tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/lima-climate-conference-13827/articlesLima climate conference – The Conversation2014-12-17T06:12:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/355662014-12-17T06:12:54Z2014-12-17T06:12:54ZWhy climate change policies are for life, not just for Christmas<p>Devoted followers of international wrangling on climate change will see much that they recognise in the <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2014/cop20/eng/l14.pdf">five-page text</a> emanating from the UN climate talks in Lima. The “parties” (countries) have long accepted the maximum 2°C warming target; that mitigation and adaptation must go hand-in-hand; and that past emissions of developed countries need to be accounted under “common but differentiated responsibilities.”</p>
<p>Actual promises of financial assistance to developing nations show little sign of progressing to their US$100bn target, though, and emission pledges so far fall far short of levels consistent with 2°C of warming. The hard-fought document restates a commitment from all countries to raise their level of ambition in order to arrive at the next meeting in <a href="http://climate-l.iisd.org/events/unfccc-cop-21/">Paris in December 2015</a> with a convincing plan to resolve their differences once and for all.</p>
<p>Radical approaches will be needed. Climate change is a particularly <a href="http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/159/">tough nut to crack</a>: there is still deep uncertainty over its likely impact; there are sharply differing viewpoints and conflicts of interest; and there is no central authority to implement any agreed solutions. Social planners call these public policy issues that challenge conventional thinking <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01405730">“wicked” problems</a>.</p>
<p>Most awkward of all, climate and development are deeply interconnected, driving a <a href="https://theconversation.com/lima-makes-it-clear-rich-nations-must-cough-up-for-past-carbon-pollution-35524">deep rift</a> between developed and developing blocs. Changes happening now are a result of the fossil-fuelled development of the richer countries, while issues of public health and energy security in poorer nations can seem remote from long-term climate change – at least until rising seas or diminishing harvests intervene. </p>
<p>The climate policies that animate negotiators each December must be thoroughly embedded in the everyday battle to escape poverty that still afflicts the greater part of humanity. Climate change is for life, not just for Christmas.</p>
<h2>Filling the green growth knowledge gap</h2>
<p>For the third year running a UN climate conference notes with grave concern the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n8/abs/nclimate1258.html">significant gap</a> between countries’ emissions pledges and the levels required to stay within the magic two degrees. However the lamentable lack of action is partly the result of a parallel gap in knowledge as politicians need to know how to reduce emissions without damping growth. </p>
<p>Climate change is pushing climate and socio-economic systems far from their equilibrium states and researchers are struggling to catch up. Traditional economic modelling relies on equilibrium assumptions of perfect markets and full employment, but the scale of transition required breaks many of these assumptions. Green growth means exploiting the resulting opportunities to mobilise underused resources. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67381/original/image-20141216-14147-1wp9tc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Working together for green growth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmnevada/8632026145">BLM Nevada</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Economists can’t solve the whole problem on their own. Neither can climate scientists, lawyers, sociologists, sustainability experts or people who work on <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/health-and-climate-change">the heath impacts</a> of climate change. All these fields and others need to work together to come up with the best possible policies.</p>
<h2>If you won’t, we will</h2>
<p>But if politicians can’t, or won’t, find a solution to climate change then other actors are waiting to step in. What was once the exclusive realm of national negotiators now sees, for instance, groups of leading companies and major cities calling for coordinated action. Such widening of participation is one of three core suggestions to accelerate progress backed by the <a href="http://envirocenter.yale.edu/uploads/Yale%20Climate%20Dialogue%20Lima%20Ideas%20Memo.pdf">Yale Climate Dialogue</a> prior to Lima. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/14/united-nations--way-forward-on-climate-change?CMP=share_btn_tw">highlighted by Lord Stern</a>, the key to success in Paris has less to do with wrangling over financial transfers between self-interested governments and more to do with steering the trillions of dollars spent annually on infrastructure and energy transitions in developing countries towards clean, low-carbon options. </p>
<p>There are plentiful ideas and initiatives to make this happen, but before a vision of a sustainable future can become an everyday reality, our leaders need solutions from the research community that reflect the true scale of the problem and its wicked, multi-faceted ways.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Edwards acknowledges funding from the EU FP7 programme under grant agreement n° 265170 (ERMITAGE)</span></em></p>Devoted followers of international wrangling on climate change will see much that they recognise in the five-page text emanating from the UN climate talks in Lima. The “parties” (countries) have long accepted…Neil Edwards, Reader in Earth Systems Science, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/355242014-12-15T18:52:35Z2014-12-15T18:52:35ZLima makes it clear – rich nations must cough up for past carbon pollution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67251/original/image-20141215-5266-18v95ke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who is to blame - and who should pay?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerosolcan_pullution.jpg">T3rminatr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two weeks of international climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, are over, with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30468048">an agreement</a> pulled out of the bag at the eleventh hour.</p>
<p>While Lima has been seen by many as a mere curtain-raiser to talks in Paris in a year’s time, when a new deal needs to reached to replace the Kyoto protocol, it will have an impact beyond this. Lima has reinforced the familiar battle ground between the developed and developing world, and it has seen the re-emergence of a key concept: climate justice.</p>
<p>The idea of equity is at the heart of this – the question of how to ensure any UN-backed emissions deal is fair and that those countries that caused the problem do the most to clean it up. This had largely been ignored at previous summits but at Lima it was once again a big talking point.</p>
<h2>No to equity</h2>
<p>“If equity is in, we are out.” Those were <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-20/china-sets-up-u-s-conflict-by-ruling-out-new-climate-regime-.html">the reported words of Todd Stern</a>, the US chief negotiator, on the eve of the last day of Durban talks back in 2011, when the foundations for a new global agreement were laid.</p>
<p>Stern was reacting to the clamour from developing countries that rich, developed nations should take the lead in making emission cuts under the principle of “<a href="http://cisdl.org/public/docs/news/brief_common.pdf">common but differentiated responsibility and capability</a>”, given their historical responsibility for climate change and their enhanced technological capabilities.</p>
<p>While some observers were alarmed by Stern’s position, his words were a fair, if vulgar, rendition of the mind-set that is quite pervasive among many developed countries. Rich nations tend to prefer to wave aside or at least make light their moral responsibility to tackle climate change, while appealing for concerted action by “<a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49600#.VI7wwmSsWOI">all parties</a>”. </p>
<p>Pragmatism, realism, and “we are in this together” are some of the phrases used by developed countries as they try to duck their responsibility and cajole developing nations to instead step up their own climate actions. It was to this effect that many Western countries lined up behind the US in Durban. Eventually all references to equity, justice and common but differentiated responsibility were expunged from the text.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=212&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67253/original/image-20141215-5287-7brr0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Durban – nice beach, shame about the climate deal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Durban_skyline.jpg">PhilippN</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>Justice returns</h2>
<p>It was a short-lived victory. Events in Lima over the past two weeks have overwhelmingly demonstrated the utter futility of developed countries’ schemes to diminish issues of equity and justice, let alone sidestep them altogether. In virtually all the key issues and categories under discussion – countries’ mitigation contributions, states’ adaptation commitments, the remit of the loss and damage, and climate finance, among others – equity and differentiation have stood out as sticking points.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.g77.org/doc/Declaration2014.htm">the G77 group</a> of developing countries said that the principle of equity must guide all negotiations and long-term actions. Showing their heightened distrust in the progress, developing countries even requested that texts should be displayed on the big screen in real time while negotiating to enhance transparency.</p>
<p>The harshest word for developed countries, however, came from Bolivian president Evo Morales, who referred to industrialised nations that have appropriated more than their own fair share of global atmospheric space as “<a href="http://www.rtcc.org/2014/12/09/live-in-lima-day-8-un-cop20-climate-change-summit/">thieves</a>” that must be made to pay back what they have stolen.</p>
<p>Of course, none of this implies that developing countries should be given an easy ride in negotiating the 2015 climate agreement, or that there are easy approaches to finding a “just” climate agreement. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.52/abstract">Climate justice</a> is a deeply contested concept, open to multiple interpretations, recommending diverse and sometimes conflicting policy. For example, there are plausible justice-based arguments for allocating carbon emissions quota on individual (per capita) and on national (per country) basis. </p>
<p>However it appears that the Stern approach to international climate politics, seemingly without morality, is beginning to lose ground. If Lima has taught us anything, it is that humanity badly needs a dose of international respect if we are to avoid climate chaos. The brazen scheme to expunge equity from previous climate agreements by the US and its backers only served to further erode the mutual trust sorely needed to make compromises.</p>
<p>Morality might be a dirty word in some states’ foreign policy handbooks. But call it what you like, the world needs to find its guiding principles quickly, and developing countries want rich nations to pay for what they’ve broken.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chukwumerije Okereke receives funding from the Department for International Development, the Climate & Development Knowledge Network, and the Leverhulme Trust.</span></em></p>Two weeks of international climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, are over, with an agreement pulled out of the bag at the eleventh hour. While Lima has been seen by many as a mere curtain-raiser to talks…Chukwumerije Okereke, Associate Professor of Environment and Development, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349782014-12-03T06:37:40Z2014-12-03T06:37:40ZAustralia’s environment minister doesn’t get a guernsey at Lima climate change conference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66168/original/image-20141203-15617-1mw72qw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trade Minister Andrew Robb will accompany Julie Bishop to the Lima climate conference – without the environment minister.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tony Abbott is sending Trade Minister Andrew Robb rather than Environment Minister Greg Hunt to accompany Julie Bishop at the United Nations climate conference in Peru.</p>
<p>Bishop, as Foreign Minister, is in charge of negotiating internationally on climate policy. The Lima meeting is already underway: the Australian ministers will be there next week.</p>
<p>One might have thought that Hunt, who deals with climate policy internally, would have had a good claim to be her ministerial partner. He is in charge of Australia’s just-legislated “direct action” plan, the centrepiece of the government’s climate policy, which he negotiated through a difficult Senate passage.</p>
<p>Frank Jotzo, an associate professor at the Australian National University, said most countries would have their environment ministers at the Lima conference, or their climate ministers if they had them. “Very few countries will have their trade ministers there,” he said.</p>
<p>In opposition Hunt hoped to be the international negotiator in a Coalition government – but Bishop got the job.</p>
<p>Hunt was a long-time supporter of an emissions trading scheme. Although he later dropped that support when Tony Abbott became leader, some sources say the Abbott office continues to have some suspicions of him on the climate issue.</p>
<p>Hunt’s spokesman said the minister had not asked to go to the conference because the negotiations fell under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. “It was never on the cards that he was going to go.”</p>
<p>Other sources said Abbott had requested Robb’s participation from an “economic perspective”. Robb was also in Latin America for other engagements, the sources said.</p>
<p>Asked about the choice, the Prime Minister’s Office said Australia would be represented by “the Foreign Minister as well as the Minister for Trade and Investment given the significant economic and investment issues that will be discussed.</p>
<p>"As the Prime Minister said in Brisbane at the G20, actions that provide strong and effective action to address climate change will support sustainable development, economic growth and certainty for business and investment.</p>
<p>"Australia is a high performer when it comes to actually delivering on real action to tackle climate change. We will achieve a 5% on 2000 by 2020 target, which is a 19% reduction on business as usual.”</p>
<p>John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute, welcomed “that this is seen as an economic issue. Ultimately what the G20 taught the government is that climate change is an economic challenge – one of risk and opportunity.”</p>
<p>Robb and Hunt both have interesting backstories in the internal Liberal politics of climate change, from the periods when Brendan Nelson and then Malcolm Turnbull led the Coalition is opposition.</p>
<p>In 2008, when the Coalition was committed to an emissions trading scheme, shadow treasurer Turnbull, Hunt, the environment spokesman, and Bishop, the deputy Liberal leader, opposed Nelson’s desire to link an ETS to when the big emitters took action rather than to a specific date.</p>
<p>In 2009, when Turnbull was leader, climate spokesman Robb – who had been on sick leave from the frontbench – spectacularly repudiated Turnbull’s proposed compromise with the Rudd government to get Labor’s ETS through parliament.</p>
<p>Robb’s dramatic intervention, made during a long party room meeting on the highly contested issue, was a devastating blow to Turnbull’s leadership, which was under pressure over his stand on the ETS and his non-consultative style.</p>
<p>Robb has documented the story in his book Black Dog Daze. Turnbull quickly lost his job and Abbott became leader.</p>
<p>The Lima conference is a step on the way to the Paris summit on climate in a year’s time, due to conclude a new international agreement.</p>
<p>In her opening address at the conference earlier this week, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, set out goals for the Paris summit.</p>
<p>“First, we must bring a draft of a new, universal climate change agreement to the table and clarify how national contributions will be communicated next year.</p>
<p>"Second, we must consolidate progress on adaptation to achieve political parity with mitigation, given the equal urgency of both.</p>
<p>"Third, we must enhance the delivery of finance, in particular to the most vulnerable.</p>
<p>"Finally, we must stimulate ever-increasing action on the part of all stakeholders to scale up the scope and accelerate the solutions that move us all forward, faster.”</p>
<p>Figueres said 2014 was likely to be the hottest year on record and emissions continued to rise.</p>
<p>While Australia has said it will achieve its 5% reduction target by 2020, it is resisting making a contribution to the Green Climate Fund, set up to help developing countries deal with climate change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Tony Abbott is sending Trade Minister Andrew Robb rather than Environment Minister Greg Hunt to accompany Julie Bishop at the United Nations climate conference in Peru. Bishop, as Foreign Minister, is…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.