New UN Climate Chief gives up on Kyoto Climate Change treaty “impossible in our lifetime”
International bureaucrats and government climate policy advisers are giving up on the attempt to seek a binding agreement on climate change and do not expect a renewal of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, will be possible.
Delegates at the UN climate change conference (UNFCCC) in Bonn last month were shocked when Christiana Figueres, who takes over from Yvo de Boer as Executive Secretary this month told them, “I do not believe we will ever have a final agreement on climate change, certainly not in my lifetime. A final, conclusive agreement will solve this problem. It would require the sustained effort of those who will be here for the next 20, 30, 40 years and I don’t think that is on the cards”, she concluded.
Madam Figueres should know. The 53 year old Costa Rican from a prominent political family has a 15-year involvement in tackling global warming, has a detailed knowledge of the issues and was director of the Renewable Energy in the Americas program and co-founder of the Sustainable Development in the Americas. She was vice president of the UN climate meetings 2008-09.
For the last three years the chief UN goal has been to set a deadline for when talks must result in a fully legally binding international treaty to replace the flawed Kyoto Protocol by 2012. Last December’s Copenhagen summit, the most important gathering of world leaders yet to engage on global warming, with its scenes of chaos and bitter disagreement, cut the heart out of the UN drive to renew Kyoto and led directly to de Boer’s departure. Delegates and officials alike now wonder if there’s any point in the UN continuing a process of negotiation that has gone on for 20 years now, which can be stopped dead in its tracks as in Copenhagen by a handful of small countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Sudan), and is going nowhere.
World won’t pay yet….
Today’s political atmosphere has not helped. World leaders are pre-occupied with cleaning up after the financial crisis and having to impose painful cuts in public spending on their countries. The Europeans, prime movers in establishing binding cuts for GHG emissions, now have little appetite for it after bailing out Greece and shoring up the Euro. In the US a bill on climate change has stalled indefinitely and a new energy bill is up in the air.
For the public at large, the recent “Climategate” scandal where scientists were caught fudging the books has encouraged climate skeptics and disinclined them towards any climate change measures likely to add to their cost of living in economic hard times.
Mme Figueres and her UN colleagues now concede that the best way forward is via a series of partial agreements on key aspects of climate change may be the best way forward. The US National Commission on Energy Policy agrees. In other words, the big players while still committed to reducing their carbon emissions levels, won’t make binding commitments to do so in a way that is verifiable and could possibly embarrass them when they fall short.
That the world’s biggest economies and emitters signed up for the first time to such limits is indeed an achievement, but is it enough to see us through? The scientific consensus is clear that at this rate - it is not. And yet, for now, that’s how the matter rests. That is to say, incremental and insufficient measures to head off catastrophic global warming.
It wasn’t all bad…..
The Copenhagen climate conference was not a total bust. In addition to the voluntary albeit unenforceable commitments on carbon emissions made by the biggest emitters there was also a agreement in theory from the rich countries to pay US$100 billion a year to poorer countries from public and private sources by 2020. Quite how and if this is done remains to be seen.
An apparently good start was made with the acceptance of REDD, (reduced emissions from forest degradation and deforestation), a revolutionary scheme backed by the World Bank to pay poor countries billions of dollars a year to stop felling trees. It is the best way to stop logging and save the planet from climate change, according to wealthy countries and many conservationists. The plan, originally put forward by Indonesia at UNFCCC Bali in 2007, enthusiastically supported by Brazil and other countries with large areas of rain forest remaining, found widespread international traction at Copenhagen. In May Norway was the first to sign on for a deal under the scheme promising to pay Indonesia US$1 billion to preserve large tracts of its forests. Further pledges are due from other nations, which include the UK and Germany and which will increase the amount pledged to $4 billion.
Under REDD, according to UN reports, 37 mainly tropical countries have now requested more than $14 billion in grants from rich countries by 2015 in return for cutting their carbon emissions from logging and other forestry activities. This is expected to lead to an income of more than $10bn a year by 2020 when a global carbon offset scheme is running. The carbon money flowing from rich to poor countries will then theoretically dwarf international aid and could reduce global emissions by 17% to 20% – more than that emitted by all the world’s transport.
Great Idea. BUT….
REDD has its problems however. In present form the scheme is a collection of guidelines on issues such as counting emissions, not a fully worked-out financing mechanism as there is for carbon trading. This concerns REDD supporters who point to the failures in both carbon trading and CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), whereby rich countries offset their carbon emissions by financing clean developments in developing countries. Both schemes have major problems threatening any significant contribution to global warming reduction. Carbon trading has not worked as well as forecast and is plagued by dishonest trades. The CDM is currently bogged down in an administrative quagmire, designed to evaluate and prevent the swindles to which it is prone.
It seems REDD could all too easily go the same way. This month human rights and environment groups are calling for a radical rethink of the UN scheme after it emerged that many countries were trying to cheat the system. As structured, they say, REDD will encourage corruption and very possibly lead to more logging not less.
An analysis of the 16 forestry reform plans so far submitted by REDD countries to the World Bank shows that many intend to abuse the system in order to collect the money while carrying on logging as usual. Recent reports from the Observer warn that the Democratic Republic of Congo wants to open up 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of new logging concessions as its contribution to reduce global warming. A war torn Congo, whose government is ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world, claims it will reduce emissions by planting more trees elsewhere…. Guyana intends to use a good slice of its REDD money to pay a property dealer from Florida to build a road and a major hydroelectric plant in some of its most densely forested areas.
Indonesia has said it will impose a moratorium on the conversion of its extensive peat forests to palm plantations, but only after 2013, allowing logging companies free rein to ravage its forests until then. Or perhaps the Indonesian government would seriously have us believe that planting palm oil is the same thing as reforestation? Other countries are setting the present rate of deforestation deliberately high or are ignoring all present logging, so that they can be paid to do nothing.
Who will police the Eco-Swindlers?
Environmental groups, including Global Witness, Greenpeace International Fern & Rainforest Foundation, also fear REDD is being used by governments to victimise and steal the carbon rights of people who live and depend on the forests. In the UK last month businessman was alleged to have paid government officials and others for the emission rights on 20% of Liberia’s forests. Interpol already says the chances are “very high” that criminal gangs will seek to take advantage of REDD. Their environmental crimes division stated that REDD is simply too big to monitor, that the potential for criminality is vast and has not been taken into account.
Last word goes to Simon Counsell, director of Rainforest Foundation, who says, “REDD could be the quickest and cheapest way of preventing climate change, but what we are seeing can make things worse. REDD needs to be taken out of the hands of the World Bank, and a new global institution established to rigorously oversee payments to tropical countries on the basis of the actual amount of logging averted.”
That may also be said of global warming and the UN as a whole. Clearly what we urgently need is a global ecological audit body with teeth. Then we might feel we are headed in the right direction.
