Addressing climate change challenges
By Shahid Javed Burki
Monday, Sep 28, 2009
THE global community is gearing up for Copenhagen where its leaders will gather to negotiate an international treaty on climate change this December.
The hope is that these talks will produce commitment from each nation that, collectively, would keep temperatures from rising two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
That will require deep cuts in emissions – as much as 80 per cent among industrialised nations – by mid-century. In order to reach agreement two countries will have to show great political resolve. Together China and the United States produce 40 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As The New York Times editorialised recently, “together they can lead the way to an effective global response. Or together they can mess things up royally.” In an op-ed article contributed to The New York Times as the first week of the United Nations General Assembly got under way, Prime Minister Gordon Brown identified climate change as one of the five major issues that confronted world and on which urgent action was needed.
“The next six months will test international cooperation more severely than at any time since 1945”, he wrote. “That may seem strange to say after a year of global crisis that has demanded unity on an immense scale, yet five challenges confront us and we cannot delay our responses”. Of these five, halting climate change was perhaps the most important one.
“This week starts with efforts to reinforce talks to secure a new international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen this December. Progress is too slow and a deal now hangs in the balance. But failure will increase the threat not only of humanitarian and ecological catastrophe but also of economic decline. Investment in energy efficiency and low- carbon energy resources will help drive economic growth over the next decade – as well as reduce dependence on imported oil and enhance energy security. Millions of jobs stand to be created as this investment expands – the low-carbon sector is now larger than defence and aerospace combined. But it is vital that we give confidence to such investment through a new international climate agreement”.
The previous one negotiated at Kyoto, Japan could not be put into effect because the United States under the leadership of President George W. Bush turned away from it. Kyoto was negotiated in 1997 by the administration of President Bill Clinton with Al Gore, his vice president, taking the lead. Bush who succeeded Clinton, was not persuaded that there was sufficient scientific evidence to support the view that human activity was leading to a change in climate. Many scientists had argued that if the change was not arrested and ultimately reversed, economic and social catastrophe would be the result.
South Asia would be one of the many world regions that would be seriously affected. Rise in the level of the seas would inundate large parts of Bangladesh. Under one scenario, as many as 30 million people of that country could be displaced.
They will seek refuge on higher ground of which there was not much in Bangladesh. They will need to go to the neighbouring India, posing serious problems for that country. But that would not be the only problem that climate change would bring to India. Pakistan and India will have to deal with the ultimate reduction in river flows that draw most of the water from snow and glacier melts in the mountain ranges. Melting glaciers will initially produce enormous floods endangering the irrigation systems that were built over centuries in these two countries. Once the glaciers had been reduced in size, these mighty rivers would begin to dry up. Much of Pakistan would revert to being a desert again.
While the science that supported the view that climate change produced by the emissions of green house gases posed a real threat to the global economy improved, President Bush refused to budge. This gave Al Gore, now a private citizen, to concentrate even more effort on educating the American public. His efforts won him a Nobel Peace Prize.
While campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama promised to put his country in the lead of the effort that needed to be made if he were elected. Once in office, he developed what he began to call the “green agenda” for his administration. A number of regulatory steps were taken by his administration to reverse the decisions taken by his predecessor.
However, even with this change of heart in Washington, a new treaty on controlling climate change did not seem to be anywhere near the capacity of the global political system to deliver. On the eve of the UN meeting devoted to clearing the air before the world met again at Copenhagen, Rejendra Pachauri, the Indian scientist who had chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that “science leaves us no space for inaction”.
Along with this panel of scientists report, a report written by a group of economists chaired by Britain’s Lord Nicholas Stern, had presented the costs and benefits of actions taken at this time. The calculus was clearly in favour of immediate action but international agreement did not seem to be in sight.
There were two reasons for this. It was by no means certain that the US Congress would be prepared to pass the needed legislation to move in that direction. Any international treaty that meant higher costs for the US industries would be a hard sell.
Second, a number of large developing countries – most notably China and India – were opposed to a treaty that would slow down the pace of their economic growth. It was the second resistance that Gordon Brown addressed in his article. A new treaty “will not be possible without the cooperation of developing countries”, he continued. “For this reason, Britain has suggested a programme of $100 billion a year by 2020, financed by wealthier countries and the private sector, to help poorer nations develop low-carbon economies”.
On September 22, the UN General Assembly was addressed by Presidents Hu Jintao and Barack Obama indicating their respective country’s approach to the problem that could not remain unaddressed. It was the Hu speech that surprised the climate community. He promised to reduce the rate of growth in carbon dioxide by a “notable margin” – at which, he implied, China would seek to reduce them in absolute terms. Among the promised actions was a government programme that would bring millions of acres of new land under forests. This was a small step but it was in the right direction. The question remains whether India would also go the same way.