End of week 2 reflections

As I sit in the Madrid airport, I reflect over the last two weeks and wonder if anything productive will come out of COP25. The negotiations continue for at least today, but I must get back home.

 
Some countries still think that we have plenty of time to figure things out (or to continue to ignore the climate change issue), despite the "time is running out" theme that was evident in the interventions of political leaders from cities to the head of the U.N., business leaders, youth, environmental organizations, and even scientists who are typically not prone to cries of urgency. The Emissions Gap report released in November provided a bleak picture of the state of greenhouse gas emissions especially when considered in context of the warnings provided in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C warming (above pre-industrial levels).

One of the strongest voices at COP25 and Time Magazine Person of the Year

If the draft text of the working groups is maintained by the Parties, there will be recognition, for the first time, of the critical importance of the oceans as an integral part of the Earth's climate system for both mitigation and adaptation. Despite alarming reports from the World Health Organization (see also the 2018 report) and the Lancet (a leading, well respected medical journal) that describe the negative health impacts of climate change and from air pollution released during the burning of fossil fuels, human health continues to be notably absent from any COP text except for vague references to human safety.

There do appear to be some advances in working out details for financing mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund, but little agreement has been reached on regulation of carbon markets.

The Paris Agreement developed in 2015 was for climate action post 2020. There was supposed to be additional work on pre-2020 action, but given that 2020 is less a month away, that article is essentially obsolete.

There was much discussion this week over the effectiveness of the UN process given that it was established in 1992 and there have been 25 annual conference of the parties, but little progress in solving climate change. I heard sharp criticism about the process from both former Secretary of State, John Kerry, and Jonathan Pershing, the former Special Envoy for Climate Change from the State Department and chief negotiator for the U.S. delegation. But while both argued that the real action is going to come at the local and regional (sub-national levels) and from the private sector, they also felt that it is important to keep countries talking as a reminder of the serious nature of this global issue.

Johnathan Pershing on the right

John Kerry

The Research and Independent NGOs, one of nine officially recognized constituencies of observer groups within the UNFCCC, has the opportunity to draft statements (interventions) for key plenary sessions throughout the COP. Because this group doesn’t advocate for any special position other than having evidence-based policy making, our statements are typically subdued or even bland. For whenever the COP closing plenary is, here is the statement that I drafted for this year:

The RINGOs would like to start by expressing appreciation for the Chilean COP Presidency’s recognition of the importance of “putting science at the center of COP25”, as the Minister noted on December 5th. We also applaud the first-ever virtual meeting of country science ministers held on Dec 4th in conjunction with the COP. 

A vast amount of relevant research data has been collected over the past several decades. Through 25 years of COPs, plentiful technical solutions for mitigation and adaptation as well as finance and market mechanisms have been developed, linking research with innovation at private and public levels. As has been said by many at COP25, it is now time to put research and the agreements into ACTION. 

RINGOs welcome the outcomes of COP25, but we urge all of us to continue to play a role in operationalizing and implementing the details of the Paris Agreement back home. Amid all of the technical discussions, the political processes, and acronyms, we must not forget to humanize climate change, and to help people better understand the implications of climate change for their own well-being as well as for the world around them. Through capacity building, we must give people the tools and empowerment to address climate change in their communities. We must push together so that no actor rests for a moment. 

The research community stands ready to serve as knowledge brokers to explain the regional relevance of the scientific evidence and COP decisions in our home communities and countries. We are also prepared to help the transformation of knowledge into day-to-day practice. The RINGOs encourage the private and public sectors to engage in climate action and move to a more circular economy, both in their work and in their local communities. We call for all stakeholders to become involved in promoting and applying science-based climate solutions. 

In conclusion, the RINGOs would like to express our sincere and deepest gratitude to the Governments and people of Chile and Spain for pulling together COP25 in such a short time. This was a good example of how the global north and south can come together and accomplish a great task - a metaphor for what we all now need to do to advance the provisions of the Paris Agreement and COP25.

Is Higher Education Playing a Leading Role in Climate Action? Part I.

The report “Higher Education’s Role in Adapting to a Changing Climate” was prepared in 2011 by the Higher Education Climate Adaptation Committee—a group of experts and institutional leaders in the United States—that is convened and coordinated by Second Nature in support of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Although it is a bit dated by this point, the report does include a relevant list of things that higher education should be considering in terms of climate action. While at COP25, I have been thinking a lot about this list as prompts for series of blog posts. In the first of this series, I will focus on a quote from the Executive Summary of that report:

Higher education has taken a leadership role in climate mitigation — that is, preventing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

In 2006, twelve college and university presidents initiated ACUPCC and eventually, hundreds of institutions signed on to a commitment in which they were to a) develop a plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible; b) complete an comprehensive inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions associated with the institution; and c) make the action plan, inventory and progress reports publicly available. Jennie Stephens, from Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs is an expert in the social-political aspects of renewable energy transformation. Writing in The Conversation in 2018, Dr. Stephens argues that climate advocacy “has become well established on US campuses over the past decade,” with over 600 schools signing the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment.

To date, now thirteen years after the formation of ACUPCC, there are 6 signatory institutions that have achieved carbon neutrality according to Second Nature. Others plan to achieve this milestone by either 2025 or 2050 (but so do at least six states). Some campuses have been engaged in energy efficiency initiatives, either through new construction of LEED certified buildings or simply as a cost savings measure. Some institutions simply participate in mandatory demand response programs to curtail electrical use at critical times (e.g. during a heat wave) to minimize the chance of an electrical blackout. In the same article referenced above, Dr. Stephens noted that as of 2018, only 150 campuses globally had committed to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies, and only about one-third of those are in the U.S.

Given these numbers, I would argue that overall, institutions of higher education are not demonstrating strong climate action leadership. There are exceptions of course (Monash University in Australia comes to mind). But given the research and innovation that universities are typically known for, we can and should be doing better, especially given the urgency needed to address climate change as outlined in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report Global Warming of 1.5 °C and strongly reiterated in the special reports the IPCC published this year on Climate Change and Land and on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

These signs are seen frequently around the COP25 venue

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The Executive Summary from the 2011 report that I referenced at the start of this post notes that “campuses face direct risks to their operations and infrastructure from the impacts of climate disruption,” and thus, have the unique opportunity to role-model solutions in their own operations. Earlier today, I attended the 10th World Climate Summit that is held annually in conjunction with the COPs. While this is very much a business and investment-focused event, I went to a session entitled “Physical Climate Risk and Response” hosted by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. In a small group exercise, they asked attendees to consider the four questions in the screen shot below.

Discussion questions posed during a session hosted by McKinsey & Company

These seem like important questions for all institutions (including higher education) to be asking; I am curious as to how people at my campus would respond. One of the points made by the facilitators of this session was that climate risk should be integrated into the risk management framework of any organization. Thus, these questions seem like important ones for each campus to be asking as part of their own risk management. Without good answers to these questions, it would be difficult for an institution to take on one of the recommendations from the 2011 ACUPCC report where the authors suggested that higher education could also "serve as ‘hubs’ in their local communities for creating, testing, and disseminating knowledge about regional climate projections and adaptation strategies, and should work directly with their local communities to explain the science and implement solutions."