Decoding Durban: Deal or no Deal? Deal, for a Deal Later (Part 4)

The road to Qatar and beyond

We are now on a ‘climate mortgage’ to borrow from our future generations. The Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1990s was just the ‘deposit’. Kyoto II is an ‘instalment’ long overdue and the Durban deal is only part of it. The lack of quantitative emissions reduction targets year after year means that our ‘mortgage’ now is subject to ‘penalty’ or a higher ‘interest rate’ equivalent to 1-2% of the world’s GDP this year rising to 19% in 2030 (according to the EU’s report – “The Economics of Climate Change Adaptation in EU Coastal Areas”). The Durban deal this year left a lot of questions, including the extent of emissions reductions in the Kyoto Protocol’s extension period as well as the specific amounts and operation management of the Green Climate Fund, unanswered. There are, hence, numerous uncertainties looming over the carbon market and forest protection financing that are the world’s main drivers to a low-carbon economy.

Over the last two decades, international negotiations and cooperation relating to climate change is like another ‘invisible’ greenhouse gas. Its emission increases year by year. Not only does it impede transnational consensus building, but also is it allowing climate change to bring us a planet of irreversible catastrophes and ever higher yearly average temperature. Looking to the future, international climate negotiations will continue not to be painless. The reasons are:

(1) There are dynamic changes in the structure of the world’s economy and global emissions. As the emerging economies that benefit from rapid economic growth are to overshadow developed countries in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions, the attitude of developed countries towards negotiations is changing;

(2) In developed countries political and economic conflicts will continue to discourage state leaders from agreeing to any climate deal which may damage their vested interests. Party politics in the US, sovereign debt crisis in Europe and nuclear incident in Japan, for instance, do signify that politicians face huge resistance to a binding deal; and

(3) Governments are under hardly surmountable pressure in cutting emissions when there has not been a major breakthrough in low-carbon and zero-carbon technologies.

In Durban, the top three emitters eventually agreed to be bound on emissions reduction quantitatively from 2020. It is not only a responsibility to tackle environmental depletion undertaken, but also the benefits of their citizens promised. Reaching a legally binding climate treaty as soon as possible is also a ‘great expectation’ of a majority of developing countries, in particular the most vulnerable island states and underprivileged countries.

We aspire to prosper perpetually.  Yet, we will make this a can-do and should-do only within the limit that the earth affords to afford and carry with. That is, we will only avert environmental disasters to our future generations if economic development and GDP growth do not exceed carrying capacity of our nature and natural resources. It is what ‘sustainable development’ is about. The trouble is how we are going to face a changed Earth faithfully and pragmatically as well as how the politicians convince their people to alter their lifestyles and perceptions already established for living in balanced and harmonious ways along with the new climate patterns. Mere arguments on numbers round the table never solve the problem fundamentally and our climate rescue efforts will be doomed to failure. If an overarching global climate treaty which the developed countries have been seeking the developing ones to join have to be more than a slogan, world leaders must sometime soon make the decisions deferred in Durban. It remains to be seen if all countries will really deliver in Qatar what they promised in Durban. But the climate negotiations must no longer be ‘sustainable’ because the nature does not afford to wait as we do.

To read more chapters, look out for my book - Green Economics & Climate Change - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Climate-Change-Institute-Handbook/dp/1907543104/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1324409027&sr=8-6

Email me at winstonkm.mark@googlemail.com