New voices…

by | Jun 27, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been blogging from the Chatham House conference – Climate Change: Politics versus Economics.

As the conference made clear, there is growing consensus about what a full-term solution to climate change would look like: concentrations kept below 450ppm or even a shade lower.

This target allows some fairly easy sums to be done. How much can we emit to keep below those limits? When will emissions need to peak? How far will they need to decline from this peak?

IPCC answers for these questions are a peak by 2015, with a decline of as much as 85% by 2050.

Add to that a professed commitment by leaders to get a deal on a post 2012 framework in place by 2009 – and you have a clear and demanding ‘signal from the future’.

That matters. It allows politicians to begin to understand the deal they will be required to make. It helps them build the alliances at home that will give them credibility on the world stage.

It also gives them an idea of the how much climate change is likely to happen – what level of risk they need to prepare for, how much resilience will be needed against future changes.

This is particularly important for developing countries. I firmly expect them to play a much bigger role in the climate change debate over the next year or so.

At the moment, the strongest voices on climate change (Merkel, for example) come from the developed world. More recently, the big emerging economies have become increasingly influential voices.

There is a line that says that that extends the circle far enough – 30 or so emitters make up 90% or so of global emissions. Why bother with countries that emit less than 1% of the world’s total?

The answer is that developing countries are important not because of their emissions, but because of they will bear the brunt of unchecked climate change.

Take people who already experience unforgiving climactic conditions and who have so few reserves that they live their lives on a knife edge. Add extra stress. The likely consequences are obvious…

That’s why I think we’ll soon see the emergence of new voices from the developing world, able to talk with real authority about why the big emitters need to act swiftly to curb their emissions. (more…)

Live blogging from Chatham House

by | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity

Back from a brief radio silence (me on honeymoon, David doing public diplomacy stuff in Nigeria), we’re off today and tomorrow to Chatham House‘s two day conference on climate change, from which we’re going to be live blogging.

We’re also jointly doing the wrap-up speaking slot at the end, during which we will attempt to sum up 2 days and 45 speakers in seven and a half minutes each… As Woody Allen once said:

“I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

Yeltsin’s wake

by | Apr 24, 2007 | Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks

This evening I went to see Yeltsin’s body lying in state at the Church of the Saviour in central Moscow. At first, I thought there wasn’t any queue at all, which would have been harsh but appropriate. But actually the police had lined up the queue on the other side of the church. It was big, but not that big. Maybe 500 people in the line at any one time, being constantly re-filled with new arrivals. The queue was just as big when I walked past again at 11pm. We only had to queue for 20 minutes or so before we were in, filing past his coffin with his pale pig-like face peaking out. A small crowd had gathered at the end of the church, some old ladies with tears in their eyes, but on the whole, this was a dry-eyed and reflective affair.

He oversaw such a painful and humiliating time in this country’s history. And for many, he was part of that humiliation, with his drunken tomfoolery on the international stage.

(more…)