Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Representation and Dedication- Call to Action

Climate change is a global problem, but those that are most affected by the consequences of climate change, and those that are least resilient are poor and minority communities. I will not even say it is the Global North or the Global South in this situation because those with the money can obtain clean water, shelter, food, and a way out of the disaster no matter where they live in a lot of cases. This Conference as opposed to others has highlighted the human communities that are depreciated and destroyed as a result of climate change. I look around me and we are all sitting here in this stadium that is difficult to navigate, but that is pretty much the biggest problem we have here in addition to people being stressed due to the demands of their job. We are comfortable. We have clothes on our back, have ways to avoid the cold, have food in our bellies (except for those that are fasting in solidarity with Yeb Sano from the Philippines), and have shelter when we are done with the conference for the day. However, in comparison to those that are suffering in the Philippines that have no access to clean water, food, medicine, and shelter or those that can no longer sustain crops due to drought to feed their families in Sub Saharan Africa we are incredibly blessed. Yet we, as the privileged individuals that get to attend this conference and talk about this issue that most of us do not "experience" in the terrible ways that others are forced to, have the audacity to push back targets to decrease emissions, not contribute financial support to countries that desperately need it, and diminish the importance of this issue in a way that makes it seem unimportant or trivial. As you can tell I am a little upset. This is clearly an urgent issue and countries are not making an effort to act. 

In addition to this, people that I would argue are affected the most by climate change are being barred from having their concerns heard in this conference. This includes developing nations and civil society. Visas from across Africa were denied by the Polish government, and this includes one of our delegates from the Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition. They gave excuses as to why the delegates could not come in including that they did not have a sufficient reason even thought they had accreditation from the UN. In Europe there is concerns about individuals from Africa coming here and staying for work, and because of this concern they were not allowed to attend this UN conference when it is clear that it is a temporary visit, and that these individuals would of course return to their countries after the conference finished. These systematic ways of silencing individuals that have a clear role in negotiations such as these is dangerous to the process, extremely dangerous. A bunch of agreements being made by developed nations with little input from others around the world should be concerning for anyone. 

In addition to this problem that came up during this conference, civil society accreditation was also pushed back. For example, last year our delegation was awarded 20 spots, and this year we were awarded 7. This is a serious concern because this means that we do not have as many people being able to track the negotiations, work on text, build relationships with other groups, and the most important part we are less effective at lobbying our negotiators. The US is a pain in the butt to push to commit to anything in the first place, but could you imagine what would NOT get done if civil society, or citizens in general were not pushing them to commit to something. It could not be done because the only way things get done in the US is if people push politicians hard enough to not maintain the status quo, but to actually make change. Negotiators need reality checks. It can be easy to get lost in the details of the black and white words written on a page, and to only be concerned about that. We are here, as an NGO, to remind them that this is about a bigger picture, and that real people are being affected by this issue every day. People are experiencing extreme weather events, wildfires in the southwest US are getting worse every year, floods are harming local economies, and hurricanes are destroying lives and livelihoods.

Why wouldn't people want cleaner technologies anyway? I really enjoy breathing fresh air, not worrying about getting in a car accident by driving less because I have decent public transportation, and knowing that mountains are not being destroyed in the Appalachian region to turn on our lights at night. 

I am really concerned about our future and how this global dialogue is being approached. We need to be wary and ready to make changes and to ensure that a strong agreement is created in 2015 with all voices being heard. Please spread this message and put pressure wherever you can to make sure that as we move forward we are talking as a global community to create this change. Even doing work on campuses, in your communities, and in your states/provinces can make a world of differences. It starts with one person, but you would be amazed at the impact that you can have if you put a little effort towards it. 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Forests with a Climate Change Perspective

I was supposed to do this blog post last year, and I say late is better than never. Plus I understand this issue much more after the past week and a half so I can relay this to you in a much more comprehensive way now.

History

 Forests are incredibly important to the prevention of anthropogenic climate change, that is if they are left standing. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deforestation and degradation accounts for about 14-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, an initiative to protect forests, specifically tropical forests was taken on by the UN Framework for the Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties. This was done through the Bali Agreement in COP 13 with a program called REDD or Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. This program was constructed as a carbon market in which businesses and governments can essentially pay developing countries to protect their forests, and in return because those forests are protected and will not contribute to carbon emissions the companies and developed countries can buy the right to pollute.

The problem with this initial idea was that countries could threaten their forests and then once they enrolled in REDD collect money from their hostage situation. This was obviously a problem so the program was amended to also encourage those countries that have been protecting their forests in the first place to maintain their "carbon stocks." This is when REDD became REDD+. Mechanisms were established and the program was developed more as the negotiations went on. However, in Cancun REDD took a turn for the worst. Bolivia had some serious issues with the agreement. They fundamentally did not thing that forests should be subjected to a carbon market because of the concerns of the abuses of this program by countries. They ended up blocking the program, which is serious because in the UN process true consensus is needed, and if one country disagrees it is not supposed to move through.

Unfortunately for Bolivia, the President of that COP in Cancun said that it was essentially consensus so the program moved forward, and this is why REDD exists today and is monitored by the UN. Although REDD+ exists, it is sort of informal. Companies, countries and subnational carbon markets use REDD as a mechanism to purchase carbon offsets and manage their carbon markets. There are basic programs in their first phases of being established in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Laos, and Ethiopia. They are setting up monitoring systems, establishing conservation plans, bringing in experts into the country to set up the infrastructure for the program, and surveying local people on forest uses. So this program is moving forward, and finally here in Poland at COP 19, years later, countries are starting to commit financing to REDD. Ironically, COP 19 is a finance conference, but none of the strong initiatives being proposed by the negotiators have received any commitments for funding while REDD has. Always an interesting outcome at COP. You never know what will happen.

Concerns

So now that you know the history of REDD there are quite a few concerns surrounding the policy that I would like to touch on.

Leakage

There is a concern that if some areas are protected then forests in other areas and countries will be destroyed instead because market demands are still maintained. This, in consequence, does not reduce greenhouse gases, but only pays countries to protect small areas of forests.

Indigenous Rights and Sovereignty

There is concern that as governments manage forests that have traditionally been used by indigenous people those people will lose access to their land or livelihoods. Additionally, those people are sometimes considered sovereign nations by the nation that houses them, but they are not recognized in the UN processes. Therefore, the people that are directly impacted by the program do not have a say in the development of REDD itself.

Finally, on this point there is a concern about developed nations forcing certain management practices onto other countries.

Morals

In general there are concerns about allowing markets to protect certain forested areas and not others, or just having markets at all relating to carbon. Creating markets out of forests is dangerous, and it not something countries can just buy and sell. They are areas that provide ecosystem services and maintain biodiversity that is critically needed for this planet.

Logistics

There are concerns about implementation and whether there is enough infrastructure to monitor the programs well enough to make sure that they are functioning well, and have the impact they were intended to have. This is also a really complex program that is hard to understand and implement especially at the local level.

There are concerns on whether the finances will get to the people that need it, or if they will go to those that are at the top levels of the government. This includes concerns about corruption of the governments as well.

I am sure I missed some concerns and did not address all of the issues that are involved with REDD. After all I am also still learning about all of this as well. However, this is a quick overview as I understand it. If anyone that reads this and finds serious mistakes in this narrative please let me know via the comment box below.


WTF? Where's the Finance?

This conference is all about climate finance, and some sort of weak finance mechanism is all that we can really expect as an outcome for this conference. Oh, and there might be some sort of outline for the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which is the post 2020 deal that will replace the Kyoto Protocol to be agreed upon in 2015.  It is now the beginning of the second week of the conference, and to be honest not much has happened. We have four days of this conference left and by then the negotiators might have a weak finance mechanism to help developing countries with loss and damage, which is where countries that are hardest hit by climate change are provided with financial assistance since they have to deal with the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. It is pretty clear that very little is going to come out of this conference and that countries are going to hold their cards as long as they can.

It is also clear that trust and efforts of collaboration are breaking down between countries, which is concerning, very concerning. Developed and developing countries are pitted against one another as these mechanism are being created because developed countries are holding out on the funds and developing countries are claiming rights to funds wherever they can. Although the developing countries may be right in their demands, it is creating a lot of tension overall in the conference. Climate change has become more about finance than solutions in my opinion, but the unfortunate part is I am not the least bit surprised.

In addition to these finance battles, major countries with recently converted conservative governments are reducing their pledges for emission reduction, which includes Japan and Australia. For the first time in a long time the United States and its lack of commitment is not the country people are primarily talking about in this conference. Not to say that the US is getting out of being challenged, but there is certainly a shift in atmosphere at this conference that I did not witness in Doha.

Last year I wrote my honors thesis on game theory and identifying the reasons as to why countries are struggling to make commitments. As we get closer to the 2015 deal I see these reasons become vividly clear. As the Peruvian Environmental Minister states "we have a dilemma." The dilemma is that we are in what is called a Stag Hunt Game. Games in political philosophy explain human behavior by analyzing what they do in certain situations, and then it is applied to real situations. For this case the story goes that there is a community of individuals that need to hunt food to survive. If they were to work together and effectively strategize they could hunt the mightiest of stags and have a plethora of food. However, in this case everyone would need to work together to make sure that they get the stag. There has to be trust between all hunters because if one defects then the food will be lost and the energy to hunt will be wasted. In large groups it is hard to have this trust, and hard to know what people will put forward during the hunt. Will they put in all their resources? Will they run a little faster and farther to make sure the stag is captured no matter what? If they do get to the stag first will they try to claim more than they deserve? These are questions that would be running in your mind if you had to embark in a community action such as this. This is where the hares come in. Individuals might also see a hare while hunting, and decide to go after that because it is easier than relying on others that they might not completely trust.

Now back to climate change. We have a situation where all nations need to work together to combat climate change, and to capture the stag. They have to share technologies, funding, ideas, make commitments, and ultimately trust one another to make something happen. The sticky point with making these commitments for all countries is that if one country commits to it strongly, implements new policies, and spends a lot of money to mitigate and adapt to climate change while the rest of the world does nothing it will not matter. It would be like a hunter chasing a giant stag around and using a lot of their own resources, bodily energy, to get no reward. Because this all depends on what other countries are willing to commit to, and the trust that comes with it countries are trying to wait until the last minute to say what they are willing to do so they do not have to spend more energy, money and capital then they have to on this issue if other countries are unwilling to commit. That is why it is such a problem that Japan and Australia are decreasing their commitments. This means that the bar has been lowered and you can expect that the bare minimum will be put forward for the 2020 action unless something changes in the next two years in Lima, Peru and Paris, France.

Right now developed countries need to fork up a little finance so that trust can be reinstated between parties, and communication can be open. Actions are very powerful, and that would be one action that would send a clear message to countries around the world if nations were to put funding into climate change mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. Trust and momentum is all we have to make the changes necessary to save this planet and the lives of people. So I ask, where's the finance?



Monday, November 18, 2013

My History, My People



So in addition to being in Poland for the UN Climate Conferences I am also taking a personal journey. I am learning how to travel alone, how to navigate public transit effectively, and most importantly connecting with things that always seem very distant, and yet always close to my heart. It is interesting how you can live with people for years, have dinners with them, celebrate special occasions with them, and call them family while knowing very little about their past and where they come from. At least that is how it seems with my family. In these past five years and on this trip I am really beginning to put all the pieces together. I suppose I should give you some background instead of proceeding with these vague statements and why I am writing this while in Poland.

I come from a predominately Jewish background I would argue. Not Jewish in the religious sense, but the culture and the traditions have always surrounded me. My Father does not really have a religious or distinct cultural background aside from coming from a midwest agrarian society so I clung to the Jewish part of me, and tend to identify with it frequently. Although I always feel as if I know very little about it. The question for me has always been why do I identify with this cultural heritage? I remember my mother coming in to my classes as a child making latkes, singing the prayer as we lit the menorah every Hanukkah, and being surrounded by bagels and lox and yiddish phrases growing up. I also remember being constantly criticized for claiming to be a Jew without practicing the religion. Throughout college, and recently as I have begun to travel the world, I have begun to understand my identity more, and to realize the importance of my people with or without the rituals religion has prescribed to define my relationship with God. Yesterday I visited Auschwitz, and after the years of learning about the Holocaust from my teachers, from my family, from my tour around Israel I finally understood what it meant to be a Jew. For me this is not about religion it is about being part of a culture of love and support and a shared understanding of the importance and fragility of life. It is a culture of celebration, remembrance, and my favorite part tradition and good food.

Walking through Auschwitz yesterday had to be maintained as a history lesson as opposed to a haunting story about the people in my family and the community my great grandparents and grandparents came from. This was so I could maintain my sanity because the things you see there are impossible to imagine. I have to admit that I know very little about my family roots. My Granny in a short conversation prior to leaving for Poland informed me that her mother was born in Poland, and I have to say I was shocked I did not know that. I also know that my Opa escaped the murderous onslaught that the Germans brought to the Jews shortly before the war. That is about the extent of my knowledge. However, it is strange to think that a majority of a group of people was systematically eliminated throughout Europe, and somehow I still exist. As I walked around the camp yesterday all I could feel was numbness, and none of it felt real. On the train ride back it all flooded over me as I read a book my mother had bought me about the tale of a family that survive the Holocaust. My dreams were flooded with terror last night, and yet here I am surrounded by people from all over the world blessed enough to have the opportunity to travel and to understand the world around me. I have incredible family and friends, and the world in all its imperfection seems to be progressing to something better.  I think this trip has been one of the most important personal journeys I have been able to embark on, and now it is time to go to work and save the world as a global community, and for some reason I have a lot of hope.




Saturday, November 9, 2013

COP 19: An Introduction

It is that time of year again... the time where delegates from all over the world congregate for the UN Framework on Climate Change Convention Conference of the Parties to discuss the looming question of how to mitigate and adapt to climate disruption. The next two years will be pretty important as we set the stage for how we as a global community work together to tackle this issue. This is the collective action problem of all time. How do you get billions of people to work together to encourage funding for adaptation and mitigation technologies, to alter the way they live to reduce their carbon footprint, and to work to alter government policies to move away from technologies that produce a lot of carbon to those that in comparison produce very little? It is a challenge that the world has never faced before, and one that requires commitments from everyone around the planet. The reason being that if countries and people defect from attempting to strongly take on this problem everyone else has incentive to do the same thing because nothing will change unless everyone commits. If the US, Canada, China, South America, Russia, India and Brazil do not take strong stances on climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies while the rest of the world does the results will be limited and the problem will still persist. And if any of the countries above try to get their way out of it you can bet that the others will follow suit because that means the pollution will still be increasing while large economies will take a hit investing in relatively expensive green infrastructure, which they will only do if everyone else does it as well. It is a complicated issue, and in these next two years countries will be putting what they think they are willing to commit to on the table, and the world will be watching.

So what is so important about the next two years? Well I will tell you. In the next two years a new agreement will be made that will replace the Kyoto Protocol. This is one that the world is hoping everyone can agree to, even the US, which will be hard since they never ratify anything that the UN produces. This agreement has been in negotiating rounds for the past couple years in what is called the ADP or the Ad Hoc Working Group in the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The negotiators have begun to craft this, but with only two more conferences it is time to get serious. Now is the time commitments to the commitment are being made, and it is a great time to start to pressuring countries hard to actually commit to the idea of mitigating climate disruption significantly. This is why I am here. As a part of the largest environmental NGO in the US, the Sierra Club representing millions of members and supporters I am working to create an atmosphere where the US has to commit. Seriously commit. I will be interacting with individuals around the globe as well as the US negotiators to attempt to influence the outcome of this process, and I believe there is hope.


After 19 hours of traveling with a cough (which makes people run away from your presence like you have the plague), a cold shower, and a power outage caused by me not using my converter correctly in the hostel I am more than excited to be in Warsaw to work on combating climate change. I truly believe that our global community can provide real solutions to this issue. It just takes a little push to encourage humanity to do great things.