Author: Bryan Walker

Coates in Cancún: agreement a good outcome

This is Barry Coates of Oxfam NZ’s sixth report from COP16 in Cancún: a deal is reached…

It’s midnight on Friday – so close to a done deal. I am sitting in a conference room with hundreds of people watching the end game. The contrast to the last hours of Copenhagen could not be more stark.

Although it’s not everything we need, the agreement on the table puts the UN negotiations back on track after the shambles of Copenhagen last year. Expectations were lowered in the run-up to Cancun and completing the final agreement was never a possibility. And for much of the conference, there was a distinct possibility that the process may fall apart, particularly when Japan announced that they could not sign up to a 2nd commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. But, unlike Copenhagen, the dynamics were positive, the process was transparent and negotiations were skilfully steered by the Patricia Espinosa, the Mexico Minister for the Environment, as chair.

So tonight, when it became obvious that a deal had been crafted, there was such a palpable feeling of relief amongst the delegates and observers that the chair got two standing ovations, the first for three minutes. The speeches were mostly upbeat, although the Bolivian Climate Change Ambassador complained that governments had not gone far enough in agreeing emissions cuts. He is right, but for almost all the governments, the deal on the table is a good step forward, and all that could be achieved.

It has been difficult to call. The emissions reduction pledges in the Copenhagen Accord were merely noted in this Cancun agreement. They fall woefully short of the level of ambition required to avoid dangerous climate change. The pledges add up to 12-18 per cent below 1990 levels to be achieved by 2020. This is way short of the required level of 40 per cent.

However, the good news is that, for the first time in the agreement, there is recognition of the inadequacy of the pledges, and there is a process to raise the level of ambition. The agreement specifies a target range of 25-40 per cent emissions cuts for the wealthy countries (drawn from the 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC), and a process for clarification, analysis and comparison. This is a potential way to raise the level of ambition, but there will need to be a serious increase in political will amongst the rich nations for this to happen.

Amongst the highlights from the conference are the establishment of a Green Climate Fund (couldn’t they have come up with a snappier title?!), an Adaptation Committee to provide learning and guidance on adapting to changing climates, a framework for supporting clean technology, an agreement to reduce deforestation, and a process for reviewing the global goal of maintaining global temperature rise below 2°C, specifically to look at a pathway to keeping temperature rise below 1.5°C. This is crucial for the survival of low lying communities and islands, including our Pacific neighbours.

The structure, governance and design of the Green Climate Fund includes ensuring that a significant share of the money for adaptation will be channelled through the Fund, and calls for a balance of mitigation and adaptation (to redress the Adaptation Gap – the past situation where only 10 per cent of climate funding has been devoted to adaptation). It was disappointing that discussions on filling the Fund have not gone far. There was no agreement on the proposal for the most promising source of funding – levies on shipping and aviation fuels.

Considering the expectations for Cancun, this is a good outcome. It restores confidence in the multilateral system, and the UN system in particular, which is much needed. This is a global problem and it needs a global agreement.

But 24 hours ago, we had real doubts that they would be able to put such a complex deal together. We were preparing ourselves for a collapse or a bad deal. But the deal was done through skilful chairing, not only by the Mexican chair, but also by the government Ministers acting as facilitators, including the New Zealand Minister, Tim Groser. It also drew on a far more constructive and flexible negotiating approach from most countries, with the exception of a few including the US, Japan, Canada and Saudi Arabia.

The US in particular, blocked agreement to other elements of the agenda until they were able to get the key element they needed for domestic political purposes – a system of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) for the emissions reductions in developing countries. The target was China, but fortunately the Cancun conference was spared the sharp disagreements between the US and China that had been evident in Tianjin two months earlier. The irony is that China has entered its pledges in 5 year development plans and has a very good record of implementing what it commits to do – in fact, their record of compliance is far better than legislation in many countries.

On the final evening, it became apparent that a deal was possible and the mood of the delegates lifted. Applause and even cheering broke out. Now the hard work starts. Overcoming the really difficult issue of comparability between the countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol and the US (which hasn’t) will return as a challenge. So will the insistence that larger developing countries take on the same obligations as the US, even though the mandate for the negotiations clearly identifies a difference based on per capita emissions and historical responsibility for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Despite their initial reluctance to agree to a 2nd commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, Japan agreed to go along with the deal on the table. But this is not the end of the process. The compromise required all the developed and developing countries to accept an agreement where the US is treated leniently on the issue of compliance for their emissions reductions. This leniency must not be allowed to undermine the integrity of emissions targets.

Some of the most difficult challenges lie ahead. We need to collectively build the political will for countries to accept far deeper emissions cuts and accelerate the pace of negotiations to secure a fair, ambitious and binding global deal.

The warning signs are there. While in Cancun, NASA confirmed that 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and the past ten years the hottest decade. Last week’s massive floods in Colombia and neighbouring countries are the kinds of impacts predicted by climate models.

Further delays will risk worsening natural disasters – droughts, heat waves and intense cyclones – as well as melting glaciers, further sea level rises and the rapid acidification of our oceans. The impacts are falling most heavily on those least able to cope – women, men and children living in vulnerable communities in the developing world. Cancun may have put the climate talks back on track, but now we need them to be concluded quickly and followed up by urgent action.

It is now 2.10am. The delegates are tired and so are we, the passionate NGOs from around the world, the social movements, women’s organisations, trade unions, academics, faith groups, the dedicated few amongst the media who stayed up, and the concerned citizens who have been pushing for a good deal in Cancun. The final plenary is about to start. Bolivia is still raising concerns about the process and the lack of ambition, but in the end they joined the consensus.

At 3.32am the Cancun deal was agreed.

Coates in Cancún: Down to the wire

This is Barry Coates of Oxfam NZ’s fifth report from COP16 in Cancún: deadline time…

Last night was very tense here at the climate change talks in Cancun. There is a certain rhythm when the deadline approaches. Some countries refuse to negotiate until they get their own way, playing Russian roulette and pushing the talks to the brink of collapse. This is particularly the case with the US at this summit. Their obstructionist behaviour is getting in the way of progress and putting people’s lives at risk.

I am writing this during heated parallel meetings, one chaired by NZ Climate Change Negotiations Minister, Tim Groser. The prospects of real progress in Cancun are on the edge. Here is the state of play:

The positive and constructive spirit that was evident last week is being put to the test. The real negotiations have finally begun, and parties are working late into the night. So far there has been too much posturing and not enough searching for solutions.

As expected, the issues of mitigation (reducing climate change pollution) and the future of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol are crucial. There is a proposal from the facilitators – UK, Brazil, Indonesia and NZ – which would see the Copenhagen Accord pledges listed in “Information documents” and taken note of in the decision text. This is not a strong enough solution for many developing countries and NGOs. Venezuela and others suggested this would signify a rolling back even from the commitments made under the Copenhagen Accord. Merely “taking note” of the numbers is very weak, and does not entail any legal obligations whatsoever on parties with regard to the pledges. That’s a lowest common denominator approach, and parties must do better. We need progress towards an agreement, not just a noting of what was agreed in the last hours of Copenhagen.

On a range of other issues, the US continues to block progress. They are unconstructively insisting that the issue of concern to them (MRV, or Measurement, Reporting and Verification) is resolved to their satisfaction before they allow anything else to move. They are refusing to agree issues such as the establishment of an adaptation committee, agreement to the proposed technology transfer mechanism and, crucially, the establishment of a global Climate Fund.

Last night in the finance negotiations, developing countries pushed for agreement on a decision that would establish a new Climate Fund, refusing to discuss the modalities of such a fund until this was clear. The US was unprepared to do that without further progress on the issue of MRV.

These blocking tactics in all night negotiating sessions are particularly hard to bear for the smaller delegations of many developing countries – those who have most at stake in a successful deal in Cancun. Their few delegates are expected to work into the morning hours, a workload that is more manageable for the larger delegations from the industrialised countries.

The Climate Fund is essential as an agreement from Cancun. This is a key to unlocking the potential for developing countries to strengthen their action on climate change, as well as to provide funding for countries and communities around the world suffering the harshest impacts. The US must not be allowed to hold the lives of poor and vulnerable people hostage to their political needs.

With one day left to strike a deal which delivers for poor countries already facing worsening droughts, stronger storms and eroding shorelines, it is time for Ministers to lead in our common interests, not to pursue their own political agendas.

Clear and present danger: Lonnie Thompson on the message in the ice

Paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University, is well known and widely respected for his decades of work on ice caps and glaciers, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions. In the past Thompson has let his research data and conclusions speak for him but he has this week caused something of a stir by voicing in a journal for social scientists and behaviour experts his concern at the grave risks we run in ignoring the evidence of climate change. Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options is the title of his paper (available here) and it’s published in a special climate-change edition of The Behavior Analyst.

One hopes the paper has many readers. Its eighteen pages, a model of clarity, are highly accessible for the lay person.

Thompson opens by acknowledging that climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group.

“We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees.”

Why then, he asks, are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? Because virtually all of them are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilisation.

“There’s a clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the earth is warming, that warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes in climate, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are very possible. This pattern emerges not, as is so often suggested, simply from computer simulations, but from the weight and balance of the empirical evidence as well.”

He explains the evidence from diverse data sources that points to relative stability in temperatures over the past 1000 years until the late twentieth century. Acknowledging that regional, seasonal and altitudinal variability can nevertheless make it difficult to convince the public and even scientists in other fields that global warming is occurring, he adds from his own area of expertise the evidence of melting ice.

The retreat of mountain glaciers is an early warning of climate change. He details the ice fields on the highest crater of Kilimanjaro which have lost 85% of their coverage since 1812. The Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the largest tropical ice field on Earth, has lost 25% of its cover since 1978. Ice fields in the Himalayas that have long shown traces of the radioactive bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s have since lost that signal as surface melting has removed the upper layers and thereby reduced the thickness of these glaciers. All of the glaciers in Alaska’s vast Brooks Range are retreating, as are 98 percent of those in southeastern Alaska.  And 99 percent of glaciers in the Alps, 100 percent of those in Peru and 92 percent in the Andes of Chile are likewise retreating. Some telling photographic sequences illustrate the findings. It’s a pattern repeated around the world. To glacier retreat Thompson adds the loss of polar ice and sees global warming as the only plausible explanation.

From there he moves to consideration of the natural forcers of climate change and the consensus among climatologists that the warming trend we have been experiencing for the past 100 years or so cannot be accounted for by any of the known natural forcers.

“The evidence is overwhelming that human activity is responsible for the rise in CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gas levels, and that the increase in these gases is fueling the rise in mean global temperature.”

The effects include sea level rise. He points out that if the Earth were to lose just 8% of its ice, the consequences for some coastal regions would be dramatic. The lower part of the Florida peninsula and much of Louisiana, including New Orleans, would be submerged, and low-lying cities, including London, New York, and Shanghai, would be endangered. Low-lying continental countries such as the Netherlands and Bangladesh are already battling flooding as never before and several small island states are facing imminent destruction. Other effects of warming Thompson touches on include the threats to glacier-fed fresh water sources on which populations in parts of the world depend and the increase in arid regions as the Hadley Cell expands.

Many of the models predicting future rises in temperature assume a linear rise in temperature. But in fact the rate of global temperature rise is accelerating, which is reflected in increases in the rate of ice melt, and in turn an increase in the rate of sea level rise.

“This [acceleration] means that our future may not be a steady, gradual change in the world’s climate, but an abrupt and devastating deterioration from which we cannot recover.”

At this point he discusses positive feedbacks, instancing forest fires, more dark areas opened through ice melt, and the release of CO2 and methane from melting tundra permafrost. He explains the possibility of tipping points as a result, with their ominous implications. But tipping points apart, if, as predicted, global temperature rises by another 3 degrees by the end of the century, the earth will be warmer than it has been in about 3 million years. Oceans were then about 25 metres higher than they are today.

What are our options for dealing with the crisis?  Not prevention, for global warming is already with us. We are left with three: mitigate, adapt, suffer. Mitigation is the best option, but so far the US and other large emitters have done little more than talk about its importance. Many Americans don’t even accept the reality of global warming. Disinformation campaigns have been amazingly successful. Unless appropriate steps are taken we will be left with only adaptation and suffering. And the longer the delay the more unpleasant the adaptation and the greater the suffering will be. Those with the fewest resources for adaptation will suffer most.

It’s a grim picture. The information is not new.  But it gains impetus when a leading scientist steps into the public arena and weaves his specialist contribution into the overall account in a way which leaves the reader with absolutely no doubt that the writer is convinced by the science and deeply alarmed at what it means for humanity. Like John Veron, whom I wrote about earlier this week, Thompson doesn’t allow scientific reticence to mute his message.

“Sooner or later, we will all deal with global warming. The only question is how much we will mitigate, adapt, and suffer.”

Every little bit hurts

“Coral reefs… once survived in a world where CO2 from volcanoes and methane was much higher than anything predicted today.”  That sounds like good news from John Veron, a world authority on coral. Not if you read on: “But that was over 40 million years ago, and the increase took place over millions of years, not just a few decades, time enough for ocean equilibration to take place and marine life to adapt.”

Veron is writing in an article recently published at Yale Environment 360.  He is deeply alarmed at the prospect for coral reefs and wants to communicate why as clearly and accurately as he can. He begins by acknowledging that warnings of dire threats to coral reefs have been common over past decades; in his 40 years of working on reefs he has often been concerned at the impacts of sediments, nutrients and habitat loss. But the devastation which global warming threatens is of a different order.

 

Veron is frank about the depth of his anxiety. He writes of the “long period of deep personal anguish” he felt when he realised the big picture that was emerging from his widespread research into the effect of global temperature changes on reefs. He speaks of turning in his dismay to specialists in many different fields of science to find “anything that might suggest a fault” in his conclusions. But without success.  The bottom line remains that coral reefs can be utterly trashed in the lifetime of today’s children.

He realises that such a conclusion will be treated as an exaggeration by many. People may think that while there may be something to worry about it won’t be as bad as doomsayers like him are predicting.

“This view is understandable given that only a few decades ago I, myself, would have thought it ridiculous to imagine that reefs might have a limited lifespan on Earth as a consequence of human actions. It would have seemed preposterous that, for example, the Great Barrier Reef — the biggest structure ever made by life on Earth — could be mortally threatened by any present or foreseeable environmental change.

“Yet here I am today, humbled to have spent the most productive scientific years of my life around the rich wonders of the underwater world, and utterly convinced that they will not be there for our children’s children to enjoy unless we drastically change our priorities and the way we live.”

He goes on to explain the issues with helpful clarity. Single-celled algae live in coral cells and provide the photosynthetic fuel for them to grow and reefs to form. High light conditions at the same time as above-normal water temperatures cause the algae to produce toxic levels of oxygen.

“Under these conditions, corals must expel the zooxanthellae, bleach, and probably die or succumb to the toxin and definitely die. A tough choice, one they have not had to make at any time in their long genetic history.”

They can recover from bleaching, but not if further events continue to occur while the ecosystem is re-establishing. Increasing ocean heat, which affects surface layers most, will mean increasing severity and frequency of bleaching events.

“Scientists don’t need a pocket calculator to conclude that compressing the time periods between events in this way will prevent recovery: If we do not take action, the only corals not affected by mass bleaching by 2050 will be those hiding in refuges away from strong sunlight.”

However, serious though bleaching is, the effects of ocean acidification will be much more serious, affecting coral reefs badly and also impacting on all marine ecosystems. He considers that ocean acidification has played a major part in each of the five major extinctions in Earth’s history. In the last four extinctions reefs disappeared for millions of years. Reversal of acidification is a long process which can take place only through the immensely slow weathering and dissolution processes of geological time, processes that take hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

Veron asks his readers to consider two facts:

“The atmospheric levels of CO2 we are already committed to reach, no matter what mitigation is now implemented, have no equal over the entire longevity of the Great Barrier Reef, perhaps 25 million years. And most significantly, the rate of CO2 increase we are now experiencing has no precedent in all known geological history.”

He concludes with a solemn reminder:

“Reefs are the ocean’s canaries and we must hear their call. This call is not just for themselves, for the other great ecosystems of the ocean stand behind reefs like a row of dominoes. If coral reefs fail, the rest will follow in rapid succession, and the Sixth Mass Extinction will be upon us — and will be of our making.”

I realise it’s only a week since I last wrote on the effect of global warming on corals. Veron is not saying anything that others aren’t also pointing to, or that he hasn’t himself said before. But he’s saying it with great lucidity and there’s an urgency and poignancy to the article which impressed me and made me want to draw attention to it. Scientific reticence is not permitted to mute the expression of his profound concern. The issue is too fundamental for that.

“We cannot afford to wait until the predictions of science can be totally verified, because by that time it will be too late.”

[Brenda Holloway]

“She took me half the way there…”

Bill McKibben has come up with a striking metaphor for the US stance in climate change negotiations. In a Huffington Post article he describes it as a tease – “it shows some leg, but it never ends up in your arms.”

Twice before US negotiators have persuaded the world into a watered-down agreement – the Kyoto pact and the Copenhagen accord – and in both cases the Senate didn’t come through – it didn’t ratify Kyoto, and it didn’t pass the climate legislation last summer. “All the watering down was for nought – you might as well have done the right thing.”

Now, says McKibben, we’re into Climate Tease Part III.

 

“This time the U.S. is demanding that the poor countries of the world stop thinking of themselves as poor. Before there can be any agreement on stopping deforestation, or on aid to help poor countries cope with climate change, Mr. Stern said last week, those nations have to agree to start cutting carbon more or less as if they were the U.S.”

It isn’t fair, but McKibben acknowledges that there’s a logic to it, in that the developing world’s emissions will need to be reined in like everyone’s if we’re to slow down climate change. It would make sense if the developed world sent them the aid that lets them move past coal.

“But since we’ve seen this movie twice already, we know how it ends. The rest of the world gives in, and then the Senate doesn’t come through with the money — indeed, just yesterday four GOP solons offered a preview of coming attractions. They sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton demanding that she freeze the relatively small sum of climate aid we’d already pledged — less than $2 billion next year. They were, they said, opposed to the deal Obama struck last year which would ‘transfer billions of US taxpayer dollars to developing nations in the name of climate change’. In other words, even the small sums we’ve promised are unlikely to be forthcoming.”

Don’t be deceived, he says. Washington is “playing the world for suckers”. In conclusion he reiterates his consistent theme.  “If we actually want to stop global warming, then we have to build a movement big enough to force change. Otherwise we’re suckers too.”

McKibben is no cynic. Although he can write light heartedly and with humour he’s very much in earnest. Indeed the idealism of the 350.org movement he co-founded is about as far from cynicism as you can get.   “Our theory of change is simple: if an international grassroots movement holds our leaders accountable to the latest climate science, we can start the global transformation we so desperately need.”  Their latest effort is an exhibition of art (an Indian one pictured) large enough to be seen from space.

Another humorous look at the intransigence of US lawmakers was provided by Thomas Friedman in his New York Times column a week ago. He imagined a Chinese WikiLeaker publishing a cable from the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

“Americans just had what they call an ‘election’. Best we could tell it involved one congressman trying to raise more money than the other (all from businesses they are supposed to be regulating) so he could tell bigger lies on TV more often about the other guy before the other guy could do it to him.”

Among the results:

“Most of the Republicans just elected to Congress do not believe what their scientists tell them about man-made climate change. America’s politicians are mostly lawyers — not engineers or scientists like ours — so they’ll just say crazy things about science and nobody calls them on it. It’s good. It means they will not support any bill to spur clean energy innovation, which is central to our next five-year plan.”

Friedman’s no cynic either, as is apparent from his climate change book Hot, Flat and Crowded. But like McKibben he’s exasperated by the seeming inability of the American political system, at least on the federal level, to even acknowledge the seriousness of the problem let alone address it. It’s certainly difficult to see the US leading us anywhere promising while they’re stuck with their current mix of legislators. Any meaningful agreements at Cancún, which Barry Coates’s latest blog considers possible, will still have to survive the bluster and bombast which substitute for science back home.

[The Fabs]