Education Matters: Generating a Green Citizenry

Many people ask what the role of Moravian College is at the U.N. climate conferences. There are actually several roles, including being a part of the official civil society voice on a topic that we care deeply about, participating as members of the research community related to climate change, and witnessing first-hand the complexity of negotiations on the international stage. But perhaps the most important role, however, we play is in education.

Our decision to apply for observer status to the UNFCCC in 2009 grew out of discussions that my colleague Hilde Binford and I had when we first began co-teaching a course on climate change. It is one thing to read up on the U.N. negotiations process and try to relay the information to students. It is quite another when you can actually take them to the international conference and have them be directly involved. For those who cannot attend, our faculty who attend are gaining direct and current knowledge that can be shared with students back home.

We learned early on that the U.S. media doesn’t routinely provide detailed coverage of the COP meetings, and, in general, there have been significant weaknesses in how the topic of climate change more generally is covered in various news outlets. Thus, we initiated this blog to share the observations of Moravian faculty, students, and others who attend the COP meetings with campus and the larger community. As I write this, we are approaching 40,000 views on our page suggesting that we have reached at least some people. In addition, our students and faculty have given talks at a wide range of events when they return each year; we don’t have numbers for those audiences.

Attending COP meetings has had a profound impact on the student participants. Several have gone on to graduate programs related to environmental science, climate change policy, and/or sustainability. Some of these former students work at the United Nations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or for the city of New York (on climate change policy); others are working as environmental consultants. We are so proud of them.

At COP21 this year, there was an entire day devoted to the theme of climate change education. Some highlights of the discussions are included in a video. I was struck by the opening call by Irina Bokova, the Director General of UNESCO, not just for greener economies, legislation, policies and regulations, and societies, but also for “green citizens.” She and others went on to express the need for education to “shape the new values, skills and knowledge for the century ahead.” The links to our college mission and how we define a liberal education are quite clear in my opinion.

Yoka Brandt, the Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, noted that empowering the children “reduces their vulnerability to their climate risks’ and “contributes to resilient families and communities and indeed to sustainable development." She went on to say:

It is not only about the planet we leave to our children. It is also about the children we leave to the planet. They have the potential and the passion. We have the responsibility to give them the tools to turn this passion into a powerful force for change.

As an educational institution that prepares future teachers, scientists, economists, policy makers, innovators, problem solvers, and yes, citizens, we have to share in this responsibility and challenge.

The Research and Independent NGOs side event on Research and Climate Policy featured many young researchers

A Look Back, as Week Two of COP21 Begins

Over the weekend, the draft text for a Paris Agreement was released. This is the document that high-level ministers from countries around the world will focus on during week two of COP21. They will negotiate the details and unresolved issues, and hopefully, they will come to consensus on an international accord. All sorts of individual experts and members of non-governmental organizations have been analyzing the details of this draft since Saturday. You may see media coverage and reactions from the legal community, politicians, and civil society over the next week. But for anyone reading this blog, some perhaps for the first time, it might be useful to look back to see what brought the world to this pivotal moment and to understand the overarching goals of the COP meetings.

The UNFCCC negotiations process is full of acronyms and jargon, starting with its name. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is essentially a treaty – one of three that was signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Each year, there is a Convention of the Parties, or COP session, where delegates from different countries around the world meet to hold consultations, to negotiate, and to attempt to come up with solutions to both the causes and impacts of global climate disruption. This year, COP21 represents 21 years of negotiations post-Rio – longer than many of my students have been alive.

The main goal of the multilateral UNFCCC agreement, which now has 196 Parties or signatories, is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” Yet solutions to this challenge have been evasive. Despite extensive scientific evidence that demonstrates how rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG) destabilize the climate and research tools that allow us to model the impacts that will result from such destabilization, mitigating the problem (i.e. reducing GHG emissions) is not a simple task.

The world has long been reliant on fossil fuels to drive technology, development, and the global economy. Carbon dioxide, the GHG that is a product of combusting these fossil fuels, is one of the main contributors to climate change and thus, you often hear reference to a low-carbon future or decarbonization. (There are differences, but they aren’t necessary to explain in this post.) Different countries have different national processes for ratifying international agreements, Several billion people around the world still either live in extreme poverty or have a significantly lower quality of life than most in the United States can even image. And according to the provisions in the Framework Convention of 1992, consensus of all Parties must be reached. Thus, economics, politics, vast inequality gaps, and the need to change human behavior in order to address climate change all present significant barriers. Try to imagine a committee meeting where 196 individuals were in attendance and, before leaving, all in attendance had to agree on a long list of items about priorities and actions they would be committed to for the next several decades. Again, not an easy task.

Despite these complexities, some progress has been made over the decades. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005. Under this agreement, 37 industrialized nations and the European Community committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – to an average of five percent against 1990 levels. The U.S. Senate never ratified this agreement, so our country was noticeably absent from the agreement, despite our long being one of the largest contributors to GHG emissions. During the second commitment period under this Protocol (2013 – 2020), Parties pledged to reduce GHG emissions by at least 18 percent below 1990. Again, the United States did not agree to this and several other nations who had been Parties to the original Kyoto Protocol (all large GHG emitters) backed out (1).

For a number of reasons, 2015 has been viewed as the year that a strong agreement aimed at resolving climate change would finally be reached. At COP17 in Durban, South Africa (2011), the Durban Platform -- a new platform of negotiations under the Convention was launched

to deliver a new and universal greenhouse gas reduction protocol, legal instrument or other   outcome with legal force by 2015 for the period beyond 2020 (2).

In other words, this was the year the world was to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new legally binding agreement that included all Parties to the UNFCCC, not just the developed nations. So at COP21, you see much reference to the ADP working group – which stands for “Advancing the Durban Platform.” A few years ago in Warsaw (COP19), a plan for allowing countries to find different paths to mitigation was set forth providing flexibility for finding ways to reduce carbon emissions. The Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs were to be submitted by each Party in advance of COP21, and by the opening of the conference, 181 countries had done so. Add this to the commitments announced by two of the largest GHG emitters, the U.S. and China, in November 2014, and it seemed as though there were at last major breakthroughs.

The year of 2015 was also when the United Nations finalized the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals that are aimed at addressing the large inequalities around the world. Compared to the Millennium Development Goals, the new SDGs have a stronger focus on environmental issues, including climate change, so the links between addressing the needs of developing countries and addressing the disparate impacts of environmental problems are now more clearly defined.

Finally, the newest science clearly indicates that the window for reducing carbon emissions in order to keep the planet from experiencing more than a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature may be closing. There is much controversy about this target, since models show that even that amount of global temperature increase will have devastating impacts, particularly on small island nations and coastal areas due to sea level rise and on already rapidly declining biodiversity. The INDCs that have been submitted to date will not even get us to this 2° target. And even if against all odds, an ambitious legally binding agreement is reached at COP21 in 2015, it won’t go into effect until 2020 and the reduction of GHG emissions will occur over an even longer timeframe. These pollutants have residence times in the atmosphere measured in years, so even if we were to stop all GHG emissions tomorrow, the problem doesn’t immediately go away. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the planet has already warmed by 0.8°C, and all indications are that 2015 will be the warmest year on record, possibly pushing that overall global warming to 1°.

Yes, much is at stake here in Paris. The world faces many complex problems including terrorism, food insecurity, poverty, an ever-growing inequality between the haves and have-nots, economic uncertainties, and many forms of environmental disintegration. But, in the eyes of many, no problem is more important and urgent than addressing the one of climate change. That is why 150 heads of state gave impassioned speeches on the opening day of COP21. And that is why so many people here are calling this an issue of human rights.

Please wish the world leaders luck going forward this week. They are going to need it, along with courage and strong political will.

Moravian College students discussing the status of negotiations at COP21

1. See http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
2. See http://unfccc.int/key_steps/durban_outcomes/items/6825.php

Revisiting the United Nations

On this chilly day in January, I find myself sitting in the Trusteeship Council Chambers of the United Nations. A very long time ago, back when I was still in high school, I had a chance to tour the U.N. with my family. A trip to New York was certainly an adventure for someone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the chance to see the institution that represented the world was exciting. I didn’t know anyone who had been to the U.N. I still remember looking at all the flags of the world in awe and being thrilled to see stamps from so many countries, my being a semi-serious stamp collector and all. I don’t remember much else about what we saw on the tour, but at the time, I doubt that I had a good sense of the wide array of roles that the U.N. plays in the world.

I am no longer new to U.N. processes, having attended the international climate conferences for the past five years, as readers of this blog know. Contacts that I have made through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings, especially Dr. Gillian Bowser of Colorado State University, led to my becoming involved with the National Science Foundation-funded Global Women Scholars Network. That group signed on as a member of the Women’s Major Group (WMG) that is working on the post-2015 goals for sustainable development. The WMG goes back to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit during which women were recognized as one of the nine major groups of civil society. These groups are analogous to the constituency groups of NGOs in the UNFCCC process. (I have previously written about my role in the Research and Independent NGOs or RINGOs. See, for instance: http://moraviancollegeatunfccc.blogspot.com/2011/11/so-what-is-ringos.html. And if you haven’t noticed, all U.N. functions use a lot of acronyms!)

Although I am new to the SDG process and meetings, I am not new to the themes. I teach a course on sustainability and redefining prosperity, and last year, I served as the co-chair for our year-long In Focus theme on sustainability. One of the main topics being considered at the U.N. this week is how climate change should factor into the next round of SDGs – yet another reason why there is some logic to my being here. But also, long story short, due to it still being our break between semesters and my relative proximity to New York City, I was invited to represent the Global Women Scholars Network at this event.

Over the past several weeks, the WMG members have been circulating drafts of several documents for both OWG7 and the upcoming OWG8 at which ecosystems and biodiversity are key themes. This group’s documents for OWG7 can be found at http://www.wedo.org.  As these documents circulated back and forth via emails and “the cloud” (just how did people collaborate before the internet), it became clear to Gillian and I that there is need for the inclusion of more sound science to strengthen arguments and to formulate sound recommendations.

So here I am – almost 4 decades later – at the U.N. sitting in the Seventh Session of the General Assembly Open Working Group (OWG7) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The theme today is Sustainable Consumption and Production including chemicals and waste. Chemicals, natural resources, conservation, natural resources, environmental and human health, toxicity, biodiversity, climate change, poverty eradication, gender equality and women’s rights – a career’s worth of scholarly interests plus many more – all converging at once. This is a far cry from an early interest in seeing the world vicariously through stamp collecting.

My day started with attending a Women’s caucus at the U.N. Foundation (well, after catching the 4:45 a.m. bus into NYC). The conference room was filled with women from around the world, each representing a different NGO. We only gave brief introductions, but I may have been the only “academic” in the room. The time was used to review presentations that would be made on behalf of the WMG during the day and to plot strategies for documenting the events and for outreach to policymakers. I felt very welcomed, and was impressed with the wide range of knowledge, the humor, and the passion that was clearly evident in the room. But I also felt uncomfortable with the strong anti-chemical, anti-technology vibes I was picking up.

It is here that the worlds of my scholarly interests collide. I was trained as a biochemist, coming up through chemistry-based academic departments. I was also a graduate student in plant sciences at the time many of the new genetic-based technologies were first being applied. I follow advances in fields such as genetic engineering, synthetic biology, green chemistry quite closely. At the same time, I work in circle of conservationists and environmental activists, many who are quite chemophobic and typically anti-GMOs, so things feel a bit schizophrenic for me at times. I wasn’t surprised to hear concerns about nuclear energy, genetic engineering, environmental estrogens, and large-scale biofuel production from this group, but wasn’t expecting a debate over how synthetic biology is defined. Many concluded that it is far worse that genetic engineering. Sigh. I teach that topic with some enthusiasm.

Because the Global Women’s Scholar Network does not yet have official credentials for the SDG process, I am actually here under the auspices of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). During the online drafting of the position papers, I learned that my comment noting that "in order to move forward and to sound credible, we can’t be against everything" was a minority opinion. So when the WMG presentation for today included a statement about a goal of zero hazardous chemicals by 2030, I cringed inside, but remained silent. Because I was new at the caucus, I played the role of observer-learner.

As I was getting my security clearance at the U.N., there was another person new to the process. Somewhat ironically, it turns out that he was representing the International and American Chemical Councils. He asked what group I was representing, and when I said the “Women’s Major Group”, there was a heavy sigh. I quickly added that I was trained as a chemist, but the conversation was over.

The official morning sessions began with the co-chairs for OWG7 hearing presentations and interventions from representatives of the Major Groups and other stakeholders. There are nine Major Groups in all, but not all were represented today. Speakers represented the interests of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the Children and Youth Major Group, Indigenous Peoples, and the WMG. The Business and Industry Major Group representative (yes, the guy I met at security) spoke on behalf of the Chemical Councils – the only voice not speaking about the evil impacts of chemicals on people and the environment. In a way, I felt sorry for him. Fortunately, one of the co-chairs of the session said what I had wanted to say at the caucus, that essentially all chemicals can be hazardous at the right dose or under the right condition, so total elimination of them is essentially impossible.

I still believe that technological innovations are key in helping us to attain food security, develop clean, renewable energy sources, find cures for diseases, address climate change, clean up toxic environments, and address at least some of the social and economic inequities on our planet. Somehow, we have to find ways to balance the emotional responses and fears of chemicals and technology with evidence-based decision-making. The passion of civil society is essential for pushing governments to act, but the policy decisions have to be practical, and hopefully, based on science. As one plenary speaker said later in the morning, we need system innovations, not system optimizations.

I have to find ways to convey this message such that my invitation to participate with the WMG isn’t revoked. I care about the same issues that they do, as I fully understand the disparate impacts that unsustainable practices, poverty, lack of access to education, climate change, water shortages, and environmental toxins have on women. But I also know that we can’t solve these problems by going back in time in terms of technology. Neither these conversations, nor finding the path to a truly sustainable future given all of our global challenges, will be easy. Yet, as I listened to the dialog amongst representatives from nations around the world – nations that used to be bitter enemies in war that are now trying to work collaboratively to tackle these challenges – I felt a sense of hope.

Leaving the building, I saw images of U.N. peace-keeping forces helping villagers build a community well, of the Holocaust, of melted and fused metal items found at Hiroshima, children’s posters on Human Rights, and an automatic rifle converted into a musical instrument. These were all powerful and conflicting reminders of how complex the world is, and how far I have come since that first trip to the U.N. so many years ago.