By David Vigar
Well, so much for
'Hopenhagen' - the idea that the Copenhagen climate talks would
lead to a new treaty on climate change and usher in a bright new
green dawn. Despite all the hope and energy invested in it, the
event fell way short of what had been expected. So what happened?
And what next?
What happened?
All the world's
most powerful leaders could muster after two weeks of wrangling and
two years of build-up was a very thin 'accord'. Much was made of
the fact that they agreed to a goal of holding the increase in
global temperature below 2C. However this is an objective which has
long been widely accepted as conventional wisdom by many
governments and organisations.
Developed
countries are going to make pledges to cut emissions by 2020 - but
choosing the numbers themselves and with no new penalties for non
compliance. Developing and emerging economies are committed to
unspecified 'mitigation actions .. in the context of sustainable
development'.
The participants could not even agree on a goal to
halve global emissions by 2050, which has been accepted by the G8
and long seen by scientists as a basic pre-requisite for a
deal.
Also missing were
the widely discussed targets for developed countries to cut
emissions 25-40% by 2020. Neither is there any mention of a target
year for emissions to peak - which scientists say should be 2015 if
the temperature rise is to stay within 2C.
These numbers had
all been part of a widely discussed plan of action based on the
2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That plan should have been the starting point for the agreement,
with the new substance consisting of national targets and
mechanisms to achieve them through international co-operation.
Instead what should have been the foundation of the deal wasn't
even there.
Oddly, one of the
mechanisms to achieve the non-targets was there. This was a pledge
that developed countries would provide developing countries with
$30bn to fight climate change between 2010 and 2012 - $10bn a year
- and a goal - not a promise mind - of raising $100bn for the same
purpose annually by 2020. It's a start but compare that
with the $500bn a year the World Economic Forum says is needed for
green investment worldwide - or with the hundreds of billions spent
bailing out banks.
For two main
players, the US and China, one of the key elements was China's
agreement to monitor, report and verify its greenhouse gas
reductions - albeit that the commitment to them is itself voluntary
and vague. This is very significant for Obama as Chinese openness
about emissions has been a major issue in Congress. The reaction to
Copenhagen in the US has been more upbeat as the Chinese concession
is seen as a platform for Obama to get his cap-and-trade bill
approved. The real issue with Copenhagen may indeed be the prosaic
one that Obama was doing health reform and Afghanistan this year
while saving the world is in his diary for 2010.
However, as
Copenhagen showed, Obama cannot deliver alone and the fact remains
that the event was a shocking letdown. Those who have worked long
hours in good faith for many years to try to shape an agreement,
such as the EU and UK's officials, many of the developing country
leaders, and Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change, must be feeling traumatised
and angry.
What next?
The Copenhagen
event provided one service though. It showed up graphically what is
wrong with the way the world is responding to climate change. In
Tomorrow's Company we published a report in mid-2009, Tomorrow's Climate, highlighting the
shortcomings of the institutions and process. For example we noted
that the IPCC and UNFCCC operate on an annual budget that equates
to the price of one corporate jet. Copenhagen brought these issues
painfully into the open and showed what needs to be fixed in
2010.
A fit-for-purpose
process: The title says it all - 'The Conference of the
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change'. This is
a 19th century diplomatic construct trying to solve a
complex 21st century problem. No reflection on the
individuals involved, but the system of the IPCC and UNFCCC needs
to be upgraded to a streamlined, fit-for-purpose solution. The
international negotiations need to become much more efficient, with
full time teams of negotiators reporting back to their
constituencies rather a travelling circus of set piece events. A
build-up such as Copenhagen had should not happen without a great
deal agreed in advance.
Relationship-building:
Relationships count for a lot in situations like this. Expecting
Obama and Wen Jiabao to turn up for one day and agree a deal was
crazy. It was no surprise that there were hash words and offence
was taken, using up precious hours. It takes time to build
relationships, especially between people from different backgrounds
and cultures.
Behind the
scenes, time needs to be invested in creating common cause between
the very different actors on the climate stage. There is a
particularly complex situation to resolve with China and India, who
in the eyes of the UNFCCC are 'developing countries' yet who are
now major polluters and major economic players, with interests far
removed from Mali or the Maldives. They need to be provided with
funding and technology, but there are delicate diplomatic tasks
involved in getting OECD countries to come up with the resources
and in enabling China and India to accept
them.
Access to new
science: Ministers have been working on the basis of
the IPCC's 2007 report, in turn based on science from the previous
decade. But today's emerging science is pointing to the alarming
risks of feedbacks in the climate system that may trigger runaway
warming, such as accelerating melting of Arctic ice. The effect of
this is that the true scale of the threat is not looming over the
conference hall, the media coverage and the watching public as it
should be. The IPCC's heavyweight reports every seven years need to
be supplemented by real time advice from expert assessors.
An information hub:
Information on science, emissions, policies, technologies and
investment needs to be collated, presented and acted on in a clear,
transparent way. This requires a total overhaul of the processes
and systems currently used by the IPCC and UNFCCC and the ad hoc
manner in which data is collected and managed.
Clear
communications: The most vital task of all. Had the public
in Europe, North America and Japan, let alone China and India,
actually 'got it', the result at Copenhagen would have been utterly
different. Outright scepticism is growing, and more depressingly,
even those citizens who accept climate change is real do not see it
as a priority. This is a failure of politicians, NGOs and media.
But someone has to take a lead soon in setting out the facts more
compellingly than they have been set out before.
'Hopenhagen' summed it up - a superficial slogan
rather than the genuine effort that is needed to reach the people
in the street with the reality of what awaits their children and
grandchildren if we fail to act.
Post-Copenhagen,
there have been calls for reform of the institutions and an
admission from the UN that things must change. From Tomorrow's
Company's perspective, we are urging that this should follow the
model of the 'E-mission Control' centre we have proposed for some
time, bringing together all of these functions or co-ordination and
communications.
It would have to
be ultimately governed at UN level, but would draw its energy and
capability from contributions of financial and human resources from
business, governments, NGOs and academia.
The input of business would be vital here.
Global businesses know how to manage complex multi-billion projects
on time and on schedule. They are practised at relationship
building because they are at home in many cultures. They handle
data and information professionally. They have made a rigorous
business discipline out of risk management. And they know how to
reach the public. Their capabilities, deployed within a
framework for which the UN and politicians take accountability,
might break the logjams.
One snag - it's
not their job. Progressive businesses have already done more than
compliance requires by cutting emissions and encouraging consumers
to make green choices. Nevertheless, it may be that only powerful
businesses have the capabilities to unravel and professionalise the
tangled mess that international efforts to overcome climate change
have become. They also have a powerful motivation as they need
certainty about the regulatory framework in order to decide whether
to invest in low-carbon assets and products. .
For those who
chose to make a contribution, it would be something bigger than the
day job. It would be the ultimate act of corporate responsibility
and it would secure the companies involved a place in
history.
David Vigar
authored Tomorrow's Company's report on global warming and
business, Tomorrow's Climate: Beyond Peak Carbon. It is available
at forceforgood.com here. To find out more about
Tomorrow's Company please visit their corporate site, http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/ , or
their interactive web platform,www.forceforgood.com .