Climate goes from Copenhagen to local {writer: Leon Alberts}

The global battle for climate change will be won or lost at local level, was the message from Executive Mayor of Johannesburg, Councillor Amos Masondo, to the recent international conference in Copenhagen organised by Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI).

It is unrealistic and unjust to expect communities and their local governments to carry the burden of climate change response on their own, he said at the conference that coincided with the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties, or COP15, held in the Danish capital from 7 to 18 December 2009.

Sadly, the summit did not live up to expectations despite the fact that it was labelled beforehand as the “last chance for humanity to save the planet from disastrous climate change”.

“We need recognition of local government. We need a partnership. We need appropriate financing and capacity-building mechanisms,” said Masondo.

The mayor is a former president of ICLEI and co-president of United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the representative global forum for municipalities. He was sharing a platform at the Copenhagen summit with the mayors of London, New York, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Mexico City and Toronto.

In the end, the summit failed to negotiate a deal that created legally binding emission targets for countries.

In a deal that South African President Jacob Zuma helped to broker, the 193 sovereign states settled for a political agreement called the Copenhagen Accord.

The accord’s package of measures, which includes new financing for developed countries, was agreed to by leaders of both the largest emitting countries and small vulnerable states.

COP 16 will take place later this year in Mexico City, and while some hope that the accord can there be followed up with a legally binding agreement for the period post-2010 when the present Kyoto Agreement expires, most commentators do not hold out much hope that it would actually happen.

There seems to be wide agreement with the viewpoint formulated by Simon Zadek on the openDemocracy website (www.opendemocracy.net) that “Copenhagen will be seen as a failure of vision, leadership and compassion. The Copenhagen Accord noted in extra time at COP 15, will be stuck with the Sudanese’s naming as a ‘suicide pact’.

“And presidents Obama, Hu (of China) and many others, however they speak to their domestic constituencies, will have been party to this failed attempt to strike an ambitious deal.”

Zadek comes to the conclusion that “studied history will point to Copenhagen as the last serious attempt to use 20th century techniques to arrange our 21st century affairs. Seeking consensus between 193 sovereign states through a zero-sum negotiation process was always going to be a fool’s errand. It failed because it handed exclusive rights to national governments, leaving 99% of the energy of business, civil society, cities and the youth (just to name a few) as frustrated bystanders.

“It failed because it sought to secure a ‘one for all, and all for one’ consensus, unworkable even in the relatively simple world of trade.

“It failed, finally, because of its use of old-style negotiation techniques where we have learnt so much form the ‘deliberative’ approaches of communities and business in envisioning change and creating unlikely pathways to achieving it,” added Zadek.

In his address in Copenhagen, Masondo said the conference must deliver a comprehensive international response that is inclusive, just and implementable. “It must give expression to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” he said.

Expressing concern that draft negotiation documents at the summit fail to recognise the importance of local government, Mayor Masondo said: “We call upon world ministers and leaders to recognise the role which local and sub-national governments play in addressing the impacts of climate change.

“We also call upon world leaders to commit to an outcome that will seek active participation of local and sub-national governments.”

Mayor Masondo said that many of the most effective measures to curb climate change fall within the responsibility of local government, including:

• Energy efficiency (efficient lighting, thermally efficient buildings, efficient heating and ventilation, water consumption reduction);

• Renewable energy consumption (solar water heating, wind farm development, landfill gas to energy, ‘green’ electricity purchase, biogas digestion);

• Transport modal shifts (from private to public);

• New planning approaches to urban development;

• Community awareness and behavioural change;

• Resilient/sustainable infrastructure development in the areas of water, waste management, energy, storm water and roads);

• Disaster management; and

• Reorganising local economies into sustainable paths in the wake of the climate change question.

Commentary in the United Kingdom gave clear indication that the focus in dealing with climate change may indeed already be shifting more toward national and local action.

Under the heading “Green jobs for British workers?”, Thomas Ash writes on openDemocracy that, “Our attention should return again to what individual countries can do to tackle climate change absent a global deal sufficient to the problem. Most of the actions available to them are quite painful, with risk of other nations free-riding on their efforts, and are consequently politically problematic.

“But there is one policy that appears to pull off the magic trick of combining balm for the environment and jam for the voters: the creation of so-called ‘green jobs’.

“Strangely enough, this approach, heavily emphasised by the political leadership in America and much of continental Europe, has failed to attract comparable attention in Britain. This despite the fact that unemployment was reported… to have reached two and a half million…” he writes.

“There is plenty of slack productive capacity in the economy (as unemployed workers are sometimes described…).

“Jobs created by governments in these circumstances are often derided as ‘make-work’ affairs, but even if they would not always be considered the most effective use of resources, they produce more than redundant workers eking out benefits would do: real motorways, or – to take a greener, less 1930s example – real wind farms.”

Indeed the last chance

There is another perspective to what has occurred in Copenhagen, that the all-doom-and-gloom, last-chance-saloon view seems to be conventional wisdom.

In another thought-provoking article for openDemocracy, Brian Davey poses the question: “What if the future is one of contraction and disorganisation anyway?”

The last-chance view is based on an assumption that emissions in the future would continue to grow as they have in the past. He argues the possibility that human society may be entering a future in which its economic, organisational and lifestyle environment may look dramatically different to what we have become accustomed to.

In the lead-up to Copenhagen, it was said repeatedly that this was “the last chance to save the climate”. This idea was constructed on an assumption about “business as usual”: if emissions continue to grow on current trends, then – with little time left to put on the brakes and decarbonise the global economy at a sufficient rate – the task appears to be completely unfeasible.

With many scientists credibly arguing that we are already over the safe limit for greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, this may be true. There is now a good case that we need to go beyond decarbonising in the economy to actually finding technologies and processes to take out the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere.

So is the situation now quite hopeless? Perhaps so, but perhaps not. A reason for being at least a little hopeful is the questionable assumption of what “business as usual” will be like.

The common assumption is that the global economy will continue to grow as it has done over the last few decades. But is this assumption true in the light of peak oil and peak gas, Davey asks, as he points out that some dramatic enforced changes in the present global energy regime may be coming humanity’s way.

He indicates that during the last year, global emissions did not increase as the economy slid into recession.

One way of constructing the events of the last year is that rising energy prices played a major role in undermining many people’s ability to service their debts. A reckless financial system was undermined.

Of course, there was more to the financial crisis and the recession than merely a rise in energy and food prices, but that was surely an important part of the crisis. There is good reason to believe that the energy crisis has only just begun, argues Davey.

There may be a near-term peak in global oils supplies at hand. If correct, there is an energy crunch down the line as the real economy picks up with resultant rising energy prices, and business-as-usual emissions will not be quite the same as projected in some studies.

According to Davey, the future may not be one of continued expansion, but one of contraction and disorganisation – as in line with the thesis by archaeologist Joseph Tainter, which states that our society has simply become too complex for governing, management and technical arrangements of society to cope. The future is likely to be one of considerable disorganisation.

Davey concludes, ”The current discourse about the aftermath of Copenhagen assumes a future that is merely a projection of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. Humanity has now reached the limits of economic growth.

Climate change is just one manifestation of this. Having overshot and overused natural capital, humanity stands before turbulent times.

“The complex governance and management arrangements underpinned by plenty cheap energy will not be up to dealing with the problems we face. A totally different politics and totally different lifestyles are necessary if humanity is to have any chance of seeing out the century.

“At the same time, the future may yet prove more malleable than we think. Whether this is really cause for hope after Copenhagen remains to be seen. But let us at least discuss the real issues rather than the banalities of the official narrative,” he writes. (Davey’s full article can be found at www.opendemocracy.net/brian-davey/after-copenhagen)

Maybe in Mexico City

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) seems to be less pessimistic than most independent commentators.

Its Secretary-General Angel Gurría describes the Copenhagen Accord as “a breakthrough towards collective international action to limit global emissions and help build cleaner, more resilient economies”.

“We look forward to working with Mexico and the broader international community, ideally to establish a legally binding agreement for post-2012 action under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by the 16th Conference of Parties...

“To achieve this agreement, international organisations have a major role to play by informing the discussions and helping negotiating parties reach a common understanding of the issues at stake,” he said in a statement at the conclusion of COP15.

Gurría also gives recognition to the fact that whatever accords or even binding agreements are reached, some effort will have to go into preparing for climate change that is inevitable anyway.

“Given the climate change that is already likely to take place, we will also step up analysis of how to integrate adaptation to climate change into all aspects of economic development. Much of the focus will be on ways to assist developing countries to best manage the risks and make their development resilient to the impacts of climate change,” he said.

It is safe to assume that particularly on the front of adaptation, local government has a crucial role to play to cushion its citizens against the ravages that could accompany climate change.