"This is a make or break time for our climate and our future" - a stark warning, indeed, from Climate and Energy secretary Ed Miliband as the government prepared its ground ahead of global climate talks in Copenhagen at the end of the year. Mr Miliband was offering the warm-up act to a speech from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which has stolen a march on other national leaders by setting out how the world should pay for avoiding dangerous climate change and adapting to its impacts. At the end of June, the government revealed its global 'deal' on climate change, which puts forward three key goals.
Firstly, to ensure that global temperatures rise no more than two degrees centigrade by making sure global greenhouse gas emissions peak and start to reduce by 2020 - and keep on shrinking to reach, at most, half of their 1990 levels by 2050. Secondly, to keep all countries to their word with strong monitoring, reporting and verification; and let money flow to where it will make most difference by developing carbon markets. Finally - and possibly most crucially - to support the poorest countries in their efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
But there's a price to pay, which Mr Brown enumerated in his speech. The suggestion is that the richer, developed nations, between them, contribute around $100 billion per year until 2020 to help developing countries reduce their emissions, tackle deforestation and adapt to the effects of climate change, such as flooding and drought, that are already being experienced.
Quite how, and by whom, this fund is to be distributed, and on what basis individual contributions are to be calculated is another matter. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister believes that securing such a deal at Copenhagen in December is absolutely essential if we are to reduce the risk of devastating future climate impacts and the huge extra costs that would bring.
Economic ‘payback’ might come in the form of big new job-creating opportunities within the green sector, which the government predicts will employ well over a million people in this country alone, by the middle of the next decade. Carbon markets, which Mr Brown mentions in his ‘Road-to-Copenhagen’ manifesto, are also only ideas on a drawing board at the moment. Some observers believe the establishment of a global carbon market could be years away as emerging industrial giants like China and India fail to agree on its principles, let alone its structures.
Deforestation and forest degradation, the effect of which equates to about 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is another contentious issue. According to a study funded by the Norwegian government and published in June by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), paying people to protect forests can be an effective way to tackle deforestation and climate change but only if there is good governance of natural resources. It warns that such payments alone are not enough; they will be effective only if key economic, cultural, institutional and information conditions are met, and if payment schemes monitor impacts on poor communities to ensure equity and avoid social harm.
The new study by researchers at IIED, the World Resources Institute and the Centre for International Forestry Research looked at existing efforts to pay people in developing nations to protect ecosystems in return for the services — such as fresh water, wild foods and climate control — that they provide. It aimed to see if such payments could be used to help tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This approach, known as REDD, is gaining international support under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"Effective and equitable governance will be the key to successful payment schemes," says lead author and senior IIED researcher, Ivan Bond. "Unfortunately, governance tends to be weakest in the very places where deforestation is greatest. Communities need clear land rights if they are to gain from payments that flow to their countries in return for forest protection."
The researchers reviewed 13 schemes that make payments for ecosystems services in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America and concluded that performance-based payments can be part of REDD but only if important preconditions are met. If they are not, the money would be better spent on improving forest governance, institutions and policies at local, regional and national levels. The authors note that where governance is weak, there are risks that elite groups will capture the flow of funds while poor local communities, with weak land tenure, will lose out.
Clearly we all look forward to a positive outcome from the Copenhagen meeting, and Gordon Brown’s pre-emptive move to establish an agenda is to be applauded. In advance of the G8 and Major Economies Summits in Italy later this week, the British Prime Minister has at least made a start to urge his fellow leaders to agree on a plan for the developing countries. He does, after all, have a track record in international negotiation, and we should give him credit for persuading key world economies to shore up their banking systems to avoid a financial ‘Armageddon’. Whether or not the ideas in this manifesto will persuade the somewhat battered economies of the West to dig even deeper into their pockets, we shall have to wait and see.
Les Hunt
Editor