Article > 'Yes' to Cancún but 'No' to handicapping the world's poor

SUSTAINABLE EUROPE

'Yes' to Cancún but 'No' to handicapping the world's poor

Autumn 2010

by Alain Juppé

Copenhagen wasn't the unmitigated disaster it's portrayed as, and Cancún may yet build on its foundations. But Alain Juppé warns that "green fundamentalists" who advocate limiting economic growth should think again if the world's poorest nations are not to suffer

Commentary:

by Luis Alfonso De Alba

For those who had long campaigned for specific commitments to limit global warming, last December's Copenhagen conference was a huge disappointment. Its failure re-kindled doubts about sustainable development, with climate change doubters and eco-sceptics making common cause in the debate, and with the defenders of what one might best describe as “green fundamentalism” taking the other against them.

Climatology and its emphasis on global warming is a comparatively recent addition to the whole field of science. Yet despite the comparative youth of this particular branch of research, the scientific consensus is clear. Climate change for which human activity is to a significant extent, although not exclusively responsible now threatens our way of life, and so we must therefore provide ourselves with the means to combat it.

EW BACKGROUND BRIEFING

Now Europe debates the impact
of a 30% emissions cut

The current targets of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 that are the EU’s commitment to the UN are seen by many greens as insufficient. They argue that the minimum needed to prevent global temperatures rising by the key climate danger threshold of 2°C demand more aggressive cuts, amounting to 30% over the coming decade.

The economic recession has already had a marked effect on the climate change debate in the EU. On the plus side, CO2 emissions have fallen further than expected because of consumer cut-backs and reduced travel. On the minus side, there is a growing reluctance to earmark spending on new technologies that might help prevent climate change.

Some areas have resisted steeper emissions cuts because of concerns about the impact on their competitiveness. An alliance of European manufacturing companies sent an open letter to EU bodies in Brussels setting out their approval to opposing 30% cuts until other major economies around the world have also made similar commitments.

But an EU report found in May that reduced emissions have already made now much cheaper for the EU to deliver a 30% reduction than previously thought – €81bn annually, which is not significantly more than the €70bn a year set aside in 2008 to reduce emissions by 20%. Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate change commissioner, said that if we maintain spending at €70bn a year, CO2 emissions will have fallen about 25% by 2020.

The Commission's report underlined other advantages of moving to 30%. These include saving $40bn in oil and gas imports, reducing the cost of cleaning air pollution by €3bn, bringing in several billion dollars' worth of health benefits and creating new jobs in the green economy.

I have to add, though, that I also believe that the fundamentalist approach that can be sensed in certain circles is skirting the limits of what is acceptable. How can it be possible that economic downturn is being advocated by the fundamentalists as a universal solution when there are men, women and children in their hundreds of millions all over the world who still lead lives of abject poverty and are in desperate need of help? How can there be talk about the need to call a halt to economic growth and therefore to structural development when these people need access to such basic things as food, drinking water and shelter? Society in so many underprivileged parts of the world has a right to become developed so that they can produce their own food, gain access to clean water and enjoy not just shelter, but also all the benefits represented by hospitals and schools. These are essential human rights and they can only be brought by economic growth, not stagnation.

At the beginning of the 20th century, only one person in ten lived in a town or city. Today that figure is one in two. According to UN statistics, there are now 3.3bn people living in towns and cities and this phenomenon appears irreversible, with the percentage of urban dwellers set to reach 70% by 2050. This clearly shows us that cities represent the most important development challenge of all, the one with the highest stakes. Urbanisation must be controlled and planned, so although cities will continue to grow and spread across the world, we must focus on concentrating their populations and ensuring that their inhabitants will be able to travel comparatively short distances to their work so as to reduce energy consumption and improve the quality of life. Urban planners will also need to think in terms of social and functional diversity as that will enable the inhabitants of these sprawling cities to live better together.

The common expression in France that great rivers are created out of tiny streams illustrates the sort of strategy for countering global warming through sustainable development that I believe could be very effective. Actions carried out locally and then developed as part of an exchange between cities could in the long-term have a global impact. That’s why I am keen to encourage local thinking and acting that also has a global perspective.

Among the issues raised at Copenhagen was the failure of the EU member states to perfect a post-Kyoto international system for fighting global warming. Fortunately, though, things have changed since then, with the 110 countries responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions – including India, China and Brazil – now giving their support to the Copenhagen agreement.

The important thing is not to stop there. We must try to make sure that future meetings like the Cancún summit this winter should be fully exploited as an opportunity to transform well-intentioned declarations into international agreements that apply not just to developed countries but to the entire planet.

The Copenhagen commitment envisages the world’s industrialised nations financing emissions reduction and other necessary adjustments in developing countries through a $30bn aid package that will rise to $100bn between now and 2020. But this agreement doesn’t state who will undertake what costs. What it limits itself to doing is to respond to the IPCC requirements on climate change that aim at keeping carbon dioxide concentration levels below 450 ppm, and the rise in temperature below a 2°C limit. So are these planned initiatives realistic? And it’s also vitally important to bear in mind the warnings of the UK’s Stern Report that we must act now because if we do not take action it will cost us a lot more in the future.

Europe has at its disposal the means to launch a second round of negotiations. Its concern that all countries taking part in the political process on climate change should be treated equally has ensured that Europe still exerts a good deal of influence. Things have clearly moved on from Copenhagen, when the priority was to reach agreement between those countries that have been chiefly responsible for global warming.

And if my own country, France, failed to set a good example to developing countries by equivocating over the terms of a carbon tax, then perhaps the time has come for its national carbon footprint to be linked with the European quota trading system for CO2. The sad truth is, though, that the solution of mixing quotas and taxes will not be able to deliver results quickly enough to bring about a genuine and immediate move to low-carbon or even carbon-free economies.

Yet we must remain optimistic. Ever since Copenhagen, a majority of the main greenhouse gas emitting nations have been setting out ambitious goals without hedging them with restrictive conditions. And at the same time, new mechanisms are being put in place to measure, evaluate and notify emissions that will allow much clearer comparisons to be established between countries. What remains to be done is share these efforts in a way that is fair and manageable for all countries.

Will we, then, manage to sign a legal and binding agreement in Cancún? Will we be able to implement co-operation mechanisms between countries such as the UN’s Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries – the REDD programme – so as to prevent deforestation, technology transfers and financing? This is the real challenge, and although it may prove ambitious, many countries will be arriving at the Cancún conference with renewed hope for the future thanks to these mechanisms.

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