All posts in COP17

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

What’s health got to do with it?

by Graham Reeder

So how are climate change and health connected anyway? I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to mind when I used to think about climate change is arctic sea ice and major industry polluting. As I’ve developed a stronger interest in public health issues over the last couple of years, the human ecologist in me has driven me to make connections between climate change, social justice, and health. And guess what…I’m not alone. The wonderful thing about COPs is that if you’re passionate about an issue that relates to climate change in any way, you’ll probably find a group of people here who engage in it as well.

This year’s COP has actually been a big one for climate and health; Sunday saw a whole side conference on health and climate change and there have been many side-events and meetings about making that link. Unfortunately, my work following the adaptation negotiations has meant that I haven’t been able to go to most of those things, but I’ve had a number of great conversations with some of the people working on the issues.

Climate change has major impacts on health issues which vary from region to region. One helpful way to categorise our thinking about this is to think about extreme weather events and slow-onset events. Extreme weather events are things like hurricanes, floods, heat waves and drought, all of which are linked to climate change (See IPCC fourth assessment report working group II). What most of these events do is exacerbate existing health problems; when disaster strikes, it is consistently the least resilient who suffer most. This is because they have less access to preventative health care, emergency services, can be already suffering from some other under treated health issue, or are literally living in more dangerous locations (low-lying areas, along eroding coastlines, in urban hot-spots, etc…) All of these conditions make extreme weather events a serious concern for health. This is not to say that only the poorer countries of the world are affected, I don’t think I have to remind anyone that the heat-waves in Europe and Hurricane Katrina were a perfectly good reminder that inequality in resilience and access to services is ever-present in even the richest nations.

In terms of slow-onset events, media and international attention has a tougher time picking up the story. One might call it easy to gain wide readership of a front-page story about floods in Bangladesh that have killed thousands and cost up to 20 million USD over the last two years, but in a world where attention span is adjusted to twitter and everything is urgent, it can be much more difficult to expose the impacts of changing vectors on malaria patterns in sub-Saharan Africa or glacial melting causing water-access issues in Latin America, and of course the looming sea level rise issue that has low-level urban areas quivering in their boots. These long-term impacts will have catastrophic impacts on health unless serious work is undertaken pre-emptively to build resilience and strengthen communities’ ability to cope. I say cope because given what I’ve seen from the UN on adaptation policy progress, coping is the best we can hope for.  Some other climate related slow-onset events that are going to have major health impacts are ocean acidification, desertification, changes in salt-water/freshwater distribution, loss of traditional medicinal species, a major decrease in agricultural productivity, forest degradation, erosion due to changing rainfall, and mass migration due to environments becoming uninhabitable. I’ll touch on the migration piece in a future blog post, but all of these impacts have colossal health ramifications that most of the world’s infrastructures are completely unprepared to deal with. We have wasted so much time fighting about whether or not climate change is real and who should do something about it that it is coming around to knock us over from behind.

In short, the connection between climate change and health is a crucial one. Given the current ambition levels on the table and the likelihood of anything changing soon, it looks like we’re in for a whole lot of warming, and a proactive health/resilience centered approach is the only chance of dealing with this kind of catastrophe.

On a policy note, the most recent AWG-LCA (Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action) text has an addendum with, among other things, sections on building resilience; poverty and inequality; protecting and promoting human health; gender; territory, mobility, and urban development; and migrants. Most of the text in these sections involves looking into things and further investigating them rather than acting on the knowledge that is already there, but seeing this language in a text like this is a little bit refreshing. There is supposedly a new text coming out tonight or tomorrow, only time will tell if any of those sections remain.

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

Photos!

Posted:
December 6, 2011
Author:
COA Students

Inspired by the Inspired

by Devin Altobello

I decided that to tackle a story about problem-solving climate change, it would be suitable to use the voices of my peers as narrators. Policy savvy and driven to understand and affect the system, UNFCCC, my peers make for dynamic subjects.

The global youth are demanding a paradigm shift that disrupts conventions of Wall Street thought. Being part of the youth constituency myself, I’m attracted to playing the game, tapping into the power of a united voice.

On November 28th COP 17 began and since then the gears have been set in constant motion for many of us. Two days earlier our delegation launched into COY, Conference of the Youth, a gathering designed to prepare young people to appropriately engage at COP. I was feeling directionless and overwhelmed by the scale of activity and energy, all the while knowing that the pace would soon quicken.

We are now more than half way through COP 17. There are four and a half days remaining with an anticipated substantive outcome. I have recorded actions, rallies, press briefings and delegation meetings. My goal for the next four days is to record commentary from young people explaining what they perceive and predict is happening in the negotiating space. I also intend to wake up at the crack of dawn to capture the Durban cityscape at golden-hour.

Posted:
December 5, 2011
Author:
COA Students

China Syndrome

by Nathan Thanki

With the dirty details of week one out of the way, COP17 is changing gears into the high-level segment. Heads of State are coming to town, security is ramped up (execpt at our hostel) and the drone of talks about an outcome  becomes louder and more persistent. A lot off that buzz is around a Durban deal, the so called “Durban Mandate.” Most of the noise is around whether or not the BASIC countries – Brazil, South Africa, India, and China – will sign up to a deal that legally obliges them (and perhaps many other developing countries other than LDCs) to reduce their emissions. The questions that journalists and some major NGOs are fumbling around with are “will China sign in order to secure further commitments from annex-1 Parties?” and “what will it take for them to do that?”

China, as the world’s largest overall emitter, is sensing that the onslaught is about to start. With the wounds of the global backlash from Copenhagen (where China took a media crucifixion for not signing up to a ‘suicide pact’ ) still fresh, Chinese authorities decided that this weekend was the perfect time to set the record straight on what their official position is. I was lucky enough to gain access to the China pavilion Sunday morning to hear the Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua  field some questions.

The general buzz yielded the expected questions such as: what are China’s expectations in general, on the Kyoto Protocol, does China support a legal outcome from the Bali Action Plan (BAP), and what are the conditions for China signing up to the mandate?

Xie sat by himself, unaided by staff or papers, and answered in depth on each point. Regarding expectations, China is quite clear that as the first commitment period of Kyoto (KP-1) comes to a well publicised end here, we must move on to the second (KP-2). As Africa group have pointed out as well in their press brief today, the fact that annex-1 Parties ratified the KP implies they will sign on to KP-2. A KP-2 must be an outcome: it’s the only legal treaty, and it uses the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, and equity. Everyone keeps saying we cannot bury KP at Durban, and they’re right. We’d have to bury the entire regime too. The transition between the two commitment periods has to be seamless: there can’t be a gap where developed countries can pollute all they want.

The idea of China signing up to emissions reductions (in an obligatory way–they already have ambitious reductions in their 5 year plan) is contingent on the results of KP. China is also calling for a simultaneous review of the implementation of KP-1. How well did the developed countries do in meeting their promises (it’s not a trick question – the answer is the obvious: terribly!) and what does that then imply for KP-2, and long term cooperative action? As China see it, the issue of KP-2 is an issue of testing political trust. How can they trust the developed countries to actually reduce emissions in a non-legal treaty, given that they failed to do it even in a legal one. More to the point maybe, how can they trust that the USA (who notoriously pulled out of KP) will ratify the new mandate?

A deal is expected, yes, but not a perfect one.  Rather, China expects a deal that can be signed and can be implemented.

Annex-1 countries like to point out that developing countries now account for over half the world’s emissions, and that they therefore must be included in new legal arrangements to reduce emissions. But under the Convention, developing counties have commitments – 1bii. And so far, it is developing countries who are showing they have committed to comparable reductions. Annex-1 countries have not shown the same honour.

However, even given that, China recognises that it must curb emissions. So the willingness is there – it’s a matter of the details (which is more than can be said of the US). China have indicated that the new legal outcome should be from the LCA, as mandated by BAP. They also have some conditions. One, the aforementioned review of KP-1. Two, a KP-2 that is separate and not contingent on a new mandate (as opposed to EU’s proposal). Three, progress in institutionalizing mechanisms under the areas of finance, tech transfer, adaptation, and capacity building. These ‘conditions’ are not new or unfounded, but based on 20 years negotiating.

The USA is trying to maintain its hegemonic power, so it must do all it can to trip up and smother it’s rivals. Stuck in a competitive rather than cooperative worldview, the States are playing a risky game with our planet’s atmosphere for the sake of trade flows and bragging rights. However, the recent developments in regard to China’s willingness to play ball could make things difficult for it’s neighbour and BASIC (sort-of) ally: India. With a similarly sized population–and large overall emissions–India looks set to come under fire from the media and governments of the developed world. One can already imagine the India bashing headlines of the tabloids. Are they ready?

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