Climate: a lost battle
While all of us wish that Copenhagen had succeeded, the economics of our times won’t let this happen

One of the most awaited global event came to a conclusion recently in Copenhagen. This was the first time I feel that human kind came together to discuss a common problem that affects each and everyone of us. Unlike issues like wars, poverty or such other manmade problems, the issue in discussion was not something that was being imposed by a section on the other. The issue of global warming (or global emission, either way you look at it) is an issue that affects both the imposer and the imposed in equal degree. In that sense, there are no inequalities amongst all the stakeholders. However, as the results of the meet prove, we are yet to achieve such consciousness.

The fact that Copenhagen 2009 (or COP 15 in short) was doomed to fail was almost eminent in advance from the various pre-meet developments (or rather, the lack of any developments). However, everyone went through the motions over the period, gathered in Copenhagen and finally emerged with a perfect dud of an understanding.

Consider this; 119 countries met together and what we have by the end of it is three pages!! Not all 119 members were part of this understanding, most only agreed to the ‘consensus’. It was not really ‘adopted’, only noted. It is only an ‘accord’, not even an ‘agreement’. But above all this, surely you would agree with me, that even for an accord on such a serious issue, three pages is surely too less. So what do we have in these three precious pages? Well, the first is almost spent on reiterating our ‘commitments’ to the issue of climate change. We agree that climate change is one of the biggest challenges we face today. Deep cuts in global emissions are required. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries. These three truisms form three paragraphs each that fill up almost one page!

Sarcasm aside, a cursory glance at the accord which the global leaders came up with will make it clear to anyone and everyone that we (as in humankind) are completely clueless about how to go about saving ourselves from the future catastrophe. The accord talks about the need to cut emissions, but has no idea about how to go about it. It talks of the need to take into account the adverse effects, but there is no understanding about how to do it. All it says is that scientists have proven that something needs to be done about the issue, but we diplomats and politicians (and policy makers in general) simply don’t know what to do.

There will be various interpretations about the failure of COP 15. I here attempt to give an economic interpretation of the failure.

As I had written in a previous article, the problem is that we do not have a credible alternative. Let us break down the whole issue as thus; global warming and all its associated problems are arising mainly from polluting emissions, mostly carbon based. These emissions are the result of our over dependence on carbon based fuels for various economic activities. These activities are the core of our development, wellbeing, daily lives; or any way you look at it. Reducing emissions thus essentially entails cutting down on such activities, or developing newer technologies that can replace the existing ones. In Cop 15, the negotiators met without any alternative technological solution in offer. The talks were thus limited to reducing economic activities, or at most tinkering with them such that they are marginally less polluting than they are today.

Reducing our economic activities is not something that any of us is willing to concede. This then forms the basis of the divide between developed and developing nations. The moment you bring in this factor, the notion of equal stakeholders (as stated in the first paragraph) is lost.

For developing nations, it is not just a matter of higher aspirations. Issues like poverty malnutrition etc cannot be addressed without raising economic activities, or exploiting natural resources. To top it all, this has to be achieved at the least cost for maximum benefit. This thus forces them to rely on carbon fuel based technologies as they are the cheapest till date. They were thus asking the developed world to cut its emissions, which are the highest as it is. For the developed world, much of the development it has achieved has to be sacrificed to achieve the emission cuts. Not only does this threaten their achieved level of development, it also forces them to face the uncomfortable problems that the developing nations are facing regarding poverty etc, something they have dealt with in the past and are in no mood to revisit. They were thus asking for emission cuts from all countries, which will not only help maintain their hierarchy (and one cannot deny this selfishness of the developed nation) but also ensure that the burden on them is considerably reduced.

Much talk is spent on the question of greener technologies. It is as if, a greener technology can help us avoid this catch 22 situation. I frankly do not share this optimism. Whatever little green technology that we have is not being shared as of now. Technology sharing was one of the prime demands from developing nations, and that has not been heeded to by their bigger counterparts. It is mentioned in the accord, but no concrete commitment has been made. All that has been offered is funds to developing nations, which I fear they will have to ‘spend’ to buy such green technologies from the developed nations. Much of the committed fund is for adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation refers to facing the ill effects of climate change like flashfloods, rising sea levels and other direct or indirect effects. The mitigation part has some reference to technology transfer, but the sense is more of seeking compensation for curtailing emission activities, to bridge the gap between current practices and ‘sustainable development’. Infact, much of the technology to be given by the developed nations is aimed at capacity building to implement the adaptation action of developing nations. There are almost no talks of sharing alternative energy based technologies for economic activities, maybe because the developed nations themselves do not have such technologies (which they themselves can adopt) or because they are not really ready to give up the technological advantage they have over developing nations. Much of the ‘success’ being touted about the accord is the amount of money the developing nations are committing to these purposes. The ‘collective commitment’ by developed nations is currently 30 billion dollar by 2012. In the context of ‘meaningful’ mitigation actions and ‘transparency of implementation’, they commit to jointly mobilising 100 billion dollars by 2020. Not only is this commitment subject to the above highlighted subjective parameters, there is no parity about how this fund is to be mobilised. Vague statements like “This funding will come from wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance” essentially mean that though the developed nation is committing to generating fund, no one is really very clear about who is going to pay, how it is going to be paid, and most importantly, no one is willing to be held accountable by 2020 for the same.

The avoidance of any accountability in the whole accord is another glaring factor which has been highlighted by most activists. Any commitment, be it financial an aid or emission cut is legally mandatory, accountable or binding. Since this accord is yet to be adopted, its mostly wishful thinking at this stage. The saddest part is that everybody is domestically bragging about not having made a binding commitment in the global forum, as the others were not ready concede. This is a classic Mexican stand off, like we see in so many Westerns. Unlike the movies, there are no clear cut heroes in this story and no possible winner either. We all collectively stand to lose, and probably will in the next Mexico round as well.