HOPENHAGEN TURNS BROKENHAGEN
(Copenhagen, 20 December 2009). It started on high hopes and ended up heartbroken. The outcome of the Copenhagen event that drew the participation of more people than any seen in previous UN summits indeed broke the hearts of millions.
People around the world expected their leaders to help avert climate catastrophe. Which means coming out with nothing less than strong, bold, and legally-binding agreements to stabilize the global climate system.
But the Copenhagen climate conference (UNFCCC COP 15) might be remembered more as a rare summit of failure than Obama’s claim of a ‘step forward’. A rare gathering of 192 heads of states, and for what?
The Obama-brokered Copenhagen Accord is a non—binding hodgepodge of promises of keeping global temperature under 2°C; an ambiguous assistance of USD 30 billion over three years till 2012 to rise (through best efforts) to USD 100 billion by 2020; and, most of all, of passing on the burden of cutting CO2 emissions to everyone, over emitters and under emitters alike.
First, the 2°C goal is already gambling with humanity’s future. That means the present concentration of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere of about 390 ppm (435ppm already according to Sir Nicholas Stern), and well beyond the safe 350 ppm, will still be allowed to rise to 450 or more. At 450ppm corals would die. Rice might still grow, but without grains.
Second, nobody knows what that promised money looks like and how it’s going to be raised. It might just be like the ‘bacon’ the Philippine president seemed so proud to bring home from Copenhagen---some $310 million climate funding of which $250 million is loan from the World Bank and ADB. To begin with, the money quoted falls short of the already scaled-down minimum estimate of USD 50 billion yearly to cover the costs of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, especially those most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
Third, the mitigation burden sharing that high-emitting countries want goes against the bedrock principle of the climate convention. And that is, that any agreement to address the climate crisis should be based on common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Annex I countries are mandated by the climate convention and its Kyoto Protocol to cut or mitigate their emissions. Non-Annex I countries do not have similar obligation but would do well to check their emissions consistent with pursuit of low-carbon economy and sustainable development.
This non-binding Copenhagen Accord merely confirmed what many had already feared before the start of the negotiations. Halfway through the two-week long Copenhagen negotiations the process hit an impasse following the expose of a secret Copenhagen Agreement drafted by the supposedly neutral host Denmark. Instant reactions to the leaked document previewed what was coming.
The leaked draft Copenhagen Agreement and the Obama-brokered Copenhagen Accord caricature the stubborn running dynamic in these climate negotiations. Or should we say, the stubborn refusal of the rich, US in particular, to put their lifestyle on the chopping block, so to say.
High-emitting countries, led by the US, would summon everything they’ve got to avoid deep and urgent cuts on their CO2 emissions. The trick is to emphasize the ’common’ and undermine ’differentiated’ which is at the heart of climate justice. The aggressor (Annex I parties) seems to say to the victim (non-Annex parties) “We’re all, both in this together”, “What’s done is done, and no point rubbing the past in, time to move on, look to the future not the past”, “It’s to everyone’s interest that you play ball and come on board or we both go down together”. Or some such Hilary-Obama-speak.
Ironically, countries go to war on the very same principles they say they want to make peace. The leaked draft Copenhagen Agreement and Obama’s deal did just that. Same principle---common but differentiated responsibilities---or set of principles, as in Article 3 of the climate convention. Same goal and shared vision---climate stabilization, as in the convention’s Article 2.
The interlocking challenges on the table are very clear---combat human-caused globalwarming and end global poverty and advance human rights, as the Social Watch statement puts it. The agenda for Copenhagen was equally clear---rich countries must commit to deep and urgent cuts on their emissions to avoid climate catastrophe and transfer money and technology to developing countries.
Carrying on business as usual, according to Stern, risks a rise of 5°C or more to levels not seen for 30 million years. These levels are way beyond what humans who have been around for only 200,000 years have been used to. Humans might perish before they could adjust to the changes.
Global annual emissions of GHGs in 2010 are likely to reach up to about 47 billion tons. Thanks to global recession, the aggregate emissions were down a few billions! To have a 50:50 chance of avoiding a rise in global average temperature of more than 2°C, emissions must be reduced to 44 billion tons in 2020, to below 35 billion tons in 2030 and much less than 20 billion tons in 2050. These are the stabilization levels our shared vision must shoot for.
These cuts would translate in dramatic lifestyle changes in the developed world. Each person must have to reduce their carbon footprint (read consumption footprint) deeply and drastically.
According to Stern, in 2009 annual per person emission in the US is 23.6 tons. In the EU it’s 12 tons per European each year. These numbers mean that US with a population of 305 million must be polluting the atmosphere by over 7 billion tons and EU with a population of 830 million by about 10 billion tons in 2009.
In comparison, China, the pet-peeve of Annex I countries, the one country they love to blame in Copenhagen, is home to 1.3 billion people emitting 6 tons each and therefore must be doing some 7 billions tons a year. But the world seems not ready yet to credit China for accommodating so many---one of six of humanity---in such a small place, for being a producer for much of humanity and absorbing the shit for it in its own backyard.
Obama promised 17 per cent cut from 2005 level by 2020. In contrast, the Chinese offered 40 to 45 per cent from 2005 level by 2020 along with progressive reduction of the carbon intensity of their overheating economy.
Stern says that, to help the developing world, rich countries should provide an extra $50 billion a year by 2015, rising to $100 billion a year beginning 2020. More, he says that $50 billion is only about 0.1 per cent of the rich countries’ 2015 gross domestic product, a very small sum compared with the costs of dealing with the impacts of unmitigated climate change.
What Stern didn’t say though is, that the Annex I countries are under obligation in the climate convention to transfer money and clean technology to those in harm’s way.
On both obligations---emissons cut and transfers---the Copenhagen outcome falls miserably short. It’s amazing how anyone would see the US offer as the ‘deal breaker‘ (‘deadlock breaker’?) in Copenhagen. Big deal!
So what now? The 350 movement advises us to get over our frustrations and keep on pushing. Good counsel. But then again, what’s the sense in continuing to expect political leadership from those who have nothing to show for it?
Yet, reality, as we know it, is such that politicians are far from being an endangered, much less extinct, species. They can easily reproduce themselves and find suckers all around. And they will continue to dominate the UN system and processes. We just have to find better ways of engaging them to deliver better outcomes.
Leadership in Copenhagen clearly had shifted to the social and environmental movements. Under the banner of climate justice they came out in tens of thousands to express the voices of millions around the world. Excluded from the Bella Center, they have braved the freezing cold to have a say in crafting any agreement and demand action from politicians.
There’s enough lesson to draw from Fallenhagen. And one of them is that ordinary people in their communities need to brace up for the worst on their own.
Farming, fishing, IP/forest communities, the workers, urban poor, the women, the young of today must muster what they know and can do best to deal with the climate crisis, with or without government.
Isagani R Serrano
PRRM, Social Watch Climate Team
A climate justice deal in Copenhagen?
Difficult but not impossible.
Fairness and justice as implied in the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities remains contested till now. Rich and high-emission countries (so-called Annex 1 countries) stubbornly insist that this principle unduly favors advance developing countries whose emissions are rising fast, eg China, who I think are being unfairly treated here. Now there’s even a suggestion to drop this principle for being an obstacle to negotiations.
The other reasons have to do with implementing that “fair share” principle. There are proposals on the table (eg green development rights, common but differentiated convergence, contraction and convergence by 2050, etc). Negotiators have to decide what’s a politically acceptable justice formula that can best meet the formidable challenge of climate stabilization in a short time.
The case of China is tricky and problematic. It is true China’s emissions are rising fast because of its high growth levels and reliance on dirty coal. But it’s equally true China’s emission level on average is still way below that of the US on a per person share. China is chalking up the world’s raw materials, accepting mountains of waste foreign countries reject in their own backyards but is also recycling the wastes of the world and doing sustainable agriculture and massive tree planting. Who’s crediting China for having probably the highest carrying capacity anywhere on this planet---which means housing, feeding, educating, taking care of one of every six of humanity in a comparatively small space? China produces cheaply for all of us but absorbs most of the carbon shit for it. Who’s paying for that? But you may also ask why can’t China shift at once to clean production and produce long-lasting goods? If it can help bail out the global economy with its surplus money, why can’t it spend for eradicating its own poverty and cleaning up its own backyard?
No easy answers to these questions.
Climate justice demands that countries act “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (UNFCC, Art. 3.1). This means the effort sharing in stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations at whatever emission stabilization scenarios (450ppmv, 550ppmv, 650ppmv of carbon concentration in the atmosphere) must be based on differentiated share of responsibilities for what happened and continues to happen and on differentiated levels of development.
Paraphrasing Durning’s [1991] conception of ecological classes, we could classify countries and peoples of the world into overconsumers or high emitters, underconsumers or underemitters, and sustainers or those living within sustainable limits. These may correspond to the three levels of development of Baer et al [2008]---(a) industrial countries which are all of OECD; (b) advance developing countries like China, India, Brazil and other East and Southeast Asian countries; and (c) least developed countries like most of Africa.
In every country, rich or poor, we would find these classes sharing basically similar circumstances. A rich Filipino in Forbes Park must have the same lifestyle and level of CO2 emission as his counterpart in an OECD country. The 600 or so million of non-poor, middle class, and rich Chinese and Indians would be a mix of sustainers and high consumers.
The excluded underconsumers or underemitters would be over 2 billion poorly fed, poorly educated, jobless, voiceless, lacking access to health care, water and sanitation, and living in degraded environments. They suffer more from the impact of climate change although they contributed little to it. They must have primacy in the right to development and should be the main beneficiaries of resource transfers between and within countries.
The ‘global deal’ to avert catastrophe seems simple enough: the rich in rich and poor countries must give up much more so that the poor and all of us may live sustainable lives.
High-emission countries must commit to drastic, deep and binding cuts on their GHG emissions from their 1990 levels and help developing countries with ‘soft’ money and clean technology. The contraction required of them is huge whatever the agreed emission stabilization scenario. This ranges between 20 to 50 percent, or higher, by 2020 up to 2050. The reduction covers all six gases of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol---carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydroflourocarbons (HFC), perflourocarbon (PFC), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)---which are translated into CO2 tons equivalent (CO2teq) in each country’s GHG inventory.
Developing countries have a right to development, a right that should not be taken as license to pollute the environment. Right to development under the CDR principle is not only about growing the economy, more important is satisfaction of basic needs leading to a decent level of security and well-being for all. Baer et al, authors of the greenhouse development rights (GDR) approach, suggest an income of $9,000 per person per year, a level all countries could converge into as they realize their mitigation commitments. Non-Annex countries who all fall below that should be entitled to transfers (ODA, technology, etc) and are allowed to increase their emissions as they strive towards that income goal.
Income as a measure is debatable but probably cannot be helped. And what’s the equivalent carbon footprint of $9,000 GDP per capita? Probably about 9 tons of CO2 per person. Can that level be reached by developing countries without despoiling the environment and destabilizing the climate system? Considering world population projections of 7.6 billion for 2020 and 9.1 billion for 2050, you can imagine how much energy and carbon that would mean.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is a flea hop from that suggested income target but should be a step forward if met by 2015. Unfortunately that’s not likely to happen considering the global financial, food and fuel crisis which undermines the capability of many governments to deliver on their commitments.
The G77 and China can offer something rich countries cannot refuse. Stabilizing population at sustainable levels should be a big deal. It would be a big offer from countries like the Philippines who’s projected to reach over 100 million in 2020 and nearly 150 million by 2050. Non-Annex 1 countries are spared from binding mitigation commitments but they can help, say, by levying a progressive carbon tax on their own rich overconsumers and by moving early on towards soft energy and low-carbon or zero-carbon pathways to development. It won’t do to continue harping on emission allowances and transfers without giving something big in return.
Non-Annex 1 countries must avoid the unsustainable path taken by industrial countries. This should be their part of the bargain. The earlier they shift to clean production and consumption the better for our planet and for all of us. Sustainable agriculture and fisheries, and forest conservation and renewable energy and delivering on their MDG commitments by 2015 can be their best bets in climate change mitigation and adaptation. A truly green revolution in both agriculture and fisheries and avoiding deforestation can contribute hugely to carbon capture and reducing carbon footprint. All these deserve to be compensated by way of financial and technology transfers which G-77 and China have been pounding on ever since.
It’s but fair for developing countries to ask for a bail-out for eradicating world poverty and rehabilitation of environment that’s equivalent to that given to big banks and others. This demand should be forcefully raised in the UN financing for development conference in December in Doha and all the way to the climate negotiations in Poznan and Copenhagen.
But whatever comes out of the negotiations in Poznan in December and in Copenhagen next year, all the contraction and convergence efforts must result in keeping the aggregate global emission down to the desired emission stabilization scenario. Which means 450 parts per million of CO2 or CO2 equivalent that hopefully could keep average global temperature below the dreaded 2-degree Centigrade---the threshold we are advised to respect, or we’re dead.
It’s tall order. At the rate aggregate global emission is going—an increase of two parts per million per year—we’re only three and a half decades away. We’re in deep trouble even before our collective best efforts could meet the 2050 target convergence.
Something’s got to give here. Otherwise no deal, and no deal in Copenhagen means back to business as usual (BAU) scenario. But let’s take a look at what it takes.
In 1990---the reference baseline for both the climate convention and the MDGs---the UN interagency panel on climate change suggested that if we are to succeed in stabilizing the global climate system each individual then living would be ‘entitled’ to only 1,500 kilograms of CO2 emission. That’s the allowable carbon footprint per person, his/her ‘rightful’ share of the skies, or right to shit the environment, if you like. That time an American was already doing about 20,000 kilograms of CO2 while a poor Filipino or Afghan only about 600 or less.
More, the 1,500 kg norm assumed that (1) existing forests are left alone and (2) not one more soul added to the then 5.3 billion inhabitants of this planet. Of course, the two assumptions turned out to be impossible.
Annual global CO2 emissions increased from 23 billion metric tons in 1990 to 29 billion metric tons in 2004. Some would welcome this as a sign of prosperity, meaning an indication that economies are growing. Others see this as ominous---every increase in the economy corresponds to a certain increase in CO2 emissions.
US carbon emissions, about a quarter of the world’s total, are simply unacceptable and destabilizing to the global climate system. Its per capita CO2 emission level has seen little or no reduction at all since 1990. Europe, Japan and other industrialized nations may have succeeded in cutting down but their collective achievement does not even come up to the Kyoto Protocol’s minimalist benchmark. From a climate justice perspective these are far too short of the required deep cuts, to say nothing about paybacks to under emitters and the environment.
But the chances of negotiating a just deal could be much better now than ever before. The climate scare is a big driver and very few would contest its basis in science and the rise in alarming indicators.
Recession, though it cuts in multiple ways, may be a big blessing. The deeper it cuts and the longer it lasts perhaps the better for all of us. Less growth less emission. Less materials input less stress on the environment. Cleaner production and universal reduction in per capita consumption means less carbon footprint and healthier living. Involuntary cut down will happen even without the Poznan and Copenhagen negotiations.
The situation compels the US and other rich countries to slow down and rethink and adjust their economies and lifestyles. For instance, the US government can just let its three auto giants go down. It could reduce its dependence on private cars, and revive its train and public transport system. It can support the community movements in different states that have already shifted to organic farming and sustainable production and consumption. This time around it must do its own version of MDGs to help its growing number of poor, hungry, homeless, jobless attain a decent standard of living. Unlike in all previous climate negotiations the US should put its lifestyle on the chopping block, as it were. There’s much, much more the US must and can do to keep its fair share of the deal.
No quick fix to climate change, obviously. I only hope the global crisis could be a better educator this time around, meaning that finally we shall have realized there’s a limit to growth in this our finite planet.
Global warming will continue even when we had done our collective best because of the time lag. It’s payback time. Let it not be said, though, that we didn’t do enough for climate justice.
Isagani R Serrano
PRRM Philippines 20 November 2008
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