Image Credit : TF1

It’s not that developing countries and emerging economies are being picky. The problem lies with the United States of America, desperate to cling on to its geopolitical leverage :-

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS273211516320101129

“U.S. Call to Preserve Copenhagen Accord Puts Climate Conference on Edge : By Stacy Feldman at SolveClimate : Mon Nov 29, 2010 : Many poor countries want to scrap the three-page Copenhagen agreement that the U.S. wants to preserve : CANCUN, MEXICO — The United States said Monday it would not back down on its plan to turn the unpopular Copenhagen Accord into a final global warming deal, setting the first day of already fragile UN climate talks in Cancun on edge. “What we’re seeking here in Cancun is a balanced package of decisions that would build on this agreement … [and] preserve the balance of the accord,” Jonathan Pershing, lead U.S. climate negotiator in Cancun, told reporters at the talks…”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/30/cancun-climate-change-summit-america

“Cancún climate change summit: America plays tough : US adopts all-or-nothing position in Cancún, fuelling speculation of a walk-out if developing countries do not meet its demands : Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 November 2010 : America has adopted a tough all-or-nothing position at the Cancún climate change summit, fuelling speculation of a walk-out if developing countries do not meet its demands. At the opening of the talks at Cancún, the US climate negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, made clear America wanted a “balanced package” from the summit. That’s diplomatic speak for a deal that would couple the core issues for the developing world – agreement on climate finance, technology, deforestation – with US demands for emissions actions from emerging economies and a verifiable system of accounting for those cuts. In a briefing with foreign journalists in Washington, the chief climate envoy, Todd Stern, was blunt. “We’re either going to see progress across the range of issues or we’re not going to see much progress,” said Stern. “We’re not going to race forward on three issues and take a first step on other important ones. We’re going to have to get them all moving at a similar pace.” In the run-up to the Cancún talks, Stern has said repeatedly that America will not budge from its insistence that fast-emerging economies such as India and China commit to reducing emissions and to an inspection process that will verify those actions. The hard line – which some in Washington have seen as ritual diplomatic posturing – has fuelled speculation that the Obama administration could be prepared to walk out of the Cancún talks…”

An “inspection process” ? Agreeing to the same use of satellite snooping and the threat of the penalties of economic sanctions as applied to the fabled Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the current pincer on Iran ?

I can’t quite see China agreeing to that.

If we’re thinking about paranoia, who should be monitoring whom ?

The Clean Development Mechanism should have been more closely monitored, but it wasn’t, and it’s collapsed in a big pile – fake credits, false accreditation, poor success rate. Where has the verification process been, there ?

New schemes for “climate finance” will essentially involve creating debt for Climate Change mitigation and adaptation projects in developing and emerging economies. Why more debt ? To prop up the ailing industrialised economies. And allow the Bank sharks to feed.

And “technology transfer” ? That’s all about intellectual property rights – America owning all the rights, and China and India and so on owning nothing, of course. What great technologies have parasitical American companies been keeping hidden away up their sleeves to sell to the Chinese under a Climate deal ? Or are they just rubbish deals, like expensive and untested Carbon Capture and Storage ?

“Deforestation” ? Virtually all proposed schemes under the REDD banner (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) include an element of emissions trading – just the kind of offsetting that large, dirty American companies want to buy to justify carrying on with Business As Usual. Protecting the rainforests ? Nah – just finding another way to make money for the Carbon Traders, and protect the Oil, Gas and Coal industries of the industrialised regions.

What is needed is for the industrialised nations to commit to domestic emissions reductions, not continued attempts to coerce other countries to make cuts that can be traded.

Nobody has learned anything in the last year. The same ridiculous non-options are on the table, and nobody’s biting.

Even only semi-regular perusers of this little web log will be astonished, galled and maybe even venomously upset to discover that for once, and probably only the once going on past evidence, I actually agree with Christopher Booker :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7969102/The-Clean-Development-Mechanism-delivers-the-greatest-green-scam-of-all.html

“The Clean Development Mechanism delivers the greatest green scam of all : Even the UN and the EU are wising up to the greenhouse gas scam, “the biggest environmental scandal in history”, says Christopher Booker. : By Christopher Booker : Published: 28 Aug 2010 : …The way the racket works is that Chinese and Indian firms are permitted to carry on producing a refrigerant gas known as HCF-22 until 2030. But a by-product of this process is HCF-23, which is supposed to be 11,700 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. By destroying the HCF-23, the firms can claim Certified Emission Reduction credits worth billions of dollars when sold to the West (while much of the useful HCF-22 is sold onto the international black market). Last year, destruction of CFCs accounted for more than half the CDM credits issued, in a market that will eventually, it is estimated, be worth $17 billion. Of the 1,390 CDM projects so far approved, less than 1 per cent accounts for 36 per cent of the total value. Even greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the “biggest environment scandal in history”…”

I would commend Mr Booker to get his chemical acronyms sorted out, by substituting “HCF” with “HFC”, or “HCFC”, but apart from that, which was fairly easy to unpick, it is quite an honourable description of the problem.

None of the money-based “flexible mechanisms” sewn into the Kyoto Protocol appear to be working, and that’s because they are (a) money-based and (b) not economy-wide.

We need comprehensive legislation and regulation to cover all Greenhouse Gas activities in the global economy, not just niche sectors and individual minor compounds.

And that means we need serious cuts in Carbon Dioxide emissions in the industrialised countries, starting yesterday.

We can’t offset this.

It is a good idea to attempt to provide finance to support developing countries in adaptation measures :-

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jaM64qTlgp4tIu1J4ZKtMd_SX__w
http://www.faststartfinance.org/

but that does not absolve the industrialised countries of action. The industrialised countries do need to start diversifying out of Fossil Fuels – as fast as all the wind turbines, marine turbines, solar roofs, concentrated solar power plants, tidal barrages, tidal lagoons, compressed air storage, pumped storage, rock battery storage, geothermal, biogas, biohydrogen, bioethanol, biomass and so on can be deployed :-

http://www.climateactiontracker.org/

http://climateinteractive.org/scoreboard

The illustrious German Advisory Council on Global Change, the WBGU, or “Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen” in longhand, have done some excellent work on proposals for a global Carbon framework.

As part of their 2009 paper entitled in English “Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” they came to some useful conclusions, but also some startlingly unworkable recommendations :-

http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html

Consider for one moment the implications of the following graph for proposed future emissions :-

The first question one could ask is, “why does the red curve for industrialised countries drop so fast ?” And the answer for that would be that the WBGU propose an immediately effective “convergence” of carbon emissions rights.

As of today, they say, we should treat everyone has having the same rights to emit, and that means that those who are over-emitting need to cut their emissions the fastest.

Of course, that will never happen. The United States of America will never agree to it.

Besides which, a principled policy of “equity today” is impossible to achieve in practical terms. Even though the wealthy industrialised countries nominally have the greatest financial capacity to act on carbon emissions, they also have the highest lock-in to high-carbon systems, which will make action more expensive than in other parts of the world.

The WBGU partly address this problem by proposing that lack of achievement in industrialised countries can be compensated for by Carbon Trading with developing countries, who will have emissions rights to spare :-

But have you seen how much Carbon they expect to be traded ? It’ll never happen. The rate at which the Carbon Markets are building will never support those kind of traded flows of emissions rights. America has a partial Carbon Market in operation, but not an overall federal commitment – and failing generally to get Climate Change legislation.

Australia is still struggling with the politics of developing Carbon finance, and the European Emissions Trading Scheme has been plagued by volume-pricing “elasticity” issues. China’s Carbon Market is lightyears away, and there are numerous abuses of the globally dispersed markets that are in place already, including fake permits, tax dodges and market “swamping”.

The Clean Development Mechanism, the chief “flexible mechanism” of Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol, isn’t working very well, and the World Bank cannot see high levels of new certified Carbon being made available to market in the near future.

So, the WBGU proposal looks highly unlikely from the practical point of view, but what about the ethics behind it ?

The reason why the WBGU propose “equity, today” is to circumnavigate a common skirmish of accusation around what is known as the “grandfathering” of Carbon emissions rights.

The industrialised countries start their Carbon Descent from a position of high emissions, and many organisations agree that this effectively means that the industrialised countries have been granted free emissions rights over and above their fair share “entitlement”.

Other groups that take this approach include EcoEquity with their framework they call “Greenhouse Development Rights”, which has been adopted by many Non-Governmental Organisations.

Pinning down countries like the United States of America over this issue would be near-nigh impossible for this one simple reason – there is another way of looking at the situation.

The Americans have been operating on the basis of “Economic Production is Good” for over 60 years. They haven’t had an agenda of “Greed is Good”. Instead, they have been living by the simple rules of meritocracy, the “American dream” of personal advancement and the benevolent, if patronising, concept that economic development can help the whole world. Their economic expansion has not been a moral issue, they’re not guilty of any crimee, and they would not permit anyone to try to make it so.

It’s no use trying to pin “historical responsibility” on countries such as the United States of America. Back in the day, nobody realised that excessive Carbon Dioxide emissions could be so dangerous, so nobody should be to blame for past behaviour.

Why should “the polluter pay” ?

The WBGU shoot themselves in the foot when they suggest that in addition to incredibly high rates of Carbon Trading, which would cost America a lot of money; that America and its industrial peers should also donate huge sums of money for “adaptation” funds, money that would also be used to halt deforestation in the Global South.

America won’t play, because it won’t pay. And it definitely won’t pay twice. There’s no way to get the American administration to accept that they owe the world.

There’s also no way that the WBGU proposals can be tinkered with to give more acceptable numbers. The number of parameters in any global Carbon framework has to be kept to the absolute minimum. No use of ethical reasoning will hold sway.

The only logical, agreeable framework for the United Nations decarbonisation treaty will be the straight-forward proposals of Contraction and Convergence, whereby the world will approach equity, tomorrow, under a safe global carbon budget, at rates that can be easily accommodated in the global economy.

America will not agree to anything less. And without America, a global treaty cannot be made.

Video Credit : Lighting Africa

Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

PART 4

CONTINUED FROM PART 1, PART 2 AND PART 3

Linking Climate Change to Poverty

There will be no global treaty on Climate Change without a solution for the poor.

The poor in every country are generally low emitters, and models of Low Carbon lives; yet because they are poor, it’s easy for their economic concerns to be swept aside in the global efforts to revive the big Energy systems.

One thing is clear, imposing a “dollar economy”, and thrusting international markets traded in American Dollars on the world’s poor is not the same as creating an environment for true social and sustainable development.

As John Gowdy makes clear in Section 5.4 of his article published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization “Behavioral economics and climate change policy”, the poor don’t need high consumption lifestyles :-

http://www.sciencedirect.com

“Policy Sub-Clue 1b: development in poorer countries need not focus exclusively on increasing per capita consumption : “Development” in the third world need not follow the path of the industrialized nations during the twentieth century. Sen (1999) has called for an approach to development emphasizing the ability to live an informed and full life rather than concentrating solely on income creation. Nussbaum (2000, chapter 4 and website of Human Development and Capabilities Association) has gone further in calling for “distributive justice”, that is, creating the conditions for the realization of a set of central human capabilities. Such policies would not only be more effective than simple income growth in making lives better for the world’s poorest, but they would also help to alleviate the pressure on the environment from more economic production. With a focus on individual happiness and self actualization, the developing world could improve its position relative to the North without emulating the consumption frenzy that drove past economic growth.”

The Kyoto Protocol’s “flexible mechanism” known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is not working to provide adaptation funds to Africa :-

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0413e/a0413E05.htm

“The Kyoto Protocol and the CDM in Africa: a good idea but …”

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/content/does-geography-matter-clean-development-mechanism-tyndall-working-paper-131

“Does Geography Matter for the Clean Development Mechanism?”

The poor don’t need to be dragged into a Carbon Trading market, even if their governments are.

What the poor need is access to land, water and energy.

Around the world there are millions of people being made landless to satisfy the demands of large mining and agricultural interests. This is a retrograde trend, which certainly needs to be reversed.

In Latin America, the landless movements are making some headway, but consider the irony – Brazil prides itself on having cheap, clean BioEthanol for transportation, yet the sugarcane for this enterprise is harvested under appalling conditions by impoverished landless peasants :-

http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=about
http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=kenfieldonethanolquestion2007

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-13-raising-cane-the-trouble-with-brazils-much-celebrated-ethanol-mi/

http://english.unica.com.br/opiniao/show.asp?msgCode={CB4605EE-B672-4D2C-9480-6A6EC339AFD2}

So keeping people landless works in favour of BioEnergy companies, so there is going to be an uphill struggle to make sure poor people have access to land.

Access to water caused a flashpoint in Colombia, when a program of “liberalisation” led to increased prices of privatised sources :-

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/1786-colombia-fighting-development-banks-for-the-human-right-to-water

But poor people need to be granted water, to grow the crops they need to survive, on the land they need to own.

I think it is fair to say that one of the biggest scourges of the poorest is night time. People need access to energy for light, at the very least. And it’s “small beer”, small change, to give people light, just as it is cheap to give poor people what they need to adapt their agriculture to Climate Change.

The International Energy Agency says that it would take $35 billion extra investment in energy annually until 2030 to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world that still don’t have it :-

http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/feature/1596241/the-shining-example-solar-etfs

“… International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighted in a recent report (November 2009)…It also noted 1.3 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030, compared with 1.5 billion today, adding that universal electricity access could be achieved with additional power-sector investment of $35bn annually until then – the assumption being a modest increase in overall primary energy demand and related CO2 emissions.”

That should be compared to the $26 trillion the world needs to spend on new energy investment by 2030 :-

http://www.iea.org/speech/2009/Tanaka/lisbon.pdf

In a policy for the poor of the world, the aim should be to enable energy access, without making the mistakes of the industrialised countries and getting locked into massive Fossil Fuel consumption.

By leapfrogging the Age of Burning Oil, Coal and Natural Gas for power, green energy will give a boost to, and enable, truly sustainable development for the poor.

What would be more costly would be to have to find the money to pay for all the Climate Change disasters, migration and serious adaptation that will be needed if Global Warming is made worse by trying to provide Fossil Fuel Energy to developing countries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a United Nations body set up under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to research and advise the global Climate Change negotiations.

Climate Change deniers and sceptics accuse the IPCC of being under government control. That is not the case. All parties and sectors are involved in the IPCC, and the research is adopted by governments, not dictated by them.

There is however a significant Trojan Horse effect from allowing the large Energy, Engineering and Mining corporations to be involved.

As just one example, how many people realise the process that directed the IPCC to commission a Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage ? Who drove this process ? Who instigated it ? Why was the final report written in large part by the Oil and Gas industry ?

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/srccs/srccs_annex4.pdf

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports_carbon_dioxide.htm

This process amounts to co-option of the IPCC institution for the financial benefit of transnational Energy companies, so much so that they can claim that the : “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fully supports CCS technology as does the International Energy Agency.” :-

http://oilsands.alberta.ca/documents/CCS.pdf

There was a bold, innovative idea that Enhanced Oil Recovery would finance Carbon Capture and Storage projects in several parts of the world. That appears to have been a pipedream, or rather a “pipeline dream” :-

http://www.joabbess.com/2009/05/17/the-weyburn-warning-carbon-capture-and-enhanced-oil-recovery/

Now, however, Enhanced Oil Recovery is being sold to governments as a hint of the financial returns of offering subsidies and incentives to Carbon Capture and Storage projects. Why do you think so much public money is being thrown at CCS ?

http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/pdf/CO2_Russia_ENG_final.pdf

“CCS-equipped plants that can sell the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) have an additional revenue stream, at E20/tonne”

The CCS people were very keen to have CCS as part of the prospective Copenhagen Treaty :-

http://ccsassociation.org.uk/docs/2009/CCSA%20Post%202012%20paper_FINAL%20VERSION.pdf

Thankfully, for now, this idea has been rejected :-

http://www.climaticoanalysis.org/post/cdm-and-ccs-the-question-of-whether-clean-development-should-be-achieved-through-carbon-sequestration/

http://www.prwatch.org/node/8780

It’s probably time to set limitations on corporate influence in the IPCC and UNFCCC process, and demand limitations on how much state money, particularly in Europe, is being committed to Carbon Capture and Storage :-

http://www.corporateeurope.org/climate-and-energy/content/2009/12/eu-money-ccs-lobby-copenhagen

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020288/climategate-we-won-the-battle-but-at-copenhagen-we-just-lost-the-war/

Delingpole writes : “Copenhagen never really had anything to do with “Climate Change”. Rather it was a trough-fest at which all the world’s greediest pigs gathered to gobble up as much of your money and my money as they possibly could, under the righteous-sounding pretence that they were saving the planet.”

I think that he’s partially on the right track : for many, many people, Climate Change is something they can make money from. Creating a commodity from a previously unvalued polluting gas, creating positive value from a negative waste product, is only going to lead to the massive-est market on Earth. And we all know who’s going to gain from that Carbon Trade, don’t we ? Not you and me, that’s for sure.

How can James Delingpole be so incisive, so knowledgeable, so right ? Maybe he knows a banker or two and sees the inner working of their “muck to brass” minds.

However, I have to part company with “Dr Strangelove” as his weblogging colleague Will Heaven epithetises him, in this paragraph :-

“This nauseating piggery took two forms. First were the Third World kleptocracies – led by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe – using “Global Warming” as an excuse to extort guilt-money from the Western nations.”

Actually, funds transfer from the Global North to the Global South is intended as a way to recognise some kind of responsibility on the part of the Global North for the ongoing and worsening Climate Change damages to the Global South environment and economies.

It’s not about stealing, it’s about demanding reparation on the basis of guilt. Some feel that that guilt should be made historical, and that the Global North should pay for the sins of the past. Others think the Global North did not know they were doing wrong so they can’t be held to blame for the sins of past emissions.

But anyway, this transfer of money from Global North to Global South is intended to be mostly through the letterbox of Carbon Trading – squeezing it through a market, in a kind of global offsetting program. Only a very small part of the funds transfered would come straight out of national budgets, and most likely a lot of it will have already been earmarked for Development Aid – something I feel James Delingpole would probably support with half an hour’s education on the subject of global trade imbalance and how the Global North feeds off the Global South for all its raw resources, pretty much.

James continues, more correctly : “Second, and much more dangerous, were the First World Corporatists who stand to make trillions of dollars using the Enron economics of carbon trading. Never mind all the talk of President Obama’s trifling $100 billion pledge. This is very small beer compared with the truly eye-watering sums that will be ransacked from our economies and our wallets over the next decades in the name of “carbon emissions reduction.””

Yes, the bankers are all lining/queuing up to have a hand in the till of the Global Carbon Exchange. They have consortia and contracts-in-principle. They give themselves fancy names like “BlueNext”. All leading up to the biggest speculative bubble since the dawn of financial dis-rectitude, or maybe the tulip mania of 1637.

James ramps up the anti : “…it was at Kyoto that the mechanisms for establishing a global carbon market were established. Carbon trading could not possibly exist without some form of agreement between all the world’s governments on emissions: the market would simply collapse. By keeping Kyoto alive, the sinister troughers of global corporatism have also kept their cash cow alive.”

Too spot on, mate ! Many reams of trees have been coated in ink to tell the story of how the Clean Development Mechanism, and its inherent acceptance of Carbon Trading, were slotted into the Kyoto Protocol, probably at 5.30am on the last day of the negotiations.

So, James, we find ourselves almost on the same hymn sheet. You disfavour corporate and market mechanisms to resolve the Climate Change treaty, and I don’t like them much either.

What could stop all this “big government” and “first world corporatism” and still allow for some kind of rational global deal ? Is there a way we could work together on this ? What platform could we share ?

Could it be this ? That we need to go cold turkey from Fossil Fuels at least by mid-this-Century. That’s mandatory, whether or not large numbers of the population believe in the Science of Global Warming.

Peak Oil means that the end of petrol and diesel will come. Thing is, Peak Coal won’t be far behind that, so we cannot rely on the hard black rock stuff to fill the gaps that sweet crude leaves behind.

Have you thought about the other environmental disbenefits from the global industry in the mining and transporting and refining of Fossil Fuels ? For the sake of glossy petrel birds everywhere, let’s can the crude trade; and for the sake of childhood lung function, let’s drop cars and coal. Let us have widely dispersed, secure supplies of indigenous Renewable Energy. Surely you can see the ultimate sense in that ?

In his book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet”, he argues in depth that Climate Change Adaptation strategies for countries in the Global South must be combined with those strategies to beat Poverty and encourage Development.

By using the term “Global South”, I mean mostly undeveloped countries, which just happen to be South of the Earth’s Equator. They also happen to be countries where international trade has a heavy drain on their domestic resources and commodities. One could question whether it is right to continue to draw them into the “global” economy if Sustainable Development cannot be achieved by their integration.

Globalisation can bring agricultural, economic and social diminishment to a number of countries, disproving the famous theory that you hear from high-flying Economists, that international trade brings a “trickle down” in wealth from rich countries to poor.

Countries that provide mostly raw resources and commodities to the international markets are prone to “supply chain squeeze” : their real income from trading key crops has shown times of remarkable “puncture” in the last ten years or so. They have also suffered crop failures, exacerbated by Climate Change, which lower their national income still further.

Think coffee. Think Kenya. Think Ethiopia. Think Fair Trade. :-

http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ke&commodity=green-coffee&graph=production

http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/economics.php

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/599224/-/rggp9mz/-/index.html

“As crop failures persist, scientists turn to rainmakers : By John Mbaria : Posted Monday, May 18 2009 at 00:00 : Joyce Kanario Marete is a widowed farmer. Her modest home is located in the once lush expanse of the Meru country in eastern Kenya. Falling towards the extreme end of the rain shadow of Africa’s second highest mountain, Mount Kenya, is her four-acre farm. It is all she has…The long rainy season here in the Giaki area always began in mid-March and lasted until May, while the short rains fell in October and November. “We have always expected a good harvest during the long rains and at least something to eat during the short rains season,” she says, adding that, unlike until about 20 years ago, when she could time the planting to coincide with the onset of the rains, “This is no longer possible.” Mama Kanario is among millions of farmers in Kenya who depend on rain-fed agriculture and who base their decisions on long-held traditions. But over the past few years, they have not been able to predict the rains. This seems to have confused them: Many times they have planted only for the crops to fail because the rains do not come…”

There is a danger that Climate Change could permanently lock in Poverty for some countries and regions, despite any increase in volumes of internationally traded goods and services.

“Make Poverty Permanent” seems to be the current track the world is on.

Nicholas Stern writes in “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet” :-

page 8
Chapter 1
“Why there is a problem and how we can deal with it”

“The two greatest problems of our times – overcoming poverty in the developing world and combating climate change – are inextricably linked. Failure to tackle one will undermine efforts to deal with the other : ignoring climate change would result in an increasingly hostile environment for development and poverty reduction, but to try to deal with climate change by shackling growth and development would damage, probably fatally, the cooperation between developed and developing countries that is vital to success. Developing countries cannot ‘put development on hold’ while they reduce emissions and change technologies. Rich and poor countries have to work together to achieve low-carbon growth; but we can create this growth and it can be strong and sustained. And high-carbon growth will eventually destroy itself. We confuse the issues if we try to create an artificial ‘horse race’ between development and climate responsibility.”

And so it is worrying that developed countries have not responded as promised to the commitment they made to achieving the Millenium Development Goals. They were supposed to be putting in 0.7% of GDP into the pot for development, and making every effort to cancel “odious debt”.

http://www.undp.org/mdg/tracking_donorcountryreports2.shtml

http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.html

http://www.jubileeusa.org/index.php

http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/4%20Hasn%27t%20all%20the%20debt%20been%20cancelled%3F+2651.twl

There is the added complication of the “Credit Crunch” which is clearly impacting the Global South, even though it is a problem not of their own making :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/22/world-bank-international-capital-recession

“World Bank calls on west to help relieve trillion dollar drain on world’s poor : Flow of money into developing world halving to $363bn in 2009 : Lack of capital means longer recessions in many poor countries : Ashley Seager : The Guardian, Monday 22 June 2009 : The world’s poorest countries will see $1tn (£600bn) drain from their economies this year according to the first detailed analysis of how the global recession is hitting developing nations. Figures published today by the World Bank show the financial crisis taking a heavy toll, with the flow of money into the developing world halving this year after heavy losses in 2008. Ashley Seager on the recession’s impact on development” :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/audio/2009/jun/22/seager-worldbank-development

“Despite recent talk of economic green shoots in Britain and the US, the lack of international capital means many poor countries will stay in recession for longer as companies and governments are starved of investment. The World Bank is calling for greater international policy co-ordination and tighter regulation of the global financial system in response. Releasing its authoritative annual Global Development Finance report, the Washington-based institution singles out Africa, central and eastern Europe and Latin America as regions suffering most from the global recession even while rich nations are starting to talk about recovery…”

But can we trust the World Bank to do for Poverty ? And if we can’t trust them for getting the Global South out of Poverty, can we hope for them to be able to act for us on Climate Change ?

Meena Raman of the Third World Network, talking to Phil England of Climate Radio about the recent Bonn Climate negotations, explained that the European Union and others were showing signs of wanting to put “Adaptation” and “Technology Transfer” funds into the World Bank but not into the “Convention” – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She explained that the Convention is “country-driven”, but the World Bank is “donor-driven” and she sees dangers in that.

She talks about the movement made on 12th June 2009, the last day of the Bonn talks, where the group known as “G77 plus China” put forward a proposal for a financial architecture, where developed countries would make public funds available of the order of 0.5% to 1.0% of GNP – money that would be used for Adaptation and Clean Energy development in the Global South. She says that the group believes that if sufficient funds are paid directly in this way, that the Carbon Trading based on the Clean Development Mechanism would not be necessary.

Here’s an early reading of that proposal from last year :-

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/climate/news/TWNaccraupdate6.doc
“G77+China financing proposal (TWN, August 2008)”

Also, the G77 plus China have put forward a proposal that the Annex I (rich, developed nations of the Global North) should make real cuts in Carbon Emissions of 40% by 2020 :-

http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/4577.php

http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12421e.html

“…China highlighted a mid-term reduction goal for developed countries of 40% based on 1990 levels by 2020. He underscored that a long-term goal should be based on sound science and economic and technical feasibility, and on an equitable distribution of atmospheric space supported and enabled by adequate technology, finance and capacity building…South Africa and the Philippines proposed an aggregate scale of Annex I reductions of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. South Africa clarified that this target does not include offsetting, only domestic actions…South Africa explained their proposed Annex I individual targets, stating that the starting point for the proposal is an aggregate reduction range by Annex I countries of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. He said this aggregate target was then allocated among Annex I countries based on responsibility and capability. The Philippines also presented their proposal, explaining that they used a similar methodology and criteria as South Africa, with different aggregate numbers as a starting point. He explained that the numbers they used were: a 30% aggregate reduction by Annex I countries in the second commitment period 2013-2017, and a 50% aggregate reduction in the third commitment period 2018-2022…”

The webcast :-

http://unfccc2.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/090601_SB30_Bonn/templ/ovw_page.php?id_kongressmain=76

http://unfccc2.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/090601_SB30_Bonn/templ/ply_page.php?id_kongresssession=1849&player_mode=isdn_real

“12 Jun 09 – 15:00 CEST : AWG-KP 8, 2nd meeting : UNFCCC : Plenary : Hall Maritim”

Here’s the Meena Raman interview :-

http://coinet.org.uk/discussion/climate_radio/bw_u

http://coinet.org.uk/discussion/climate_radio/bw_u/the_300_350_show_bonn_wrap_up

“The 300-350 Show: Bonn Wrap-Up”

Remember that the current offers from the Global North for Carbon emissions reductions don’t really amount to much.

And there is a real danger we have lost our chance to contain Global Warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels :-

http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0907/full/climate.2009.57.html

“Halfway to Copenhagen, no way to 2 °C : Joeri Rogelj, Bill Hare, Julia Nabel, Kirsten Macey, Michiel Schaeffer, Kathleen Markmann & Malte Meinshausen : National targets give virtually no chance of constraining warming to 2 °C and no chance of protecting coral reefs.”

So, why do the Department of Energy and Climate Change negotiators think “40% is laughable” ? :-

http://adoptanegotiator.org/2009/06/11/whats-laughable-about-40/#more-863