacles should be viewed as motivations, not deterrents. Rich countries have the opportunity to create an investment dynamic that will by itself be a source of strong job and income creation. Developing and underdeveloped countries have what I call, after Alexander Gerschenkron, the advantages of backwardness. As the UN survey puts it, “developing countries may be able to leapfrog directly to renewable energy sources”. Instead of trying to catch up developed countries through the high-carbon path, they can shortcut to the low-carbon advanced economy.

Read full article here.

Sergio Abranches

The last official preparatory meeting before COP17, in Durban, South Africa, has started yesterday in Bonn pointing to more problems than solutions. Christiana Figueres, top UN climate official, warned the parties about the risk of inaction, but realistically acknowledged that there will likely be very few substantial decisions in Durban. She finally admitted that there is not enough time left to approve the text for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. A regulatory gap is already unavoidable.

Warning statements by the top climate official always precede the final preparatory meetings. Yvo de Boer used to do that before Figueres. It is also on the script to voice some realistic assessments about what is possible to accomplish. Realism helps to manage expectations.

“We are putting ourselves in a scenario where we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere,” said Figueres. “We are getting into very risky territory,” she concluded to stress that time was running out.

She has also sided with the less developed countries and the small island-states observing that the target agreed upon in Copenhagen to limit global warming to around 2C is unsustainable. She supported the small countries’s plea that the world targets 1.5C instead. In Cancun, there was an agreement that at some point the 1.5C target will be considered.

“In my book, there is no way we can stick to the goal [2C] that we know is completely unacceptable to the most exposed [countries],” Figueres said, according to the Guardian.

By pushing for the 1.5C goal Figueres may get a broad majority support among the parties, but runs the risk of creating an unresolvable polarization between the smaller countries, the U.S., China, India, and Brazil. A polarization that may lead to a deadlock in negotiations. Besides, several climate scientists have told me that this is an unrealistic target given the level of GHG already accumulated in the atmosphere and the present path of emissions. Some of them think we’ve already passed even the point where the 2C limit would be feasible. Based on their opinion it seems that either 2C or 1.5C would only be achievable if we have better technology to capture GHG from the atmosphere, as Figueres suggested.

On the side of realistic statements, Figueres has finally acknowledged that an agreement is unlikely in Durban on the second period of commitment for the Kyoto Protocol. “Even if they were able to agree on a legal text”, she said, as Reuters reports, “that requires an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, it requires legislative ratifications on the part of three-quarters of the parties, so we would assume that there’s no time to do that between Durban and the end of 2012.” A post-2012 regulatory gap is already unavoidable, and may further destabilize the already fragile carbon market. There is a broad perception among climate negotiators that no binding agreement to replace Kyoto is likely to be agreed upon before 2015.

Negotiators are even more skeptical about getting any relevant outcome from Durban because of the attitude of the South African presidency. Critics say the presidency lacks initiative. No informal meeting has been organized so far to consult the parties on a viable set of decisions that could prevent COP17 from being a total failure.

Asked about this absentee presidency, Figueres said that “South Africa has been very carefully listening, trying to understand where there are commonalities and where the weaknesses are.” It seems too little given the amount of negotiations still required to reach a consensus on a few points.

Less developed countries are very concerned about the mitigation and adaptation fund. In spite of a commitment made in Copenhagen to implement the fund, and the decision made in Cancun to put it in place, there has been no institutionalization of the fund or disbursement of money. Finding a way to make the fund real could be a fair outcome for the Durban climate talks.

A qualified and active presidency is key to prevent failure of climate talks. The transparent and pluralistic informal meetings convened by the Mexican presidency of COP16 were decisive to get the Cancun Agreements. Prime Minister Rasmussen’s attitude in the presidency of COP15 has contributed in no small amount to the crisis of confidence among parties that led the Copenhagen final session to the well-known dismal ending.

Another critical factor at climate negotiations is some degree of understanding among countries that have a leading role in the different groups among which the Parties are organized: the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China); AOSIS (small island states); African Union; and Less Developed Countries. The three BASIC big players, the U.S., and the European  Union are always decisive players. If they reach some understanding with opinion makers among the other groups, and are able to take these countries’ major interests into account, some progress could be achieved. It is the COP presidency that has the political and institutional means to propitiate situations where this preliminary understanding could be pursued. Apparently this is not happening at all.

Years of deadlocks, paralysis, and muddling-through outcomes, if and when there is some progress, have led several analysts to propose that the UNFCCC ceases to be the main forum for global climate policy-making. Some of them defend the creation of an agency similar to the World Trade Organization to become the global climate change regulatory agency. Others think that sectoral agreements and bilateral deals could pave the way to a multilateral agreement encompassing all major carbon emitters. This deal could be done within G20, and be more effective and binding than any UN-sponsored agreement.

I agree that the UNFCCC is unlikely to yield a broad and bold binding agreement in any foreseeable future. Climate change challenges us to do the maximum possible under the present technological and social conditions, as well as to keep searching for stronger technological means, short of geoengineering. The UN rules could only lead to consensus around an acceptable minimum. But , its weaknesses notwithstanding, the UNFCCC still has an important role to play.

It creates an environment where the key actors of the global society can interact and learn the ways towards global democratic governance. Government officials, NGOs, scientists, business, and the media get together to debate all topics relevant to climate change. This continuous interactions create connections, networks, allowing  all players in this complex and decisive global political game to be exposed to each others’ views and values. It is an exercise fundamental to the future of democratic and pluralistic global governance without government. An important environment to test everyone’s capabilities to become a part of this cosmopolity, of this global poliarchy. Perhaps it is not the appropriate mechanism to provide us with a strong and binding legal framework for global action on climate change, but is is a necessary piece of this machinery, in itself a work in progress.

Sergio Abranches

Local sustainable development 2.0, that’s how we should call what is happening in 80 municipalities of the Brazilian giant state of Pará, in the Amazon region. Pará is 1.8 times the size of Texas. These 80 towns are basically dominated by cattle-ranching and some timber production. Beef, timber, and soybean have been the main culprits for a long history of illegal logging, that has claimed about 20% of the Amazon rainforest, and 27% of Pará’s forest cover.

Until recently, local development in the Amazon has been based on small scale cooperative-based extractive activities for the production of rubber, fruit or fish. Now local development has to address large-scale production, usually for beef, soybean, and wood products exports.

Deforestation has declined sharply over the last five years, from more than 25,000 sq. Km a year to around 7,000 sq. km. Forest degradation, though, has been rampant, especially over the last three years. Degradation has two main sources. One, is selective logging for  timber production. Loggers cut the most valued species and leave those with less or no commercial value. The other is land clearing for pasture or soybean production. Loggers also cut selectively, to hide the process from common satellite detection, until it is too late for authorities to prevent full clearing.

Continue reading…

Sergio Abranches

Looking at the sequence of extreme weather events from 2005 to the beginning of 2011 it seems clear that any trend analysis or future scenario has to look at climate change as a central driver.A few years ago a friend of mine, an economist who runs a successful consultancy business, asked for a meeting to discuss my view on climate change. He was intrigued by the fact that, knowing my work as a political risk analyst, I have started to write extensively about climate change. Especially my journalistic commentaries have centered, for several years now, on climate change and related issues.

I argued that looking at long range scenarios to assess forthcoming risks I realized that climate change had become a unremovable driver. In the 1980’s, one could still find 30-50 year scenarios that looked at climate change as a variable. At least one scenario would not feature climate change, and this absence would be one of the factors that would distinguish it from the other scenarios. From the 1990’s onwards one could not find any credible long-run scenario that did not take climate change into account. In other words no story about the next three or four decades would be credible if it did not include climate change. Scenarios can vary widely when other factors are examined. Climate change has to be in all, and can only credibly vary regarding its intensity, and the different solutions envisaged.

He told me that he was beginning to see it, when analyzing long-term agricultural trends.

Yesterday he coined a catch-phrase for one of his analysis looking at supply, demand and price trends: “extreme weather used to be a random factor, and has now become a permanent one because of climate change”. Maybe it has never been a totally random factor. But it is clear that it has been a permanent feature over the last few years.

I’ve looked at extreme weather events from 2005 to the beginning of this year, and was able to make an extensive list covering these seven years. For all of them I could list heavy storms; floods and landslides; anomalously cold or hot winters; heat and cold waves; severe droughts. Anomalies could be found in all years, and all around the world. A good aggregation from 2005 to 2009 here. For 2010, an year of extremes, two good sources are here and here. Another good source, from the insurance industry here. This year began with some deadly weather events in Sri Lanka, Australia, and Brazil.

This sequence of extreme events over seven straight years has had a disruptive effect on agricultural supplies. Demand continued to grow, but crop failures due to the weather has reduced global supplies. Prices have increased feeding a weather-related food price inflation. It seems sensible to admit that weather extremes have become a driver no mid to long-term agricultural scenario can disregard. it also means that agribusiness will have to invest in adaptation. Some migration of agricultural production from risky to safer areas is becoming likely. Obviously the reach of the climate driver goes far beyond agriculture. Loss of lives, infrastructure and property was widespread. Extreme weather raises the risk of disasters everywhere, and adaptation has become a general need. The insurance industry has introduced the climate driver in its calculus long ago. Cities are already preparing themselves for present and future events resulting of changing climate patterns.

No risk or trend analysis will make sense if it doesn’t take climate change as a permanent and ubiquitous driver.

Sergio Abranches

How the physical environment is segregating the key players of global climate politics, and decisively influencing the way negotiations take place at COP16.

The physical environment is clearly having a significant impact on the climate and dynamics of the negotiations here in Cancun. The set-up isolates negotiators and observers from the NGO’s, and makes the access of the media to the delegations far more difficult than it was in Copenhagen, for instance. It also makes contact between the media and NGO’s discontinuous and far more demanding. The distances involved are a major factor as well as the overall poor logistics for COP16.

The physical set-up of a meeting has a clear impact on behavior. The relationship between physical environments and behavior has already been widely documented by anthropological, sociological, socio-psychological, and political research.

The ExpoCenter at the Moon Palace, where the delegations meet officially, and press briefings are held, lacks a  media center. The media center is on another building of the Moon Palace, and one can only move from “lobby to lobby” through minibuses. This morning I had to wait 18 minutes to get one of those minibuses. One can easily waste half an hour just moving from within the huge and labyrinthine resort housing the official proceedings of COP16. You waste time. To meet the schedules requires leaving to places earlier. The lack of appropriate housing for the media closer to where the meetings and press briefings occur reduces the capability for real time reporting.

I am writing from an empty media center. There are only nine journalists here. I can see a meeting of the Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol on the screen, but the phones won’t broadcast what the delegates are saying. This empty media center, overlooking the caribbean sea, with a mute TV screen showing delegates discussing one of the key issues of this global meeting on climate change is an eloquent portrait of the present climate.

Unsurprisingly small-groups informal meetings and informal consultations dominate COP16. Delegates complain about the lack of official drafts, there are no texts for them to discuss and negotiate formally. Brazilian chief climate change negotiator ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo referred yesterday to this bias towards informality as an “intensification of informal consultations” on all the dimensions of the negotiations. He sees this process as one that could lead to more objective formal negotiations latter on. However, he also sees some risks if these informal consultations are used to go too far on the details of each issue, loosing the overall, systemic view of the process.

Other negotiators think that informal consultations lack transparency and representativeness. As a political analyst, I understand the need for informally tackling the harder issues paving the way to smoother formal negotiations. I also understand why diplomats have a bias towards small-group talks. However, when they become the dominant activity in a meeting that requires formal procedures, they can easily become a way to delay decisions.

NGO’s are a victim of this isolationism. The cannot either mobilize or advocate efficiently through all the barriers imposed to their participation. The whole meeting becomes tribal. Delegations talk only to delegations, and tend to follow the lines of elective affinities. NGO’s end up by talking basically to environmentalists and experts they already know well on side-events. They are segregated from the main events.

On one of her witty press briefings secretary Christiana Figueres invited the media to go to the “climate change village”, she described in strong colors as a wonderful place the Mexican government has built for the NOG’s. “The climate change village is where things happen. So stop looking for where things happen. Just go there”. She was referring to night life obviously. But the fact is that the “climate change village” is a sort of NGO zoo set up to separate the environmentalists from the place where the things that really matter happen.

Christiana Figueres is has a powerful personality. Her eyes glitter with intelligence, but as a diplomat’s eyes they’re opaque to her sentiments. They won’t tell you whether she is sincere or not. Today she strongly defended the participation of stakeholders. She also said the participation of NGO’s and stakeholders is very welcome. She also said NGOs were fully participating “following electronically” what the delegations are doing confined in the Moon Palace. The fact is that while at the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) delegates are discussing how to create official tracks for stakeholders (NGOs included) participation, this participation was drastically curtailed on Cancun. A large part of this spatial confinement is the responsibility of the Mexican government on the presidency of COP16. Mexican president Felipe Calderón was probably negatively impressed by the democratic environment inside the Bella Center, in Copenhagen, where he started planning what to do about Cancun’s COP. But Figueres is also responsible for deciding not to insist on a more inclusive and transparent meeting.

In Copenhagen, it was very difficult to reach the Bella Center. But, once inside, the environment was an open one, very democratic, where everybody had an opportunity to see and talk to everybody else. In Cancun, on the contrary, COP16 has become a “closed-doors” event, on a “palace”, that has an architecture and a decor of doubtful taste, and a space organization that makes very easy to implement an isolationist organization.

Global climate politics is not only about governments, observers and official delegations. It has three key actors: governments, global civil society and the globalized press, including news oriented and scientific blogs, and social media groups. The separation of these actors is not a productive way to look for good working results. Watchdogs and advocates are crucial not only in the quest for effective solutions, but also in ensuring effective implementation. Cancun may still yield good results. But transparency is gone.

Sergio Abranches

Politics and climate are often at odds with each other. The best scientific evidence shows a continuous and accelerating trend towards climate change. Each year of inaction represents higher costs in the future.

We’ll have to face the unavoidable climatic consequences of past GHG accumulation, and will have to scale up the effort to reduce the risk of cataclysmic scenarios. Politics are far more influenced by short run shifting contexts, than by long run trends. If an event of the magnitude of Katrina reached each major player of global climate politics every year, appropriate decisions would come quick and easy. But, fortunately these events seldom repeat on an yearly sequence and everywhere at the same time. But they are indeed becoming more frequent.

Shifts and turns in the political and economic realms are far more frequent. Weakening cabinet support, losses in midterm elections, economic downturns have far more influence  on political and corporate decision-making around the world. The pressing demands of unemployment, poverty, consumption upgrading or downgrading are stronger than the far more dangerous claims about climate change. Even though unmitigated climate change would impede economic growth, and increase unemployment and poverty.

Things are even more complex because political and economic shifting contexts may frequently contradict each other or, even worse, reinforce each other in the wrong direction. The economic contexts of 2005 or 2006, for instance, were more positive to climate change decision-making than the circumstances of 2009 or 2010. That is to say, the economic contexts of COP11, in Montréal, or COP12, in Nairobi, were much better than the economic conditions under which COP13 (Bali), COP14 (Posnan), and COP15 (Copenhagen) took place. The latter were all marked by the subprime crisis or its aftershocks. But the political conditions for a climate agreement in 2005 or 2006 were not good at all. The U.S. had a contrarian attitude under the Bush administration. The governments of China, India, and Brazil were not yet convinced they should accept any commitment for reducing their carbon emissions. The political context was too negative for the major players and carbon emitters outside the reach of the Kyoto Protocol to decide on a global climate agreement.

This mismatch of the economic and political circumstances has also happened in Copenhagen, the other way around. The political context had changed for the better in the U.S. with the Obama administration and its debut at the UNFCCC talks. China, India and Brazil changed their noncommittal attitude in the months prior to the Copenhagen Summit. All three arrived in Copenhagen after having disclosed the voluntary emissions reductions pledges they were willing to bring to the table of negotiations. But the crisis in the developed world wasn’t over, and there were signs it was worsening again.

What about Cancun? The mismatch is over but, alas, in the wrong direction: the political context has taken a negative turn in many countries. Obama has lost the midterm elections, and Congress has dismissed the climate and clean energy bill. Lula’s term is  only five weeks to go. The president-elect, Dilma Rousseff is far less committed to the idea of Brazil taking responsibility for mitigation efforts. There is a lot of stress impairing concerted economic and political action in the EU. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s coalition is barely holding together, and the Chancellor is losing popular support. In France, Nicholas Sarkozy is facing cyclical outbursts of social unrest. In the UK, the new coalition government’s expenditure cuts are raising uneasiness among the population. Besides, they have badly hit climate change and scientific programs. In China, a two-year process of power transition raises some uncertainty about the present government’s propensity to support a more effective climate pact.

The economic context is even more negative. The crisis in the U.S. is far from over. Unemployment is too high. Signs of recovery are faint, at the very best. The Eurozone is in danger of falling apart. Conservative fiscal policies in the UK are likely to delay economic recovery. Portugal and Spain are in dire straits. Conflict of economic interest between the U.S. and China is on the rise. A currency war leads to greater monetary imbalances among countries, making it more difficult for them to cooperate towards a concerted solution. Cooperation in other complex policy areas becomes far more difficult when countries fail to reach a common understanding of global or regional economic issues.

What should we expect looking at the adverse context awaiting Cancun’s climate talks?

Certainly not the broad, conclusive agreement we have failed to get in Copenhagen. There are, however, some open tracks under the present circumstances. One of them, very few people are talking about, would be to make the Copenhagen Accord official. In Copenhagen, the plenary took note of it. A save-face solution. Now, its terms have been accepted as part of the LCA document. The plenary of COP16 could approve it as a voluntary agreement, not a legally binding one, but under official umbrella of the Climate Convention.

Why should we do that? Because it is the first ever agreement within the Climate Convention that has been fully supported by the U.S. China, India, Brazil, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and a few others. All full members of the “high-carbon club”. A study UNEP has just released shows the gap between the Copenhagen emission reduction pledges and what is needed to keep warming at the vicinity of 2^oC. It has a best-case scenario in which what is lacking could be supplemented using existing technologies. The data also shows that the countries associated to the Copenhagen Accord, with registered pledges, represent a higher volume of carbon emissions than the aggregate emissions of Annex I countries under the Kyoto Protocol. The Accord is voluntary, but would be even more legitimate, accountable and prone to global social control if it becomes official. The Accord has already been negotiated and approved by the heads of states and governments. Making it an official UN document is a smaller step.

There are, additionally, issues related to the Copenhagen Accord that still need to be clarified and approved. Some are for the short-run. The  fast-track section of the financial mechanism was decided but wasn’t implemented. It could be updated and its implementation rescheduled and disbursement to the less developed countries ensured. Some are for the future. The MRV mechanism, for instance, that enabled the Accord at the last-hour negotiations between Obama and the BASIC countries still lacks a methodology that adequately expresses what has been agreed upon.

Another track that could yield good results would be to concentrate on mid to long term issues that are still undecided, preparing them for a final decision under a more positive future context. Problem solving and conflict resolution could make progress if one knows that no decisions are to be implemented immediately, but only after a full agreement is decided upon. Taking a longer, less pressing view could help to remove deadlocks and create some incentive to cooperation.

There still is a chance for Cancun to become a milestone on the path towards a good future global climate agreement.

Sergio Abranches

The leaders of the G20 have pledged that they “will spare no effort to reach a balanced and successful outcome in Cancun.” Will this really come through?

It is clearly on the G20’s power to lead Cancun to deliver sound outcomes. But will they use this power? The leaders of the member countries have included a supposedly strong paragraph on the Climate Talks in the final ‘Declaration of the Seoul Summit’. They said that:

“We reaffirm our resolute commitment to fight climate change, as reflected in the Leaders’ Seoul Summit Document. We appreciate President Felipe Calderón’s briefing on the status of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, as well as Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s briefing on the report of the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing submitted to the UN Secretary-General. We will spare no effort to reach a balanced and successful outcome in Cancun.”

From the Seoul Declaration

To have a hint of what they might do in Cancun we should first look at what they’ve done about the global currency disequilibrium in Seoul. This crisis is a more pressing problem, one that requires prompt, coordinated action. The economic diagnosis of the present imbalances is clear, so are their causes. The actions to be taken are well known and have already proved to work in more than one occasion. All that said, one should expect a clear, direct, practical and operational statement about what is to be done, by whom and within which timeframe. Not a diplomatic note written to suit any circumstance whatsoever and giving everyone an excuse to opt out.

The decision-making setting is very similar to the climate change one. Typically a situation the players say to each other: “I’ll do it if you do more of it”, or “I’ll do my part after you’ve done yours”. Positions are framed on the basis of each ones’ appraisal of everyone else’s ‘primary responsibility’ for what happened as well as for what continues to happen. This is a game that has no optimal solution, only suboptimal ones. In other words a situation that leads to the decision to muddle-through.

Let’s look at what the leaders have put on paper about fiscal policies, financial reforms and monetary and exchange rate policies, the three pronged policy requirements to adequately face the crisis:

“Fiscal Policies: Advanced economies will formulate and implement clear, credible, ambitious and growth-friendly medium-term fiscal consolidation plans in line with the Toronto commitment, differentiated according to national circumstances. We are mindful of the risk of synchronized adjustment on the global recovery and of the risk that failure to implement consolidation, where immediately necessary, would undermine confidence and growth.

Financial Reforms: We are committed to take action at the national and international level to raise standards, and ensure that our national authorities implement global standards developed to date, consistently, in a way that ensures a level playing field, a race to the top and avoids fragmentation of markets, protectionism and regulatory arbitrage. In particular, we will implement fully the new bank capital and liquidity standards and address too-big-to-fail problems. We agreed to further work on financial regulatory reforms.

Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies: We reaffirm the importance of central banks’ commitment to price stability, thereby contributing to the recovery and sustainable growth. We will move toward more market-determined exchange rate systems and enhance exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying economic fundamentals and refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies. Advanced economies, including those with reserve currencies, will be vigilant against excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates. Together these actions will help mitigate the risk of excessive volatility in capital flows facing some emerging market economies.

Nonetheless, in circumstances where countries are facing undue burden of adjustment, policy responses in emerging market economies with adequate reserves and increasingly overvalued flexible exchange rates may also include carefully designed macro-prudential measures. We will reinvigorate our efforts to promote a stable and well functioning international monetary system and call on the IMF to deepen its work in these areas.”

From The Seoul Summit Document: Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth

The paragraphs above need no comment. The Seoul Summit has failed to decide on a clear set of concrete actions to tackle the so-called “currency war”. The detailing paragraphs deal with what has been done – to no avail – what has been decided, and has not been implemented, and future work. A well known story of leaders making vague commitments at global fora, not taking any strong action back home, only to meet again to promise to implement what they’ve failed to implement before. This was exactly what happened with the “fast-start” finance agreed upon in Copenhagen. It was decided and not delivered.

Now, why should we expect that the G20 leaders will be more affirmative and decided in Cancun? Why should we expect Cancun to be more successful than Seoul, and to go beyond Copenhagen?

The leaders were generous on words and promises drafting the climate change-related  paragraphs of the Seoul Document. On fossil fuel subsidies, a clear and straightforward measure that could help accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy, they approved the following statement:

“Fossil Fuel Subsidies: We reaffirm our commitment to rationalize and phase-out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, with timing based on national circumstances, while providing targeted support for the poorest. We direct our Finance and Energy Ministers to report back on the progress made in implementing country-specific strategies and in achieving the goals to which we agreed in Pittsburgh and Toronto at the 2011 Summit in France.” From The Seoul Summit Document: Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth

“Medium term” and “timing based on national circumstances” give any country a legitimate exit option based on the subjective interpretation of “medium” and “circumstances”. Chance of achievement near zero.

Here’s what they said about climate change and the low carbon economy:

“Climate Change and Green Growth: Addressing the threat of global climate change is an urgent priority for all nations. We reiterate our commitment to take strong and action-oriented measures and remain fully dedicated to UN climate change negotiations. We reaffirm the objective, provisions, and the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. We thank Mexico for hosting the UNFCCC negotiations to be held in Cancun beginning at the end of November 2010. Those of us who have associated with the Copenhagen Accord reaffirm our support for it and its implementation. We all are committed to achieving a successful, balanced result that includes the core issues of mitigation, transparency, finance, technology, adaptation, and forest preservation. In this regard, we welcome the work of the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing established by the UN Secretary-General and ask our Finance Ministers to consider its report. We also support and encourage the delivery of fast-start finance commitments.

The ongoing loss of biodiversity is a global environmental and economic challenge. Both climate change and loss of biodiversity are inextricably linked. We acknowledge the outcomes of the global study on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity. We welcome the successful conclusion of COP10 in Nagoya.

We are committed to support country-led green growth policies that promote environmentally sustainable global growth along with employment creation while ensuring energy access for the poor. We recognize that sustainable green growth, as it is inherently a part of sustainable development, is a strategy of quality development, enabling countries to leapfrog old technologies in many sectors, including through the use of energy efficiency and clean technology. To that end, we will take steps to create, as appropriate, the enabling environments that are conducive to the development and deployment of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, including policies and practices in our countries and beyond, including technical transfer and capacity building.

We support the ongoing initiatives under the Clean Energy Ministerial and encourage further discussion on cooperation in R&D and regulatory measures, together with business leaders, and ask our Energy Experts Group to monitor and report back to us on progress at the 2011 Summit in France. We also commit to stimulate investment in clean energy technology, energy and resource efficiency, green transportation, and green cities by mobilizing finance, establishing clear and consistent standards, developing long-term energy policies, supporting education, enterprise and R&D, and continuing to promote cross-border collaboration and coordination of national legislative approaches.”

From The Seoul Summit Document: Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth

A mix of diplomatic literature and promises without any real action behind.

“We also support and encourage the delivery of fast-start finance commitments.” Fast-start finance was decided by these same leaders – with the exception of the UK PM – in Copenhagen, and was to be fully available in the beginning of this year. Nothing happened. Is it really the case to say that the leaders support and encourage its delivery? Isn’t it a matter of simply writing some checks?

The elements that might help us to make an educated guess about the likely outcome at Cancun are not on global summit communiqués or on what happened at UNFCCC’s preparatory meetings. We should look for them in the realm of domestic politics. The relevant question is whether there has been any significant change in the domestic political circumstances that might affect the major developed and emerging players’ attitude at the climate talks.

The answer is yes for a handful of powerful players. In the U.S., president Obama has lost the majority in the House, barely managed to maintain a slim advantage in the Senate, and now leads a “divided government”. Congress is far more hostile to climate change policies than it was before, when Obama wasn’t able to pull a clean energy bill.

In the UK, the new coalition has imposed harmful budget cuts to the environment, climate change and scientific programs. I talked to a Cambridge professor who heads a low carbon economy program and he told me they’re loosing their best people and that he expects “a lot of change” for the worse because of the budget cuts. The director of a British private organization that provides consultancy and finance to business low carbon initiatives told me his company has also been hit by the cuts. They’re streamlining plans and loosing people.

The European Union is entangled in the fiscal and financial crises of many of its members. In France, president Sarkozy faces increasing social unrest. In Germany, Angela Merkel looses popularity and fights to keep her coalition together. (Reuters has just released a very interesting Special on chancellor Merkel.)

In Brazil, Lula’s former Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff, has been elected president. She masterminded the huge government investment program known as the “PAC” (Plan to Accelerate Growth). Almost every project in the program has a very high carbon footprint. In Copenhagen, as head of the Brazilian delegation, minister Rousseff, now president-elect, has impeded the delegation to have an effective role in the negotiations. The Brazilian position has only changed after president Lula arrived.

I have analyzed in detail what happened with the major players in Copenhagen in my last book Copenhague Antes e Depois.

The most important lesson from Copenhagen was that leaders will commit globally to what they have negotiated domestically, not the other way around. This means that the goals and commitments of a global agreement have to be politically approved at the domestic level beforehand. Only then can they be more significant than those decided in Copenhagen. Only when these commitments become domestic laws will they have a better chance of being implemented and enforced. A binding global compact without a corresponding set of national laws is very unlikely. Look at the Kyoto Protocol. It is an international law, but is it really binding? What power ensures its enforcement? The European Union is ahead of the rest of the World because it has a binding domestic program for emissions reduction in force.

What we can expect from Cancun is progress focused on some areas, building a bridge for more objective future talks. No real change is likely to happen before the global economic disequilibrium is effectively addressed. No country or group of countries will make further commitments at global meetings, before they approve them domestically.

It is unlikely that president Obama will be able to negotiate any meaningful climate change bill with the recently elected Congress. We’ll probably have to wait to see whether he can get reelected. Once reelected and if the economic situation improves, than he may have a new chance at persuading Congress to vote a climate change bill.

It is unlikely that president Dilma Rousseff will be more supportive of environment and climate change policies than she was as Lula’s all-powerful chief of staff and chief policy coordinator.

There are no new facts that would lead the Chinese leadership to change attitude in Cancun. And nobody really knows what may happen to Chinese global climate change politics when a new leadership, under the presidency of the Xi Jinping, comes to power in 2012.

All major players have reason to keep the same position they had in Copenhagen. It is unlikely that Cancun will go any farther than Copenhagen did. It will probably be a “bridge meeting”, one that takes us, more or less unharmed, to the next season of negotiations.

From diplomacy to realpolitik: a likely route for COP15

Several days of diplomatic maneuvering, lobbying and arm-wrestling could pave the way for the heads of states to seal a political deal after 12 days of strenuous conversations and off-the-record conspiring.

Sergio Abranches, from Copenhagen

Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen’s opening speech at the Climate Summit has caused discomfort, frustration and irritation among many well-informed observers. He returned to the idea of an agreement to save face because there is no time to create the necessary and sufficient political conditions for a full deal.

At the same time, much negotiation, arm-wrestling and maneuvering are already taking place behind the curtains. At the center of off-the-record conversations are two main issues: the level of commitment of the developed countries, especially the US; and finance for both mitigation and adaptation efforts in the developing world.

A negotiator has told me that “the numbers can be somehow dealt with. The main difficulty is to arrive at an acceptable finance equation.”

There are numerous rumors about finance proposals circulating the Bella Center, the headquarters for the Climate Summit. Some are contradictory among themselves. One rumor says the US is about to announce a far more aggressive financial proposal, to compensate for president Obama’s political limitations regarding the US numbers of GHG emissions reductions. Other tell about an agreement towards a small short-term finance commitment, to postpone any firm decision on a broader and more expensive scheme. There is also signs that Japan’s Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, could propose a third way to the financial hurdle.

There are several political crosscutting undercurrents heating up the convention center. EU diplomats, and NGOs that work hand in hand with European governments are dissatisfied with the US weak inputs to the deal. The leading countries of the G77 and China (a conglomerate of more than 130 disparate countries), Brazil and China, have been entertaining bilateral conversations attempting to take the lead on the negotiations. A broad majority of the persons I talked with today tend to agree that the host country – Denmark – has not been very helpful so far. The text it has forwarded as a draft of the agreement, for example, has been widely rejected as a “nonstarter”.

From a predictable opening to heated background discussions, an overflow of rumors, and an unending political wrestling from room to room of the Bella Center, everything point to a major political and diplomatic event. That’s how progress is made. Piece by piece, with much struggling, testing, teasing and bickering.

At the end of the day, when the heads of governments meet, they’ll probably turn a formal diplomatic meeting into a full political dealing. Some good news could come from this shift from diplomacy to realpolitik.