An upbeat message on climate change
David Dickson
The report on climate change by leading economist Sir Nicholas Stern paints
a dire picture of what is likely to happen if drastic action is not taken
soon to curb the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
But the underlying message is more optimistic. Preventing climate change
does not mean stopping economic growth, Stern argues. It merely means
containing economic growth within reasonable limits and ensuring that it
follows a responsible path.
According to Stern's estimates, an investment of just one per cent of the
world's gross domestic product would be sufficient to cap the carbon gas
emissions causing global warming at between 500 and 550 parts per million a
year. This, he says, is likely to limit the rise in global average temperature
to between two and three degrees centigrade. This would be a significant but not
necessarily catastrophic increase.
The message is timely as countries signed up to United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change continue to gather in Nairobi, Kenya, for the
latest round of negotiations on putting commitments into practice.
One of the main tasks they face is how to forge an international consensus
on action once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Another is how to bring
larger developing countries like Brazil, China and India into a 'post-Kyoto'
regime.
Two arguments are generally used to excuse these countries from not doing
more. Both are based on concepts of international equity. The first is that
they should not be penalised for being late starters in the industrialisation
stakes. The second is that it is unfair to ask either country to make economic
sacrifices when the world's largest contributor to climate change, the United
States, refuses to do so.
But Stern's report provides a useful antidote to those who argue that
developing countries should not be expected to contribute significantly to
efforts to reduce climate change. Today's expenditure to curb carbon
emissions should be seen as an investment in future benefits. Not as an
operating loss.
Furthermore, the cost of delay is likely to be high. And the cost of delay
will increase rapidly, leading eventually to annual losses of 20 per cent of
global Gross Domestic Product. As Stern puts it: "the benefits of strong
and
early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting."
Such a conclusion justifies a wide range of political responses. One is that
international aid is urgently needed to help fund carbon reduction
strategies and technologies in developing countries. Curbing deforestation.
Assessing whether projects funded through carbon trading schemes are
efficient enough.
A second is that there should be a massive increase in expenditure on
renewable energy research. The worst culprit here is the United States,
which has had virtually the same energy research budget for the past decade.
But other countries are not much better.
The third conclusion to follow from Stern's analysis is that developing
countries such as South Africa stand to benefit substantially from building
their own technological capacity to limit carbon emissions. This requires
mobilising domestic resources. The voting public also has to be convinced of the
urgency of such investment — a task in which the national media have an
important role to play.
Relying on the developed world to provide the means for reducing polluting
emissions into the atmosphere is not a long-term solution. Many climate change
sceptics, who tend to see any attempt to control growth
only in terms of its negative impact on the economy and the curtailment of
economic freedoms, have already dismissed Stern's warnings as another set of
alarmist predictions.
Other critics have warned that Stern does not go far enough. They suggest
that measures that are predominantly economical — such as enhanced trading in
complicated carbon emission permits between the industrialised and less-industrialised
nations — may fail to achieve Stern's stabilisation
target. Even this target may be insufficient to prevent major climate-linked
catastrophes, such as widespread drought in sub-Saharan Africa.
From a political perspective, the major challenge at present is not to come
up with a logically watertight answer to climate change. The challenge is to
come up with a strategy that has a chance of succeeding in the real world.
This means persuading countries such as China and India that it is in their
own interests to engage in global efforts to curb carbon emissions.
Stern's report seeks to do this. Its underlying message is that tackling
climate change effectively requires global action. But it is action from
which everyone will eventually benefit — and in which everyone, whether in
developed or developing countries, should therefore participate. - SciDev.Net
More information:
 David
Dickson is director of the Science and Development Network, an open-source news
agency online at www.SciDev.Net
Article courtesy and ©Scidev.net
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