Credits: David Buckland, Ice Texts, 2004–2005

Imagine an eclectic group of artists, writers, and musicians. Imagine a group of scientists and professionals whose work is rooted in the latest climate science. Imagine a passionate group of communicators, educators, journalists, and media specialists. Imagine a boat, and a strong idea: climate is culture. You are imagining the Cape Farewell project.
In 2001 artist David Buckland created the Cape Farewell project to promote a cultural response to climate change. The original concept was about bringing artists, scientists, and communicators together to stimulate the production of art grounded on scientific research.
Cape Farewell asks the top creative minds of our time to address the complex issue of climate change and climate change communication in order to innovate and shape an inspired language to convey the urgency of climate challenges and build a vision for a sustainable development.

From 2003 onwards, Cape Farewell has led eight expeditions to the Arctic, one to the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon, and one to the Scottish Western Isles, taking artists, scientists, educators, and communicators to experience the effects of climate change on a personal basis. Over 140 artists, among whom novelist Ian McEwan, poet, playwright and novelist Nick Drake, choreographer Siobhan Davies and of course David Buckland – the artist and film–maker who founded the project and now directs it, have voyaged with Cape Farewell, engaging with more than 45 scientists. They sailed to the hotspots of climate change aboard the Noorderlicht (Northern Lights) schooner to promote public awareness and engagement, with artists asked to explore their human responses.  These expeditions resulted in an extraordinary collection of artworks, exhibitions, books, videos, films and education programmes. Artists involved in the project have also been the subject of a film and a BBC documentary.

As David Buckland often points out, climate change is now a human-caused reality, threating the planet and future generations. That is, the solution to this potentially devastating reality has become a cultural experiment and necessity David Buckland has highlighted this idea once more in the article Climate is culture recently published in Nature Climate Change. Talking about the Cape Farewell project and its evolution over the years, he underlines the new challenges (especially communicative ones) we have to face and explains why climate change is truly a cultural challenge. ClimateScience&Policy had a conversation with Buckland to find out why we should currently accept that climate is culture.

Ackroyd & Harvey, Ice Lens, 2005 - Courtesy by {link:http://www.capefarewell.com} Cape Farewell{/link}

CLISP – You started the Cape Farewell project in 2001. How did the idea first come up?

David Buckland - At first it was all about climate models; those huge mathematical models used to foresee the future fascinated me. As an artist, I found the possibility of predicting the future quite intriguing. I went to visit the Met Office Hadley Centre one of the UK’s top climate change research centres – to engage with climate scientists and understand climate change and its related effects.
They gave me all the kind of information on anthropogenic climate change that we are currently very aware of. It was very clear that they already knew about this stuff twenty years ago! They told me what was happening, the media and public opinion were not understanding the situation at all; there was no awareness about climate change and its related effects being a big trouble for all of us. It might be unsurprising that scientists have been the first to report the evidence of global warming and to urge society to face it. Unfortunately this emergency and global priority was not communicated successfully enough to provoke a cultural shift and a significant societal change. Perhaps the problem lay in the language used to communicate climate change related issues; scientists and the general audience seemed to speak in languages that were very apart from each other. Scientists speak in data, numbers, and graphs; in a way that it’s quite difficult to understand for the general public and that it’s quite different from the kind of information the media are looking for. Maybe we need to reinvent a language.

I started Cape Farewell in 2001 with the idea to put together the best artists, writers, and scientists (especially scientists involved in climate change research like oceanographers, climatologists, geologists, physical scientists, etc.), on a boat sailing to the Artic. The idea was to get scientists and artists in a conversation about climate change. Our primary goal was to encourage artists to create an original and innovative language of climate change powerful enough to engage the audience. And indeed, that’s what they did!

After visiting the melting Artic ice, they came back and told their personal experience of climate change with films, novels, editorials, and more; they reported what was observed during the Cape Farewell voyage. That is, they talked about the issue not in science but in emotional terms, trying to describe what was happening to our climate through their personal point of view and cultural sensibility. They told people that climate change is a reality and a problem we all have to face. I think that the wide range of materials they’ve come up with– such as artworks, books, documentaries and exhibitions– is the best evidence to the success of this innovative and multidisciplinary project.

CLISP – What does “cultural response to climate change” mean?

DB – Scientists have been giving information about climate change for over twenty years. They have done a brilliant job, but scientists do not cause climate change. So, what does it? At the end of the day, it’s the way we live that it is causing the problem; we have devoted ourselves to a lifestyle that actually it is not sustainable for the planet. Climate change is not a scientific responsibility; it’s a cultural one. In that sense climate is culture; culture is actually affecting climate change, and if you really want to find the solution to the problem, you need to foster a cultural shift in societies. When I say culture I mean a lot of things; politics, economy, systems of values are all about and related to culture. Everything society is based on is about culture. Our model of progress based on fossil fuels is not sustainable anymore: it’s up to us to change our cultural values and to find reliable solutions.

2010 Artic Expedition: Svalbard - Courtesy by {link:http://www.capefarewell.com} Cape Farewell{/link}

CLISP – To leverage the arts as a primary vehicle for climate change communication is quite provocative. Are the arts the most appropriate mode to talk about the issue?

DB – Well, I don’t think that art is the primary mode to communicate climate change; scientists and politicians are central to this, and museology for example is another important way of communication. What is peculiar to the art is that the message that comes from the artistic world uses an emotional, popular language. So, people respond to it.
We make the key decisions in our lives based on emotional bases, we fall in love, decide to breed, choose places of habitat. Maybe we have lost our complexity of emotional knowledge; we need to understand the world more and with more sophistication on an emotive basis, which is the way an artist articulates his or her involvement with the world. Each of us has been profoundly moved by a work of art, a book, film, music, painting and once absorbed we inhabit this knowledge and it informs us.

CLISP – You said that one of the main drivers for Cape Farewell was engaging with the media. How are you doing that?

DB – Well, it’s not every day that a group of artists and scientists organize a scientific expedition to the high Artic, the place that is most challenged by climate change. It is clear that the event itself is news to be reported by the media. Perhaps we have the opportunity, even more than the conventional approaches (say journalism) to tell stories. Stories are the strongest way to inform and to foster a cultural shift. And art easily deals with stories because it’s personal: when you read a scientific report saying that Artic ice is melting, or asked to consider a temperature rise of 2°C, it might be difficult for you to engage with it emotionally. But if an artist goes to the high Artic and creates something out of their experience, then you have a story.
The most-informed amongst us – scientists, activists, common citizens – are well aware of the risks due to climate change; we know very well that a change of values and models of development is necessary, that a cultural shift needs to happen. If a cultural shift is required, there’s no one best suited for the role than an expert in managing culture, no one better than the artist.
I think that international finance and economy are unfortunately still quite indifferent to the climate challenge. We are destroying our planet, and the efforts to bring climate change into the political agenda are even more enormous, and largely failing.

CLISP – Do you believe that the aims of Cape Farewell expeditions and projects have changed over the years?

DB – People often see scientists dealing with abstract notions, such as a two-degree rise in global temperature, or 65 centimetre rise in the sea level. Artists convert these numbers into stories, and bring climate change on to a human scale, in order to foster public engagement and awareness. As I said before, and as I write in my paper in Nature Climate Change, establishing climate change as a reality is important, but now the Cape Farewell project is more focused on solutions. Why we should look at climate change as a tragedy? It is more a comedy of human error, but in reality it is a brilliant opportunity to address some of societies deep and misguided values. There’s a brilliant story to tell about climate change, about society, about the way we live. Perhaps we should address climate change more “in the spirit of an expedition that encompasses the optimism of moving forward”.
Furthermore, climate and weather are becoming more instable; we see an increasing frequency of different extreme events such as floods, draughts, storms, more strong winds and so on in many areas of the world. Look out of the window and you will see climate change in action. You don’t need to get to the Artic to observe climate change and its impacts, not anymore. That’s why we still focus our project on a cultural approach to climate change, on emotions and expeditions. But now we do it locally; basically we have expeditions only in England and North America.

Siobhan Davies, Walking Dance, 2005 - Courtesy by {link:http://www.capefarewell.com} Cape Farewell{/link}

Last year we explored for example the impact of climate change on Scotland’s Island communities. A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that rising sea levels are likely to have a severe impact on much of the UK’s coastline in coming decades, in particular across Scotland’s Highlands and Islands. This is why 42 artists and scientists travelled for four weeks through the Outer and Inner Hebrides, investigating the innovative use of local resources, the effects of environmental change on marine ecosystems and wildlife, the preservation of local culture and language.

CLISP – You mentioned your last expedition in 2011. Could you share with us some of the highlights of this remarkable experience?

DB – Last year Cape Farewell embarked on a four-week expedition by boat across the Western Scottish Islands.  We wanted to explore the island ecologies and cultures, and the strategies for sustainable and resilient futures being implemented across the Scottish Isles. Island communities are very good examples of the sustainable cultural change we need, and many of them are at the forefront of sustainable thinking; during the voyage we saw diverse island communities practising real stewardship, managing their own resources, and generating their own power entirely from renewables. We met some very interesting models for a world free from fossil fuels. We were witness to a clear path of cultural change.

CLISP – In the end, what are the main topics of the three new exhibitions – Carbon12, Carbon13, and Carbon14?

DB – The three exhibitions recall the carbon isotopes 12, 13, and 14. Carbon is a building block of life, our bodies are 18% carbon, it also is the main cause of the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and importantly it was the original material with which artists made drawings. The Carbon 12 exhibition opens in Paris on May 3 at the Espace Foudation EDF. Five artists have addressed climate change working in partnership with particular climate scientists. The exhibition celebrates the interdisciplinary approach, showcasing a wide range of climate-related subjects, from biodiversity and marine ecology and pollution, to oceanography and atmospherics. Carbon 13 opens at the Ballroom in Marfa, Texas, in October 2012. Six artists are invited to realize artworks that address our current lifestyle, our fossil fuel addiction and the dramatic consequences of our persistent denial of climate change. To take an example, artist Erika Blumenfeld made her artworks with the carbonised burned wood left behind by the huge fires that raged through the states of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. When collecting her burnt wood object she was stopped by the police (she was told) because she was stealing from a massive ‘crime scene’. Her artwork is made from stolen objects but there is a strong query here on ownership and greed. The Carbon 14 exhibition will open in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, in September 2013. Like the isotope, the exhibition will be something edgy and unstable; in our terms, exciting, pioneering and subversive.

You may also be interested in:

• Climate is culture the feature article by David Buckland in the March issue of Nature Climate Science.
• The official Cape Farewell website
• David Buckland’s personal page in the Cape Farewell website.
• The blog of the 2011 expedition to the Scottish Isles.
• Read about Solar, Ian McEwan’s novel inspired by his voyage to the Artic with Cape Farewell.
• Watch the video “David Buckland: Cape Farewell, Archinet Feature”

Credits: CC by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/73515347@N03/6666286765/sizes/z/in/photostream/}Lihi Koren at Flickr{/link}

With a fast – growing population, food production will have to increase considerably to meet global needs, and this within the framework of climate change. Though agriculture represents an essential activity for our survival, according to the experts this is threatened by climate change, especially in developing countries and in vulnerable parts of the world. Still, it’s a chance for us to cope with our needs, while we cut the emissions of greenhouse gases that are accumulating in the atmosphere.

In a paper recently published in Science, “What next for agriculture after Durban?”, a group of international experts on agriculture speak for a stronger action on global food security in climate talks in 2012. The article expressly includes some recommendations to foster the integration of agriculture in the climate change negotiating process in order to guarantee food security, and calls on scientists to “assume a more prominent role” by ensuring clear and relevant information for climate change talks.

“Climate Science & Policy” discusses the matter with Professor Molly Jahn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Laboratory of Genetics and Department of Agronomy, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment), who co – authored the article in Science and is a strong advocate of the need to take the world’s poorest population into consideration when it comes to policy strategies towards climate-smart agriculture.

CLISP – Negotiations in Durban focused on agriculture among other topics as never before in climate meetings. What do you think about the specific agreement on agriculture that was recently achieved at COP17?

Molly Jahn - As we write in our paper, COP17 produced the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action”, which commits parties to come to a legal framework for reducing global emissions by 2015. Even if during the UN Conference in Durban political momentum grew for a work program on agricultural adaptation and mitigation within the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), the integration of agriculture in climate change talks has moved at slow rate: the only specific agreement on agriculture was to consider the adoption of a framework for sectorial actions, which could include agriculture, without the adoption of a formal work program.

In our paper, we outlined seven priority actions to foster the discussion on agriculture in the climate change negotiating process:

1. Integrate food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies, including adaptation and mitigation;
2. Increase global investment in sustainable agriculture and food systems;
3. Sustainably intensify agricultural production while reducing emissions and other environmental impacts;
4. Target programs and policies to assist vulnerable populations;
5. Reshape food access and consumption to ensure the basic nutritional needs are met and to foster healthy and sustainable eating habits;
6. Reduce food loss and waste across supply chains;
7. Create comprehensive information systems on human and ecological dimensions.

A SBSTA work program on agriculture taking into consideration adaptation and mitigation as well as a legal agreement for agriculture are needed at COP18 in Qatar. The support and contribution of the scientific community will be crucial for those processes.

CLISP – As a major driver of deforestation, agriculture is likely to be discussed in details in REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). How do you evaluate this first step?

MJ – We believe of the extreme importance to consider the use of landscapes holistically, so we recognise that REDD+ may help us to highlight the importance of indirect land use consequences from agriculture and other demands on landscapes. Any opportunity to manage the consequences of human activities and our immediate demands more holistically allows us to deal better with the environmental consequences of climate change.

Right now REDD+ discussions are opened, and I hope that sustainable agriculture and deforestation will be both directly and comprehensively addressed during the process.

CLISP – Converging trends in climate change, population growth, and use of resources threaten global food security and environmental sustainability. What are the main impacts of climate change on agriculture? What are the major and more urgent risks we have to face?

MJ - The key to understand the link between climate change and agriculture is the connection and the distinction between climate and weather. Weather affects agriculture and climate change actually stands for several transformations in weather conditions: more or less water, flooding and desertification, shift in temperatures, extreme events occurring more often. These are the main negative consequences of a changing weather, and each one of them could affect agriculture.

Summing up, the inset of climate change and agriculture occurs through shift in weather patterns. That is, we understand diverse consequences for agriculture globally since the impact of climate change on weather. We see an increasing frequency of different extreme events in many areas of the world, and many countries that are experiencing the most extreme consequences of climate change are already affected by poverty or weak government systems, raising important security issues. It’s important to understand that in a discussion on climate change and its impacts on agriculture we must acknowledge the increasing extent of some episodes, i.e. the global increasing frequency of extreme events of all kinds. That means we now have to consider flooding, or drought, or shift in temperatures (especially higher temperatures) as an issue, even though they were never assumed as that before. We can actually detect significantly consequences in crop yields due to climate change, for example. Many crops are extremely sensitive to higher temperatures at night; if there’s a higher shift in night temperatures this will affect crop yields considerably.

There are also some benefits: generally a mild climate shift can open up new areas for agriculture or increase its yields in some parts of the world. These benefits are balanced by the increased frequency of extreme events during the growing season. Since the growing season is now longer due to climate change, we are still interested in breeding crops as natural and quick as possible in order to minimize their exposure to extreme weather events likely to occur. We are also interested in the consequences of climate change related to increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There is a great deal in studying how all these dynamics work together to affect overall crop outputs.

CLISP – How can we adapt agriculture to climate change?

MJ – I think that our highest priority is to get agriculture and food security into the conversation about climate change and adaptation.

Due to climate change, agriculture is more subjected to losses from weather shift and extreme events. It’s important to understand that a shift in the use of landscape due to climate change is a risk for all countries, whether in the developed or in the developing world. Now, there are increasing conversations focused on the importance to manage climate risks and to create financial instruments in developed and developing countries. We need to rethink our idea of development in order to avert a humanitarian, environmental and climate crisis.

We understand that adaptation to climate change goes beyond the management of its consequences on agriculture, as it deals with the consequences of climate change for human beings that depend on agriculture too. This means that we need financial innovations and policy actions, particularly for developing countries.

CLISP – Research and scientists are very important in tackling climate change and in fostering food security and sustainable agriculture. How can scientists improve our comprehension of the problem?

MJ - I am a crop breeder, mainly focused on growing yields and crop assistance. Personally, as a scientist involved in agriculture development, I accept the responsibility for the outcomes of my work, as well as the specific outputs that I am chanced to focus on.

I think that the entire scientific community is responsible for food security. I believe that if as a scientific community we hold ourselves accountable for the condition of food security and we recognize expressively the linkage between the use of landscape and the condition of food supply and production through good quality information, we would have many opportunities of innovations in the agricultural system that may not be so obvious if we restrict our attention to the short term maximization of crop yields or agricultural outputs.

When you are really designing and managing the landscape in face of climate change you need to consider food security as the main issue.

CLISP – How can politics work effectively with scientists and experts?

MJ - Although is not my field, I believe that the main role of the scientific community is to provide good quality information, conveying the essential scientific data about agriculture, climate science and related topics to foster public discussion on the matter. As a scientist, I think we do accept the responsibility to provide decision makers with good quality information in order to boost science and improve our understanding of science topics, and to turn information in policy relevant advices.

Science has a very important role to play, particularly in democratic systems. We should ensure that the information we generate about the connections of science with climate change and agriculture is delivered to decision makers as clearly as possible. Policy makers and scientists need to work together to outline a sustainable global food system.

CLISP – Considering the future of global agriculture, what are the main challenges and goals to address?

MJ – I think a specific goal for agriculture is food security for our planet. I believe in land sustainability, and I actually believe that food security should be considered along with other human rights. This is essential for all that goals we are to face in agriculture research. That’s a very controversial statement; since we are not able to achieve that outcome by any means. We probably do not have all the tools in agriculture research; the entire scientific community must improve its knowledge of politics and economics, then we might understand that food security is not simple at all, and agriculture proactivity is an essential component of food security. For me, it is very important to lay that goal in front of us and to work still within that holistic framing we were talking before.

In the end, I think we are facing a very profound change in the understanding of our targets and obligations, which affects the way we work too.

Further contents

• “What next for agriculture after Durban” , Science magazine, Summary.
• Molly Jahn’s page in the “Agriculture&Food Security” journal

Credits: CC by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/stef3d/4560661663/sizes/z/in/photostream/} stef thomas at Flickr {/link}

Over the past few years the greatest preoccupation in Europe – including Italy – and in many countries in the world was to find a way to respond to the financial and economic crisis that hit in 2008.
Small wonder that the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 – also called Rio+20 – has not been uppermost in the minds of some political leaders, captains of industry and the public as a whole.
I would like to argue that a transformational outcome in Rio in June — two decades after the Earth Summit that set the course and laid the foundations for sustainable development —has the potential to counter a suite of persistent, evolving and emerging crises compared to which the current one may appear harmless.
I also think that a transformational outcome in Rio may help a global audience to believe that those who muare responsible for managing a planet of now seven billion people have got solutions and the resolve of leadership not only to deliver economic progress, but social and environmental progress too.
For I would contend that today we have a crisis of confidence and a crisis of long-term vision as much as a crisis of the banking sector or the financial markets. Plus we struggle to make the economic models inherited from the past operate in the world we live today, which is very different under the geopolitical, economical and environmental point of view.

What’s the meaning for wealth?

Wealth, as defined in the 20th and 19th centuries, was based on manufacturing mining the globe’s natural and nature-based assets; later on wealth depended on service sectors propelled by growing patterns of consumption that are frankly unsustainable today and totally inconceivable in a world of over nine billion people by 2050 if – the “if” is very important here– they keep growing at the present rate.

Many critical sectors of the economy such as human capital and the full ecosystem of ‘natural’ capital – i.e. forests, the atmosphere, and freshwaters – were either marginalized or made invisible in the ledgers of profits and loss.

At the moment several countries, companies, cities, and citizens recognize that this narrow notion of wealth is not enough to explain the extraordinary losses that are taking place, basing their assumption on the burgeoning levels of science and more sophisticated economic analyses:

• Over the last 25 years, while the world economy has more than doubled, 60 percent of the world’s ecosystem services covered by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are found degraded or used unsustainably
• Each year, 13 million ha of the world’s forests – the size of Greece – disappear
• According to UNEP’s Year Book 2012, 24 percent of the global land area has already suffered declines in health and productivity over the past quarter century as a result of unsustainable land-use
• Some types of conventional and intensive agriculture are triggering soil erosion rates 100 times more than the rates at which nature can form soil in the first place
• By 2030, without changes in the way land is managed, over 20 percent of terrestrial habitats such as forests, peat lands, and grasslands in developing countries alone could be converted to cropland, aggravating losses in the vital ecosystem and biodiversity
• Greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, pushing the planet towards the 2 degrees C threshold above which scientist fear some environmental changes could become irreversible. Global warming may trigger increasing numbers of displaced people and make whole countries inhabitable, including the low lying island of the Maldives and Kiribati.

On its current trajectory the world is undercutting some of the essential services nature has freely provided for millennia and is driving unprecedented conditions that could tip these services into new and perhaps less productive states with significant consequences for global supply chains, human well-being, and social stability. This will happen in Italy, in Europe and across all the countries in the world.

Experts at work

It was in response to the financial and economic crisis that UNEP rapidly convened some of the best economic and scientific minds in order to imagine a way to realize sustainable development and perhaps a way out of these twin crises and those to come.
This was the birth of what was labeled the Global Green New Deal/Green Economy Initiative.
Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication is one of the two overarching themes for Rio+20 in June.
When UNEP launched its work on Green Economy in 2008, we could not have foreseen how it might resonate, in Italy as well. Despite or because of the shock of the financial and economic crisis – far from being closed and defensive – many in the North and the South were open to new ideas. Indeed the pathways and policies towards an economy that delivers economic progress and generates decent employment without forcing humanity through planetary boundaries has gained almost universal acceptance. Yet there are some skeptics who perceive the concepts behind these pathways to be ‘commoditizing’ while other are still convinced of the risk of eco barriers to trade. Some initially perceived Green Economy as some kind of Emperor’s green new clothes or an alternative Universe. But my sense – based on UNEP’s gathering of world environment ministers in Nairobi in February – is that the debate is generally maturing beyond ideology into managing legitimate concerns and ensuring that social outcomes, including poverty eradication, are maximized. While some countries and civil society groups possibly perceived Green Economy as a reform or retrofitting of industrialized economies, there is a widespread understanding that can echo in all economies at different stages in their development and may be even more relevant to developing economies rather than the developed ones (a point evidenced by the fact that all 54 of Africa’s states are backing Green Economy as part of their submissions going into Rio+20).

An overwhelming number of countries has come to understand Green Economy as a way of implementing sustainable development and the intended aims in 1992. UNEP’s complete Green Economy Report on the pathways to sustainable development and poverty eradication was released late in 2011. The report estimates that initiating a transition will require a global investment of two percent of global GDP up to 2050 into ten key sectors ranging from energy supply and sustainable transport to fisheries, forests, and sustainable agriculture. I would like to mention two categories – energy supply and fisheries — as they underline different challenges, policies, and opportunities. The report suggests that investing about one and a quarter percent of global GDP each year in energy efficiency and renewable energies could cut global primary energy demand by nine percent in 2020 and close to 40 percent by 2050.

• Employment levels in the energy sector would be one-fifth higher than under regular business as renewable energies take close to 30 percent of the share of primary global energy demand by mid century.
• Under a Green Economy scenario, savings on capital and fuel costs in power generation would be on average $760 billion a year between 2010 and 2050.

Fisheries subsidies estimated at around $27 billion a year have generated excess fishing capacity affecting the ability of fish to reproduce. The report suggests that investing in strengthened fisheries management – including the establishment of Marine Protected Areas and the decommissioning and reduction of fleet capacity as well as retraining – can rebuild the planet’s fish resources:

• Such an investment backed by policy measures will result in an increase in catches from the current 80 million tones to 90 million tones in 2050, although between now and 2020 there would initially be a fall.
• According to the report, «the present value of benefits from greening the fishing sector is estimated to be three to five times the necessary investment»
• Focusing in capacity cuts on a small number of large-scale fishers and small-scale artisanal fleets can minimize jobs losses in the short and medium term
• Jobs in fisheries are expected to grow again by 2050 as depleted stocks recover

As the fisheries’ analysis points out, there may be pain for some sections of society especially if such a transition is not carefully and sensitively managed and alternative training and livelihoods are not found out. But the alternative, to keep the business as it is, offers only pain and a zero sum game for millions of people dependent on fish for their maintenance either directly or indirectly.

There are clear signs that many countries in the world are already heading onto more creative and intelligent paths at least in some sectors and areas of their economies. Italy for example has in some sectors been embracing a Green Economy transition.
33 percent of SMEs in Italy are adopting technologies aimed at reducing environmental impact; about 50 percent are pursuing or considering investments in photo voltaic, according to a study released last year by FondazioneImpresa:

• Already the second largest photo voltaic market in the world, Italy has extended its feed-in tariff through 2012 and is supporting the expansion of small-wind turbines less than 1 Mw through a special tariff
• There are plans for the solar-powered Catania-Siracusa motorway (perhaps a world first)
• Italy is in the top ten of countries around the world with the biggest number of hectares of land under organic agriculture, just behind China and ahead of Germany

Italy is not alone in these developments.
By early 2011, 61 countries and 26 states or provinces have implemented feed-in tariffs, including 16 developing countries.

A question for people heading for Rio+20

According to UNEP’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in 2010 new global investment in renewables reached over $210 billion exceeding the investment in new fossil fuels.

Kenya, where UNEP’s headquarters is based in Nairobi, introduced feed-in tariffs in 2008 to expand renewable energy power generation in the country. This will incentivize an estimated additional energy generation capacity of 1300 Megawatts (MW) alone in the geothermal sector thereby doubling Kenya’s total present capacity. Kenya’s strategy is not just about increased energy generation but also about extending access to energy in rural areas, providing an important starting point to lift people out of poverty and diversify livelihoods.

Other studies show similar trends and opportunities; a recent study commissioned by a coalition of Environmental Groups estimates that transferring 15 percent of the EU budget to renewable energies, energy saving in buildings, management of the Natura 2000 network and sustainable transport would yield three times more jobs than with current investments. When compared with the Common Agriculture Policy spending, for example, investment in the Natura 2000 network can create five times more jobs per €. Public spending may be essential in jumpstarting such investments but the key is to foster and leverage private sector involvement enabling public policies and institutions at the same time.

The question world leaders, ministers, business, and civil society representatives heading for Rio+20 must face is: what kind of big cooperative agreements could propel, scale-up and accelerate this transition so that the pace of positive sustainable change begins to outstrip the negative indicators on the sustainability dial?

There are clearly some obvious cases that represent absurdities or gross misallocations of capital in our global economic systems. I mentioned over $27 billion fisheries’ subsidies, only $8 billion of which are considered ‘good’ support mechanisms with the rest contributing to fisheries’ declines. But what about fertilizers and pesticide subsidies and what about fossil fuels amounting to something in between $400 billion and over $600 billion? The size of these subsidies contrasts with that for renewables, amounting to somewhere over $70 billion a year.
In Rio countries could press forward on this issue, some already have. Indonesia, Iran and Ghana have benefitted from generally positive economic, social and environmental improvements. Nigeria’s attempts have so far roused civil unrest, underlining that how the phase-out is managed is a key to the outcome as much as the action itself.

Dealing with subsidies is a good short-term measure to face preexisting distortions and to liberate investment into other Green Economy sectors such as recycling or sustainable transport to schools, hospitals and social enterprises.
But Rio+20 needs to be more than subsidies; it has to deal with fundamental barriers. In respect to a greater uptake of renewable energy sources in a Continent like Africa, the challenges are no longer cost and technology, but rather financing and infrastructure.

Dealing with fundamental barriers

According to a recent study from UNEP’s Finance Initiative, the obstacles that need to be removed are up-front costs, difficult grid access and political regulatory and commercial risks in many sub-Saharan countries. Although very complex, these risks can be abated and their impact lessened by the use of risk-mitigation instruments already available.

Rio+20 also needs to deal with the fundamentals of an overall, new and transformational indicator of wealth. Hence the very animated debate and emerging action towards an indicator or  multiple indicators that go beyond the narrowness and bluntness of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Measuring well-being will require a shift to metrics that incorporate non-economic market based aspects of well-being, including sustainability issues.

In its submission UNEP has called for a  «Commitment to the development of an internationally-agreed accounting framework and metrics to complement GDP for the better measurement of progress towards sustainable development» and pointed to foundational materials that already exist and could be synthesized and integrated into national accounting frameworks. A number of initiatives are leading the way to new measurements in which UNEP as well as many of us are involved.
For example the work on Inclusive Wealth – which is based on the World Bank’s Adjusted Net Saving indicator– is developing a more inclusive indicator of national wealth, covering not only produced capital, human capital, and natural capital, but also critical ecosystems. Results are expected before Rio.

Such initiatives are also being informed by the findings and the ways of measuring wealth outlined in The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a broad partnership that emerged from the G8 in Potsdam and was eventually hosted by UNEP. Some of these are:

• The EU effort to go “Beyond GDP”  launched in November 2007 aiming to come up with a broader set of macro-level indexes other than GDP and provide information on the way economic growth affects its own foundation (stock of all assets).
• The accounting of Environmental Goods and Services Sector (EGSS) in select countries. OECD and Eurostat have pioneered the development of a statistical framework for measuring the EGSS.
• This framework is now part of the UN’s SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting), which is becoming an international statistical standard.
• OECD’s initiative on measuring societies’ progress.

The work of the UNEP-hosted International Resource Panel is also providing analysis on how to decouple economic growth from resource use. The concern is that without the decoupling resource use triple by 2050:

• In short the aim is to delink economic growth and well being from physical growth as another supportive element of the transition to a Green Economy
• A transition towards Green Economy is pigeonholed by a significant decoupling from environmental impacts, with global ecological footprint and bio-capacity ratio projected to decline from a current level of 1.5 to less than 1.2 by 2050 (much closer to a sustainable threshold value of 1). Under ‘business as usual’ this figure may become 2.

Twenty years ago, a message for new generation leaders

Rio+20’s second overarching theme is an institutional framework for sustainable development aimed at reforming and refocusing the institutions and the bodies charged with delivering sustainable development in order to better equip them for a new century, including how to center and maximize investment flows. One topic within the overall issue is environmental governance including whether the world needs an UN organization or a world organization for the environment. It is perhaps beyond these remarks to delve into the whys and the wherefores, but one driving force is the concern that ministers responsible for the environment are marginalized compared to their counterparts in finance, development, health and foreign affairs.

Meanwhile the decisions taken by ministers responsible for the environment at for example the UNEP Governing Council are subject to the vagaries of the General Assembly process; quite literally these decisions can be shelved or shredded. We need to strengthen the environmental governance of our activities also at global level to achieve a more balanced public policy discourse.
In short, a Green Economy, or whatever sustainable economy is eventually secured, needs a higher goal to aspire to. Did the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 fail? No it didn’t: it rather laid the foundations upon which a new generation leaders must build something.
The directions and compass forged in 1992 however need to reflect the markedly different world I remarked upon earlier. We also need to implement what was agreed rather than leave it to the vagaries of short-term market forces that currently are advancing too few at the expense of too many.

The encouraging signal is that many parts of the world are actively looking and engaging on sustainable economy and social progress; the Chinese may call it an ‘ecological civilization’, in Bhutan it is known as the ‘gross national happiness’ index. Many are calling it Green Economy; the actual term matters little.
What is clear – as evidenced in Italy – is that there is desire for a new kind of progress and the economic and social analysis that has been incubating for decades – often on the back burners,  in the halls of academia, in the think tanks of NGOs and institutes — is eventually coming to the fore.

As an extraordinary number and range of remarkable projects and policies are being tried and tested in both developing and developed countries and which, we are becoming aware of a critical mass. We also admit a new understanding according to which in a world of many, how the economy manages scarcities will in many ways define the future of its citizens.
Whether a sufficient number of world leaders will seize the moment and take the opportunity to look for a new compass – one that is cooperative rather than competitive, one that can allow all human beings to fulfill their potential – remains an open question for Rio+20.

But whether it happens in 2012 or in a few years’ time, happen it must either by default or by design. This is what science is telling us.  Seven billion people are not going to wait forever for the Future they want, they are looking to national and international institutions to prove leadership now. Rio+20 represents a moment in time when those who wish to be the architects have the chance to show their leadership in support of a truly sustainable and progressive 21st century.

See also:

• The UNEP official web site
• Fondazione Aurelio Peccei
• WWF Italy

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The changes wrought by climate change will define our world in the 21st century.  Since the international community has failed to take immediate collective action to rein in carbon emissions — a warmer climate is inevitable. As the United Nations noted in 2007, human-created climate change “is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” (1)

In the 21st Century, these changes will increasingly threaten human security, particularly in the least developed countries. Changing environmental conditions will pressure traditional livelihoods, rendering them unsustainable in the worst-affected areas. Faced with deteriorating circumstances, humans have historically used migration as an adaptive mechanism; the stresses of climate change will contribute to human mobility around the world. Even if most climate migrants — people displaced by the slow or sudden onset of climate change — move only short distances, these shifts could increase ethnic tensions and provoke clashes over resources.

The nexus of climate change, migration, and conflict multiplies the pressure on governments in vulnerable regions around the globe. Human migration driven by environmental crises, as well as social conflict caused by this migration and competition for more scarce resources adds complexity to existing and future crisis scenarios. Governments must plan to address these new threats. Environmental degradation, the movement of people from rural areas to already overcrowded cities, and rising food prices exacerbate the cumulative effects of long-term economic and political failures in a number of vulnerable regions of the world, such as Northwest Africa.

An African arc of tension

We have identified what we dub an “arc of tension” in Northwest Africa. Rising temperatures, drought, desertification, erosion, flooding and sea-level rise resulting from climate change threaten a corridor from Nigeria through Niger, Algeria and Morocco. Niger and northern Nigeria have faced more frequent droughts and flooding, along with temperature rises of between 0.5 and 1℃ over the last three decades (2).  In northern Nigeria, expanding desertification has caused 200 villages to disappear (3).  The continuing drying of Lake Chad and rising temperatures in southern Algeria and northern Niger further complicate the picture. Lagos, in Nigeria and many parts of Algeria and Morocco’s northern coasts are under threat from rising sea levels (4).  Finally, erosion and increasing salinity in agricultural areas along the Mediterranean coast is shrinking already limited areas of arable land (5).

These environmental trends have the potential to increase migration in the region.  Agriculture, herding and fishing provide the socioeconomic foundation for most of the population, and these livelihoods will be increasingly threatened. More frequent droughts and less predictable rainfall squeeze marginalized people, increasing numbers of whom have chosen to migrate. Reports indicate some 65,000 migrants passed through Agadez in Niger on their way north to Algeria, Morocco, and Europe (6).  Rapid population growth has also contributed to the flow of migrants from Sub-Saharan and Sahelian Africa to the north. These African states are highly vulnerable moving forward, with up to 250 million people projected to suffer from water and food insecurity and a rising sea level (7).  While only 1 percent of Africa’s land is located in low-lying coastal zones, this land supports 12 percent of its urban population (8).  Furthermore, a majority of Africans lives in lower altitudes—including the Sahel—where the worst effects of water scarcity, hotter temperatures and longer dry seasons are expected to occur (9).

Climate, its role in a complex interplay

There is, however, no consensus among experts on how to identify climate as a causal factor in migration. A 2009 report by the International Organization for Migration and the UN University argues that “environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.” (10) The UN also reports that extreme weather events associated with climate change can cause more frequent humanitarian crises in areas least able to cope, such as those mired in poverty or prone to conflict (11).  It is clear that, though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real.

These developments may be exacerbated by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the effects of climate change and by the unpredictable overlay of conflict, both within nations and transnationally. The last two decades witnessed a diffusion of security interests, and the international community will have to confront climate and migration challenges within increasingly unstructured local or regional security environments. In Northwest Africa, instability and conflict complicate the environmental and migratory picture. Nigeria faces a long-standing insurgency in the Niger Delta and the rising threat of Boko Haram.  The group has orchestrated attacks of increasing violence in Abuja and the north and northeast, but their grievances are rooted in long-standing socio-environmental problems (12).  Niger faces widespread problems of security and governance, and clashes over water and rangeland are common. Additionally, the nation’s mineral resources have provoked conflict, such as the Tuareg rebellion in 2007 (13).  Algeria’s many large ungoverned spaces offer refuge for violent actors ranging from simple bandits to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Algeria has experienced close to 1,000 incidents of terrorism since 2001, including kidnappings and bombings (14).  While Morocco remains stable, its status as the endpoint for migrants trying to reach Europe raises the prospect of growing instability. Migrants and police have clashed at the borders of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and Al-Qaeda has called for the “liberation” of these areas from Spanish control. (15)

As these threads — climate change, migration and conflict — interact more intensely, the consequences will be far-reaching and occasionally counterintuitive. The interplay of these factors will drive complex crisis situations in which domestic policy, international policy, humanitarian assistance and human security converge and overlap in new ways.

The nexus will challenge many multinational, regional, national and non-profit organizations dedicated to improving the human condition worldwide. Organizations like Amnesty International, the World Bank, or the World Health Organization will have to tackle these issues.  The nexus also poses distinct challenge to international security. In vulnerable regions—sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia—food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change will challenge international responses over the coming 20-30 years. These developments could demand U.S., European and international humanitarian relief or military responses — often the default method of delivering aid in crisis situations.
Despite these projections, the American defense, diplomacy and development silos struggle to plan across a broad range of policy fields in combination with the people of the affected regions. Europe is fragmented by the diversity of EU member states’ interests. Rising regional powers such as India, China and Brazil are primarily concerned with economic growth, and find it difficult to muster resources to address these complex crisis scenarios.

Looking at a sustainable security

Yet action is critical. The interplay of migration, climate change and conflict will be with us for the long term. The uncertainty surrounding the exact causal relationships should not be a reason for inaction. And while the relationships may not always be clear, the lines of inquiry moving forward are becoming apparent. To understand this nexus, we will need to ask what role mediating factors such as economic opportunity, levels of development, health indicators and legal status will play in the relationship between climate change and migration. We must determine if there is a threshold at which the effects of climate change could be significant enough to cause migration directly, or at what level climate change will become the most important of several “push” factors.

Additionally, we should ask whether climate change will alter the composition of migrant communities. Migrants, historically, are not necessarily the most desperate or destitute. Migrations, particularly across international borders, often require means (16).  Could an increase in extreme weather events or shifts in climate norms alter this dynamic? What would be the implications of that shift?
We can’t know how future migration-fueled conflict might develop, but we can foresee future stresses from the trends of population growth, deteriorating environmental conditions, and massive migration. For a forward-looking policy-maker, these trends suggest that the climate, migration and conflict nexus requires greater attention, and the problems more nuanced policy prescriptions (17).

We must develop a robust contemporary notion of sustainable security that effectively integrates defense, diplomacy and development into a comprehensive policy designed to deal with today’s crises while preparing for future threats.
Specifically, we recommend the international community, the United States, its allies and key regional players:

• Reform the institutional forms of the development-security relationship and prioritize planning for long-term humanitarian consequences of climate change and migration as a core national security issue.
• Develop strategies to strengthen inter-governmental cooperation on trans-boundary risks in vulnerable regions.
• Increase funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative.
• Ensure better information flows and more effective disaster-response for early-warning systems.
• Support the best science to expand our understanding of specific circumstances such as desertification, rainfall variability, disaster occurrence and coastal erosion, and their relation to human migration and conflict.
• Identify regions most vulnerable to climate-induced migration, both forced and voluntary, in order to target aid, information, and contingency planning capabilities.
• View migration as a proactive adaptation strategy for local populations under pressure due to increased environmental change.

A modern and sustainable approach to security requires us to look beyond traditional security threats posed by the interaction between states. And it is important to emphasize that future global stability is advanced by promoting individual well-being and human security across the developing world, and by embracing collective responses to the shared threats of climate change.

This piece is excerpted from “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century”, the first in a series of papers from the issued by the Center for American Progress that will examine the implications of the climate change, migration and conflict nexus. The introductory paper lays the foundation for a series of regional reports focused on Northwest Africa, India and Bangladesh, the Andean region and China. This series is closely linked to the longstanding Sustainable Security project, which argues that our understanding of national security must be broadened to meet the threats of the coming decades. The full report, interactive maps and expert video interviews are available here.

You may also be interested in:

• Escaping from climate change – a post by TeC, the CMCC’s blog;
• Michael Werz’s page at the Center for American Progress;
• the official page of the report “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century”;
• the official page of the full reports, interactive maps and video interviews.

References

1. UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report” (2007), available at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf
2. Serigne Tacko Kandji, Louis Verchot, Jens: Climate Change and Variability in the Sahel Region: Impacts and Adaptation Strategies in the Agricultural Sector, United Nations Environment Program, Nairobi 2006, p.4.
3. Olakunle Michael Folami, “Climate Change and Inter-Ethnic Conflict Between Fulani Herdsmen and Host Communities in Nigeria”, (Adekunle Ajasin University, 2010).
4. Nick Tattersall, “Sea surges could uproot millions in Nigeria megacity,” Reuters, November 19, 2008, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE4AI74G20081119.
5. “Adaptation is…Protecting Coastal Communities in Northern Morocco”, IDRC and CRDI, available at: http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-126504-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
6. CARIM–Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration, Carim Migration Profile Niger by Anna Di Bartolomeo, Thiba ut Jaulin and Delphine Perrin, February 2011, p. 3.
7. IPCC, “Climate Change 2007.”
8. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries” (Bonn, 2007), p. 5.
9. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries”, p. 18.
10. Prof. Norman Myers, “Environmental Refugees: An Emergent Security Issue” (Oxford: Green College, Oxford University, 2005).
11. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries” (Bonn, 2007), p. 5.
12. Vanda Felbab-Brown and James J.F. Forest, “Nigeria’s Boko Haram attacks are misunderstood as regional Islamist threat”, Christian Science Monitor, January 12, 2012. Retrieved at: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0112/Nigeria-s-Boko-Haram-attacks-are-misunderstood-as-regional-Islamist-threat
13. Yvan Guichaoua, “Categories of rebellions in practice: the ‘Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice’ in Northern Niger”, paper delivered to CRISE workshop on Mobilisation for Political Violence (March 2009).
14. Yonah Alexander, “The Consequences of Terrorism—An Update on al-Qaeda and other Terrorist Threats in the Sahel & Maghreb”, (Potomac Institute, 2011).
15. Youssef Boudlal, “Bomb attack in Morocco tourist cafe kills 15″, Reuters, April 28, 2011. Retrieved at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-morocco-blast-idUSTRE73R39T20110428
16. Oli Brown, “Migration and Climate Change” (International Organization for Migration, 2008), p. 9; Cecilia Tacoli, “Climate migration fears ‘misplaced,’” (BBC Viewpoint, September 29, 2009), available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8278515.stm.
17. Jay Gulledge, “Scientific Uncertainty and Security Risks”(Pew Center on Global Climate Change), available at http://www.jhuapl.edu/ClimateAndEnergy/Book/Author/Gulledge,%20Jay.pdf

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Sound bites are a big problem. If you want to talk to a vast audience, you need clear, direct and short sentences to communicate to the public your opinion, your thoughts and your knowledge. Thus, you should make an effort and talk in a way that is easily comprehended by the public at large, use something that would directly grasp people’s attention. It is a media rule: short is better and more effective. When you are hosted in a TV talk-show, when you are talking on the radio, writing an article or an op-ed for a newspaper – even when you are posting something in your blog – the option is always the same: be brief, the more words you are using, the more audience’s attention you are loosing. All you have to do is to find a sentence with “a minimum of word and a maximum of sense” (Mark Twain admirably outlined it in a sound bite).

But when you are dealing with science, short sentences and few words may build a message that could be (deliberately or not) inaccurate, elusive or even wrong at all. Science needs more than a blurb to explain what consequences a physical phenomenon is bringing to our everyday life. Climate is a good example of the confusion and misunderstanding sound bites can bring into the public debate. Even if the scientific community shares a vast consensus on some evidences, a vast part of the public opinion believe that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether climate change is occurring or not and if it is caused by humans. According to the Global Warming’s Six Americas in May 2011 report by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication only 39% of people in the United States believe that “most scientists think global warming is occurring”, and 40% believe that “there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening”.

It is quite clear that the public opinion perception on the climate change scientific consensus is far from the true. But climate change is gaining increasing attention by decision makers and involves policy resolutions at both local and international scale. This is a main topic involving the public opinion at large as much as it is discussed in the academia. Are scientists able to communicate their knowledge to a wider audience and to avoid misunderstandings and confusion about what science really knows on the changing climate?

We asked some questions to Lawrence Hamilton, Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, who investigated public knowledge and beliefs on environmental change. Dr. Hamilton told Climate Science&Policy that scientists should learn to communicate in different ways to different audiences while real-time Internet may be the key to disseminate correct knowledge on climate science in a communication environment ruled by sound bites.

CLISP – In the last decade topics such as climate change and global warming gained the public opinion’s interest and the attention of political institution both at national and global scale. Why did this topic reach such an increasing and unprecedented relevance in the public agenda?

Lawrence Hamilton – Climate change has become a major topic of research, as data from thousands of researchers contributes different parts of the puzzle. Many scientists were skeptical of anthropogenic climate change when this was a new hypothesis, but as the evidence built up over decades across so many fields, most shifted toward the modern consensus that climate is changing now due mainly to human activities, with potentially large consequences for the future. The public understanding of both the nature and content of scientific research can be unclear, but the salience of this topic is fueled also by current events such as new territorial claims in the Arctic, or the impacts of extreme weather events.

CLISP – Even if climate change is discussed in international meetings and conventions, researches and surveys tell us that people are confused on what climate change and its causes are about and what does the scientific community know, whether there is strong scientific consensus or not. Which factors are more effective in shaping the public perception of climate change?

LH - In the US, public opinion about climate change is heavily influenced by political factors. Scientific communication has not been perfect, and many scientists are working hard to improve it, but this is not the main problem. The traditional scientific approach of presenting research through refereed journal articles and scientific meetings now can be rapidly outpaced by political activists or writers on the Internet, for example, who are free to make any claims they want about the science. In a number of cases recently it seemed that bloggers and political think tanks held positions near the top of the information food chain, bypassing or re-interpreting science to make scientific-sounding arguments that went on to receptive journalists, politicians and the public.
Part of the communication problem is that the real science is not simple. “It’s cold here today!” is a sound bite that, on the right day, anyone can repeat. Explaining why today’s weather does not disprove global warming takes more words and sounds less exciting. Similarly, one can easily make a false but scientific-sounding declaration such as “Volcanoes release more CO2 than humans.” Explaining how scientists know that, in fact, human activities release far more CO2 than volcanoes do requires a lot more patience and understanding.

CLISP – Some people say that climate scientists should move beyond a dedicated audience and make an effort to communicate climate matters to the public opinion. In a recent editorial online, “Nature” magazine openly addresses scientists, affirming they should be even more energetic in delivering their message to citizens. How could a scientist talk about a tough topic such as climate change – which requires a multidisciplinary level of analysis involving science and politics, physics and economics – and avoid the risk of oversimplification?

LH - Real-time Internet and news media communication seems to be the key. All the traditional science communication channels are proving to be slow and too easily outmaneuvered by pseudo- and anti-science narratives in the modern information environment. Unfortunately, scientists need to more actively follow up on how their own work or field is getting reported, and publicly respond to misinterpretations. More need to participate in public discussions at every level. Fortunately, a small but growing number of scientists are doing this already, and are encouraging their colleagues to do likewise in publications and at meetings.

CLISP – Are you saying that climate scientists should learn to communicate and to become more familiar with new media and new opportunities to disseminate their results?

LH – Yes, scientists need to learn the new media, as some of them are doing very well already. This includes not only the Internet but videos, news outlets, public talks or whatever. Through something called the Science Café, two colleagues and I recently enjoyed an evening answering questions about climate change in a tavern! Different scientists will of course find they are good at different things, or that certain media suit their field.

CLISP – Won’t there be any consequences on research?

LH – Unfortunately yes, learning new kinds of communication is time not doing research. But the alternative, letting pseudo-science continue its rise in politics, seems worse.

CLISP – The public debate around climate change seems to be affected by a sort of polarization. On one hand you have people claiming that climate change is occurring and that it is primarily human-induced. On the other hand you have the so-called skeptics, people denying that climate change is occurring at all or assuming that, if the climate is changing, it’s only because of a natural course. Do you think this kind of polarization is affecting discussions among scientists as well, or does this oversimplification apply only to the non-specialized debate?

LH – Scientists are not polarized. This is obvious from scientific meetings, refereed journals, statements by every major science organization, national academies of science, international reviews and scientifically-designed surveys of scientists. A few scientists have argued against the consensus, suggesting that climate change is not happening, or if it is happening then it is not caused by humans, or if it is happening and caused by humans then the consequences won’t be bad, or even if they are they will be less bad than the cost of reducing fossil fuel use. These arguments do not agree on much except “don’t reduce fossil fuel use,” and their proposed alternative explanations (solar, cosmic rays, clouds cause warming, it’s a 60-year cycle, and so forth) have met with little success in terms of theory or data. Historically, a few scientists argued that we should not worry about the health effects of smoking or asbestos. There will always be contrarians but this does not mean science is “polarized”.

CLISP – There are some surveys showing that partisan and ideological views could influence what people in the US think about climate change. One of these surveys was lead by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and showed a sort of ideological divide on climate change within the US electorate. Could this affect climate change communication?

LH – Survey research shows that many people do respect and listen to scientists. However, many others do not, when the scientific message seems to conflict with their ideological beliefs. Moreover, bloggers and political activists can provide scientific-sounding rationales for why it’s OK to reject science when you don’t like its conclusions. These are symptoms of deeper problems with US political life today—extreme partisan polarization of everything, along with the Internet and narrowcast media ability to form separate realities, in which everything you hear reinforces what you already believed.

* This interview was released on february 28th 2012

You may also be interested in :

• “Do you believe the climate is changing? Answers from new survey research”, L.C. Hamilton (2011). Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire.
• “Climate change: Partisanship, understanding, and public opinion” (pdf), L.C. Hamilton (2011). Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire.
• “Do scientists agree about climate change? Public perceptions from a New Hampshire survey” (pdf), L.C. Hamilton (2010). Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire.
• Lawrence Hamilton official webpage at the University of New Hampshire

Pitcure by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/52781623@N00/1064450190/} cgkinla {/link} - Creative Commons

At the moment there is no a single spokesperson for the global atmosphere; there are rather multiple competing interpretations of global warming.
Mass media constitute the arena in which these different versions are presented and discussed. “Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change”, by Maxwell T. Boykoff of the University of Colorado explores the different narratives around climate change.
In Laura Caciagli’s interview, the author talks about the new role of media, highlighting the factors that influence media coverage of climate change.

Prof. Boykoff, what’s your opinion on the new role of the media in communicating climate science and what do you think about the way media representations of climate change are produced and negotiated?

In my book I analyse media coverage of climate change because of its important role in reaching out everyday people. To keep myself up-to-date about the major topics of climate change, I participate in climate science conferences and workshops; I follow climate talks and negotiations as well.
But, in reality, very few people have access to the science literature and to policy documents so they generally rely upon media representations of climate change. Mass media help to interpret and translate important but difficult information and processes.
In terms of reaching a mass audience and shaping public awareness, public engagement as well as public support for positive action, mass media play a very important role and need to be studied carefully.

What do you mean by “competing frames” in your book?

Well, there are a lot of different ways in which mass media address dimensions and aspects of climate change. When I introduce the notion of “competing frames” I want to explicitly discuss how media rely upon actively shape public discussions on climate change and its impacts. For example, a charismatic leader talking about climate change action becomes a chance for the media to cover the issue. This, in turn, shapes ongoing considerations on action in the public arena.
Statements and pronouncements of leaders, politics and policy makers often become frames.
When covering climate change mass media mainly focus on few topics such as weather extreme events or charismatic megaphones like polar bears, while some important themes – i.e. socioeconomic aspects of climate change or environmental justice – are completely ignored.

{link:http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/who_speaks_for_climate/index.html} Who Speaks for the Climate? {/link} "In my book I analyse media coverage of climate change because of its important role in reaching out everyday people"

How could journalistic norms affect and influence media coverage of climate change?

In terms of socioeconomic factors I find the situation quite discouraging.
I think it is very challenging to cover stories such as those of climate change in a comprehensive, responsible way. At the moment hope is raised by some ONGs that are stepping forward to provide a connection between climate scientists and the media, although they remain small examples in a larger scene openly discouraging mass media consolidation and enduring.
As for journalistic norms, they really influence the ways in which stories are shaped and realized and how pieces of information are translated into news. In this process, the trend is to rely upon personalities and dramatic events with journalists trying to give a spectrum of opposing points of view. In this way the audience is provided with a framework of competing on the same stage but there isn’t any emerging difference if one point of view is brought into the media arena by a scientist, an opinion leader, a politician.
The journalistic norms that I have tracked on the book are personalization, dramatization, novelty, reliance on authoritative spokepersons and journalistic balance of opposing viewpoints. They all contribute to a coverage that coheres with dominant market-based and utilitarian approaches to discussing the spectrum of possible mitigation and adaptation action on climate change. The journalistic norm of balance in news reporting has in particular served to amplify outlier views on anthropogenic climate change and concurrently caused an appearance of increased uncertainty regarding this issue. This, in turn, has permeated climate policy discourse and decision-making.

Are climate experts able and effective in communicating climate change enough? Is there a way to improve their PR skills?

The role of expertise, authority and perceived legitimacy remain very important. To understand a changing climate we have to rely upon climate models and experts, whose role is critical in terms of reaching out the mass media and the public. As a scientist, I consider a duty and an extension of my work trying reach out the public and spread knowledge among the general audience.
In recent years, Internet and social media changed the situation a lot: today many people find information about climate change via Google searches, and the legitimacy checks in place there are much different than those in place in academic ‘peer review’. I think that these democratizing and complementary developments are net positive changes, with many more people discussing and participating. Yet there are costs as well. My book works through these sorts of issues in the context of 21st century climate challenges.

Why climate change has become so important in politics?

I think that climate has become very important in politics because it cuts our relationship with the environment and every aspect of daily life: how we work, travel, produce food and use land, how we play and relax. Curbing emissions has become central in considerations of critical phenomena such as poverty, inequality, justice and armed conflicts. More and more people recognise climate change as a central issue to discuss.

In your opinion, how can we improve media reporting on climate change?

Research like mine can help to re-consider media institutional practices and theirrelationship with the scientific and policy communities as well as with the public. Journalists should work to provide accurate metaphors in order to describe climate change and its impacts in a simpler and clear way.
Scientists too might improve their way to communicate this complex issue.
Media, scientists, policy actors and focus groups in the public must dialogue and cooperate to democratize these topics and inspire more reactive engagement about climate change. At the moment some media outlets are trying to connect journalists – especially those from developing countries who have no access to peer-reviewed articles – with the relevant experts in order to improve and foster the media coverage about climate change.

You may also be interested in:

• Nature’s challenges to communicate climate science – a post by TeC, the CMCC’s blog
• Maxwell Boykoff’s page at the Center for Science and Technology Policy
• The official page of the book “Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change” at Cambridge University Press website
• A review of the Boykoff’s book at Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media
• Andrew Revkin’s (NYTimes) Book Report in his blog Dot Earth

A specific option, currently discussed in UNFCCC negotiations, is the use of standardized approaches for the determination of baselines and additionality. Determining the baseline (emission scenario that would occur in the absence of the proposed project activity) and demonstrating additionality (proving that the project generates real emission reductions beyond the baseline) are often the most complex phases of the project cycle, implying some level of subjectivity and less certainty on the generation of carbon credits.

The challenge is to set up methodologies applicable to multiple projects, regardless of project specific conditions. This may contribute to reduce transaction costs, increase transparency, ensure better predictability of emission reductions and allow a faster project cycle. Yet, their use may not be appropriate for all types of projects and could require significant upfront costs and efforts to be developed. Standardization is not a new concept under the CDM, however it has not been widely exploited, for reasons related to the origins of the mechanism itself. In fact, the CDM was conceived as a global mechanism encompassing any possible emission reduction activity for the six gases of the Kyoto Protocol. For such a mechanism, it was impossible to elaborate top-down methodologies for all eligible activities, both financially and within a reasonable timeframe. Therefore, in view of a quick start-up of the mechanism, it was decided to leave to project proponents the possibility to propose methodologies, that would be subject to approval by the “CDM Executive Board”. Therefore, the tendency was inevitably project-specific (none of the proponents had interest in developing methodologies applicable to other projects). On the contrary, in other offset schemes outside the UNFCCC, restricted geographical scope and limited eligible project categories allowed easier development of top-down methodologies. Offset schemes used in Australia, Canada and US make wide use of standardized approaches.

Following the recent Cancun decision on “further guidance relating to the clean development mechanism”, there is a stronger mandate for the CDM Executive Board to work on standardization. Yet, considering limited availability of financial resources, work needs to be concentrated on clear priorities. In this regard, the challenge of standardization should be considered within the wider exercise of streamlining methodologies and facilitating their applicability in under-represented regions, thus enhancing geographical distribution of the CDM. Across the different standardization approaches, some may be helpful in this direction. For instance, the development and use of “default values” may facilitate baseline calculation where project data are not available or would require very costly measurement campaigns. Some default values (e.g. IPCC values) are already used in UNFCCC methodologies and this approach should be further developed. While an important challenge remains the development of new methodologies, the potential of “hybrid” approaches, combining standardization and project specific elements, should be duly investigated, starting from existing methodologies.

A project scouting exercise carried out in the Northern African region highlighted several difficulties of application of UNFCCC methodologies to local technology practices. For instance, applying the UNFCCC methodology “AMS.III.H, Methane recovery in wastewater treatment” to some emission reduction projects, posed a number of issues where lagoon treatment was used. These issues were related to technical definitions, availability of historical data, application in conjunction with other methodologies (where energy production was also contemplated) and additionality tests. Provision of historical data represented one of the hardest barriers, both in the methodology itself and in the application of the “emission factor tool”, required to calculate the electricity delivery component in case of methane utilization for energy production. In this regard, uncommon grid delivery layouts (with onsite diesel generators, very frequent in rural areas) represented an additional barrier. Another major barrier was linked to monitoring and verification: a very high number of parameters are required by this methodology (e.g. methane content at different locations), with high risks of failure in the phases of verification and issuance of carbon credits. This is an aspect discouraging projects in regions where other kinds of investment risks already exist.

In general, methodologies are often too demanding in terms of baseline calculation and monitoring parameters, with a number of requirements that could imply, for small scale projects, a micro-difference in emission reductions. In these cases, minor differences in percentage of emission reductions should be deemed acceptable, if technology diffusion and other environmental benefits outweigh such difference. In general, for underrepresented regions, methodologies should become more manageable, with increased certainty on project registration and generation of credits.

Whatever the outcome of Kyoto negotiations, flexible mechanisms are likely to continue playing a role in mitigation policies. Their rules should be improved, with the aim of enhancing regional distribution, efficiency and environmental integrity. Standardization, although not applicable to all categories of projects, can be part of this exercise. The COP/MOP decision adopted in Cancun, while limited in its scope, is a good first move. The decision had the merit to set some priorities (especially for under-represented regions), include additionality within the scope of the baselines, give a mandate to the Executive Board for a top-down work and plan work for the refinement of other aspects over the next negotiating sessions. The Executive Board has a challenging work ahead and next UNFCCC sessions, including Durban, are expected to further pave the way to the improvement of the CDM. While being also a political issue, with potential effects on the carbon market, standardization should remain a tool to overcome current weaknesses of the CDM and improve investment in clean technologies.

References

• Broekhoff, D. – Expanding global emissions trading: Prospects for standardized carbon offset crediting. Prepared for International Emissions Trading Association. World Resources Institute, 2007
• Carnahan, K. – Multi-Project, Standardized Baselines: Explaining A Key Issue in the Reform of the Clean Development Mechanism. International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), 2009
• De Sepibus, J. – The environmental integrity of the CDM mechanism – A legal analysis of its institutional and procedural shortcomings – NCCR Trade Regulation, Working Paper No 2009/24, 2009
• Ellis, J., and Kamel, S. – Overcoming Barriers to Clean Development Mechanism Projects. OECD and UNEP/RISOE, 2007.
• Fischer, C. – Project-Based Mechanisms for Emissions Reductions: Balancing Trade-Offs with Baselines – Energy Policy, Vol. 33, pp. 1807-1823, 2005
• Hayashi D., Müller N., Feige S., Michaelowa A. – Towards a more standardized approach to baselines and additionality in the CDM. Determining nationally appropriate performance standards, thresholds and default factors – Commissioned by the UK Department for International Development, Perspectives GmbH, 2010
• Houdashelt, M., et al. – Alternative Tools for the Demonstration of Additionality: An Assessment of Proposals – Center for Clean Air Policy, Washington, DC, 2006.
• IPCC – 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Prepared by the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme, Eggleston H.S., Buendia L., Miwa K., Ngara T. and Tanabe K. (eds). Published: IGES, Japan.
• Kartha, S., Lazarus, M. and Bosi, M. – Practical Baseline Recommendations for Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Projects in the Electric Power Sector – OECD/IEA, 2002.
• Lazarus, M., Kartha, S. and Bernow, S. – Key Issues in Benchmark Baselines for the CDM: Aggregation, Stringency, Cohorts, and Updating – Tellus Institute / Stockholm Environment Institute. Prepared for U.S. EPA, 2000.
• Lory, J. A., Massey, R. E., Zulovich, J. M. – An Evaluation of the USEPA Calculations of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Anaerobic Lagoons – Journal of Environmental Quality, 2010
• Presicce, F. – Enhanced action on mitigation in the future climate change regime: implications of the use of standardized multi-project baselines for the improvement of project-based mechanisms. Doctoral thesis, PhD on “Science and Management of Climate Change”, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, 2011. Available at http://hdl.handle.net/10579/1114
• Schneider L. – Is the CDM fulfilling its environmental and sustainable development objectives? An evaluation of the CDM and options for improvement – Oeko institute, 2007.
• Schneider, L. – Assessing the additionality of CDM projects: practical experiences and lessons learned – Climate Policy, Volume 9, Number 3, 2009.
• Sikirica B., Presicce F., Di Andrea F. – Evaluation du potentiel des projets dans les domaines des energies renouvelables, de l’efficacite energetique et de la gestion des forets, dans le cadre des mecanismes flexibles du Protocole de Kyoto au Royaume du Maroc – Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, 2008
• Sutter C., Parreño J.C. – Does the current Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) deliver its sustainable development claim? An analysis of officially registered CDM projects – Climatic Change No. 84, 2007
• Van der Gaast, W. – Application of Multi-Project Baseline Methods in Practice – Foundation JIN, 2006.
• Website of the “Alberta Offset System” – www.carbonoffsetsolutions.ca/index.htm
• Website of the California Climate Action Registry, CCAR – http://www.climateregistry.org/
• Website of the Chicago Climate Exchange – www.chicagoclimatex.com
• Website of the Climate Leaders Programme – www.epa.org/climateleaders
• Website of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – www.rggi.org
• Website of the South Wales GHG Reduction Scheme – www.greenhousegas.nsw.gov.au
• Website of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – www.unfccc.int
• WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol for Project Accounting – pdf.wri.org/ghg_project_accounting.pdf

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It is relatively cheap, it is abundant and its renaissance started before the Fukushima accident. In the future energy mix, gas and renewables will play an important role, but coal will be the most important source. That’s why we need to implement CCS and make it economically affordable if we want to meet our mitigation targets. Prof. Ottmar Edenhofer, in this interview conducted by Mauro Buonocore, talks about the future of energy, the opportunity of a European super-grid and proposes a two-track model for climate negotiations.

Prof. Edenhofer, how have climate negotiations been going since the last COP in Cancùn?  What can we  envision for the future of international negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement?

It’s very hard to predict what will happen after Cancùn. By and large, I would say that the prospects for a quite comprehensive climate regime in the near future are not very good. And the likelihood that this would happen at the Cop 17 in Durban, South Africa, unfortunately is very low. Nevertheless people become aware of what happened in Fukushima, which has basically nothing to do with the climate change issue, but has a lot to do with the energy issue and will change things substantially in the energy market at the international level. I think that people are going to be a little bit more aware that energy security, human development, economic growth and climate change are all parts of the one integrated issue which deserves much more attention than we gave to these single topics in the last decade. So, I do not assume that the Cop in Durban will be a great success, but I think that in the next three years something will happen at the international scale, which will help us with the broader sustainability issue. The longer we wait, the more expensive mitigation becomes – and the risk increases that climate change reaches tipping points in the earth system like Greenland ice sheet melting.

Should the international community drop the project of a global agreement and should it concentrate its efforts on countries’ individual pledges without a legally binding framework?

I think that a legally binding agreement is important but this should not be the one and only target to camp on. Think about China, for example. China has recently presented the 12th five-year which is extremely ambitious, in some aspects. We don’t necessarily need legally binding agreements. What we need is some kind of international cooperation, which could be very effective as a starting point of negotiations and, with its new 12th five-year plan, China could be one of the driving forces for international cooperation.

After the conferences in Copenhagen and Cancùn the format of the COP was criticized and some experts said it was  not the most  effective way to get concrete results for climate negotiations. Do you agree with this assessment?

That’s probably true. The whole framework of the UNFCCC is good at getting a consensus in the end of a process, but it is not the best format to do real negotiations and therefore I would strongly propose to have a two-track model. On the one hand we could negotiate within the G20 and other international arenas about several issues. In the end if we have achieved any concrete results, the UNFCCC would be a very good framework to get everybody on board and to have the strongest legitimacy on the achieved outcomes.

Could you please make some examples of these other arenas?

G20 would be one of them, for example; or other arenas where you could achieve a bilateral agreement, let’s say between Europe and China, on climate and energy topics. Let me give  you a more concrete example. China intends to implement an emissions-trade scheme and the European Union,  which has great experience on this issue, could advise China on how to implement such a thing. This could be done at a bilateral level. There are so many opportunities for international cooperation and I would avoid the kind of negotiations where people are only focusing on the UNFCCC. I mentioned the G20 as a good arena to achieve outcomes because in the G20 we have already agreed to abandon fossil fuels subsidies. This kind of decision should be simply implemented and this would also be a very good starting point to do something at the international scale. So I think we have to combine different scales of cooperation, we should be aware that in the end we have to achieve an international agreement but there are many ways and many smaller steps that could have a strong impact on all the international negotiations.

Will the Fukushima nuclear crisis have any consequences on energy policy and on nuclear strategies around the world?

First of all, Fukushima has a strong impact on the European policy and I am quite convinced that in the end it will have a strong impact on the global energy policy. I would like to give you a number. Up to now, 14% of the  entire world’s electricity production comes from nuclear power. We have now about 455 light water reactors on the globe. And, given that the electricity consumption will double within the next 20 years, if we  would decide to stabilize the share of nuclear power on the electricity production, we will have to implement around 450 other light water reactors across the globe by the year 2030. I think that – independent of the question whether this is something to aspire to – at the international level we will simply not be able to stabilize the electricity production at 14% from nuclear plants around the world.  I also think that China and India will think about nuclear power again. I’m not saying that they would phase out nuclear power, but the speed and the race to build nuclear power plants might very well be much slower than the project many people anticipated before the Fukushima event. I would say that we could  expect a decline in the share of nuclear power in the global energy mix. From my point of view, in the global scale, the big issue in the future will be coal because it is relatively cheap, it is abundant and many countries will then substitute their nuclear power capacities with coal. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial for an ambitious climate policy, that we have Carbon Capture and Storage technologies available. I know that CCS is not available now at the commercial level and we have only a few pilot plans. People, particularly in Europe, think that CCS is not an important part of the mitigation portfolio. I think it is an almost inevitable part because coal remains the most important issue. Gas will also become important, energy efficiency also has to play a very important role. And the scenarios produced by IEA show that renewables will play an extremely important role and then we have to make sure that renewables really become competitive and cost efficient.

Are the European targets on mitigation achievable with an energy strategy with no nuclear plants?

It is an issue, which has to be analyzed very carefully, but I have the feeling that the European Union  can achieve its mitigation targets if we have a common and a unified European energy policy. If we would have a grid across Europe, we would be able to have integrated energy from the best sites for renewables. We could concentrate, for example, solar power in Spain, wind plants in the North Sea, and so on. With this perspective, I think that we could achieve the ambitious climate protection goals even without nuclear power, but admittedly a   European super-grid requires a lot of investments in the infrastructure.

But renewables are not competitive in the energy market, today. And they are growing on public incentives. Do you think that they will soon become competitive?

It is a stepwise process and it has to be complemented by energy efficiency. Wind is to a certain extent already competitive and also an increasing CO2 price will make coal and gas less competitive. So this is a timing issue and I’m not saying that we can achieve it immediately, but over a reasonable time horizon we can build  this kind of super-grid which  integrates renewables from all over Europe. It’s definitely an option, but it takes time. Even in Germany we  are now debating about by when we should phase out nuclear power. It is my expectation that we will not phase out nuclear power immediately, but we will also do this step by step. And although we have to invest, we have to inform the people and  ask them if they would like to phase out nuclear power by 2020 or a bit later. Anyway, new investments in renewables are inevitable and people have to accept that this is not a free lunch.

Which kind of energy mix are China and India going to compose?

I definitely think China  now has the goal to increase the energy efficiency to an unprecedented scale so China is also thinking about an emissions trade scheme at a national scale, which is very encouraging. The Chinese energy portfolio will count on renewables, but they also have a huge amount of coal and gas. The role of nuclear power will depend on how fast they will be able to build up new nuclear plants. But, again, coal will be a  prominent energy source and so we need CCS and we have to clarify to what extent it is feasible and economically affordable. China is now willing and is committed to do something to reduce their emissions and I find this a very encouraging sign.

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Many recent climate projects focus on present-day climate variability and its consequences in the centuries to come. Regarding observations made in past centuries, trends present an increase in global temperatures therefore, anthropic contribution is important. Various indicators, such as GHGs, have already reached  the highest levels recorded in ice cores (~ 290 ppm for CO2; < 700 ppmv for CH4) during previous interglacial periods (Petit et al., 1991). Several strong interglacials, proving temperatures to be warmer than present-day associated with higher eustatic sea-levels, have been proposed as analogues for present-day global warming (Figure 1). The Eemian Marine Isotope Stage 5.5 (126 kiloyears ago, ka hereafter) is the second warmest interglacial of the last 600 ka. The MIS 11, ~400 ka has recently been considered the closest analogue for present-day climate despite the low GHGs relatively to present-day (EPICA Dome C, Lüthi et al., 2008). During both peak interglacials, high latitudes temperatures were warmer than today by 2.2°C and 1.8°C respectively (Bintanja et al., 2005). Both orbital configurations corresponded to a maximum in eccentricity and a minima in precession, placing the Earth very close to the Sun during summers. However sea level was similar (Bowen, 2009).

Will the climate reach a warm equilibrium and gradually cool? How will the climate respond to extreme warming on long time-scale variability? Will there be an abrupt glacial inception similar to previous glacials/interglacials?

Figure 1 δ18O stack (LR04) from Lisieki and Raymo (2005), sea level estimates (m) (Bintanja et al., 2005) and CO2 concentration in ppmv from EPICA, Dome C, Antarctica (Lüthi et al., 2008) for the last 1 million years. Maxima in δ18O values indicate a glaciation while minima indicate interglacials. Two great interglacials, MIS 5.5 and MIS 11, used as present-day climate analogues are indicated. click to enlarge

During the last 5 Million years, the climate variability have experienced two types of transitions: «abrupt» and «extreme». During the last 800 kyrs, glacial/interglacial periods have been pacing the climate natural variability following saw-tooth abrupt transitions . These cold/warm oscillations, are part of a larger time-scale gradual cooling that was initiated during the Mid-Pliocene (~ 4 Million year ago, Ma) and that brought global climate into the Northern Hemisphere glacial/interglacial alternation (Ma hereafter, Figure 2). The onset of glacial inception is generally said to have occured toward 2.7 Million years ago, evidenced by geological proxies. However, these two types of transitions have to be considered on different time scales. During the Late Pleistocene, the transitions between glacial/interglacial periods seem to have been paced by the fluctuations in eccentricity and precession approximately following a 100-kyr cycle (Hays et al., 1976). On the contrary, during the Late Pliocene, the slow gradual cooling occurred over a period of several million years as the climate mainly oscillated, mostly following the ~ 41-kyr obliquity cycle from 2.8 Ma (Lisieki & Raymo, 2005, 2007).

Five Million Years Ago

The Pliocene period (starting at 5.3 Ma) has raised interest because the continental configuration was almost similar to present-day and because until ~ 3 Ma, the climate was warmer than today (by ~4°C in the tropics and by ~10°C near the poles). This caused sea level to rise by ~20 m (Haywood  et al., 2000; Ravelo et al., 2004) although CO2 concentration was almost similar (415 ppm, Pagani et al., 2010). An El-nino-like state existed in the Pacific and lasted several millions of years (Wara et al., 2005). However, the lack of sensitivity of climate models prevents a realistic simulation of the Pliocene warm climate without artificially introducing an increase of atmospheric CO2 larger than that inferred from geological records for this period (Pagani et al., 2010). This suggests that CO2 is not the only factor that influenced the regional gradual cooling at the end of the Pliocene. Note that, the Earth’s climate history alternated between warm and cold periods  throughout several hundreds of million of years. Pliocene represents a warm period in a cold global climate state, i.e. icehouse, which  initiated ~ 50 Ma (Antarctica started to grow toward 30 Ma).

Figure 2 LR04 δ18O from Lisieki and Raymo (2005) correlated to the temperature anomaly inferred from the deuterieum concentration in ice cores from EPICA Dome C, Antarctica (Jouzel et al., 2007). The main orbital (purple), tectonic (brown) and oceanic (blue) events are indicated (see the text for the references of each event). The orange box represents the start of the onset of the Northern Hemisphere glaciations. 100 kyrs and 40 kyrs correspond to the orbitally-driven glacial/interglacial cycles period. This period changed from 41 kyrs to 100 kyrs during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition toward 1 Ma (MPT). click to enlarge

Although the factors influencing the Northern Hemisphere glacial inceptions during the Late Pleistocene have been deeply investigated, they are still poorly constrained. The few simulations focusing on a full glacial cycle hardly reproduced accurate ice volume fluctuations without accounting for more precise internal climate feedbacks such as vegetation and dust. Until now, such long-term simulations have not been performed with full General Circulation Models (GCMs), but with Earth Models of Intermediate Complexity (e.g. Calov et al., 2005; Kubatski et al., 2006; Bonelli et al., 2009). The primary driver of the glacial/interglacial cycles is the Earth’s orbital configuration and the resulting variations in insolation (Hays et al, 1976). Other factors, such as the CO2 and CH4 concentration, which have corresponding climate response lags of several thousands of years (~ 5 kyrs), are thought to drive the ice sheet growth and decay (in that case, GHG effect is similar to that of insolation) or to be driven by the ice sheets fluctuations (Ruddiman, 2006). Oceans are often seen not as a driver of these long time-scale climate fluctuations, but as an amplifier of those oscillations since their thermal inertia is large and may have delayed the climate response to external forcings variations (Knorr and Lohmann, 2003). Ultimately, the role of vegetation and aerosols transportation and deposition feedbacks during glacial/interglacial has been highlighted. Indeed, vegetation and dust changes amplify the regional climate trend through changes in local albedo and may have played an important part in triggering the growth and decay of the ice sheets (e.g., Kubatzki and Claussen, 1998; Peltier and Marshall, 1995). Finally, the mechanisms driving the transition between glacial/interglacial periods are poorly understood. As for the glacial period, insolation changes seem to trigger interglacial periods but full GCMs cannot reproduce those transitions at the moment.

The Glacial Inception in the Northern Hemisphere

If the mechanisms of the 100-kyr glacial/interglacial cycles are still not fully understood, the onset of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciations (NHG) toward 2.7 Ma will continue to be a mystery. First, what defines the onset of the NHG? A drop in CO2 from 415 ppm to less than 280 ppm has been recorded in geological data (Pagani et al., 2010) and simultaneously, the first ice rafted debris  (IRD) event is dated at 2.7 Ma in the Pacific (Prueher and Rea, 2001). IRD are continental material (sediments and rocks), which are embedded in continental ice (glaciers or ice sheets) and  are deposited onto the bottom of the ocean when the ice breaks into icebergs at the continental margins, which drift along oceanic currents. IRD events imply ice dynamics and thus, the presence of ice sheets. These  two observations clearly indicate that toward 2.7 Ma, ice sheets were already growing on the Northern Hemisphere continents.

Which processes triggered the gradual cooling and the glacial inception in the Northern Hemisphere? The onset of the NHG is thought to be caused by processes acting on a time scale of several million years (Figure 2). There are different hypothesis that have been tested in GCMs simulation to check their potential importance in the glacial inception of the Northern Hemisphere. One of the major hypotheses is the closure of both the Indonesian (~3-5 Ma, Cane and Molnar, 2001) and Panama seaways (~3 Ma, Bartoli et al, 2005). The closure of the Panama isthmus, which began 13 Ma, was very slow. When the connection between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans closed, it intensified the thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic intensifying the heat transport from the equator toward high latitudes. Such hypotheses tested in GCMs circulation show that, even if a larger heat export could bring more precipitation and lead to the built of an ice sheet, the difference in ice sheet volume accumulated between an “open” or “closed” isthmus is small (Klocker et al., 2005; Lunt et al., 2008). On the contrary, the closure of the Indonesian seaway stopped the warm waters from the South Pacific from flowing into the Indian Ocean. This increased the amount of the North Pacific cold waters involved in  circulation into the Indian Ocean and thus reduced the heat transport from the tropics toward the higher latitudes, finally triggering a global cooling (Cane and Molnar, 2001). Another hypothesis involves the increase in stratification of the Northern Pacific ~ 2.7 Ma (Haug et al., 2005) that would have risen the summer and autumn sea surface temperatures (SST) and cool the winter SST enough to allow the snow cover to become permanent and initiate  glaciation. Fedorov et al. (2006) proposed that the shoaling of the equatorial Pacific thermocline reached a threshold ~ 3 Ma, which allows the surface winds to bring cold waters to the surface in the various upwelling zones. This affected the response of tropical SSTs to orbital variations and thus initiated glaciations in the high latitudes. A very recent study by Steph et al. (2010), supported by new sea surface temperatures data, suggests that the progressive closure of the Panama isthmus increased the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.  This in turn triggered the shoaling of the tropical thermocline between 4.8 and 4 Ma, finally intensifying the NHG toward 3.6 Ma (suggested earlier than previous studies). This directly contradicts the hypothesis that shoaling of the thermocline first triggered the cooling of the deep ocean as suggested by Fedorov et al. (2006). Finally, Rea et al., (1998) suggested that the drop in CO2 at the end of the Pliocene was caused  by the uplift of the Tibetan plateau (start ~ 3.6 – 4 Ma) that caused an intensification of the subpolar westerly winds, cooling the Northern Hemisphere.

All the processes described here are not critical and could not have triggered  the onset of the NHG alone. However, combined together, they could explain the drop in CO2 and the changes in heat distribution which decreased the global temperature and led the cold climate state that started ~ 2.7 Ma (Figure 2). How will our climate respond to the large increase in CO2 and in temperature that we are recording at present? The various studies dealing with the cyclicity of the glacial/interglacial cycles may suggest that anthropogenic warming may have postponed the next glacial period (Berger and Loutre, 2002). Given the recently high CO2 concentration reached in the present atmosphere it is suggested that our interglacial could last for some more ~ 50 kyrs (Berger and Loutre, 2002; Mysak, 2008).

References:

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Pitcure from {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/davesag/543627248/} davesag's Flickr album {/link}

In the last two years the international community shared the objective  to limit the increase of  mean global temperatures to 2°C above pre-industrial levels in order to prevent the risks and effects of climate change. This agreement was made in a number of international meetings: G8 2009/2010, G20 2009, UN General Assembly 2009/2010, Copenhagen Conference 2009.
The Council of the European Union, on October 29, 2010, acknowledged that to stay below 2ºC would require global greenhouse gas emissions to peak at least by 2020.  In order to limit the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations to less than 450 parts per million (ppm), global greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by at least 50% compared with 1990 by 2050 and continue to decline thereafter.  The developed countries as a group should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 80% to 95% by 2050, through an intermediate legally binding quantified emission reduction commitment of 30% by 2020, with respect to 1990.
The developing countries as a whole should achieve a substantial deviation below the currently predicted emissions growth rate by 15-30% by 2020.
Furthermore, estimates based on available information such as current population projections by 2050, calculate that global average greenhouse gas emissions per capita should be reduced to around two tons  CO2 equivalent. A  gradual convergence of national per capita emissions between developed and developing countries would be necessary considering the national circumstances.

Feasible Targets? Atmospheric CO2 concentration and global emissions

The present atmospheric level of CO2 is approximately 390 ppm (NOAA, 2010).
Taking into account all the greenhouse gases, the CO2 equivalent is already 448 ppm  (EPRI, 2009, pdf) and it is expected to rise in the next years.

Until now,  efforts to reduce  carbon emissions through international legally binding agreements have not worked..
Ten years after the agreement of  the Kyoto Protocol, 1998-2007, the global emissions rose by an average of 2.5% a year. Although emissions fell in USA, Canada, Japan, EU, between 2008-2009 as the global recession took hold, they continued to grow in China, India and in the most of the developing countries. With 1.86 billion tons of CO2 emissions in 2009 (25% of the global emissions)China succeeded the USA as the world’s biggest carbon emitter.
Meanwhile India’s, emissions  have been growing at about a 5% yearly rate in the last decade,  succeeding Russia as the world’s third largest emitter.

The energy scenarios of 2030  project a significant increase in the demand for global fossil fuels as well as CO2 emissions. According to IEA World Energy Outlook 2009, the global demand grows by 40%  between 2008-2030, with coal use rising in absolute terms. The global energy demand is increasing mostly in the emerging and developing world, to sustain their economic growth and social development. CO2 emissions continue to grow (+45% in 2030) mostly from the emerging and developing world.

Nevertheless, per capita emissions in emerging and developing economies are far below those of most in  the developed world.
In 2010, per capita emissions in USA are three times larger than in China and 15 times larger than India.
Per capita emissions are a sensible indicator of the energy and social divide between the countries considering that 2 billion people in the developing world do not have access to energy.

The IEA Business As Usual scenario suggests  that after 2030, the global energy demand will continue to grow. In the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario, the “carbon neutral” energy sources (renewables, biofuels, nuclear),  combined with energy efficiency and the technology of carbon capture and storage are not sufficient to replace the fossil fuels  to meet the increasing energy demand, and fossil fuels will continue to supply more than two-thirds of the world’s energy.
Therefore, the global emissions will be larger than+ 130% with respect to 1990.

The “energy revolution” to meet the stabilization target

According to the ‘Blue Map’ scenario in 2010 Energy Technology Perspectives (IEA/ETP, pdf)

• global greenhouse gas emissions should peak by around 2020, and decline steadily towards the 50 % cut in carbon emissions by 2050;
• investments (public and private) in clean technologies should rise from the present $165bn a year, to $750bn in 2030 and $1.6 trillion in 2050;
• renewables should account for 48% of power generation, nuclear 24% and plants equipped with carbon capture and storage 17%;
• the widespread use of next-generation biofuels should replace gasoline and diesel;
• a huge improvement in energy efficiency should reduce the energy demand growth by only  32%, compared with 84 % under the BAU;
• the widespread introduction of electric, hybrid or fuel cells cars should account for at least 80% of all vehicles on the road;
• stable, long-term incentives such as feed-in tariffs, loan guarantees and tax credits must be introduced to encourage the adoption of low-carbon technologies, while market barriers such as planning obstacles, building codes and red tape must be cut.

The “Blue Map”, with the convergence of the “Per Capita Emissions” issue (2 tons  in 2050, as suggested by EU)  demand immediate global action to address :

• the “burden sharing” of 2020 peak and 2050 per capita emissions,  taking into account the present and predicted  gaps in carbon intensity and per capita between the countries;
• the energy technologies “revolution”  in terms of  agreed and mandatory
  • international standards ( in energy efficiency, sustainable biofuels, renewable performances…..);
  • international  rules to shift the energy system towards the “carbon neutral” technologies (for example phasing out the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructures not equipped with Carbon Capture&Storage technologies and forbidding  new plants, like in the case of  CFCs under Montreal Protocol);
• the international and domestic trade and fiscal rules, both to support low carbon technologies investments and to  avoid unfair competition and carbon leakage;
• the establishment and the management of international financial mechanisms to support the energy security in the developing world.

The challenge is new, complex and unprecedented. An international agreement to address the issues that are needed to tackle climate change, carbon intensity of the economies,and energy security has not yet been made. The traditional format of the agreements under the Climate Change Convention (Kyoto Protocol, Copenaghen Accord) is not adequate to meet the challenge.

The “test” of complexity lies within the combination of the low carbon strategies and measures with the existing and forecasted investments in oil and gas infrastructures. Is it possible to design and manage the exit strategy from fossil fuels while tens of  trillions of dollars are invested in new energy infrastructures based on oil, sand oil, natural gas and shale gas? How will it be possible to meet the long-term lifetime of such infrastructures with the 2020 peak?
Is the combination of international regulations  and the Environmental Social Responsibility of the private energy companies enough to address the exit strategy from fossil fuels?

Another test is the “parallel” case of China and USA

According to the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, “China’s emissions need to peak by 2020. Without such commitment from China, halving CO2 emissions by 2050, is simply impossible”.
According to the Chinese government, the 2020 peak target  combined with a projected 36 % cut in coal consumption by 2050, will force China to sacrifice economic growth.
China has already pledged to reduce energy intensity (CO2 emissions/GDP) by 40-45 % by 2020.  Today China is the biggest global investor in renewables, nuclear and carbon capture&storage technologies.
In addition, China’s per capita emissions , in comparison with USA, are 3 times lower in 2010, and are predicted to be 2,5 times lower in 2020.

As noted by Amy Heinzerling of the Earth Policy Instituter, 22% of China emissions come  from the production of exported goods, while goods imported by USA are responsible for 190 million tons of emissions per year.

Further domestic and international commitments made by China can be considered only if USA and the most developed countries make proportional and comparable commitments.  These commitments also depend on the efforts supported by multilateral/bilateral technology and financial cooperation in China.
Otherwise  China’s peak of emissions will be reached between 2030-2040,  under the present domestic policies and measures.

The United States have not been able to make commitments  to reduce emissions and shift from fossil fuel to a low carbon economy.
In September 1999, the US Senate rejected the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, proposed by the Clinton Administration, considering that the international treaty would affect the energy security and the national sovereignty of USA.

In 2010, the US Senate refused to examine the draft law for the introduction of limits to CO2 emissions through a mechanism similar to the European one. This occurred because of missing cost estimates and serious concerns regarding the effects on energy security and on the national sovereignty.
Furthermore, US Senate expressed its uneasiness to accept commitments that emerging economies, such as China and India, have not shared.

Meanwhile, in 2010, the EU countries and Japan, with comparable standards of life in  USA, emit only half per capita CO2. This is a case of unfair competition by  USA with EU and Japan because of unequal commitments for the emissions reduction.

A new leadership for Europe?

The European Council on October 28 suggested  “a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, as part of a wider outcome including the perspective of the global and comprehensive framework engaging all major economies “
Perhaps it is time that the EU  acknowledge that the Kyoto format is not adequate to meet the multiple challenges of climate change, low carbon economy and energy security.
Rather than focusing on complex legal structures and the construction of a new international bureaucracy on climate change, Europe should focus on promoting international projects. These projects will face the global technological challenge using the great potential of the European integrated economy, which has already achieved important levels of efficiency and innovation.
Europe should test the possible rules and measures necessary to promote a global “de-carbonized” economy able to sustain growth and reduce emissions, building a European “Global Platform” based on the three technological pillars: energy efficiency, renewable energy and nuclear energy, also including forestry management.

In this perspective, it is necessary to work at two levels:

The national level: through common EU policies and strategies on technologies and financing measures.  In spite of the framework established by the “climate and energy package” the lack of harmonized measures for energy efficiency, efficiency standards for renewables, nuclear, energy fiscal policy, agriculture and animal husbandry, forestry management, financing for research and development, hinder the valorization and development of the European potential to build a “green” and “de-carbonized” economy;

The international level: through a new and structured European initiative for the technological cooperation with emerging economies and with USA/Canada/Japan in order to use the European platform as a “Hub” for the global innovation and dissemination of low-carbon technologies. The technological initiative could represent an evolution of the Kyoto Protocol JI and CDM mechanisms.

The Threat of Climate Change: the Need of Adaptation Measures

Waiting for USA and China,  no agreement will be effective, and tackling global climate change will be more difficult, also because of the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
The Atmosphere CO2 stabilization at 450 ppm is difficult to achieve.
Some scientific institutions suggest the consideration of more realistic targets, taking into account that the CO2 concentration, due to carbon cycle, is the result of both the emissions and the carbon dioxide already “stored” in the atmosphere.
According to EPRI (2009), two stabilization targets could be considered, taking into account the radiative forcing and the relative increasing in the mean global temperature.

Click to enlarge

Stabilization at 550 ppm  (target 3,7) which corresponds to + 2,5 °C,  requires too strong of a commitment even if postponed, in the deviation from the emissions baseline.
Stabilization at 650 ppm ( target 4,5) which corresponds + 3 °C,  requires challenging global measures  which address the emissions reduction and the adaptation to the effects of the temperature increasing above 2°C

However, as the temperature is increasing, extreme events may occur with greater frequency and intensity.

Last summer many regions and countries  were affected by extreme events, worse than any other in the historical record, with high economic costs and the loss of thousands of lives: flooding in Pakistan, Western China, and India; heat waves in eastern USA, parts of Africa and  Asia, and Russia with unprecedented drought and fires.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in the first six months of the year 2010, the average temperatures were the warmest on record, in accordance with the trend of the recent decades.
Statistics show that the added heat in the atmosphere in the last decades is the driving force for the worsening of the extreme events.

Locally, “some extreme events occurring over a relatively short time period, especially in close proximity, could mutually reinforce each other in such a way that the resulting cascade of consequences becomes a global catastrophe.” Other extreme events can have secondary consequences that generate additional, substantial damage.   Secondary consequences, in turn, can trigger tertiary consequences that further amplify the adverse consequences, and so on” (“Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes”, Carolyn Kousky and others, 2009).

Pitcure from  “Climate Change and its possible security implications” – Report of the Secretary General to the General Assembly (September 2009) Click to enlarge

Drought and/or flooding, are the best examples of extreme events, which generate multiple effects: food and water shortage, loss of cultivated areas, devastation of urbanized areas in the coastal zones, migration of the populations, regional conflicts, and political instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.
Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.
According to UN secretariat (2009) the multiplier threat of climate change should be addressed while considering the adaptation (prevention policies) and the international assistance in the case of the extreme events.
Until now, such policies  have not been put in place.
This is an additional and urgent task for the international community.

References

• Geoffrey J. Blanford, International Participation in Post-Kyoto Climate Policy, Epri 2009
• Amy Heinzerling, Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall in 2009 – Past Decade Still Sees Rapid Emissions Growth, Earth Policy Institute, July 2010
• International Energy Agency  – World Energy Outlook 2010
• International Energy Agency  – 2010 Energy Technology Perspectives (pdf)
• International Energy Agency  – World Energy Outlook 2009
• Martin I. Ioffert, Climate Change: Farewell to Fossil Fuels?, Science, 10 september 2010
• Carolyn Kousky, Olga Rostapshova, Michael A. Toman, Richard Zeckhauser, Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes, RFF Discussion Paper 09-45, November 2009
• Richard Richels, Feasible Climate Targets, Epri 2009 (pdf)
• UN General Assembly, Climate Change and its possible security implications – Report of the Secretary General to the General Assembly, September 2009