By David Ciplet and Timmons Roberts

It’s absurd — the countries least responsible for causing climate change are suffering worst and first from its impacts, including droughts, floods and famines. Meanwhile, wealthy countries continue to feed the problem by directing hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize fossil fuel industries every year. In fact, the support they’ve offered those hit hardest is less than one percent what they give the polluters most driving climate change.

In 2009, these countries promised to end fossil fuel welfare once and for all. It is time that they met this promise. Redirecting this money to the Least Developed Countries and other vulnerable nations would help them to adapt to this new climate reality and level the playing level playing field for clean energy, spurring a transition to a sustainable economy.

In three weeks, representatives of the world’s nations will meet for talks on the United Nations’ climate change treaty. President Obama led the initial charge against handouts to Big Oil, but lost the political will to make it a reality. Hot off his reelection, Obama has a huge chance to be bold and start moving money from the problem to its solution. Sign the petition here – Avaaz.org will deliver the petition to wealthy countries at the climate talks when we reach a critical mass!

Do you know about the climate paradox? The countries hardest hit by climate change are also the least responsible for causing the problem. Learn more by checking out our video and research covered today in The Guardian at this link.

Photo Cred: Orin Langelle/GJEP

Written December 21, 2011, posted March 21, 2012

In the utilitarian lecture-hall of the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa, some of the world’s top scholars and activists on the “ecological debt” spoke to a half-full hall.   Impassioned speeches outlined the big idea: that rather than owing a huge economic debt to private and World Bank lenders and governments of the wealthier nations, the world’s poorer nations are actually owed an “ecological debt” due to the plundering of their natural resources by colonists and neo-colonizing corporations alike.

Who owes by this reckoning?  The global North.  The bill?  By one scholarly estimate: US$1.8 trillion.  Others argue that it is impossible to calculate the value of complex ecological systems, but the first level estimation is that the financial debt of poor nations is tiny in comparison and should be forgiven.

The microphone is passed around the audience in the risers, and finally finds its way to the hands of a Durban labor union leader.

“We must get beyond nice slogans, to find the practical politics to rally around,” he says.  “Do we really expect the North to pay reparations?  And who pays, corporations or states?”

This event, taking place at the dramatic hilltop university in parallel to the United Nations’ “Conference of the Parties” following up on the Kyoto Protocol about four miles away at the glitzy convention center in downtown Durban, was part of “the people’s conference”, an ambitious counter-event organized by the Economic Justice Network of the Foccisa Fellowship of Christian Councils in South Africa.  The miniconference was focused an idea that has gained traction over the past decade in developing countries—the Ecological Debt—and how it relates to the injustice of climate change.

The case of climate change raises a simple and stark case of injustice: the poorest nations did not cause the problem but are suffering its impacts first and worst, without the conditions to cope with these impacts.   The reality of this injustice is irrefutable, and the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change acknowledged it and how wealthy nations therefore needed to act most aggressively and quickly to address it by reducing our emissions and sending money South to help them avoid carbon emissions and cope with climate disasters.

While the injustice is clear, the practical politics called for by the Durban labor leader are anything but clear.  Todd Stern, the lead negotiator from the United States, said at a press conference in Copenhagen two years ago that because for most of history we were “blissfully ignorant” of the impacts of fossil fuel burning, “I completely reject the notion of a debt, or reparations, or anything of the like.”  Voluntary compensation to the victims remains off the table for the U.S., and legal efforts to force reparations are extremely preliminary and hotly contested.

This intransigence extends to most other developed countries, loath to admit the need to compensate poor nations for past, present or future damages from a destabilized climate.   So we are left with the Durban labor leader’s question: what are the practical politics of addressing climate justice?  And what was the impact of the Durban negotiations on efforts to address climate justice—are we closer or further away after Durban?

The core language of the UNFCCC agreed by 194 countries in 1992 is that nations would act according to their “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities.”  This “CBDR+RC” was understood as the US and other rich nations taking the first steps and the developing countries joining in later.  However the US Senate’s July 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution sought to avoid an “unfair” advantage to overseas firms by prohibiting the nation from taking binding action reducing our emissions without there also being binding limits on India and China’s emissions.

The battle for a more just climate policy has become quite fragmented, specific and balkanized in the past few years.  For example, in an effort to gain a predictable and adequate flow of funding to developing countries for addressing their needs to adapt to climate change, many groups have focused on “innovative” finance mechanisms, like a financial transaction levy, an airline levy, or taxes on “bunker fuels,” those used in international shipping.  These international taxes are especially appealing since they would avoid national treasuries and flow through United Nations channels, where the developing world has more leverage than in World Bank-controlled funds.

While generally in favor of these tax measures, most groups in the Climate Justice Now! (CJN!) network have taken hardline positions against any mechanisms that allows trading and markets in carbon, includingbecause they allow rich nations to get off the hook from reductions they should be making at home.  CJN!’s position often puts climate justice activists outside the room when United Nations and national policies are being debated, since both the Kyoto Protocol and EU and US regional greenhouse gas reduction plans have been centered around the practical political idea that trading emissions permits allows emissions reductions to go on where the costs are the lowest.

Durban negotiations saw the EU joining up with the Association of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries to push for a new commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol after its expiry in 2012, but CJN!’s 10 December press release argued that “the richest nations have cynically created a new regime of climate apartheid” by delaying real action until 2020.   Critical of nearly every element of the Durban Framework, CJN! argued that “Developed countries, in assuming their historical responsibility, must honor their climate debt in all its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution.“

Certainly developed nations much honor their debt and act as we promised back in 1992, acknowledging our responsibility and capability to do so. The framework built by the NGO EcoEquity.org lays out estimates of each nation’s responsibility and capability quite clearly.  However, the outcomes of the Durban package are intriguing precisely because they allow forward progress in spite of diametrically opposed positions of the U.S., BASIC, and the new EU-LDC-AOSIS coalition.  By saying there are going to be emissions limits with “legal force” by 2020 on all nations (including India and China) and by calling for tougher action as it becomes necessary and possible, the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action may have found the sweet spot between the perfect and the possible.  Time will tell, and serious militancy will be required to mobilize the effort the Platform promises.

2020 is a brilliant time horizon from the perspective of politicians because it is just over the political horizon—they can pass the tough decisions off to their successors.  However we know that 2020 is too late for serious action reducing our emissions, so “increasing our ambitions” will be needed urgently, especially by the biggest emitters.  This in turn requires a mobilized civil society in places where it has been weak (the U.S., China, among many other places), demanding tough choices by their politicians to address a long-term but grave issue.  National policies need to be strengthened in harmony with international norms, so that single countries do not feel they are acting alone.  And the easiest part of the puzzle for the wealthier nations is to meet their promise of supporting green energy solutions in developing countries. But if this is to lead to greater justice on climate change, these efforts must support solutions that actually reduce climate-changing pollution. This means closing various loopholes. This is a job for civil society, who must wade through messy politics to create the best change possible.

Karl Marx famously said that “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”  The injustice of climate change will not be righted quickly or with utopian slogans, as the Durban labor leader pointed out.  We owe the Ecological Debt, to be sure, but the paying of that debt must be creatively crafted into a system of payments and emission reductions that can be seen to benefit all, South and North.  The G20 meetings and the Rio+20 meetings in June are excellent times for movement in globally addressing these debts.

Timmons Roberts is Director of Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies, and co-author of A Climate of Injustice (MIT Press, 2007).

The need for transparency in climate finance is plain: unless developing countries know how much money to expect, when and for what, they cannot effectively plan their efforts to address and respond to climate change. But what has been the track record of wealthy countries on this crucial issue?

A new scorecard, released by the organization the International Institute for Environment and Development, reveals that we have a long way to go in making climate finance transparent. Two of the authors, David Ciplet and Timmons Roberts, are from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab.  The scorecard evaluates the extent to which these countries meet a set of 25 common-sense transparency criteria in their climate finance reports to the UN. The scorecard can be found at: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17100IIED.pdf

Even the highest-scoring countries — Norway and Japan — barely reached a 50 per cent score across the criteria evaluated.  A look at how funds are being allocated reveals a murky and complicated underside to the commitments made two years ago in Copenhagen.  There are grave concerns that funds previously promised or expected for basic needs such as health and education are being diverted for climate projects.

In the lead up to the global climate change negotiations in Durban, the authors call for an international registry of funds that provides comprehensive, detailed, consistent and transparent accounting and reporting measures at the project level.  A transparent system, they argue, is essential to build much-needed trust and to jointly achieve the critical global goal to reduce emissions and protect those people most vulnerable to climate change.

Post by David Ciplet, member of Brown’s Climate and Development Lab.

After the longest session on record, governments at the COP17 in Durban in December 2011 agreed to negotiate by 2015 a climate deal to enter into force in 2020. The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action defied predictions that the meeting in South Africa would lead to a collapse of the UN climate talks. Many parties from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have worked many years to make possible the political compromise achieved in the final hours and included in the Durban Platform. Today, the challenge is to make this platform ambitious enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

In this new CDKN and Energeia Policy Brief we discuss the outcomes of the COP17, the contribution Latin America and the Caribbean made and the implications of the Durban Platform for the region. The Brief finishes by offering a set of recommendations:

1. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries supporting high ambition at the international climate negotiations need to continue to shape a more ambitious climate narrative by acting together, domestically and internationally, and strengthening existing work with experts on bold action both within and outside the COPs.

2. Informal exchanges inside and outside of the UNFCCC process to jointly define key milestones for the Durban Platform and identify areas of convergence and divergence must take place within LAC countries and with Africa and Asia between now and 2015.

3. Both at home and abroad, the LAC region needs to improve how it communicates its successes on low carbon, climate resilient strategies to keep building confidence and generating a stronger impact at the international climate negotiations.

4. LAC countries need to continue to explore how best to advance national conversations linking climate change issues such as mitigation and resilience plans to national interests and potential losses in food security, infrastructure and trade.

To read the Policy Brief click here.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the full version of its Special Report on Extreme Events and Disasters (SREX). Check out this powerful video for details on the study and its implications.

The first consists of shared gatherings to encourage dialogue and cooperation. Country delegations arranged open meetings in which CSOs were invited to participate, while CSOs invited country delegations to their own specially arranged events.  During COP17 the ALBA countries, represented by Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba, organized a meeting with Latin American CSOs to discuss their key positions, focusing on the Kyoto Protocol and the Green Climate Fund.

Bolivia emphasizes creating spaces for civil society participation in decision-making on climate change.  Although the involvement of civil society in Bolivia’s own national decision-making is less robust, on a global scale, Bolivia is an important driver of global climate change activist networks.

Bolivia’s efforts to reach out to civil society can be traced back to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in April 2010. Bolivian President Evo Morales and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joined 30,000 activists from around the globe in demanding climate justice. The People’s Agreement of Cochabamba, which emerged from the conference, set out a series of demands including a call for developed countries to recognize and honor their climate debt.

In Durban, the other ALBA countries emulated these efforts to ensure a more participatory negotiating process — to a certain extent at least. This can be explained by a variety of factors. Firstly, there is a strategic imperative. The ALBA countries and particularly Bolivia, which stood alone in rejecting the Cancun Agreements, require support from CSOs to gain legitimacy and coverage for adopting a particular stance in the negotiations.  There is greater recognition of civil society’s ability to communicate rapidly and effectively with diverse audiences and constituencies.

Secondly, the political weight of civil society in Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua presents an important reason to engage with these actors. CSOs can be prickly and fickle partners, and it would be unwise to risk bad press back home by shunning opportunities for engagement and cooperation at the talks.

Latin American CSOs have also been proactive in engaging with country delegations. Following its formation in March 2011, the Construyendo Puentes (Building Bridges) Initiative brings together Latin American platforms and networks to improve coordination, communication and dialogue between CSOs and negotiators at the UNFCCC talks.  On two occasions during the COP17, Construyendo Puentes met with delegations from a number of countries–including Peru and Panama–to discuss those countries’ principal issues at the negotiations. These meetings were an opportunity for CSOs to take the pulse of the talks based on country delegates’ perspectives, and to offer specific recommendations in an open and participatory environment.

The second level focuses on increasing levels of CSO participation within country delegations. The COP17 was the first time the Mexican delegation included members of CSOs in its ranks. The Bolivian delegation also included a limited number of civil society representatives. The Brazilian delegation, on the other hand, has included scores of civil society and private sector representatives in the past.

CSOs participation in country delegations appears to be symbiotic. Government delegations are able to draw on media and translation skills and scientific expertise such as in the case of the Rwandan government, which invited the UK’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, to participate in its delegation. These CSO delegates may also be part of civil society networks and can be called upon to connect with these large audiences to support the dissemination of governments’ positions and demands.

CSOs representatives working in country delegations have unrivalled access to the internal workings of the UNFCCC negotiating process–a rare opportunity, given the traditionally closed and secretive nature of the talks. The potential for CSOs to influence proceedings from the inside is not an opportunity to be taken lightly.

Increased engagement, dialogue and exchange between Latin American delegations and civil society organizations at the organizational and individual levels are beneficial to both actors, as well as the progress of the UNFCCC negotiations. Given Latin American citizens’ high level of concern over climate issues, further exchange between these actors should be encouraged to ensure a more participatory and democratic process at the domestic and international levels.

Cross-posted from intercambioclimatico.com

During the COP17 I caught up with Dr. Fernando Tudela Abad, one of Mexico’s foremost climate change experts and a high ranking official of the Mexican delegation. Dr. Tudela is Under Secretary of Environmental Policy and Planning at the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resource and also chairs the expert group of the OECD on climate change.

Dr. Tudela explained how Mexico’s active involvement in the climate negotiations is based on national concerns of the country’s considerable vulnerability to climate-related disasters. In2010 Mexico’s Foreign Secretary, Patricia Espinoza, remarked before the COP16, ‘we estimate that 15 per cent of our national territory, 68 per cent of our population and 71 per cent of our GDP is highly exposed to the impacts of climate change.’

Last year Mexico faced its worst drought in 70 years with the lack of rainfall affecting almost 70 percent of the country. Entire crops covering tens of thousands of acres were lost and over 400,000 cattle perished in arid pastures.

As the first heavily-populated oil-exporting country to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Mexico has a long history in the international climate change negotiations and strongly emphasizes the importance of multilateralism. The country’s efforts at the COP16 in Cancun, which successfully resuscitated the UNFCCC process following the bungled COP15 in Copenhagen, are generally recognized as a diplomatic triumph.

Dr. Tudela also commented that Mexico views climate change as an incentive to advance sustainability. This shift in thinking towards a low carbon resilient economy is partially based on the study, The Economics of Climate Change in Mexico, which states that climate change has and will continue to have significant impacts on the Mexican economy. The study details impacts on a variety of sectors including agriculture, tourism, infrastructure and public health.

The report states that the total costs of climate change by the year 2100, are the equivalent of around 6.2% of GDP, excluding livestock production, extreme weather events, sea level rise and nonmarket costs in terms of biodiversity and human lives. The cost of mitigating emissions by 50% by the year 2100, relative to 2002, are between 0.7% and 2.2% of GDP making a very strong case on why inaction could prove so costly.

Dr. Tudela also highlighted the importance of every country doing its best to work towards securing a successful outcome at the UNFCCC talks, while also being ambitious at the national level. Even though Mexico’s developing country status precludes it from legal commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, its Special Program on Climate 2009-2012 sets out an aspirational target to reduce national GHG emissions 50% by 2050 with year 2000 emissions as the baseline. However, the Program states that this target will only be met if developed countries provide unprecedented levels of financial and technological support under a multilateral regime.

Mexico’s desire to be a leader in green growth saw the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources sign a cooperation agreement in September 2011 with the UNEP, which will assist in creating and operating a new Mexican Center for Sustainable Development. The Center will aim to become a regional hub for Latin America, fostering cooperation on low-carbon growth and green economy issues.

In the chaotic corridors and meeting rooms of the COP17, Dr. Tudela’s thoughtful and softly spoken comments are emblematic of a country quietly ‘getting on with it’. As we wrapped up the interview it seemed more likely that the overall goals of the UNFCCC could be met if more countries like Mexico brought positive experiences and a pragmatic attitude to the table.

Cross-posted from intercambioclimatico.com

President Obama at COP15, AFP Photo

By Graciela Kincaid

At both President Obama’s “job speech” to the Joint Session of Congress and his speech at the Clinton Global Initiative last September, one issue was shockingly absent from the agenda: climate change. The term was scarcely mentioned in either speech, and more surprisingly, the administration also failed to deliver on the more popular message of clean energy. For all the talk of job creation and economic growth, the role of green jobs and a potential transition to a green economy were missing from the dialogue. In fact, lately the green jobs issue has taken a serious hit because green innovation has not been proven to create enough immediate “boots, jeans and helmets” jobs.

The phrases “climate change” and “global warming” have become all but taboo on Capital Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena, and have been since 2010. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on October 13th, “It has become no longer politically correct in certain circles in Washington to speak about climate change or carbon pollution or how carbon pollution is causing our climate to change.” Why?

As part of a Brown University research project this summer, I conducted a comparative analysis of the Obama administration’s use of climate change and clean energy rhetoric, and how they were changing. We examined 1,606 speeches by administration officials over three and a half years (January 2008-July 2011), assembling keyword counts from a campaign speech database and the White House Speeches and Remarks Archive. Rhetoric was sorted by categories: “climate” and “energy.”

The results were dramatic:

The ratio of the administration’s usage of “climate change” versus “energy” has changed significantly since Obama’s 2008 campaign days. “Climate change” rhetoric saw its brief heyday in 2009, thanks to the popularity of the President, the streamlined message of unified party government, and the hope for legislative action before the United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Climate change rhetoric was most prominent during 2009, when it was mentioned 246 times and the months with highest frequency were April and November. Interestingly, the only point at which these two levels were equivalent was in November of 2009–the month the Copenhagen Conference began. Since then, the ratio of energy to climate rhetoric has steadily increased, and the phrase “climate change” is routinely omitted in favor of clean energy-related diction.

The difference in magnitude for the two classes of rhetoric usage is striking. The overall ratio for this 3.5-year period is 7.6:1; energy is mentioned over seven times for each mention of climate change. The ratio of energy to climate rhetoric usage was 9.6 in 2008, 5.0 in 2009, 10.6 in 2010, and 14.6 in the first half of 2011. These ratios climbed since President Obama took office–tripling between 2009 and 2011–revealing the administration’s urgency to outpace the depressing “climate change” imagery with the more upbeat promise of “clean energy.” Noteworthy are the State of the Union speeches, meant to be indicators of the president’s agenda. These speeches regularly favor energy to climate change messages. In 2009, climate change was mentioned only once while energy came up 14 times; in 2010, climate change was mentioned three times to energy’s 15; and in 2011 while energy was mentioned 9 times, climate change was not mentioned at all.

What has caused this significant shift in rhetoric? Climate change is apparently politically tainted, a doomsday issue, and the administration has re-branded it under a clean energy and energy independence discourse. The administration has clearly responded to increasing hostility (on one end of the political spectrum) towards the effort to address climate change, scrubbing out words like global warming, cap-and-trade, and climate change from agency communication. Surveys are showing drops in public concern for the issue, and since 2010 House Republicans have directed an increasingly right-wing agenda against it, striking down climate change legislation and funding at every opportunity. Climate change is a hard sell amidst the economic downturn, and the environment always loses to job concerns. By contrast, the push for clean energy seems bipartisan, positive, and more difficult to publicly oppose. The political calculus seems clear: job creation, national security, and oil independence all seem to be credible, patriotic, and appealing reasons to promote the green sector.

As the calendars flip once again into campaign season, we may see a different strategy from the Obama administration as it seeks to distinguish itself from its Republican challengers. We have already seen more proactive rhetoric from Obama, with digs such as this at Governor Rick Perry: “I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change.” However, the UNFCCC climate change negotiations in Durban this month saw little effort by the president to shift attention to the issue—Obama chose to send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Busan, Korea for a conference on foreign aid instead of to South Africa for COP17. The president’s intentions are revealed by his weak rhetoric and avoidance of anything tainted with the terms climate change or global warming. Unfortunately, the atmosphere doesn’t understand our delicate sleights of tongue, only the gases that continue to belch from our cars and smokestacks.

Notes:
1. “Climate” included the phrases climate change, changing climate, climate negotiations, climate bill, and global warming.
2. “Energy” included clean energy, renewable energy, green energy, energy economy, energy technology, energy independence, energy dependence, energy efficient, energy efficiency, energy security, energy capacity, energy supply, energy-saving, energy plan, energy policy, energy bill, energy jobs, energy industry, energy production, energy use, energy grid, energy future, energy development, energy revolution, energy prices, and energy needs.

As negotiators determine the fate of the Kyoto Protocol on the last day of COP17, youth from all over the world, NGO members, and a few distinguished negotiators stormed the hallways of the International Convention Centre demanding climate justice.

Protesters began the march toward the opening plenary for the 7^th meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) singing a mix of the South African miner’s song “Shosholoza” and chants for climate justice. Borrowing the human microphone from the U.S. Occupy Wall Street movement, they voiced their demands for the negotiators to come up with an ambitious, legally-binding treaty to reduce emissions.

“We are here today for the people who can’t be here. We are here today for the people who will suffer the weight of climate change,” they yelled, “We are here today for Africa. We are here today for the island nations. We are here today for the world to say ‘listen to the people, not the polluters.’ We are here today to support those that are inside who are still fighting for a real climate deal. Listen to the people.”

Although everyone was free to speak, the crowd passionately encouraged those from developing and highly vulnerable countries (especially those from Africa) to voice their demands. First to speak was the Environmental Minister of the Maldives, Mohamed Aslam, who used the voice of the people to echo his cry for the Maldives’ “right to live.” He appealed to his fellow ministers, “You can’t decide our destiny.”

As the protesters walked on to escort the Minister to the plenary, they filled the negotiating hallways with cries of “Climate Justice Now” and “Take the world bank out of climate finance.” By the time they neared the end of the hallway, the UN police had linked arms and formed a barricade to stop the masses from reaching the doors of the plenary.

Yet this simple human wall did not prevent the demonstrators from voicing the injustices which have been reproduced since the inception of the Kyoto Protocol.

Voices from Nigeria, Egypt, and Zimbabwe spoke of the rising threats for their lives. Youth reminded the negotiators that they were the ones who were going to suffer from the decisions made today. One pre-medical student marked climate change as the biggest threat to human health in the future. Voices from developed countries joined the conversation, apologizing for their governments’ histories of emissions and lack of adequate action.

This is the 17^th session of the Conference of the Parties, and we have taken far too long to come up with an adequate response to prevent our emissions from rising above 2˚Celsius. Although the world really needs a second commitment period to start immediately, the conversations seem to only be about how long we can procrastinate.

For years, Civil Society has fought for its voice within these negotiations. Several Canadian Greenpeace activists were deported last week, and an American student was de-badged for interrupting a plenary session.

And so when the U.N. Security gave the demonstrators two paths to take—one leading to the courtyard beside the hall, where they would be free to stay as long and be as loud as they desired; and the other, to stay there, have their UNFCCC badges taken away, and be removed from the convention—the majority opted to stay, raising their collective voice to the negotiators’ ears before they decide the fate of the world.