Foreign Policy In Focus

By refusing to make any firm commitments at the Doha summit to deliver money over the next decade, industrialized countries are effectively relegating the GCF to irrelevance.

Cross-posted from Responding to Climate Change.

For those of us (wonks, admittedly) interested in the fate of the Green Climate Fund – potentially the most important multilateral institution to deal with climate change in the near future – the outcome of 2012 Doha climate summit was a disappointingly mixed bag.

The 194 countries assembled there made promising statements about the importance of the fund in the international climate financing architecture and outlined their work for the year ahead.

But by refusing to make any firm commitments in Doha to deliver money over the next decade, industrialized countries threatened to relegate the GCF, at least temporarily, to irrelevance.

No new money in the mid-term

Three years ago in Copenhagen, developed countries agreed that by 2020 they would make sure $100bn reached developing countries each year to address the impacts of climate change and support their shift from dirty energy to low-carbon development strategies.

They also promised to move $30bn right away – what’s come to be known as “fast start financing.” They left unfunded the years between 2012 and 2020.

Thus commitments from wealthy countries for specific amounts and deadlines for medium-term financing became a key ask for developing countries at Doha.

Wealthy countries did not, in the end, agree to funding targets or benchmarks to ensure the delivery of climate finance from now through the end of the decade. 

The Doha decision weakly “encourages” developed countries that had already pledged to provide some climate money before 2015 to increase their efforts to at least what they had promised in the fast-start period, and “urges” the remaining developed nations to make pledges “when their financial circumstances permit.”

Hardly the display of urgency or mandate for action that any of us were hoping for.

The decision document also invited (but didn’t require) wealthy countries to submit their strategies for moving $100bn by 2020, and granted a one-year extension to a process meant to help indentify pathways for scaling up climate finance in the long term.

In other words, while governments say they’re anxiously awaiting the opening of the Green Climate Fund, there appears to be little enthusiasm for making public money actually flow.

Moving forward on GCF infrastructure

Despite a lack of political will to fill the fund, there was some forward movement on building an institution worth putting money into. The following four issues are some of the most important pieces of the Doha decision that the GCF’s board will report on when nations reconvene at the 2013 climate summit.

1. Secure funding

Seeing little money materialize in Doha, the board of the Green Climate Fund was tasked with securing funds from industrialized country governments as well as a variety of other public and private sources.

The economic crisis and budget shortfalls are pushing contributor countries to call on the private sector to be more involved in climate funding – even promising to funnel money directly from the Green Climate Fund to private investors for projects in developing countries.

But while the private sector has played a significant role in providing finance to energy and other climate-related projects, experience shows that left to its own devices, the private sector often doesn’t put the needs of people at the center of its investments.

For instance, money channeled through the private arm of the World Bank – the International Finance Corporation – tends to bypass impoverished countries and marginalized people within middle-income nations.

These are the countries and communities least responsible for causing the climate crisis, but most impacted by its effects.

GCF board members will have to establish rules for effective, appropriate engagement for the private sector to make sure that projects and policies prioritize the goals of the Green Climate Fund rather than those of investors.

At the same time, leaders should harness the popular narrative of fiscal hardship to implement innovative ideas for funding national budgets – like a carbon tax or a financial transaction tax. These policies are good for the climate and financial stability, and raise revenue that can be used beyond climate.

2. Develop a ”no-objection” procedure

Calling for a ‘no-objection’ procedure was one way that the Green Climate Fund’s founders tried to ensure that both private and public investment serves the needs of impacted people.

The procedure should help ensure genuine developing country ownership of activities within its own borders by giving any government the power to nix a project or program supported by the GCF headed for their country that doesn’t meet national goals.

Also, securing “no-objection” at the national level should help people living within a country – particularly individuals and communities affected by a GCF project – reject an activity that might be well-intentioned, but could ultimately undermine their development.

If designed right, the no-objection procedure could help filter out projects that are incompatible with national strategies, conflict with better programs and projects, or impose undue harm or costs upon host communities and their environment.

3. Balance support for adaptation and mitigation

Given the emphasis on pulling private sector investors into the fund, the GCF board will need to implement clear standards to ensure that programs and policies to build resilience to climate change impacts receive the resources they need.

Investors, not surprisingly, look for a return on their investment, and as a result support for profitable mitigation and large-scale projects dwarfs that for adaptation.

According to recent studies, only 15 percent of all climate finance goes to adaptation – for private climate finance that shrinks to a mere 5 percent.

The GCF board will have to go beyond setting rhetorical guideposts for allocating finance and establish concrete directives based on the goals of the fund and the needs of developing countries.

4. Set-up the structure

In order for the fund to meet its aim of providing climate finance for a climate-conscious paradigm shift, it needs a credible and effective infrastructure.

That’s why countries attending the Doha meeting asked the board to make arrangements for a permanent secretariat to take care of the day-to-day work of the fund, and to make a plan for coordinating with the other relevant bodies of the climate convention like the technology and adaptation committees.

The board was also tasked with establishing rules for an open, transparent and competitive bidding process to find a permanent trustee so that the World Bank – now holding the interim position – doesn’t automatically fill the post.

Many developing countries and climate campaigners are calling for an alternative to the World Bank because of its history of placing policy conditions on loans, racking up developing world debt, and supporting dirty energy around the planet.

On the bright side, Doha showed that both developing and developed countries are committed to getting the GCF up and running.

But for the Fund to meet the needs of climate-impacted communities, satisfy contributor countries, and achieve basic standards of fairness and effectiveness, its members have their work cut out for them this year.

Janet Redman is co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at IPS.

Both President Obama and Governor Romney have to break their silence on climate change in the third and final presidential debate tonight. Unfortunately it appears they’ll get little help from moderator Bob Schieffer, who has chosen to focus on war, the Middle East, and China, while presumably lumping all other matters of global importance under “America’s role in the world.” 

It may not fit neatly into the categories presented tonight, but the next president’s approach to climate change will impact the real security of our nation, and global economic and political stability. Global warming – and the extreme weather, displacement, scarcity conflicts, and humanitarian crises it promises to bring with it—will affect every aspect of U.S. foreign policy. To be a responsible electorate on November 6^th, we need to know how each candidate plans to address the threat of climate disruption.

The best first step to addressing global climate change is reducing greenhouse gas pollution at home in the United States—still the world’s biggest overall climate culprit. The incoming president should start by ending tax breaks to dirty energy like coal, oil, and gas, beefing up investment in clean wind, solar, and energy efficiency, and letting the EPA do its job of enforcing existing rules to protect the planet. The last thing we need is a pair of politicians falling all over each other on the debate floor to prove who loves coal better and who’s going to open up more gas and oil fields.

Barring an apology for their wanton wooing of the fossil fuel industry in previous debates, here are four things I hope to hear both candidates talk about getting done on climate and the environment in the next four years:

1. Stand up for multilateralism and global democracy. When U.S. envoy Todd Stern first addressed the 192 member countries of the UN climate convention after Obama’s inauguration, he received a standing ovation. Since then he’s worked to steadily lower expectations of what the United States—and democratic spaces like the United Nations—can accomplish on climate. Regrettably, it’s worked. Confidence in the UN as the best forum in which to seal a global climate deal is staggeringly low. But a growing chorus of international civil society and official voices alike is calling for the United States to bargain in good faith for a fair and effective climate treaty in 2015, or step aside and let the rest of the world do so.

We need to get verbal confirmation that our next leader understands the magnitude of the threat that climate change poses, and hear how he would promote multilateral efforts to solve this global challenge.

2. Put his money where his mouth should be. Taking global warming seriously means spending money to help poorer countries steer away from cheap but polluting energy toward low-carbon development. It also means paying our fair share to support communities as they adapt to the effects of warming already “locked in” by existing emissions. It’s a moral obligation and a legal commitment, but it also makes economic sense. Every dollar we spend today staving off climate chaos saves three in future disaster response costs. And since climate change threatens to derail and even roll back development gains in the global south, paying for prevention is part of protecting 60 years of U.S. investment in reducing poverty.  

The candidates should signal support for international climate finance by naming innovative proposals to raise funds like a financial transaction tax (popularly known as a Robin Hood Tax)—a tiny tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives that can raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year—and committing to put that money in the Green Climate Fund.

3. Don’t trade away our future. Trade may not seen like a climate issue, but the United States is in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement (FTA) called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that could stop us, and our allies, from passing laws that protect the planet and our families. FTAs give countries—and even companies—the power to sue governments for policies that they say hurt their bottom line. In a current case, Japan and the European Union are suing Canada for Ontario’s new feed-in tariff program to increase the share of green energy in province electricity markets and encourage “made-in-Ontario” goods and labor.  Sadly, the United States has sided against the climate, submitting an official brief calling Canada’s support of local renewable power “trade-distorting.” The United States could be in the same boat in the future if a member of the TPP doesn’t like one of our environmental regulations. Add to the mix a major potential ramp-up in natural gas exports to Asia, and the biggest free-trade agreement on the table is a climate disaster waiting to happen.

Both Obama and Romney should talk tonight about how their policies on trade would protect our environment and local jobs, and what they would do to correct past mistakes that undermine our partners’ forward-looking initiatives.

4. Champion real security for all. The debate tonight will no doubt focus heavily on security and the military, and there’s no better reminder of the urgency of climate change than voices from the front line. From the 2007 Blue Ribbon Panel to current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, security officials have been sounding the alarm about the increased risks of instability that global warming poses. The next president needs to make clear his plans for bolstering human security in the face of climate chaos, steps that could include cutting the military budget and spending those dollars instead on helping communities keep good jobs in the transition from military manufacturing to solar panel production. 

It may not be realistic to expect these words to fall from either candidate’s lips—and if we don’t hear most of what I’ve outlined here, I’ll be disappointed, but not surprised. But if the next president doesn’t take climate change seriously as a central issue in his foreign policy platform, then he’s not being realistic either.

Janet is co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies.

(Pictured: The proverbial nuclear wasteland)

In recent years, when applied to the United States, the term "exceptionalism" has escalated from its usual first meaning -- uncommon -- to its second -- extraordinary. Meanwhile, when it comes to the planet on which we live, Americans and the rest of its inhabitants may not exactly be earth exceptionalists, but we are earth-centric. Since the earth is our only frame of reference, we're alternately resigned to how its history repeats itself or we're wracking our brains, trying to figure out how to navigate the next millennium as if nothing like it had ever been done before -- by anyone, anywhere in the universe.

As one disposed, by nature, to believe in alien life forms, I often ask myself about the various obstacles with which we're confronted or those of our own making: How do they do they surmount them on other planets? For example, does anyone really believe that a civilization elsewhere that may be a millennium -- or a million of them -- older than ours bases its economy on capitalism and free markets? It doesn't take much imagination to see that dwindling resources require a managed economy, at the least, to parcel out what's left. 

Recently, however, the pendulum of my perspective has begun to swing back to earth-centric. Recent thinking places planets that just might host human life forms at the far reaches of the universe. In other words, prospects for a community of planets inhabited with humanoids, in our corner of the universe anyway, may be slim and none. In fact, it may be a millennium before such planets are even visible via telescopes. Last spring, at Astrobiology Magazine, Dan Choi wrote:

Although our telescopes will likely become good enough to detect signs of life on exoplanets [planets revolving around another sun besides ours. -- RW] within the next 100 years, it would probably take many centuries before we could ever get a good look at the aliens.

Signs of life may be all we see because what's required is not the most powerful telescope of all time, but a series of telescopes.

To begin imaging even giant organisms 30 feet long and wide on the closest putative exoplanet [which is] 4.37 light years away, the elements making up a telescope array would have to cover a distance roughly 400,000 miles wide. . . . The area required to collect even one photon [the basic unit of light -- RW] a year in light reflected off such a planet is some 60 miles wide.

In other words, it's likely that we're more alone than I had thought. The logical response then is to value the planet for its uniqueness as if it were a priceless museum piece which we pledge to keep out of harm's way. 

It's difficult to believe that many still view the earth as a raw resource to be developed, when, in fact, such a pursuit comes perilously close to rifling the pockets of a corpse. Unless, that is, they're convinced that once the earth is used up, they can colonize another planets. (Mining aside, some scientists maintain that Mars and other planets may be arable.)

More likely, environmental concerns are tuned out because of an inability to stomach the messengers -- whether progressives in general or scientists who hold no truck with creationism. But it's folly to believe that when the earth finally keels over and expires, colonization and migration can be ramped up on demand.

In the end, when it comes to planets conducive to the care and feeding of advanced life forms, earth is likely a space oasis. Which should serve to firm up one's commitment to nuclear disarmament. For when it comes to ravaging the earth, a nuclear attack accelerates the entropy of global warming many times over. The number of dead may result in a suddenly sustainable population, but that's a poor consolation prize for the physical and psychic trauma inflicted on the survivors. Complete with a radioactive landscape and nuclear winter as well, nuclear war can send the planet on a fast track to hell.