This blog contains exciting educational reflections made during a year-long research project on the 15th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP15)!
Within these pages you’ll find:
1) Who We Are!
2) Reflections made at COP15!
3) Video Interviews from COP15!
4) Reflections post-COP15!
5) Student Impressions on Key Issues
6) Research Projects
The course is over, and this is the last post of the site, however, many of our students and professors are planning to attend future COPs, and we hope to link you to those in the near future!
We are a research team from Dickinson College consisting of 15 students and 2 professors.
We spent the past year in a course titled From Kyoto to Copenhagen, during which we attended the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, interviewed parties to the conference, gave presentations to our community, blogged, wrote research papers, lectured at an international ethics conference,made posters, gave demonstrations, and learned a heck of a lot about climate change!
For the past year, this has been our blog. We’ve written in it from our first days of class last fall, through our whirlwind of a time at COP15, and for the next semester as we returned and hit the community with as much information as we could.
We hope this blog will continue to serve as an exciting educational asset, as a relic of this historic past year of climate change events and our thoughts on them.
I urge you especially to look at our reflections while at Copenhagen and our archive of video interview footage from COP15, which we are proud to offer as a unique educational experience unavailable anywhere else.
That class is over, though, and currently, I am writing one of two final posts. Yet as this blog closes, the movement does not.
Several of our team members have plans to attend (and I’m certain blog from) COP16, and I will link their blogs here as they become available.
And
Our professors will be bringing another class like ours to COP17 to continue what we’ve begun. It is my sincere hope that Dickinson College will continue to support these unique learning opportunities and that you’ll learn from them and pass them on to friends and family.
If there is only one thing I’ve learned from the past year (I swear I learned more than that), it is that education is the most important gift we can give.
We all know people that think climate change is a hoax or who maybe aren’t convinced it’s the single most important matter to our generation. These people simply haven’t had the opportunity to see what we have, and we urge you to share it with them.
Climate change is truly a global issue. A huge takeaway from Copenhagen for me was: policy is slow.
We cannot possibly wait for our governments to take care of everything for us. That climate change is a global issue and policy won’t be fast-moving enough to help in large part to mitigate its effects means that we need everyone’s help.
If there’s one thing I pledge for the future, and I hope you’ll join me in it, it’s that I won’t keep quiet in front of climate skeptics anymore.
I realize it’s difficult. It’s politically incorrect. But this is bigger than political correctness, and I bet you’ll make some new friends with this hefty dose of self-respect you have.
The bottom line is: climate change is bigger than you or me. Unfortunately no matter how much we recycle or eat locally, it won’t add up to much without others.
It’s an uphill battle, and the other team has some pretty cool weapons, but we hope the information contained within this blog will help you fight it, and I hope that very soon it will be linked to know blogs on COPs 16, 17, and beyond.
See you then.
In my previous post, Reducing GHG emissions in a finance-constrained world, I mentioned the fact that pledges of climate funding at Copenhagen, though very encouraging, is nowhere near the expected needed level. After the excitement upon the funding news waned, many people began to question the vagueness in the language of the Copenhagen Accord. Will the financial resources be delivered as promised?
In one of its briefings, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) pointed out that there are six significant questions that need to be addressed soon:
- What are the sources of funding? From public or private sources? Counting private funding creates potential double counting of current flow of foreign direct investment.
- Is it new and additional? Without this condition, many established sources for health care and education can be counted, effectively lowering the amount allocated only for climate change.
- Who decides? Who has the authority to make the final call regarding what country or project should receive the money is always an important question.
- Grants or loans? Apparently, grants would result in much more impact.
- How predictable? How consistent is disbursement of the fund?
- What channels? Local government? NGOs?
Those six questions if answered in a certain way can wipe out the effectiveness of the fund. The purpose behind rich countries providing the money would potentially be totally distorted in that case. It would possibly be more about diverting global pressure and criticism rather than helping mitigate climate change. As a result, global attention is still needed until all the above questions are answered in a positive way and until there is transparency in handling of the money.
This problem of vagueness in wording already emerged during the Bonn conference in late April. As the Guardian pointed out, many countries double-counted pledges and aid budgets in their climate change mitigation money. Technically, money used for aiding development should be separated from climate funding. The six questions above need urgent answers to prevent any further misappropriation and misinterpretation of the fund.
During the recent financial crisis, it was once again proven that transparency improved market condition by reinforcing investors’ confidence and, as a result, increased investment and liquidity in the market. Climate finance is a growing global market with participation from the public and private sector, much like the financial market. If this level of opacity sustains, it would be no surprise that there is not enough money in the market to channel to climate mitigation.
Tags: Bonn, Climate Finance, Luan Nguyen
As we began to digest what came out of Copenhagen, many felt disappointed that a legally binding agreement was not reached and started to look forward to COP16 in Cancun. However, up to this point there are not very high expectations for this round of negotiation which is happening in 6 months.
About a month ago, negotiators from countries that convened in Copenhagen last December met again in Bonn, Germany, to discuss how to connect the outcome of Copenhagen to the negotiation in Cancun. The frustratingly long procedure that we saw at the Bella Center in Copenhagen seemed to repeat itself here. Many countries are still in the mindset that they would be at an economic disadvantage if they spend a little bit more than other countries on climate change mitigation.
The difference between developed and developing countries is still there. Developing countries want to take into account historical responsibility while developed countries want to change the base year to a more reason year to cut even less GHG emission (such as the US, followed by Canada). Developed countries want an across-the-board policy while developing countries focus on cutting carbon intensity but not absolute amount to allow for their economic development (such as China).
According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), there were so much frustration that the number of informal meetings happening outside of Bonn processes increased. Norway and France, in one of those meetings, launched an interim REDD+ partnership in an attempt to expedite the progress on key issues outside of the UNFCCC process. The formal UNFCCC meeting itself, ironically, was more focused on the procedures for wording of the text for the agreement as well as discussion on how many more meetings would be needed before Cancun. Yvo de Boer (video of de Boer on the upcoming negation below), Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, was pessimistic, “I don’t think Cancun will provide the final outcome. I think Cancun can agree on an operational architecture but turning that into a treaty, if that is the decision, will take more time beyond Mexico. Matthew McDermott, a climate negotiation commentary, of Treehugger even suggested skipping COP16 to focus on the negotiation round in South Africa in 2011.
Following the climate change negotiation for me has been very frustrating. It has made me question everything from the efficiency of international negotiation, the advantages and disadvantages of democracy and the role of science in the society. Politics clearly is many years, even decades, behind science. On a more encouraging note, many countries, including the REDD+ partnership mentioned above, are ahead of the pact in climate change mitigation. Businesses in general are also moving more to cutting emissions levels. Politics still slacks behind.
Tags: Bonn, COP16, Luan Nguyen, Preliminary negotiations, REDD
“Yet the bill has no chance unless President Obama steps up. Mr. Obama pledged to “engage” with the Senate to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill “this year.” This was one of those ticket-punching statements that isn’t going to change any minds. What he should have said is that he is going to hammer on the Senate until it does what this country needs.” -NYT Editorial, May 14, 2010
The Kerry-Boxer climate bill has finally ”rolled” into the Senate for serious consideration. I’d like to think that the recent oil spill in the Gulf put enough pressure on elected officials to cut our dependence on fossil-fuels. I’d like to think that the bill will actually get through the Republican road blocks in the Senate. The fact is, time is running out for wishful thinking. President Obama and the EPA need to realize this, and assume leadership positions on this issue.
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon: the Washinton Post recently reported that the EPA is “moving forward with carbon regulation,” which could be used as leverage. Industry would rather have a fairly pro-industry climate bill, than strict EPA regulation, so they might ease up their lobbying campaigns. Whether this is optimal, I don’t know. I do know that some type of regulation is better than nothing at all.
As a closing personal note to all of my K2C blog posts, I would like to share how important this climate change issue has been to my understanding of the US public policy process. Next year I will be attending a master’s program in public policy, hopefully to learn more about navigating our policy maze.
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