Climate Change Priorities for Copenhagen

The Commonwealth knows painfully well about climate change. It sees it in shrinking rainforests, made worse by unsustainable logging practices in Asia and the Pacific; in dwindling fish stocks in the Atlantic and other oceans; in a thawing of the tundra in northern Canada; in encroaching deserts in northern Nigeria; in flooded lowlands in Bangladesh; and in rising sea levels around Tuvalu and the Maldives. Climate change is an existential issue. I welcome and encourage this debate and discussion. This is a meeting for our times to address a preoccupation of our times. This is what the Commonwealth and the CPA, do well.

I am reminded of what CP Snow said, “technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” The industrial revolution, with technologies running on coal, oil and gas, has driven our world economy forward, but we are now seeing a hefty sting in the tail.

While soot and sulphur are visible pollutants which we have learnt to deal with, slowly and step-by-step through legislation and new technology, what about carbon dioxide? This gas – so familiar to us all, and which we breathe each day of our lives – is itself a major pollutant in the consequences it has.

Just as before, legislation and new technology will be our tools of choice, as we adapt and mitigate. But this time our action must be swift, and it must be collective. Parliamentarians have a strategic and pivotal role to play in building political resolve towards strong multilateral action, and in setting the necessary regulatory frameworks domestically.

Let me focus today on some key priorities for parliamentarians in seeking a just and effective agreement from Copenhagen. In this, I see three key challenges, but also two major opportunities.

Those challenges are:

· first, to push for strong action despite straitened economic times;

· second, to build trust and strengthen good faith within the negotiations; and

· third, to make this a truly inclusive deal that leaves no country or group behind. If we do not achieve this, it will firstly be a failure of collective, ethical responsibility, and global inequity and poverty will also deepen at the cost of global peace and security.

Meanwhile, the two opportunities lie in:

· firstly, reflecting the mounting concern of citizens for a decisive and substantial agreement on climate change; and

· secondly, in using the global economic and environmental crises we have before us to resolve, some of the long-standing development challenges we have faced, and start to re-engineer our world economy towards a more sustainable model.

If I may talk briefly to each. Financing climate change action was always a challenge, but what about now, when governments are facing increasing debt burdens and other calls on the public purse? When core budgets – like those in education and health in developing countries – are being drastically cut?

The answer has to be that we simply must find the political will to take action swiftly. The Stern Report has shown that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change dramatically outweigh the costs: to stabilise emissions at manageable levels would cost about 1% of global GDP, but that not to act would cost at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. This dwarfs the current crisis! The IMF recently estimated that global GDP shrank last year by 1.3% .... but the Stern Report foresaw the damages of climate change rising to 20% of GDP or more. The numbers can be disputed: the essential fact cannot be.

The key to unlocking political will is a deeper understanding of the costs of our current pathway of development.

The Commonwealth has placed an expert in the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre in Belize who is working with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and DFID, (the UK Department for International Development), to complete a regional study on the economics of climate change. We will shortly be doing the same in the Pacific, too. Not only will this work help to build knowledge about the economics of climate change, but the Commonwealth’s longer-term involvement will hopefully also help to translate the results into practical programmes of action, and share the knowledge and understanding that has been gained among all states.

Your engagement in the outcomes of these studies, and similar ones in other regions, is needed to deepen their impact in decision making.

In 2007, Commonwealth Finance Ministers considered how to ‘re-invent growth and build clean’, by promoting distributed power grids based on renewables, avoiding deforestation which accounts for 18 per cent of emissions, investing in energy efficiency, and by reducing taxes on public transport while increasing taxes on cars. These show that political will can be translated when costs are clear.

The second key challenge is to bring renewed faith and goodwill to the climate change process.

President Obama’s negotiating team was warmly welcomed to the negotiations in Bonn in March, with a hope in some hearts that the process might run more smoothly as a result of America’s change of administration. Of course, many also understood that there was still a wide gap to bridge between Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – a gap that is also substantial within the Commonwealth. The differences – as in the global debate more widely – arise over mitigation and adaptation. If we can bridge these, then the prospects for a global solution are increased.

One of the greatest concerns, not just in climate change but across the sustainable development agenda, is delivery on international funding commitments. While action plans have been agreed, the financial support to make these a reality has not shown the same progress. We see ‘talk the talk’ but less ‘walk the walk’.

For Copenhagen to be a success it needs to deliver quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives for industrialised countries; clarity on national actions by developing countries; and meaningful levels of readily accessible financial and technological support for developing countries.

The Commonwealth has a long track record in building communal trust in the way it engages with international negotiations that set the development agenda. This includes the areas of trade, finance and sustainable development. Its first discussions on climate change took place in 1987, and Heads of Government agreed the Langkawi Declaration on the Environment in 1989 – a powerful statement which was very influential in the formulation of the Rio Earth Summit Declaration of 1992, that borrowed heavily from it.

In 2007, our Heads of Government agreed the Lake Victoria Commonwealth Climate Change Action Plan. This was a statement of political will at the highest level to take action on climate change, buttressed by a practical programme of work. This began efforts to build negotiating capacities; supporting research and debate in areas such as forests, food miles and trade and climate change; and developing skills, for example, in modelling the impact of climate change on agriculture.

The Commonwealth has also engaged its finance ministers, its health ministers, its parliamentarians like yourselves, its youth representatives, its human-rights experts, and a wide range of its professional associations, in respect of the challenges that governments and people face from climate change.

The full weight of 53 states that can be brought to bear in building political will and pushing an agreement closer. This year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting – in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, at the end of November – will provide an important opportunity, immediately ahead of the Copenhagen Summit on 7^th December, to let this collective voice be heard, particularly in respect of the small and vulnerable states, whose cause has been an abiding Commonwealth concern.

In line with the Commonwealth’s concerns for equity and development, the third challenge will be to leave no country, and no social group, behind at Copenhagen.

It is this principle – of inclusiveness – which is at the heart of the current Commonwealth initiative to reform international institutions to reflect the reality and the interests of all, not just a few. Eleven of our leaders came together in London in June last year, and called for reformed international bodies built around not power-sharing at the top, but the principles of legitimacy; fair representation; responsiveness; flexibility; transparency and accountability; and effectiveness. Our Heads also emphasised the need to bring the development and environment agendas closer together.

The Director-General of UNEP, the United Nations Environment Progamme, has said that – of the global cascade of papers he has seen – the best was produced by the Commonwealth for that mini-summit. It dealt with the subject of international environmental government, or IEG. Because of our inclusive and balanced perspective, I was then invited to moderate a four-hour session on this theme among all of the world’s environment ministers at the last annual conference of UNEP, in Nairobi in February. This is the Commonwealth being recognised and enlisted for its wisdom function.

Not only must the process be guided by these principles, but the outcomes must reflect them. Because those who have most to lose from climate change are those who have contributed least to the problem, and who are the least equipped to deal with it.

Least developed countries and small states already face the development challenge in its full complexity. Many are struggling to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly since they are poor and lack the necessary financial and technical resources. This is further exacerbated by climate change. Many face severe physical impacts from global warming; and many have economies that are particularly sensitive to climate variation, based as they are on tourism, agriculture, fisheries and other commodity exports.

Despite the challenges brought by climate change, to which they have contributed so little yet suffered so much, poor and small states struggle to shape global responses to the debate. They are not seen as ‘part of the problem’ and, perhaps because of this, their needs are not being adequately addressed. The fact that these countries have small delegations and limited resources with which to engage in the negotiations adds to the problem.

The scale of ambition shown in Copenhagen, and the design of mechanisms to deliver finance, technology and expect support, are of particular concern to poor and highly vulnerable states. So far, these countries have been virtually excluded from support under the Clean Development Mechanism, and are yet to see meaningful funding for adaptation. This needs to change quickly. Be it in disaster risk reduction, or reducing emissions from deforestation, and degradation, or in adapting their economies away from vulnerable sectors, let the world not forget that the prime constituents of the climate change negotiations are poorer, weaker, smaller states.

I turn now to those two opportunities which I feel are – despite everything – in front of us.

The multi-faceted crisis that we are facing today is starting to lay bare the fundamental inter‑connectedness of our economic and environmental systems.

Between January and August last year, food prices surged by 50 per cent. This was not the result of any particular climatic crisis, but the cumulative effects of long-term trends based in population, changes in diet, declining investment, soil degradation and rapid urbanisation, which have been starting to pressure availability and erode the stock of agricultural land. While prices have stabilised to a degree, the long-term trends remain, and fuel prices - an important component in food prices - have again started to climb. Climate change may help some regions to become more fertile, but most Commonwealth citizens are facing declining agricultural productivity and increased food insecurity. Yields from rain-fed agriculture will decline by 50 per cent by 2020, so irrigation to boost productivity becomes imperative.

But our water supplies do not allow it. Water consumption rose at twice the rate of population during the last century. Globally, we are using about half of all accessible freshwater. Water usage is predicted to rise by 50 percent by 2050 in developing countries, yet actual water supplies are predicted to decline. It is thought that in 15 years from now, 1.8 billion people (that is, the same number of people that exist within the Commonwealth today...) will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. Perhaps we can start to create water from the sea, but that takes a great deal of energy at present, and there are still the challenges of conveying it to where it is needed.

Perhaps this moment of economic crisis, water crisis and climate crisis will be the moment at which we begin to grapple with what a truly sustainable world economy could look like, and build the institutional architecture to make it happen. That is the opportunity we must create within our current travails.

From a sustainable development perspective, renewable energies can deliver a high development dividend for poor states. They lessen dependence on oil imports and the risks associated with price fluctuations. And they can release government financing for other purposes and play a key part in bolstering resilience.

We also need integrated policies. Commonwealth Health Ministers grasped this challenge in May when they focused on the ‘co-benefits’ of action on climate change. They recognised, for instance, that investments in public transport, for example, will reduce emissions but also bring the poor into the centre of economic life and encourage people to leave their own vehicles behind. That, in turn, creates better personal health through increased exercise and reduced lung-disease from air pollution.

My second and final ‘opportunity’ in this calculus lies in the potential for yourselves, the representatives of the people.

Many, particularly in the developed countries, are already doing their bit – recycling, using energy efficient lightbulbs, whatever it may be. But they look to you – as their voice on the national stage – to grasp the nettle.

They are demanding a decisive response to climate change. Citizens are looking to their political representatives to show both visionary and consequential dedication to public policy responses and a long-term commitment on climate change.

Within parliament, you can ensure that climate change is taken into account across all areas of government.

Take two small examples of parliamentarians in action. The Maldives government has pledged to become the world’s first carbon neutral nation, setting an aspirational goal that will help spur innovation and partnerships across the economy. And last year, the UK parliament passed its Climate Change Bill: the world’s first long-term legally binding framework to tackle climate change. Such resolve should not weaken.

The people look to you to work in committee, to vote budgetary resources to support action, and to strengthen co-ordinating mechanisms at the national level.

We encourage parliamentarians also to develop the capacity of the civil servants who will drive policies and negotiations practically.

Parliamentarians are uniquely placed with a role in both international, top-down approaches, and in grassroots, bottom-up mechanisms. This can be accomplished only through legislators working towards cross-party consensus to ensure a long-term commitment to building the necessary skills, planning frameworks and policies.

I want to end with a quote from Anthony Giddens’ new book on: The Politics of Climate Change. It talks about the task ahead. I quote:

‘Some policies will have to have a hard edge to them; many will be unpopular and actively resisted. Powerful interests often stand in the way of reform, and have to be faced down’.

The role of legislators is the determinant one at the national and pan-Commonwealth levels. I wish you strength and success in this most critical of endeavours. ENDS