by Alex Evans | Dec 20, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia
I spoke at a conference organised by the Institute for Environmental Security in Brussels earlier this week. (Here’s the speech I gave, which updates the argument from The Post-Kyoto Bidding War to take account of Bali – and in particular the US’s shift from arguing for no binding targets for anyone, to arguing that if developed countries have binding targets, then so should developing ones.)
The overall theme of the conference was ‘from Bali to Poznan’ – the latter being the place in Poland where next year’s UNFCCC gathering will be held. With this in mind, the organisers secured a presentation from Poland’s Ambassador to the EU. You might have thought that the Poles would want to rise to the occasion and capitalise on the post-Bali good cheer among Eurocrats. Not a bit of it: instead, we had a rambling discussion that was heavy on Poland’s impressive track record in energy efficiency but light on strategy.
As one of the other speakers at the conference later remarked, Poland is essentially emerging from a rather, well, crazy period. It needs to show other EU member states that it’s not just a big member state, but that it has big ideas as well. A good start to that enterprise might be to have some kind of narrative about why it wanted to host the halfway point conference on the road from Bali to Copenhagen. As things stand now, officials who work on climate change are quietly dreading the prospect of the Poles chairing the summit…
by Alex Evans | Dec 19, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
David and I are publishing a report today entitled “Climate Change: the State of the Debate“. It’s essentially intended to catalyse a deeper discussion about why climate change has become a big political issue; what’s driving awareness of it among diverse publics; whether climate change will stay high on the agenda; and how future perceptions of the issue might evolve. It does not try to set out definitive answers to these questions, but instead explores questions of who influences whom in the global conversation about climate change.
The report, published by CIC’s Climate Change and Global Public Goods program, forms part of the London Accord, a major climate change research initiative which launches today (Wednesday 19 December), and which involves organisations including ABN AMRO, Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, BP and the Corporation of London.
The paper begins with a survey of the history of public perceptions of climate change since 1900, arguing that these perceptions have much deeper roots than is often realised: Time magazine ran a cover story on the idea of a warming world as long ago as 1939, for instance. The history section also stresses that perceptions of climate change have always been subject to peaks of interest followed by subsequent declines, and a constant ebb-and-flow of public attention. Above all, the history of climate change shows that perceptions of the issue are by no means driven only – or even primarily – by facts, evidence and rational argument: images, narratives, relationships and values matter at least as much.
Section two of the paper looks at a sample of recent polling data in an attempt to discover whether perceptions of climate change really did reach a ‘tipping point’ during 2006, as many media commentators believe. While opinion polls do appear to show a global public consensus that climate change is real, urgent and driven at least in part by human activity, the perceptions of what needs to be done – and by whom – are much less clear-cut. As well as examining polling data, section two explores the findings of qualitative research methods, which suggest that instead of attempting to understand ‘public opinion’ about climate change, it is essential to realise that there are diverse publics involved in the issue – all with different ‘prisms’ or ‘frames’ through which evidence, facts, arguments and discussions are filtered.
The paper concludes that while climate change may have reached a tipping point of sorts in 2006 as far as perceptions of the problem are concerned, the same definitely cannot be said for perceptions of the solution. So far, we lack answers to fundamental questions such as which solutions will be favoured; who will back them and who will resist them; how much they will cost; and what benefits they are likely to deliver. As we argue, the direction of this debate will depend on how deep public concern is, and on whether what people ‘want’ (either consciously, or as expressed by their behaviour) in different countries diverges or converges.
So before any actor – whether government, investor or advocate – can seek to influence the climate debate effectively, it is essential to understand the drivers of that debate. For deal makers, knowledge and information about the politics of climate change is itself a global public good: the lack of clarity favours those who would prefer inaction. Here, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides a model. Just as the IPCC has informed and then stabilised the ‘problem debate’, so we now need a similar knowledge bank on the perceptions and politics that make up and drive the solutions debate.
We also conclude that governments and businesses face huge political and financial risks as they navigate the climate debate. At present, their actions are based on vague, and mostly intuitive, views of what is driving change. Many professionals assume they know more than they do, or that climate change is basically a scientific and technical problem. This view is mistaken – and now is an especially good time to correct it. The push for a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol is now beginning in earnest. This will place stress on existing beliefs, force apart current coalitions, and create the circumstances for new ones to be born. That’s why it’s now time to understand, study and track the state of the climate change debate.
by Alex Evans | Dec 12, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
I love it when FT columnists get all catty. Willem Buiter did a blog post about climate change, asking what’s the ideal temperature for the atmosphere, and since then debate has been unfolding in the comments (including yours truly). It was all very civilised. Friendly, even. Until “Dave” came in with a rebuttal of Buiter’s argument:
Was this supposed to be a ‘reducto ad absurdam’ critique of climate change sceptics? Well done.
Of course the change and the rate matters more than the temperature (within limits). We’ve built a complex and precarious civilisation that is dependent on agriculture and trade based on the current temperature.
Concern about this is not called ‘anthrocentric’ it’s called ‘humanist’.
Martin Wolf tried. He really did. But he just couldn’t help himself:
If people cannot get this sort of thing right, one begins to wonder about their other arguments.
Ooh. Watch and learn. Know what Martin calls that in his hood? The Senior Common Room smackdown. Get down wit your bad self.
by Alex Evans | Dec 7, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) have just launched a major three year programme to work with religions on climate change. Details:
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and ARC will manage the programme which involves major traditions in eleven of the world’s faiths drawing up seven-year plans of action to be launched in early 2009 at Windsor Castle, and to run through to 2016.
Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, Sikh and Zoroastrian leaders will each be invited to commit their faith and their followers to projects and programmes that will address climate change and the protection of the natural environment in practical ways – from forestry conservation to organic farming schemes to introducing, promoting and financing alternative energy sources.
“This is an extremely exciting development which will have a real and long lasting impact on the health of the environment and on people’s lives,” said ARC’s secretary general Martin Palmer, who is working as a co-chair on this programme with the UNDP’s deputy director Olav Kjorven.
Interesting factoid: religious faiths own more than 7% of habitable land on the planet (so ARC say, at least).
by Alex Evans | Dec 7, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, South Asia
FT Asia Editor Victor Mallett’s analysis piece on India yesterday is a worth a look. Scarcity issues are slowly assuming centre stage:
It is slowly dawning on Indian policymakers that the country’s much-trumpeted “demographic dividend” – the population surge that will increase the workforce to 800m by 2016 and make India the world’s most populous nation – may turn out to be more of a threat than an opportunity.
Who will create the jobs to absorb the net increase of 71m young people of working age over the next five years? Most are poorly educated and only a fraction will find regular work.
Who will feed them and supply them with water and fuel? India has 18 per cent of the world’s population but only 4 per cent of its fresh water and just over 2 per cent of its land area. Many of the country’s groundwater aquifers are already in critical condition. Available per capita water supply has declined since 1975 and water demand is set to exceed all usable sources of supply by 2050.
The bulge of young people today, furthermore, will in time become a bulge of pensioners in a country where only 11 per cent of the working-age population have formal pension arrangements. India will thus face the same problems of ageing and high dependency ratios as Japan and Europe today, only on a larger scale.
All six risks facing India identified by the WEF and the CII – inequality within a rising population, water shortages, high oil prices, global protectionism, climate change and infectious diseases – originate, at least in part, in the alarming growth of the Indian population.
