CCBF Blog

A Trustee of Planet Earth

I am writing to tell you that I have just become a Trustee of Planet Earth! I feel slightly dizzy with this new and large responsibility. But what does this mean?

Quite simply, I give full recognition of the duty of care that we owe this beautiful planet and call for a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights. The mastermind behind this proposal is Polly Higgins (Barrister). Her declaration of planetary rights enshrines ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to as the Declaration of Human Rights won after the second world war.

The Declaration of Planetary Right would change the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It would create a global framework for negotiation that creates direct responsibility and protection provisions rather than endless blame game negotiations where responsibility is by-passed and dropped.

The good news is that Bolivia, Ecuador and other Latin American countries are taking this idea seriously. On 22 April 2009 President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia called on the General Assembly of the United Nations to develop a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. And then a recent UN General Assembly resolution approved in December in 2009 calls on all countries and the Secretary General to share their experiences and perspectives on how to create “harmony with nature.”

According to Polly Higgins: " If  legal systems recognised the rights of other-than-human beings (e.g. mountains, rivers, forests and animals), courts and tribunals could deal with the fundamental issues of environmental contamination rather than being bogged down in the technical details of permitted pollutants and emissions. For example, a rights-based approach could evaluate whether the rights of humans to clear tropical forests for beef ranching should trump the right of species in those forests to continue to exist. Instead of devising ever more complex schemes to authorise environmental damage and to trade in the right to pollute, we would focus on how best to maintain the quality of the relationship between ourselves and Earth."

You too can be a Trustee of Planet Earth. Just click on the link and sign up: http://www.treeshaverightstoo.com/

Ciara Shannon

PS: How come more people aren't blogging? Come on everyone!

Private Sector and the International Climate Change Negotiations- Developing Options for Institutional Engagement

Business no role to play in international level negotiations...

As mentioned in an earlier post, many businesses at the Global Business Day in Copenhagen found it difficult to hear Yvo De Boeur say that though business often plays an effective role in engaging governments nationally, at the international level, and particularly in Copenhagen, business had “no role to play”. Yvo went on to mention that many negotiators were keen to keep it this way.

Apparently the UN commissioned a study in 1992 to find out how best to involve business in the negotiation process, but the overall conclusion of the complexity of dealing with so many agendas was too baffling. Next up is that the European Commission has commissioned the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Ecofys and Climate Focus to look into possible design options for effective and formal private sector engagement within the international climate change policy development and implementation process.

The key question they will assess is how governments can design policies that effectively leverage private capital, know-how and engagement to deliver the solutions necessary to address climate change at the scale and pace needed?

http://www.wbcsd.org/Plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?DocTypeId=33&ObjectId=MzY2MjM

If your business is interested in being interviewed as part of this consultancy then you'll need to contact any of the below people. Suggest WBCSD as first point of contact.

Project contacts

• Antonia Gawel
  WBCSD
  Tel.: +41 22 839 3110
  gawel@wbcsd.org
  
  
• Marion Vieweg
  Ecofys
  Tel.: +49 221 270 70 184
  m.vieweg@ecofys.com
  
  
• Moritz von Unger
  Climate Focus
  Tel.: +31 20 262 10 37
  M.vonUnger@climatefocus.com

Ciara Shannon

The problem of price and uncertainty

Will investors invest despite Copenhagen? The problem of price & uncertainty.

A positive outcome of Copenhagen was the pledged US$30 billion (2010-2012) quick start fund and the USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for developing countries with a significant portion of this to flow through the ‘Copenhagen Green Climate Fund’. 

 

This is good, but the Accord doesn't specify how the money will be raised, and according to many the price tag isn’t enough. The International Energy Agency's 2009 World Energy Outlook  says that investments in low-carbon energy technologies and energy efficiency on the order of $500 billion a year for the next 20 years will be required to reach 450ppm of carbon in the atmosphere.

 

Copenhagen also dashed any hope of a global market and left a question mark on the price of carbon. Immediately after Copenhagen, carbon dropped to a six-month low because of heightened uncertainty over the continuation of the CDM and JI mechanisms beyond 2012 and a concern that the development of new CDM projects would slow significantly.

 

It is expected that some 85 percent of the financial resources needed to cope with climate challenges must come from private investment, but investors post Copenhagen are faced with an uncertain path of diverse national policies on climate change. This will create an uneven playing field and is likely to increase the possibility of high-carbon industries “leaking” to those countries with less stringent policies; and some countries imposing tariffs on carbon-intensive imports.

 

What investors want according to a recent Deutsche Bank report is TLC (Transparency, Longevity and Certainty) in policy to mobilize capital with certainty, and at the scale needed. Investors also need the assurance that the price of carbon will be much higher than the current levels to make their investments cost-competitive with coal, oil or natural gas. Airlines and power companies don't yet know whether upgrading to cleaner technology will be economically worthwhile. According to the IEA, the carbon price must be €33 in 2020 and €73 by 2030 to make low-carbon technologies economic.  Last year it was averaging at €14.

 

The Deutsche Bank report goes onto to highlight that investors will become increasingly concerned about regulatory risk and countries that deploy a transparent, long-lived, comprehensive and consistent set of policies will attract global capital. Among the major economies surveyed in the report, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany and Japan were found to present the lowest investment risks. Germany and China ranked highly in terms of the amount of clean tech investment projects between 2000 and 2008, with respectively $36.7 billion and $41.2 billion in capital investment. The report also stresses the importance of energy efficiency in reducing global GHG emissions, saying "It is essential that governments incentivize deployment of capital in this area."

 

Just last week on January 14^th 2010, investors representing US$13 Trillion met at the UN in New York for an Investor Summit on Climate Risk and called on the USA and other countries for "a price on carbon emissions" and "well-designed carbon markets" to provide "a cost-effective way of achieving emissions reductions." Likely this summit was timed to put pressure on the passing of USA’s pending climate change bill, if passed it will limit carbon in the USA and put a price on carbon, as well creating a carbon market three times the size of the EU ETS scheme. All eyes on the USA....

 

Ciara Shannon