COP21 Day 1 – and oh what a day!

The Venue - Anticipation of What Was to Come

I spent the morning of Day 1 at COP21 sitting in a large plenary room where I got to hear short speeches from a long list of world leaders including Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General and Presidents (or King’s representative) of France, the United States, Paraguay, China, Morocco, Egypt, Djibouti, Russia, Lithuania… all before lunch. Never before have 150 heads of state been in the same place at the same time focusing on the same issue.

There were repeating themes in the messages:

1) There were many statements of solidarity with France, given the recent “barbaric attacks by cowards.” Several presidents noted that terrorism and climate change are two of the biggest global challenges, and that climate change has the potential to magnify conditions that lead to conflict (drought, poverty, displacement of people, loss of homeland, etc.).

2) The leaders stated that they were hearing the voices of the people from around the planet and needed to respond with strong action to show that they are listening. They spoke of the need for an ambitious, legally binding agreement to keep the warming of the planet from going above 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

3) Leaders from developed countries shared specific examples of what they are already doing to mitigate their emissions, develop new technologies, etc. Can you imagine a sustainability “arms race” to outdo one another with clean energy and technology for a low carbon economy? In contrast, leaders of developing countries called for assistance with technology transfer, adaptation to the impacts of climate change, and funds to help them not only deal with the negative consequences of climate change, but also to help them develop sustainably along a clean energy/low carbon path.

4) Most of the presidents commented on the importance of protecting the planet for future generations, and to address inequities of the impact of climate change on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Of the leaders I heard, none was more passionate about this than His Excellency Mr. János Áder, President of Hungary who pondered the conversation he would have with his grandchildren in 2030.

5) All of the heads of state referred to this historic moment, not only because of the unprecedented gathering of world leaders, but because of this being such a pivotal moment to enact change. Many noted that this agreement has to come to fruition now, as it may very well be our last chance to prevent irreversible planetary damage that will impact all of humanity. I am not prone to hyperbole; those were their words.

I was struck by the commonalities in the words of these different world leaders. It seemed to be such a sharp contrast from what we hear in the news – the focus on differences and disagreements. I was also struck by the sharp contrast from the messages I am getting from home (friends and family back home worried about our safety in Paris) versus what I was hearing from the dignitaries in the room who were much more worried about the safety and security of future generations. These are the glimmers of hope – that maybe, just maybe, these individuals will truly use this moment to lead.

I leave you with a series of screen shots – literally! It certainly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (See if you recognize some of these world leaders - just a sampling of the 150 who made statements today.)

Student voices

I am so glad that the students have been actively posting on this blog. Since I had to return to the states to give a final exam and finish my semester grading, I am behind in my writing.  Week 2 brought the 3rd annual Gender Day, a day focused on Human Rights, and visits from Al Gore and John Kerry (see note at the end of this post). U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, several high-level ministers, and even a few presidents and prime ministers showed up as well -- all imploring the negotiators to commit to ambitious agreements to reduce the threats of climate change (For example, see Kaitlyn Teppert's post on the blog entitled "Ticket for One, Please".


While I was away, I had assigned some final essay questions for my Introduction to Environmental Science course -- a 100-level course for non-science majors, many of whom are interested in going into K-12 teaching.  One of the questions was as follows:

a) Why is "Do you believe in evolution?" an inappropriate question?

b) Is “Do you believe in climate change?” an inappropriate question?  Explain. 

c) What factors determine whether a species will either adapt to environmental change or end up in decline or extinct?  Many believe that we are facing the 6^th mass extinction and climate change may be a major contributor to this.  Why can’t species simply adapt to the new climate conditions?

Below, I share (with permission) the response by Ms. Kayla Marinelli (a first year student) because a) I like what she had to say, b) it is relevant to the theme of this blog, and c) I want to keep the momentum up on this blog while I have time to collect my thoughts and analyze the outcomes of COP20.


            “Do you believe in evolution?” is a simple, common question asked so often, yet extremely inappropriate.  Evolution is not something that can be believed in; evolution is a fact.  Asking if someone believes in evolution is the equivalent of asking if someone believes in gravity.  Everyone believes in gravity; gravity is a concept that everyone understands and knows is relative.  Gravity is taught in sixth grade science classes across the country because it is a fact, yet evolution is still in question after all of the proof that has been stated and all the information found.  Asking if someone believes in evolution is putting evolution on the same level as religion.  Religion is a touchy subject for some people and means different things to different individuals.  Religion is something that cannot be tested nor proven; God cannot be proven to exist.  There is solid, concrete proof of evolution.  So why is it put on the same playing field as something that has nothing more than spiritual proof?  “Do you believe in evolution” is an inappropriate question because of the countless pieces of evidence found to prove it.  Evolution is a widely accepted theory in the scientific community but not commonly accepted by the general public.  Evolution is not about how life began but how life evolved after it began, which not much of the public understands.  The public believes that evolution means that God does not exist and that it is how the world was created.  In America today, 78.4% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, 4.7% as other religions, and 16.1% as unaffiliated (Pew Forum, 2007).  These statistics explain a lot about why evolution is not accepted.  83.1% of America believes in a God, which most of the public thinks evolution says cannot exist.  That is false though since evolution, as previously stated, does not describe how life began but instead how it changed since evolution means ‘change.’  Many people in the public do not understand this distinction hence why they do not believe in evolution.  Therefore, asking whether someone believes in evolution or not is not an appropriate question since evolution is not a belief, but a fact.

            Talk about climate change is all the rage at this moment.  Climate change is another proven fact, same as evolution, that people simply do not believe in.  Studies have shown the steady increase in temperatures for years.  Studies have also shown the rise in sea level, which is due to the increase in temperatures.  Global warming, a cause of climate change, is carbon dioxide and other pollutants gathering in the atmosphere like a thick blanket that traps the sun’s heat, causing the planet’s temperature to rise (NRDC, 2011).  Temperatures in an area may not seem like they are any different than previous years, but the average global temperature has increased the fastest ever recorded.  The levels of emissions being produced need to be decreased in order to save the world.  Just this past November, President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed an agreement to reduce greenhouse gases down to 2005 levels by the year 2020 (CBS News, 2014).  The agreement is exciting news to see considering the fact that it may get more countries involved in helping to lower emissions.  The only problem is that the agreement is only a promise until some actions are made to move the project forward.  Climate change is like evolution in the way that people do not believe in it without any proof against it.  Climate change is a big problem to biodiversity, which is the diversity among and within plant and animal species in an environment.

            There are many factors that determine whether or not a species will adapt to a situation and survive or die off to the point of extinction.  Climate change is a cause of the decrease of biodiversity, the increase in the extinction or decline of species all over the world.  Natural selection is a determinant of a species being in decline.  Some species can survive certain variations of weather and if one variation is too extreme, the other variation of species may have more survivors.  The robin is a perfect example.  The robin, a very common bird in Pennsylvania, has two migrating patterns.  Some robins migrate to the South while others stay north for the winter.  The robins that stay north stay down at the creeks and eat berries all winter while the Southern robins have plenty to eat since they are in a warmer climate.  The North robins could have problems by running out of food, such as berries, and the South robins could have problems with their journey down south.  Depending on if either group had any problems, one group of robins may come out on top of the others.  If there is an especially difficult winter, the robins that stayed home will have died, then getting selected out of the population.  This happens with a lot of species and can cause variation within a species. Variations also occur naturally, such as DNA mutations.  The organisms can also share their genes when they migrate, causing even more variations.  In general, variation in genes is truly the main factor on whether a species will survive; there are just many types of variations that can occur.  Species cannot simply adapt to every climate though.

Many scientists believe that the 6^th mass extinction is coming upon us and it is all at fault of humans, essentially.  Studies have shown that the rate of extinction used to be one species per ten million species annually while today the rate is between one hundred to one thousand species per a million species (Pappas, 2014).  That is quite a leap, especially considering the fact that only 0.05 to 0.2 new species per a million begin their existence each year (Pappas, 2014).  The rate of extinction is much higher than the rate of production of new species, which means that biodiversity is becoming smaller and smaller every single year.  The climate change is a large factor contributing to the extinction of so many species.  As previously stated, species cannot just adapt to every climate condition thrown their way.  It takes generations and generations of a species to have adapted to a certain climate, but the climate is changing far to quickly for these species to keep up, causing them to become extinct instead of adapting.  Humans are ultimately at blame, though, since the human species is the cause of so of the much pollution that is causing the climate change.  The human population needs to make serious changes in order to slow down extinction rates of species.

An Introduction to Climate Change. (2011, November 8). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/climatebasics.asp

Kunkle, D. (Director) (2014, December 2). Evolution. Lecture conducted from Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA.

Obama: U.S.-China climate change accord "historic" (2014, November 12). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-china-announce-climate-change-agreement/

Pappas, S. (2014, September 8). 6th Mass Extinction? Humans Kill Species Faster Than They're Created. Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.livescience.com/47733-humans-destroy-earth-biodiversity.html

Report 1: Religious Findings. (2007, May 8). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

Note: See the accountings of these visits from the students representing the American Chemical Society: http://www.studentsonclimatechange.com/student-blog/jess-nina-hurricane-al-touches-down-at-cop201 and http://www.studentsonclimatechange.com/student-blog/will-the-us-kerry-some-responsibility.

Preparing for COP20

On December 1st, the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20) will meet in Lima, Peru to continue the long-running attempts to draft an international treaty on climate change. A successful agreement would have aggressive commitments to mitigate the causes of climate change (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and a dramatically decreased rate of rainforest destruction) and would include a comprehensive global blueprint (and funding) for adapting to the changes resulting from planetary warming and climate disruption.

COP20 marks the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – an agreement that emerged from the Rio Earth Summit. It has been 25 years since the international community called for action on greenhouse gases, 26 since James Hansen testified to U.S. congressional committees about global warming. When the UNFCCC was drafted in 1992, negotiators borrowed language from the Montreal Protocol (an agreement to address the destruction of the ozone layer): that member states would “act in the interests of human safety even in the face of scientific uncertainty”. In the time since that draft, the scientific uncertainty about climate change and its causes has been greatly reduced as evidenced in the thousands of peer-reviewed papers published each year and the high confidence level (over 95%) expressed by experts in the most recent report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that climate change is indeed human-caused.

This will be the 6th COP that Moravian College has sent a delegation to after being accredited as an official observer in 2009. We use this blog to report on the issues that we learn about at these international gatherings in an effort to increase awareness of this complex 21st century challenge and to hopefully generate discourse about how to address climate change.

There are a number of factors that make this COP particularly important, including some of the memorable events over the past year in terms of climate change history.

• COP21 in Paris in 2015 has been identified as the target year for adopting an ambitious, multilateral, legally-binding treaty that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make major progress on a myriad of issues related to building resilient communities, managing risks of extreme weather events and disasters, and assisting developing countries in adapting to the impacts of climate change already being experienced. That means that the main negotiations on targets and language will have to be developed at this conference. In order to “galvanize and catalyze climate action” in advance of COP20 and 21, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited world leaders to a Climate Summit in September of this year; over 100 world leaders gathered at the United Nations for this event. Perhaps even more importantly, two days before the summit, the largest climate march in history took place with 2646 events in 162 countries. More than 300,000 people marched in the streets of New York City alone.
• Preceding this summit, over the past year, the United Nations hosted 13 Open Working Group sessions as part of the effort to develop the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Global climate change was at the forefront of these discussions, and combating climate change emerged this summer as one of the 17 proposed SDGs. Debate was not over whether climate change should or shouldn’t be a goal, but whether it should be a stand-alone goal or a component of all SDGs.
• According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the globally averaged temperatures over land and ocean surfaces for both June and September 2014 were the highest since record keeping began in 1880. September marked the 355th consecutive month (29.6 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average global temperature for June was in 1976 and the last below-average global temperature for any month was in February 1985. In the U.S., the October national average temperature was 3.0°F above average and 2014 is on track to be the warmest year on record globally. Welcome to the new normal.
• Slower to the warming party due to the physical and chemical properties of water, our oceans are now demonstrating the anticipated changes. The September 2014 global sea surface temperature was the highest on record for any month. Did these warming waters have any impact on Typhoon Nuri – the recent storm that hit Alaska? We can’t know for sure. Not only was this the strongest storm to hit this region, meteorologists believe that it may have been one of the deepest extra-tropical low pressure systems on record in the North Pacific.
• This spring, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surpassed the 400 ppm mark. Unlike the stock market, rising values is not what the public should be hoping for. According to an October 2009 paper in the highly respected journal Science, you have to go back 15 million years to find atmospheric conditions like that in our atmosphere – long before Homo sapiens were around. According to UCLA professor Aradhna Tripati, the lead author on that paper, "The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland." The atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide today represent a 44% increase since the historical pre-industrial levels of 278 ppm which were relatively constant for about 800,000 years.
• The November election results in the U.S. will bring to Washington a Republican-controlled House and Senate. Party leaders have already vowed to revoke regulations aimed at tackling carbon pollution in this country and are trying to push through approval of the controversial Keystone pipeline project in this lame-duck session. Given these developments and the fact that the U.S. has long been viewed as a major obstacle in the international climate negotiations, I was assuming that COP20 would be another fruitless endeavor. And then, out of the blue this week, came the announcement of a historic climate-related agreement between the U.S. and China. These are the two nations with the largest carbon footprints and the two most recalcitrant parties at the COP meetings. The proposed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions of these two countries are not sufficient to “fix” the problem of global climate change, but the agreement is a crucial first step for both countries. No doubt this will lead to a showdown in Washington, but the agreement could really provide the spark needed to ignite progress at the international negotiation table.

Stay tuned! 2014 still has several more weeks to add even more chapters into the climate history book.

References:

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/

http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/ 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/ 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm



Post-15 Agenda and UNFCCC Draft Agreements: Can They Be Friends?

After a marathon session at the UN in New York last week for the 65th Annual United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) Session, the world is now one step closer to a to-do list to end poverty that includes one of its main drivers: climate change. 

In the case of the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC, the chances for their goals to compliment the other could easily dismantle and confuse global negotiations for the issues surrounding climate change, sustainable water, energy, and food scarcity.  Can these two Draft Agreements work together to integrate and not desaturate the necessary components each brings to the table?

The Post-15 Agenda is an answer to the Millennium Development Goals...and should guide the UNFCCC roadmap to Paris 2015.  

 Deadlines. Deadlines. Deadlines.

From August 27th to the 29th at the #UNNGO2014 65th DPI NGO conference invited over 920 NGOS to comment on the final version of the Post-15 Agenda. In 2015, the UNFCCC COP 21 in Paris and the launch of the Post-2015 Agenda will culminate within months of each other. This Roundtable discussed the interlinkages between both processes and the benefits as well as the of drawbacks of having two separate tracks in the medium and long terms. Terms like Low-carbon development, adaptation, disaster risk reduction and finance were thrown around. 

The Post-2015 process is to create a transformative agenda that is meant to usher us into a new era of sustainable development and in harmony with nature, that is rights based and ensures no-one is left behind. 

Cross-synthesis was a theme hammered by the panelists, but the articulation of that word failed to show the audience examples of how the policies could co-exist and not cancel the other out. 

Moderating the panel, Lina Dabbagh, Post-2015 Officer, CAN International immediately stated that climate change affects every sector from sustainable water, energy.  This is an important step. Citing Climate Change for the first time after the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) failed to include it as the driver of social poverty, the Final Draft of the Post-15 Agenda gave Climate Change a number: Goal 13  The panel suggested that its inclusion is the key issue to ensuring sustainability in the future. While there could have been a fierce debate about one developmental agenda against the other, overall the panelists stayed on the fence about the conflicting status of the declarations.  

H.E. Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velásquez, Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations, kicked off the panel discussion citing how Peru has already accomplished their MDG's for targeting poverty levels and other targets in his own country.  Stating that the "Issue of inequality is important, we want to address social exclusion and inequalities" he set the tone of the discussion. Peru is the next host country for the final UNFCCC meetings before Paris in 2015.  Velásquez believes that the efforts need to be more aggressive and drafting resolutions that use technology transfers first and financing second will be the successful components of each plan. He emphasized building social capital before financial capital. 

No one argued. 

It seems that reversing individualistic approaches to resource security by identifying opportunities for integration and identifying existing trade-offs will result in better policy recommendations for both draft agreements. 

Velásquez made the link between poverty and climate change.  What are these linkages exactly?

Dork Sahagian, an IPCC Nobel Prize winner and professor of Earth Sciences at Lehigh University suggested we think alongside the fabled words of John F. Kennedy "Ask not what climate change will do to the poorer populations but ask what the economic development will do to 7 billion people. Moving away from fossil fuel development in the post-15 agenda is not a current development goal and is necessary, said Dr. Sahagian,

"otherwise the sustainability goals are in direct conflict with our Climate Change goals."

Additionally, Nicholas Nuttall, Creative writer for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and Director of Communications & Outreach, UNFCCC suggested that much of the development targets and discussion that are central to Sustainable Development Goals in the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC should be to act as opportunity multipliers.  The division between the private and civil society sector is a huge obstacle. He articulated the issue between the policies well. Consider what the RIO+20 was asking for: a new indicator for process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that was not just limited to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) valuation. He asked the only worthwhile question in a panel circulating in a maelstrom around the possibilities for collaboration How can the SDG's support a legally binding process?  

Which process will be codified 

into international law first,

if any?  

Elenita “Neth” Dano, Asia Director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) remarked, that we must first raise awareness about the issues we wish to combat, this is key to a more sustainable global development agenda. SDGs should act as enablers. Post-2015 draft agreements should be a development agenda. UNFCCC is the driver. Dano argued that we have to look beyond SDGs 2013, because they talk only about food, water and health. However, the success of solving those conflicts builds upon the capacity on countries to adapt/mitigate to climate change in relation to those SDGs.

François Gave, Counsellor for Development and Sustainable Development, Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations debated that Climate Change is still politically charged and polarized. It tends to be a left-winged and right-winged debate.  He called for a broad-based world consensus on climate change and action. He outlined those ideas below:

1. Incentives (Carbon pricing) Is on the road map to Lima and Paris.  The September 21st, Climate Summit will offer a global schematic that will be addressed in Peru this December at COP 20.
2. Building confidence and addressing the free-rider problem through rules, transparency and monitoring at the private and civilian level.
3. Perceptions. The language barrier between science and public information is not being addressed.

If we are to illustrate how awareness is the key to driving dialogue, development draft agreements like the Post-15 Agenda and the UNFCCC as well as others across the globe are mirroring much of the dialogue from this roundtable, and we are slowly learning that integration is a must.

The main takeaways from this roundtable is that only through collaboration, adaptation, and dissemination will sustainability be ensured in our development goals.  It is only a matter of time before further integrated dialogue on each sectors’ development needs eliminates the separation of climate change from sustainability goals and unites them as dependent on the success of the other.

I know what you are all thinking... we know this already?

Exactly.  Join the Call to Action.  See you in NYC for the Climate Summit. 

There can be no Social Justice without Environmental Justice.