For what it is worth

The early feedback on the framework coming out of Warsaw:

http://www.rtcc.org/2013/11/23/un-agrees-on-framework-for-2015-climate-change-deal/

http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/131123_pr_closing_cop19.pdf

http://www.woi-tv.com/story/24050597/compromise-breaks-deadlock-at-un-climate-talks

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/world/deals-at-climate-meeting-advance-global-effort.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131124&_r=0

2015 marks the deadline for a multilateral agreement under the UNFCCC that will be a) replace the Kyoto Protocol and b) be implemented no later than 2020.  It was decided back in Durban (COP17) that a new legal agreement was needed in which all countries play a role in reducing greenhouse gases and adapting to a new climate.

From the UNFCCC:

This includes work to make existing national emission reduction or emission limitation plans more transparent. It also encompasses the launch and long-term implementation of the comprehensive global support network that will deliver funding and technology to help developing countries build their own clean energy futures and construct societies and economies which are resilient to climate change. (emphasis added) 

As one of the largest national greenhouse gas emitters, the U.S. needs to both significantly and deliberately reduce its emissions (not just show up at the international negotiations table) and Congress will need to ratify any final treaty that comes out of the UNFCCC process by 2015.  Given the current "climate" in Washington D.C., that seems more difficult than reaching compromise and agreement on the international stage.

Show me the money

Since returning from Warsaw, it has been characteristically quiet in terms of media coverage about the international negotiations related to climate change. My students were on the lookout while I was away and also reported little coverage. But finally, some news about the UNFCCC proceedings has begun to appear in the U.S. media. From the New York Times on Friday (November 22nd): U.N. Talks on Climate Near End:

The United Nations climate conference ambled toward a conclusion on Friday, with delegates saying that the meeting would produce no more than a modest set of measures toward a new international agreement two years from now. As usual, the biggest dispute was over money.  



Finance is a word commonly heard in the halls and negotiating rooms of COP meetings: Long-term Finance, Fast-start Finance, Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, Loss and Damage, the economic costs of mitigation. As with much of the UNFCCC process, there is lots of jargon around the topic of finance, and it can be difficult to keep all the different funding streams straight. (If you are interested in that type of stuff, details can be found here.) For those less inclined to delve into the policy and finance mechanism details, the short version is that negotiators debate the following:

• How to transfer low-carbon technology to developing nations so they don’t further exacerbate the greenhouse gas problem and who pays for this technology transfer, adoption, and training (not to mention the loss of intellectual property income if technology is just given away);
• How to help countries adapt to the impacts of climate change (ranging from adaptations in agriculture to reducing risk from extreme weather events). Something as simple as early warning systems such as the alerts on cell phones that may have saved countless lives in the Midwest this week can reduce risk, but such technology is not available in many parts of the world.
• Whether countries should be compensated for the loss and damage they experience from climate change related events. Who should pay for all of this, and are some countries responsible for historical emissions dating back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?
• Carbon markets such as emissions trading or sustainable development projects which help other countries avoid carbon-emitting processes or help remove carbon from the atmosphere for instance by protecting rainforests.

There are also costs of inaction that don’t directly enter the discussions at the COP meetings, but provide an underlying incentive for the talks to continue, despite little progress over the past several years. (See my post from December last year). Take for example the economic toll from weather-related disasters on Earth so far in 2013. The following is from Dr. Jeff Master’s blog from November 22nd on wunderground.com.


Three billion-dollar weather-related disasters hit the Earth during October 2013, bringing the world-wide tally of these disasters through October 2013 to 35, according to the October 2013 Catastrophe Report from insurance broker Aon Benfield. If we add November's Super Typhoon Haiyan, the total reaches 36. This is the second highest yearly total of billion-dollar weather disasters for the globe since accurate disaster records began in 2000, though the total cost of weather-related disasters so far in 2013 is below the average for the past ten years, according to Senior Scientist Steve Bowen of Aon Benfield. The record highest number of billion-dollar weather disasters was 40, set in 2010. For comparison, during all of 2012, there were 27 billion-dollar weather disasters; the tally in 2011 was 35 (adjusted for inflation.) The U.S. total through October 2013 is seven.

In the table within Dr. Master's post, the annual loss and damage total through October 2013 comes to almost $102 billion. These numbers do not take into account the cost of damages from Typhoon Haiyan or the tornados that ripped through the Midwest of this country just this past week, so this number will rise dramatically. And the figure doesn’t take into account the loss of life.

A concept that came out of the COP meeting in 2009 – in Copenhagen (the first attended by Moravian College) was to create a fund to help cover some of these financial issues. This was put forth by wealthy nations that indicated at the time that this money would not come directly out of their treasuries.  Rather, there would be a mix of public and private financing and novel funding sources such as taxes such as on aviation and shipping fuel. A few COP meetings later, a figure of $100 billion of contributions per year by 2020 was thrown on the table.

One has to question how the figure of $100 billion was determined.  It clearly wouldn’t cover all of the annual damages based on extreme weather events over the past few years (which are predicted to become even more frequent). Hurricane Sandy and the major drought in the U.S. in 2012 alone had a price tag of $100 billion, according to the global reinsurance firm Aon Benfield, based in London. And that is for just for a single country and doesn’t take into consideration the lost revenue from tourism and recreation at the New Jersey shore during the 2013 year or the costs of the major 6-block fire in Seaside Park that destroyed 50 businesses – due to electrical damage from Sandy that went undetected.

Such reported figures are typically underestimates of the actual impact of an extreme weather event. In the U.S. in 2011, it was estimated that extreme weather events (tornados such as hit Joplin, MO, Hurricanes Irene and Lee, etc.) caused $50 billion in damages. That year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, there were 3,251 monthly weather records broken by extreme events that struck communities in the U.S.  Many of the losses were uninsured (perhaps as high as 60 to 80%) and thus, may not be calculated in the official numbers. Further, there are many indirect costs that are unaccounted for.  It is estimated that weather events cause significant losses (14%) to the mining economy each year due to price fluctuations for oil, gas and coal that change with the weather, threats to the security of mine water supply, and damage to mines and associated transport infrastructure.  Torrential rain and unreliable temperatures negatively impact crop yields, and thus there are agricultural losses -- perhaps as high as 12%. The manufacturing, finance, insurance, retail and utilities sectors are also sensitive (think weather-induced power outages which are a huge blow to electric-utility operations). Sometimes there are winners and losers that further complicate the economic picture. For example, in a snowstorm: air travel is disrupted and heating costs skyrocket, but ski resorts hit the jackpot. During dry spell, crop supplies dwindle, but construction projects are able to stay on schedule. According to Kinetic Analysis Corporation’s figures, the real damage costs in 2011 were probably closer to $485 billion.

From a colleague who was in attendance during week 2 of COP19:

Other news was that the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) walked out on Wednesday in protest of the developed nations to fully fund commitments and Environmental groups on Thursday to protest the sluggish funding of the Green Climate Fund.

I guess I missed the interesting stuff by coming back early! (See the story.)

On the day that the LDCs walked out of the COP meeting in protest, NPR carried a story entitled “Poor Countries Push Rich Nations to do More on Climate Change”. Commitments for finance have been slow in coming causing the developing nations to question whether the industrialized nations take the negotiations process seriously. But the funding proposal mentioned above did come with strings; it was contingent on meaningful action towards mitigation (pledges to reduce greenhouse gases) by all countries – not just the Annex I (developed, rich nations) countries.  In a second NPR story from this past Wednesday on the tensions between rich and poor nations at the climate meeting reported Richard Harris stated:

And I might add that about half of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from the developing world. That includes coal burning in China and deforestation in Indonesia and Brazil.

The spin coming out of Warsaw yesterday:

The Adaptation Fund Surpasses $100 Million Fundraising Target at COP19!
New commitments from Austria, Belgium & Regions, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland (Warsaw, Poland, 22 November 2013): The Adaptation Fund has received strong support from the international community at the COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, with commitments for $ 72.5 million in funding from seven European governments, bringing its total raised in a major fundraising push to US$ 104.3 million. The governments of Sweden and the Brussels Capital Region earlier contributed US$ 31.8 million toward the goal.

Strong support?  Really?  That is $100 million (with an "m" not a "b").  For comparison purposes, JP Morgan, a single banking entity, agreed this week to pay $13 billion (that's with a "b") in a settlement over faulty mortgage assets it sold in the years leading up to the financial crisis as a big victory for the judicial system. (See the story here.)

The constant threat of financial crises and economic recession in developed nations is frequently held up as reasons why countries cannot make greater commitments to the various funds and finance mechanisms discussed at COP meetings. Yet what about the countries that have never climbed high enough out of poverty to know what a recession is?

This week (November 20th) Melissa Block of NPR interviewed Munjurul Hannan Khan, a Bangladeshi negotiator and spokesman for what's called the Least Developed Countries group at the talks.

[Melissa Block]: What is the argument by which rich countries should have to compensate developing countries, such as your own, for the losses that you've described due to climate change?

[Khan]: First, they [developed, industrialized nations] have to accept the reality. Realities on the ground that people are suffering, and the realities on the ground that we cannot do anything by - only by adaptation or only by mitigations. So there are some things called residual impacts. These residuals impacts need special attention that we are seeing called loss and damage.

A premise that has long been part of the UNFCCC deliberations is the “Polluter pays principle”, but a long-running debate is whether developed nations should be responsible for historical emissions. Another problem is that you cannot necessarily link specific weather events like Typhoon Haiyan to climate change. So how and when would allocations from a “loss and damage” fund be distributed? And who gets to decide? 

In some cases, the link between an observed impact and climate change are clearer -- such as warming global temperatures leading to sea level rise (due to melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, and expansion of water as it warms).

[Mr Khan]: The whole coastal area is - salinity intrusion is so high, they couldn't do their agricultural practice. They couldn't actually get their livelihood support from that area.

Some like to question models and scientific predictions.   I am not sure why.  The weather patterns and other impacts (loss of sea ice, rising sea levels, etc.) are behaving as predicted by the Global Climate Models.  And the warming trend continues:  October 2013 was 344th consecutive month of above average global temperatures.

If you go to the website for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) you will find this at the top of the homepage:

The urgency and seriousness of climate change call for ambition in financing adaptation and mitigation.

Ambition has been a common (and hopeful) word at the past few COP meetings.  Continuing from the website:

The purpose of the Green Climate Fund is to make a significant and ambitious contribution to the global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change.

Say what?

The Fund will contribute to the achievement of the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the context of sustainable development, the Fund will promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

A GCF press release from earlier this week:

(Warsaw, Poland, 19 November 2013) – The Green Climate Fund announced today that is on track towards completing the final steps that will enable it to mobilize funding and start its operations.

Hmmm.  On track?  More spin?

And a final thought from the interview between NPR's Melissa Block and the negotiator, Mr. Khan, from Bangladesh (Todd Stern is the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change):

[BLOCK]: Todd Stern is also saying here, the fiscal reality, as he put it, of the United States and the other developed countries is not going to allow this. The money simply isn't there.

[KHAN]: If you would like to compare Bangladesh with the U.S.A., we are so poor. Our poor people is really trying hard to get the next meal. But in case of the developed country, it's the question of compromising the lifestyle. In our case, it's a question of survival. (emphasis added) 

Lately, I have been once again pondering the work of British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow, especially The Two Cultures - from an influential and controversial 1959 Rede Lecture delivered in the Senate House, Cambridge.  Essentially, his thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole western society" was split into two cultures -- the sciences and humanities -- and he lamented that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

Fifty years later in 2009, Peter Dizikes was reflecting on this work in the New York Times:

So why did Snow think the supposed gulf between the two cultures was such a problem? Because, he argues in the latter half of his essay, it leads many capable minds to ignore science as a vocation, which prevents us from solving the world’s “main issue,” the wealth gap caused by industrialization, which threatens global stability. “This disparity between the rich and the poor has been noticed . . . most acutely and not unnaturally, by the poor.”

I think Mr. Khan and many others from the LDCs would agree.

"When I Was Ten"

Obviously, the Co-Chair of the contact group for Loss and Damage, Robert Van Lierop (representing St. Kitts and Nevis) was a bit older than ten when, in 1991, he recommended tabling the issue of Loss and Damage.  This astonishing admission came about when the G-77/China group mentioned that this topic wasn’t new to Doha last year, but had actually been in the works for three years.  The representative of Nauru has a longer memory, and she mentioned that the topic was first mentioned at Bali in 1991, and that the co-chair of this current meeting was responsible for tabling it.  In the interest of full disclosure, Van Lierop acknowledged the misstep, and, in a humbling moment, said he tabled the motion “when I was ten.” 

To be fair, in 1991, the severe impacts of climate change were being considered more as a theoretical possibility, and not as something absolutely certain. The first IPCC report had just been published in 1990, which served as the basis for the UNFCCC meetings. But for the past few COP meetings, climate change impacts are clearly a reality, and Loss and Damage is an important topic.

The first meeting of the contact group was open to observers, but will quickly change to closed meetings for the duration of COP 19.  Bolivia, speaking on behalf of China and the G77 has urged the group to quickly start working on the text itself, rather than spending time on speeches and rhetoric. In good faith, they submitted a text hours earlier and sent it ahead to the other parties.  The Co-Chair acknowledged the submitted text, along with two others: those submitted by the EU and Switzerland/Norway.  However, no texts were available at the time of the meeting for discussion, and opening statements were made as usual.

All of the representatives who spoke conveyed their thoughts and prayers to the people of the Philippines. The United States representative spoke of the $20 million of humanitarian assistance already committed to the Philippines, along with the pre-positioned team coordinating help efforts. She also recognized the existential threat to low-lying islands for a variety of reasons.  There is a broad range of issues that are part of Loss and Damage, including mitigation, assistance, and migration. A comprehensive report about the various aspects of this important issue can be found here.

At this point, only the text by China and the G77 is posted online at the UNFCCC site.  This is an issue that will be carefully watched by the developing countries and the NGOs.  The developing countries strongly believe that they need to have a system in place to address loss and damage, and they are looking beyond ad hoc humanitarian responses which are are “appreciated but not adequate.”

Workshops and Workstreams

Even after five years, there is much to be confused about at the COP meetings between all the acronyms, jargon, and complicated governance frameworks. There are contact groups, informal consultations, open-ended consultations, meetings, workstreams, work programmes (yes, the British spelling is correct), workshops, daily programmes (that change several times a day), briefings, official documents, informal papers, and even non-papers. (I am not kidding about that one!) Plus, some of these sessions are open to observers (civil society) one day, but not the next. Week one is an intense work week as different groups collect data and ideas to draft language and plans for moving forward. When the high-level segment commences on Tuesday of week #2, high ranking ministers and heads of states use these materials, but have also been known to scrap all the work and start from scratch at the negotiating table. Science seems so much easier (and more logical) than this multilateral policy stuff!

This year, there seems to be an unusual number of workshops. I have been to three already, and it is only day #3. I went to one last year, which was the first I ever recall seeing on the agenda, err, I mean daily programme. In subsequent posts, I will elaborate on the content of the three workshops I attended on

• “Issues related to agriculture” (as mandated in paragraph 83 of FCCC/SBSTA/2013/3);
• "Gender and climate change”; and
• “Lessons learned from relevant experience of other multilateral environmental agreements.”

When I was a graduate student in the 1980s, our lab worked on the impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide on photosynthesis in algae and plants. This information had implications for crop yields (agricultural productivity), and we knew that different types of plants (C3 vs C4; I won’t bother you with the biochemical details) respond differently to increasing carbon dioxide availability. During those graduate school years (1981 – 1986), carbon dioxide levels went from 338 to 346 ppm. This year the levels hover around 400 ppm. As the implications of rising greenhouse gases became more apparent, scientists realized that there would be many impacts on agriculture.

Yet despite the wealth of scientific publications around this issue, it wasn’t until COP17 in Durban, South Africa (2011) that text was adopted that enabled (mandated) a dialogue about agricultural impacts and adaptation. This was assigned to a working group within the SBSTA framework, and plans were made to hold this workshop – now two years later.

What is SBSTA (besides one of the many IPCCC acronyms)? Following the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, two bodies were set up to deal with the technical discussions. The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (or SBSTA) is one of these. And alas, agriculture is one of the issues that now falls under this group’s auspices.

At COP18 in Doha, issues of women and gender were front and center (oddly enough in a country where women’s rights are a bit different than what we are accustomed to in the United States). Concerns centered on the fact that, globally, women are disproportionately impacted by climate change for many reasons, yet the policy work related to the environmental problem is negotiated mainly by men. Two important decisions were adopted which “promote gender balance and improving the participation of women in Convention negotiations and in the representation of the Parties in bodies established under the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol.” The work to implement these decisions fell to the SBI, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation – the group that advises the COP (Conference of the Parties) on “improving the effective application of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol”.

The third workshop was organized by yet another group – the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action or ADP. This new working group was established in 2011 in Durban (sometimes things make sense) and is charged with adopting an agreement by 2015 to be implemented in 2020, effectively replacing the Kyoto Protocol. Given the difficulties in achieving consensus on pretty much anything – details of mitigation (reducing the causes of climate change), adaptation (learning to live under a new climate regime and increasing resiliency), and financing things like technology transfer, a Green Climate Fund, or loss and damage resulting from historic, current, and future emissions – this new group is looking elsewhere for ideas. In this workshop, representatives from other successful multilateral agreements related to the environment shared their models of decision making and implementation. These included CITES (an agreement related to endangered species and international trade), an agreement under the Stockholm Convention related to Persistent Organic Pollutants (the “dirty dozen” and other toxic compounds), and the Montreal Protocol that addresses the phase out of ozone-depleting chemicals that degrade the stratospheric ozone layer.

If you are still following along, you should know that these items represent only a small percentage of the work that goes on at a COP meeting!

A panel discussion during the "Gender and Climate Change" workshop

Note:  I am grateful to the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie for their extremely value resources including the "Guide to the Negotiations for COP 19 and CMP 9 (#13), and "Background Analysis".  These resources are handy references and contain detailed analysis on the history and status of negotiations.



“What happens in this stadium is not a game”

"What happens in this stadium is not a game”

Those were the words of UNFCCC Executive Secretariat in her opening comments for COP19.  “There are not two sides.  All of humanity will either win or lose.”  Sobering words to start the day.

Despite the general sense that UNFCCC climate negotiations have more or less stalled over the past several years, COP meetings tend to open the two-week session with a sense of optimism, a renewed hope that maybe this time significant progress will be made.  In contrast, this year’s opening ceremony, my fifth, was the grimmest start that I have witnessed.  Perhaps it was the horrific news coming in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and the emotional comments from the negotiator from the Philippines (see earlier post).  Maybe it is because Poland, the host country for the climate talks, is also hosting a coal-summit that coincides with the COP meeting.  UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres is speaking at that summit, and NGOs are questioning why.  The youth went so far as to un-invite her from speaking to their constituency.

Maybe it was the take-home messages from the latest report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – reiterated by Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri this morning:  the newest trends in rising global sea and land surface temperatures, the stats on the decrease in snow and ice cover, sea level rise occurring at rates greater than in the last two millennia, and the 40% increases in dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean, which, in turn, lowers the pH of the water even further.  Such sobering scientific details are not typically mentioned in this ceremony, despite calls by many in other sessions to remind negotiators to use science as they develop policy.  Christiana had us all take a deep breath of the air, reminding us as we did that, for the first time in human history, the air we inhale contains 400 ppm carbon dioxide.

In an afternoon session sponsored by the Third World Network (TWN) entitled What to expect from Warsaw anger and frustration with the lack of progress was clearly evident.  These countries are already suffering from the impact of climate change – caused by greenhouse gases emitted into the atmospheric commons largely from other (developed) countries.  The anger is fueled by concerns that developed countries are trying to profit off of their pollution (carbon markets and “clean development mechanisms”) and reneging on promises to fund technology transfer programs and pay for loss and damages – all while they continue to provide subsidies for fossil fuel companies.  The comment was made that reimbursements for climate-caused destruction is not simply “planes dropping blankets and medicine” when disasters strike.  Panelists questioned why wealthy nations find money "to bail out banks and to buy drones", but cry “economic recession when it comes to rescuing the planet.”  And I should note that the panelists included both civil society representatives and negotiators (official delegates from countries who are parties to the U.N. convention).

Outside of the COP19 venue, a crowd of violent Polish nationalist demonstrators disrupted the Independence Day march.  Inside, delegates were pondering the words spoken by the Polish COP19 president during the opening ceremony:

If it weren’t complex enough, we are all experiencing threatening climate change. Changing landscapes, forcing us from our normal ways. Killing.

Only two days ago, a powerful typhoon swept through the Philippines, claiming thousands of lives, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. A great human tragedy. Unforgettable, painful, awakening.

I say awakening because it is yet another proof that we are losing this unequal struggle between man and nature. It got the better of us yet again, and will continue to do so in the future if we do not close ranks and act together to strike back.

Climate is a global issue, global problem and global opportunity at the same time.

An opportunity? For whom?

Maybe these words might not seem so peculiar if the host country website for COP19 didn’t include an introductory piece pondering whether humans are in fact are contributing to climate change.  Perhaps that is why Dr. Pachauri reminded those in attendance at the opening ceremony that in the IPCC’s latest Assessment Report (published at the end of September) that panel concluded there is greater than 95% certainty that humans cause the climate change that we are now experiencing.