2010: Intruders on a biodiverse year?
By Richard Black
In a somewhat dank and dreary London back garden, I’ve just been watching grey squirrels carrying off and eating bits of stale Christmas cake that we’d left out for them and the birds.
If we’d been quick enough with the camera, it would have made a fantastic picture, with the bushy-tailed squirrel perched on the back fence holding an impossibly big slice of cake in its paws.
But would it have qualified as a true nature picture – feeding by humans in an urban setting of an introduced species that has out-competed (and probably passed disease to) its local counterpart, the red squirrel, displacing it from the region?
It may be a somewhat boring question to ask given the visually charming vignette being played out – but it serves perhaps as a reminder that amid all the climate change clamour of the last few months, other issues of how the human hand is changing the natural world have not gone away.
The effects of cities and introduced species on nature are, in fact, a couple of strands that ought to feature prominently on these pages during 2010.
The UN system has declared it the International Year of Biodiversity – and the big political set-piece is October’s meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in Japan.
Eight years ago, governments set themselves the target of significantly curbing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. It’s a target that isn’t going to be met – that’s been clear for some time – but the October meeting will see ministers batting around some ideas on why it hasn’t been met, whether anything can be done about it, and whether a different kind of target is needed now.
We know the most important reason why biodiversity loss isn’t being curbed already: the expanding human footprint. But do governments have the capacity or the nerve to tackle issues such as the growth of the human population, the rate of resource consumption, the spread of agriculture, and so on – all (as some will see it) to save a few birds and trees?
If the Copenhagen climate summit had produced anything resembling a definitive conclusion, I would be confident about biodiversity loss assuming centre stage during 2010 – and not before time, many would argue.
As it is, I’m not sure whether it is destined once more to languish in the shadow of climate change. The bones of Copenhagen are going to be picked over during the next few months, that’s for sure; and as we go through the year, governments will have to decide whether they want to invest political capital once more in the idea of a negotiated, legally-binding treaty.
Given public statements on the issue, you might assume that many of them will find the heart, and that Mexico (the location for the next UN climate summit) will become as talked about during 2010 as Copenhagen was during 2009.
But as I wrote in my final post from Copenhagen, events there left many people absolutely stunned – and it is not clear whether the most important governments now want climate change to be dealt with in the forum of a UN convention.
Many “non-state actors”, though, surely do; and we’ll need to keep more of an eye than usual on the groups that make up what we usually refer to as “the environmental movement”. Copenhagen was a disaster for them – and how they respond, whether they step up the scale of direct action on climate change, and whether their capacity to lobby is changed in a recessionary world may all be “live” issues as 2010 speeds by.
The lack of appetite within some important governments for tackling climate change on a global basis also calls into question whether they will continue to back a global approach to curbing biodiversity loss.
What else can we look forward to over the next 12 months? Well, the story of the e-mail hack from the University of East Anglia (“Climategate” in some quarters) is definitely not played out yet, with investigations running and with the identity of the hacker(s) and any significant paymasters still to be revealed.
That’s one for any budding John le Carré to savour; and also one to watch in the context of the severely delayed cap-and-trade legislation now before the US Senate.
The conclusion of a two-year “peace process” within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) falls in the middle of the year, a process that could conceivably see agreement between vehemently opposed countries to regularise some of the practices that currently cause so much dispute.
Or will politics intervene? Will Japan’s budgetary review curb its Antarctic hunt, or will an end to Iceland’s whaling be made a condition of its probable EU accession?
In March, we’ll see a different battleground being prepared for the camps fighting over bluefin tuna, when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is due to consider whether stocks are so low that an international trade ban should be invoked.
It’ll probably be a bloody conflict, because once one commercially important fish species is made subject to a CITES ban, campaigners will be queuing up to protect others under the same convention – and some countries are adamant that such a precedent must not be set.
As far as UK domestic issues are concerned, 2010 is a key target year on waste. Under EU legislation, the amount of biodegradable waste going into landfill is supposed to have been cut by 25% from a 1995 baseline. The government reckons the country is more or less on course – we’ll see.
The year will also see the introduction of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, a cap-and-trade system that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from about 5,000 UK businesses and institutions not covered by the EU Emission Trading Scheme. It’ll be a challenge for some of the organisations involved; in the post-Copenhagen-non-agreement period, how enthusiastic are they likely to be?
A general election is looming – May is the bookies’ favourite; March a distant second.
Based on past experience, it seems unlikely that environmental concerns will become big election issues nationally, particularly as – on the surface – there’s not the breadth of a wind turbine’s blade between the major parties on climate change.
But you never know. The Tories have a powerful “climate-sceptical” contingent in their hinterland, while there are significant divides (for example on nuclear power) with the Lib Dems.
In wind-abundant Scotland, it seems likely that energy independence and methods of electricity generation will feature on party manifestos; while in Wales, the simmering row over culling badgers for bovine TB could become something of electoral significance.
For those of us immersed in environmental issues, as well as for anyone who likes to spend time following them, it looks like the antithesis of a quiet year ahead.
Better grab any slices of Christmas cake that remain while you can.
Best wishes from a white land
Just a quick note, today, to say “best wishes” to everyone about to celebrate Christmas or some other winter festival.
Here in London, it’s been refreshing (in more ways than one!) to see snow on the ground and kids out playing in it – a reminder of childhood days.
For me, it’s time to put the laptop away for a few days after the most intense reporting assignment I’ve ever had, and remember that there are other things in life besides the politics of climate change.
On that note, you’ll doubtless have seen that rumblings and recriminations about the outcome of COP15 go on apace – who’s to blame, how did it happen, etc. Roger Harrabin and I have contributed final analysis pieces for the BBC website, and you may also like to read Mark Lynas’s account from inside the negotiating room in the Guardian.
The climate beat is going to be a somewhat lonelier place next year following the retirement from news reporting (on the final day of the Copenhagen summit) of probably the finest correspondent on the issue in the English-speaking world, Andy Revkin of the New York Times. Here’s his account of why he’s stepping down and what he’s planning.
Not everything Andy has written pleased everybody – that goes with the territory. But as someone who broke a raft of stories during the Bush presidency, always set climate change in the context of other issues such as the growing human population, and regularly offered tantalising titbits of thought and analysis, he contributed to the understanding of climate change more than he probably realises – and his departure leaves a huge hole.
So best wishes to Andy – and best wishes to all of you too. The debates on this blog are almost always feisty, and sometimes phrases are used that I suspect wouldn’t be employed if you were all meeting face-to-face… but I hope that amid the harsh words, we do sometimes find sparklings of new insight.
Happy Christmas.
COP15: (No) Hopenhagen?
Everywhere you go in Copenhagen, you’re met with two kinds of advertising poster.
One sells lingerie, the morning walk to the railway station bringing a sequence of scarcely clad models smiling unfeasibly in the freezing morning air.
The other sells hope. “Hopenhagen” has been the city’s alternative name for the past fortnight, a campaigning city promoting its dream on banners, along with periodic exhortations to “seal the deal” and “bend the trend” (the trend of rising emissions, that is).
As the UN climate summit ends, the question is whether it brought the beginning of hope, or the end.
Depends on your point of view on climate change, of course. But for the thousands of campaigners here, the climate scientists, the delegations from small island states, what “hope” meant was clear; to secure a deal that would put our global society on course to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.
Not my phrase, that, but the key clause in the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) – agreed, lest we forget, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro way back in 1992.
The mandate to reach a new agreement here was agreed in Bali two years ago, after the last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appeared to convince governments that dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system was not being prevented.
Key commitments in Bali included:
“A shared vision for long-term co-operative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions.”
Did they get it? No. Reading behind national positions, disagreement about even the most basic measure – the size of temperature increase that countries would like to see – ranges from 1C to 3/4C
“Measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions… by all developed country parties.”
Did they get it? Yes, except for the US, where MRV is not yet flying – no change there.
“Nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country parties… in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner.”
No; unless “verifying” means “believing what a country tells you it is doing”.
“Improved access to adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources… and the provision of new and additional resources.”
Yes – kind of. There is money pledged, for sure, and a fund to run it.
Whether it’s “predictable and sustainable” is another matter. The short-term “fast-start” finance should be, as it’s mainly from the pockets of Japan, the EU and US; the longer-term stuff depends on mechanisms that don’t yet exist and might encounter political obstacles.
As you’d expect, leaders from EU countries and the developing world states that really don’t like this deal at all have been assuming rictus grins and telling us it’s a “good first step”.
Problem is, Bali was the “first step”; come to that, Rio was the “first step”.
Where we go from here isn’t clear at the moment; and even people who have followed this issue for years don’t have ready answers.
What appears to have happened is that the UN process was effectively ambushed by countries that perhaps don’t want there to be a UN process.
Which countries they might be doesn’t take a detective of Sherlock Holmes’ prowess to work out; look for ones that haven’t signed up to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or ratified the UN biodiversity convention, and another that does not on principle allow international oversight of anything.
Intriguingly, the morning after the deal was announced by White House press release, it wasn’t clear whether it counts as an agreement within the UN system or whether it lies outside.
If parties had adopted the deal, it would be a UN issue. But they didn’t, because there was no consensus; instead governments only decided to “take note” of the accord.
During their discussions afterwards, several delegations suggested this means it isn’t a UN agreement – and various UN officials gave different interpretations.
If it turns out not to be a UN agreement, then – at the extreme end of things – the UN climate convention could effectively be dead as the powerful world’s favoured instrument for controlling emissions.
A deal made at a UN summit would move outside, being a free-standing arrangement effectively decided by the 26 countries involved in the drafting.
It will mean that a select group of countries – the G20, or thereabouts – will basically decide what they want to do, and then do it.
That might sound like an extreme analysis, and perhaps it is; but in the last few years, climate pledges have been made in the G8, the Major Economies Forum and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (Apec) – all places where countries can say what they want with no pesky small states around to demand that they do more.
Don’t forget that there has been no real negotiation here on targets for developed nations. Sessions have been held, yes; but all developed countries set their own targets before they arrived, and stuck to them.
In principle, poor countries would lose from a transition away from the UNFCCC, because its mechanisms are supposed to bring them access to clean technology and money for forests and climate protection.
It’s hard to overstate the size of the mood change that’s occurred over the last few months – even over the last two days.
Approaching the summit, it appeared that pretty much all the countries wanted a new global climate deal under the UNFCCC umbrella. Politicians from many countries invested significant diplomatic effort to make it happen – apparently.
The concluding sequence of this much-hyped summit has left many observers and national delegations stunned.
Ministers and officials and scientists and campaigners and lobbyists who have dedicated huge swathes of the last year to making a tough deal happen watched aghast as Chinese and US leaders and their entourages flew in, took over the agenda and emerged with what was basically their own private deal, with leaders announcing it live on television before others realised it had happened.
Does Copenhagen, then, mark not the beginning of a new global climate regime but the end of the vision of global, negotiated climate governance?
Is it the end for the idea of global, negotiated governance on other environmental issues?
These are big questions that many never saw themselves having to ask in the Obama era.
In cafes and bars around (No) Hopenhagen, they’re being asked now.
(Source: BBC)
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