And now we wait…

Posted on December 12, 2015 by sara

Delegates and negotiators have worked around the clock for days (weeks, months, and years for some) to put together an agreement with prospects of being adopted. If everything goes according to plan, today, their efforts will come to fruition. COP21 President, Laurent Fabius, made an impassioned appeal this morning in support of the final text, urging delegates to set aside any remaining doubts and to approve this agreement for the good of mankind.

This afternoon the final version of the Paris Agreement was released. The plenary was originally set to reconvene at 3:45pm, after the delegates had time to review the new draft. But, in order to accommodate additional negotiation meetings, the plenary has now been rescheduled for 5:30pm. In the meantime, everyone is sitting in groups and circulating amongst constituents to review and discuss this historic document.

Photo courtesy of Catie Davis

Photo courtesy of Catie Davis

Photo courtesy of Catie Davis

The venue is practically vibrating with anticipation. Yet, at the same time, there is an anticlimactic feeling in the air. Because the event was officially scheduled to end yesterday, the vendors have all vacated, the NGOs and other advocacy organizations have abandoned their posts, and most of the civil society members are either traveling home or are participating in the demonstrations throughout Paris. Booths are being deconstructed, rooms are emptying, and even the water fountains have been turned off. All of the remaining energy in the building is going toward high-level political meetings that will determine whether this agreement thrives or fails.

Photo courtesy of Sara Barnowski

The mood in the observer hall rather accurately reflects my own personal feeling toward portions of the final version of the text. The agreement as a whole represents an historic shift in the global response to climate change. There are many ambitious provisions, and the Parties have done an admirable job compromising to create a workable agreement. For all those who have been lucky enough to be part of this process, it is a wonderful and exciting moment. However, the language related to the scale of developed countries’ financial commitment to climate change has been removed from the legally binding portion of the agreement, here, at the eleventh hour.

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Davidson

While the non-binding goal of the agreement calls upon the Parties to set a “new, collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year,” by 2025, the agreement itself only notes that, “mobilization of climate finance should represent a progression beyond previous efforts.” This organization leaves generic and ambiguous language in the heart of the agreement, and transitions the specific objectives to the unenforceable portion of the agreement. As someone who has focused on the finance components of this text for several months, this end result seems somewhat disappointing.

Nevertheless, this agreement does achieve many important goals and creates a framework to combat climate change that many did not think would be possible. All that is left is to wait for the Party representatives to approve it. As President Fabius noted this morning: “The world is holding its breath. It counts on all of us.”

COP21: The Gathering – What are we willing to trade?

Posted on December 11, 2015 by sara

From: http://images.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&source=imgres&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjX9dGQ-tTJAhXJXRoKHUt7AtIQ5RMIBDAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgeekspodcast.com%2F2010%2F04%2F29%2Fhow-i-organize-my-magic-the-gathering-cards%2F&usg=AFQjCNHGMS49fmEdu2avr5ZpqFpTLEfn6g

From: http://geekspodcast.com/2010/04/29/how-i-organize-my-magic-the-gathering-cards/

There are many analogies used to describe the climate negotiations, some of which – including fractals, webs, and dances – have been referenced right here on this blog. At this stage of the negotiations though, another metaphor comes to mind: that of trading card games. With the initial deadline for an agreement hours behind us, negotiators are making every effort to cobble together a robust outcome that will be approved by the Parties before the close of the week. At this phase, the foundation of the agreement is in place and global political leaders are negotiating the last remaining bracketed words and phrases.

This is not entirely dissimilar to trading card games, in which players build their decks over time, collecting cards that will serve particular purposes, and trading to create a final arrangement that will win the game. In Paris, negotiating groups continue advocating for particular measures, steadfastly insisting on their inclusion in the final deck. But to reach the finish line and present a substantial and effective climate agreement to the world, compromises must be made, trades brokered, and deals coordinated. And importantly, the trading cards being dealt here do not come in little foil packages, but represent language choices with grave impacts for real people across the world.

Photo courtesy of Rebecca Davidson

In the most recent version of the text, it is clear that Parties have reached some compromises, making informed sacrifices in order to preserve their most valued cards. Of particular note is how the language on finance has evolved over the last thirty-two hours. Financial obligations are addressed under Article 6 of the agreement, and since the previous version of the text on December 9th, the vast majority of the uncertainty has been removed from the language. Only a few lonely brackets remain, indicating that parties have worked furiously to resolve much of the underlying disagreement.

From: http://www.thenational.ae (Vesela Todorova)

While trade-offs are apparent throughout the text, the give-and-take strategies are particularly notable when developed and developing countries try to reach agreement around financing. For example, some large developed countries insist that they will not agree to new, legally binding financial obligations. Simultaneously, some developing countries insist that they will not agree to a system that saddles all parties equally with the financial burden for climate change. Many of the outstanding challenges similarly relate to notions of differentiation of responsibility and ambition.

A potentially underappreciated trade occurred in reconciling Paragraphs Five and Six in the most recent text. Developing countries lost an important component of their deck when dedicated funding for loss and damage was omitted. The earlier version of the text had obligated developed countries to ensure adequate financial support for the International Mechanism to address Loss and Damage, and to promote and support financing for irreversible damage from climate change. This paragraph no longer exists in the draft text.

However, developed parties offered a trade by including vital language related to the scale of financing to be provided. Paragraph Five in the current text calls for consideration of the priorities and needs of developing countries, with a focus on public, grant-based resources for adaptation. This represented a valuable trade for developing countries because, even without the loss and damage funding, this section prioritizes adaptation projects in developing countries when allocating grants and public funding, which are highly sought-after.

These are the types of deals that must be finalized amongst 196 parties before Sunday morning. It will be fascinating to track the outcomes of these trades in the final agreement.

California Leads Subnationals in Setting a High Bar for COP21 Negotiators

Posted on December 10, 2015 by sara

Mary Nichols, Chair of the CA Air Resources Board presents to UCLA & Vermont Law Students (Photo courtesy of Tracy Bach)

The VLS delegation had the privilege yesterday to attend an intimate presentation given by Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board, and Ken Alex, the Director of the Governor Jerry Brown’s Office of Planning and Research. Mary and Ken candidly addressed a group of professional students and professors from UCLA and Vermont Law School while a documentary crew followed Mary’s every move and captured the group’s reaction.

These representatives of the California state government offer a surprisingly powerful presence at COP21. The commitments and strategies of subnational groups have been a major topic of conversation this week since these groups, including U.S. states, represent key stakeholders in the movement to address climate change. According to some sources, “in order to keep global temperatures from rising 2˚C by 2050, the world needs to cut 8 to 10 gigatonnes of carbon emissions by 2020.” Our mitigation goal will be even higher if the negotiators ultimately agree on maintaining temperature rise at or below 1.5˚C. Yet, the U.N. Environmental Program reports that agreements between subnational governments to reduce emissions could prevent 3 gigatonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere by 2020. Cooperation and ambition amongst subnationals is therefore crucial to reaching our COP21 goals.

Governor Brown speaks for subnationals (From: the Office of Governor Brown)

California is a particularly important piece of the puzzle. According to Ken Alex, the state represents 1.3% of global emissions and has a larger economy than 188 of the 195 countries that have ratified the UNFCCC. The state therefore has a large role to play, and so far, it has exceeded expectations. California is leading a group of more than 123 subnational jurisdictions (including Vermont), which represent $9.9 trillion in GDP and 720 million people, in pursuing more ambitious goals than those identified in the anticipated Paris Outcome. This group of signatories to the Under 2 MOU is aiming to reduce emissions 80 to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050, or to achieve a two tons per capita CO2 emissions limit.

Under Governor Brown and Mary Nichols’ leadership, California is making progress toward addressing these goals. The California cap and trade scheme is gaining traction, partnering with Quebec and, hopefully soon, with other states. The state is also the only one in the country allowed to implement its own, more rigorous, mobile air emissions standards. These standards have subsequently been adopted in other international cities, including in Beijing.

Governor Brown and former Governor Schwarzenegger meet to discuss climate change. (From: LA Times & Christophe Petit Tesson / EPA)

To promote California’s progress and inspire other global leaders, several California representatives have presented at COP21 over the last several days. Governor Jerry Brown welcomed new signatories to the Under 2 MOU in the German Pavilion at Le Bourget. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke on behalf of Austria at the beginning of the week, and later conducted meetings with the current governor of California. Other state representatives, like Mary Nichols, are also participating in discussions throughout the event, including in a session dedicated entirely to California at the U.S. Pavilion.

We will continue to track the inspiring action of subnationals throughout the event, particularly those of U.S. states like California and Vermont.

Caught on the Front Lines of Climate Change

Posted on December 8, 2015 by sara

In an event hosted today by WOCAN (Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management), six inspiring women shared their stories of community, loss, and leadership. The panel was comprised of women from diverse and remote regions of the world, including a Native American of the Ponca Nation, a representative from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a Quechua-speaking native of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and several leaders of global non-profit organizations. All of these women came to COP21 with the same message: the voices of women and indigenous peoples are essential to effectively addressing climate change.

Panelists at today’s event, Global Women & Indigenous Peoples on the Frontline of Climate Solutions: Forests & Renewable Energy

Each of the panelists shared shockingly similar stories of their lives and their communities, highlighting their plight against the effects of climate change. Most indigenous communities contribute very little to climate change, yet feel the effects far more profoundly than the rest of the world. Women also face disproportionate impacts from climate change, indicating that this group had tremendous insight to offer from both perspectives. They had faced the direct impacts of climate change and had established innovative methods of addressing the associated problems. In the case of the Ponca Nation and the Amazonian natives, both groups are actively opposing resource extraction in their sacred ancestral lands. Women in Colombia are reclaiming land for traditional agricultural practices after years of protests allowed them to begin saving seeds again. Women in the DRC are creating carbon negative local economies by planting trees. By organizing their communities and utilizing traditional and institutional knowledge, they are developing robust, local solutions to climate change.

Nevertheless, a Paris agreement may not address these groups’ needs or their suggestions. There are currently four binding sections of the agreement that reference gender equality or the rights of indigenous people, and two of those references are bracketed. This means that the rights of indigenous people and women may not be adequately addressed in two important parts of the agreement (purpose and finance). Hopefully, this panel discussion, along with the other events associated with Gender Day, will encourage the negotiators to avoid this absurd result.

It’s All About the Benjamins: Ratcheting Up Financial Support for Developing Countries

Posted on December 7, 2015 by sara

In 2009 Parties to COP15 in Copenhagen agreed to a global goal of mobilizing $100B (that’s right, billion) per year for climate finance by 2020. A recent OECD report indicated that we are well on our way to achieving that goal (with $62B committed in 2014). Unfortunately though, $100B may not even be enough to keep global temperature rise between 1.5˚C and 2˚C. For this reason, much of the discussion at COP21 has centered on the scale of climate finance. Exactly how much additional funding will be necessary? For now, the answer seems to be “more.”

In response to this need, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), one of the entities responsible for providing climate finance under the UNFCCC, announced a new initiative today: the Climate Aggregation Platform (CAP). The GEF will seed CAP with $2M, which is expected to catalyze over $100M in co-financing from other partners, including from the Inter-American Development Bank.

CAP is just one piece of an ongoing effort by all global actors to increase access to climate financing from a variety of sources. The draft Paris Outcome places an emphasis on the use of public funds, but also acknowledges the role that private finance will play in addressing climate change. Private investors, which currently comprise about 25% of global climate investment, typically offer loans rather than grants. This means that the investors expect to make their money back over time. Therefore, to entice private

Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson, Global Environment Facility

investors to promote clean energy in developing countries, there must be some indication that the project represents a sound investment. CAP aims to help facilitate these types of robust investment opportunities.

First, CAP will establish a global working group to provide key finance and industry stakeholders with transparent access to, and coordination of, climate-related projects in developing countries. CAP will also promote project standardization, with the goal of creating uniform contracts and repayment plans. Finally, CAP will develop in-country demonstration projects and provide technical support for other pilot transactions. These actions will serve to increase the number of qualified projects, creating a scalable pipeline of clean energy investments.

Establishing a streamlined framework for project development has two major benefits: It increases the penetration of clean energy technologies in the developing world, thereby serving climate change goals. It also allows investors to aggregate a large number of projects, thereby reducing the financial risk. In the same way that insurance companies profit by insuring large groups of people with a variety of health risks, climate investors will be more successful if they invest in large numbers of projects with a variety of risk profiles. As your financial planner will tell you, a diverse portfolio is generally a strong portfolio.

And confidence is high that, if we build it, they will come. Since the financial crisis of 2008, there is a significant appetite for impact investments, which are transparent investments in projects that have demonstrated social benefits. Many institutional investors, along with independently wealthy individuals, are actively seeking investments like clean energy projects in the developing world. There is approximately $46B in impact investment already under management, and that number is on the rise. Leveraging a small amount of public money has been shown to catalyze additional private investment in these types of projects. Some studies indicate that $1 of public funding can attract $20 of private funding. Just last week, Bill Gates alone pledged to contribute $1B in seed capital to potentially transformative energy systems with “near zero carbon emissions.” And he’s getting his friends to pitch in too.

Developing programs like CAP that foster a strong market for investment in climate-friendly projects is one of the most important things that come from COP21.

The Role of Gender in Climate Politics

Posted on October 31, 2015 by sara

Climate change is proven – the vast majority of the scientific community, along with many major businesses and nearly every major insurance provider, all agree that climate change is having real impacts on the world today. Most also believe that those impacts are the result of anthropogenic activity. However, the facts about climate change are not being translated into political action. This is in large part because the facts are not driving the discussion.

Despite the fact that the latest IPCC report states that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” and that “human influence on the climate system is clear,” somehow 18% of the US population still does not believe global warming is occurring, and 35% does not believe that it is caused by human activity. Even worse, the 114th Congress includes 162 climate deniers (approximately 30% of Congress) with only eight states represented exclusively by individuals who believe that addressing climate change is a priority.

Sen. James Inhofe

Who are all of these climate deniers? Many Americans, if asked to picture a climate denier, would likely picture a figure like Rush Limbaugh or Senator James Inhofe. It turns out that there is more to this assumption than mere stereotyping. Several studies have been published over the past five years, building on existing bodies of research, which all indicate that climate skeptics are most likely to be white, conservative men. I took a closer look at three psychology and sociology studies from three different continents, all of which came to this same conclusion.

A study out of Cardiff University indicated that men are more skeptical of climate change than women, and that “political affiliation is a strong determinant of skepticism, with Conservative voters amongst the most skeptical.” An American study out of Michigan State University was one of the first to explicitly categorize “conservative white males” as the most skeptical of climate change. This study went a step further to analyze conservative white men who self-reported an above average understanding of global warming (considered “confident conservative white men”). By isolating these individuals, the study found that 48.4% of confident conservative white men believe the effects of global warming will never happen, compared to only 8.6% of all other respondents. Additionally, it found that while 71.6% of confident conservative white men believed that recent temperature increases are not primarily due to human activities, only 34.2% of all other respondents feel that way. Finally, a 2015 study published in the New Zealand Journal of Psychology supported and extended the “conservative white male” effect based on a sample of over 6,000 New Zealanders. This study confirmed that conservative white males (along with older individuals with high levels of socioeconomic status and less education) are disproportionately more likely to be skeptical of the reality of climate change and its anthropogenic cause.

These studies essentially just prove what most of us already knew or assumed. But the impact of the “conservative white man” syndrome is significant. Not only do the studies provide scientific evidence that conservative white men are the least likely to take action on climate change, it also indicates that “beliefs about climate change are fundamentally linked to existing values and worldviews,” and “are not a result of knowledge deficit or misunderstanding.” In other words, they are also least likely to be swayed by the overwhelming scientific consensus or by the urgency of environmental advocates.

Ms. Usha Nair, representative of the global south and current Co-Focal Point of the Women and Gender Constituency stakeholder group

None of this would matter so much if it were not for the fact that political decisions related to climate change are predominantly made by men. The UNFCCC Conference of the Parties is actually mandated to “improve the participation of women in bodies established under the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol.” However, progress is slow, and the involvement of women in recent Conferences of the Parties has been limited. Women only represented 36% of the Party delegates to COP20 last year, and only represented 26% of the heads of Party delegations. This year, women represent only 25% of the members of constituted bodies (which is a ~3% decline from last year) and represent only 23% of the regional groups and other Party groupings.

Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and other Senate republicans

Even if we give the benefit of the doubt to the Conference of the Parties and assume that the participants in the process are all committed to combating climate change, any international agreement that the Parties sign must still be approved by two thirds of the United States Senate for it to become legally binding on the U.S. (although there are alternative mechanisms for the country to deposit its “instrument of ratification” with the UNFCCC). At least one source indicates that 32% of the current Senators are climate deniers, creating a very narrow margin for the 66% approval of any international climate change agreement. The fact that the whole of the U.S. Senate is currently 54% republican, 94% white, and 80% male does not lend hope to the cause.

Now, none of this is to say that every climate denier is a conservative white male, nor is it to say that all conservative white males are climate deniers. It is my ardent hope that the current United States senators (republican, democrat, Caucasian, minority, male, and female alike) will vote to approve the agreement reached at Paris this year. But if they do not, it might be an additional incentive to diversify our elected officials.

Riding the Wave of Divestment

Posted on October 7, 2015 by sara

Divestment is essentially the opposite of investment. The climate action group gofossilfree.org describes it as “getting rid of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous.” Generally speaking, institutions divest when they stop financially supporting specific entities because of the means by which those entities generate revenue. Divestment has been used as an advocacy device for many years, as a means of tackling the tobacco industry, sweat shops, and even apartheid in South Africa.

Divestment of fossil fuels began in 2012 with Bill McKibben’s climate change movement 350.org. Since launching this campaign against traditional fossil fuels, hundreds of organizations – beginning with universities and faith-based organizations, and expanding to municipalities, pension funds, and foundations – have committed to divesting from fossil fuels. In the last month the movement has reached a landmark $2.6 trillion divested. According to one study, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries, together representing $2.6 trillion in assets, have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.

Many types of investors have embraced fossil fuel divestment, both on the institutional and the individual level. High profile individuals have been particularly active in the divestment from fossil fuels. Specifically, actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo have led the movement to cease investments in traditional fossil fuel companies. Their announcements have served as a means to show legislatures and CEOs alike that United States citizens are taking climate change seriously.

Rather than these red carpet personalities, universities have traditionally been at the forefront of divestiture movements. We continue this trend in Vermont, with many colleges and universities (including VLS) committing resources to exploring divestment opportunities. This has been an important method of expressing students’ and citizens’ dissatisfaction with traditional energy investments. It has also lent support to Vermont’s support of broader energy and climate change goals.

Some studies show that divestiture is not actually effective as an economic driver because it does not force major fossil fuel companies out of business or necessarily compel them to change their practices. Nevertheless, divestment may, in fact, be a smart financial decision, since other recent reports have warned of the negative financial consequences of holding large portfolios of fossil fuels. Additionally, it can have an important impact in terms of shaping national discourse. By bringing climate change issues into the media spotlight, the divestment movement helps to put pressure on the negotiating parties at COP21 in December.