Allgemein « Climate Equity

Observed around the world with varying degrees of curiosity, high expectations and hopes, skepticism, potential good will or schadenfreude, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has embarked on probably the furthest reaching energy transformation of any industrialized country by its recent government decision – confirmed by a parliamentary vote end of June – to phase out nuclear energy by 2022.  This will be a costly endeavor, no doubt, a multibillion-dollar experiment to improve the country’s electricity grid and scale up generation and use of renewable energy domestically.  If Germany’s great energy transformation effort succeeds, other industrialized countries will have a harder time arguing that a low-carbon energy transformation will necessarily cost jobs, reduce a country’s economic growth and threaten its global competitiveness. 

Yet, the German experiment can only then be judged a true success, if Germany does not fund its national energy transformation  at the expense of its international obligations and pledges to help developing countries finance their own low-carbon and climate-resilient development.  Funding both the energy transformation at home and internationally at the same time, without short-cuts and excuses:  this  will set Germany apart from the rest of the industrialized world and cement a true German leadership position in climate actions globally ….. (more…)

Four months after the climate summit in Cancun endet with a a series of „Cancun Agreements“, this week, negotiators in Bangkok/Thailand continue to push for an international climate compact.  It is not only the nuclear meltdown in Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami there, which attracts political and media attention instead of the Bangkok talks.  A UN negotiation fatigue, starting with the politically controversial Copenhagen Accord, has not yet dissipated, despite the partial success in Cancun – which agreed to worry about the really contentious issues, like the legal status of a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, later.  Many have lost faith that the UNFCCC is the right venue to engender substantial process in the international climate talks.  ClimatEquity talked with Hans Verolme, an advisor to many of the civil society organizations organized in Climate Action Network International, who is participating in the Bangkok negotiations this week.

ClimatEquity (CE): In Cancun, there was a spirit of optimism expressed by many government negotiators and civil society representatitives. Is any of this spirit still palpable in Bangkok?  

Hans Verolme (HV): While the hangover from Copenhagen may have lifted in Cancun, it is my view that the Cancun Agreements were to some extent merely a translation of the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC negotiating text. They also represented an acknowledgement by the world’s governments of their lack of political courage to translate a rather vague, rhetorical ambition to prevent dangerous warming into a fair and binding agreement. The existence of this large (some 10 gigatonnes!) gap between ambition and action is now central to the NGO work here. This sobering but realistic assessment also leads many NGOs to focus on very concrete issues such as how to deliver technology and finance support.

Overall, civil society (and donor) interest in these negotiations has dropped significantly. Where in the run up to Copenhagen the meeting rooms were too small to handle the throngs of activists and the streets of Bangkok were full of protesters, all that remains is a small core of NGO representatives, often members of Climate Action Network with longstanding expertise in these negotiations. Unfortunately the growing climate movement is not felt here. (more…)

The World Bank’s series of World Development Reports (WDR)is special: conceived as the “flagship publication” of the international development bank, whose self-declared primary mission is poverty reduction, WDRs are meant to showcase the most advanced thinking from within the World Bank, detailing — and suggesting ways to overcome – major political, social and economic obstacles to global development targeted at development policy makers and practitioners. Given this premise, and the world’s acknowledgement of gender equality as critical for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one might wonder why it has taken the World Bank research staff that long to zoom in on gender equality (the Bank has published 32 WDRs so far since 1978) as the topic for a WDR, with “Gender Equality and Development” now being the official focus of the upcoming WDR 2012 to be released in late 2011.

But if a first 65-page draft outline of the possible several hundred pages long final report is any indication, the World Bank’s staff, despite its stated intention to use the WDR to take a look at the “various dimensions“ of gender equality, will not be able to overcome its own parochial view of women and gender equality.  Missing most prominently: an understanding of development in the context of sustainability, which – in the day and age of persistently high poverty rates, food insecurity, gender inequalities, environmental destruction and climate change globally – should be redefined as low-carbon, climate-resilient, livelihood focused, gender equitable development.  After all, almost 20 years after the Earth Summit, next year a serious reconsideration and refocusing of the concept in the context  of Rio+20 seems unavoidable. (more…)

When the Parties in Cancun agreed to set up a global Green Climate Fund (GCF) and tasked a new Transitional Committee (TC) of experts to meet by March 2011 for the first time to get to work on designing the new global climate fund, this was hailed as one of the most important concrete outcomes of the Cancun Agreements. Observers also noticed with hope that the TC would have a majority of its 40 members (namely 25 of them) come from developing countries.  This, so the expectation would ensure that the new Green Climate Fund would be more needs-based and recipient-country driven than is the case with most of the existing climate financing instruments, and less guided by industrialized countries’ demands as primary fund contributors.  Developing countries, having fought so hard before and in Cancun for the Green Climate Fund, seemed eager and excited to get to work quickly…. (more…)

According to Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean President and now the Executive Director of UN Women, the UN’s new agency promoting women’s rights and their full participation in global politics, “Women’s strength, women’s industry, women’s wisdom are humankind’s greatest untapped resource.” And in her first 100-day work plan as head of the new entity, she has put one big issue front and center on the agenda: promoting coherence with respect to gender equality and gender awareness within the UN system and its processes.  A good starting point for this endeavour: the UNFCCC and its executive director, Christiana Figueres… (more…)

Now that the political decision was made in Cancun in December to set up a global Green Climate Fund, the task turns to the only seemingly more mundane and less glamorous work of figuring out what the GCF should look like and what it can and should do.  Provided, of course that there will be a significant chunk of money flowing through a new GCF.  However, this seems less than clear and might be the biggest of several major design challenges such as its governance facing the new fund…. (more…)

It has taken the 192 member states of the United Nations a little while (what, four years?) to come to a decision on how to best promote gender equality within the international institution.  The result, agreed upon by General Assembly in a resolution beginning of July, is a newly formed agency within the UN, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women.  

Now, ordinarily, one would refer to this UN unit henceforth under its acronym.  Unfortunately, “UNEGEEW”  doesn’t exactly role from the tongue.  Nor does it ring with positive connotations — in US English, “eew” is an utterance of distaste and disgust.  So, with tongue-in-cheek and decidedly unimaginative, the entity will be known in the future as “UN Women” or “ONU Femmes” in French.  One can only hope that this nomen turns out to be a good omen,  even as it downplays the gender dimension of its work…  At least, the new structure provides some clarity and with the expected appointment of the head of the new UN Women agency at the rank of an Under-Secretary-General, directly reporting to the Secretary General and included in all senior-level management circles some much needed authority boost for gender equality issues at the United Nations. (more…)

The biggest renaissance we are experiencing in terms of nuclear power is the political debate about it. Conservatives in Germany such as Norbert Röttgen, Federal Minister of Environment and Nuclear Safety, view nuclear power as a dead-end technology and even newspapers as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), historically right-leaning, report on the disastrous finance of the construction of new power plants.

Unfortunately, the debate in the US is not quite as frank, but instead characterized by ideological half-truths, political tactics and a poorly informed public. Even Barack Obama, until now the main savior of the climate in the US, argues for the construction of new nuclear power plants in the US (e.g. in his State of the Union address). Consequently, the budget proposal of the White House contains more than $50 billion in loan guarantees for new plants in 2011. Do we face a renaissance of nuclear power in the US? (more…)

Guest Commentary by Sun Xiaohua (China Daily)

For Tibetan yak herder Bugye, the grassland in Nagqu prefecture, Lhoma county is much greener this year. “The animals have more fresh grass, especially this summer,” Bugye, 68, said, watching over his herd of 70 yaks and 200 sheep grazing under blue sky and bright sunshine this early autumn. The rainy season came a month earlier and lasted longer. Herdsmen like Bugye, who endured a severe drought last year, were very pleased. But it is proving to be a mixed blessing.

Scientists consider this kind of weather fluctuation testimony of global warming and worry that herders will face more extreme weather conditions and degradation of the grassland in coming years. An immediate consequence is that herders now face a severe shortage this winter of what is traditionally used for heating fuel- dried yak dung. With the prolonged rainy season, Bugye and other herding families have had trouble getting yak dung dried this year. (more…)