Climate and Development

Earlier today, I linked to this great piece by Elisa Lai on climate change and its impact on women. Now DipNote has a post– that went up a couple days ago, I confess– from Jared Banks. He reflects on a recent trip to Senegal and what he observed in the relationship between climate change, the environment, and migration in the region.

He writes:

The visit to Senegal provided me an opportunity to discuss this issue with policymakers in the national and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, academics who are studying the phenomenon, and leaders of local communities that have been affected by displacements. The team was also able to examine first-hand the impact of environmental and climate changes at very local levels, including among fishing, herding and agricultural communities. For example, we met with the leaders of a fishing community in Camberene (near Dakar), which has experienced both an inflow and outflow of migrants.

The local imam opened the meeting with a prayer and told us the story of the founding of the community by a religious man — a history that continues to influence the community’s generally welcoming attitude toward incoming migrants, including those leaving farming communities in northern Senegal because of desertification. The community members lamented the loss of their beaches to coastal erosion, the rising sea water temperatures, and the slow decline of fishing as a sustainable livelihood. Some of the women said that it is good for young men to migrate abroad, but others lamented that migration isn’t a long-term solution for the community and that the financial crisis has taught them that they cannot always count on remittances.

We also met with a community in Lebar Boye in northern Senegal where the land has become too salinated to farm because of the decreased amount of fresh water, accentuated by a dam that was built to prevent flooding. As a result, most of their children were now working in urban centers. Some farming continued in the Senegal River Valley despite the drought conditions because of a government-funded irrigation system. At one of the farms, we met two young men from Guinea Bissau who travel north to work during the dry season and then head back to Guinea Bissau during their community’s farming season. Climate change and the consequences are not bound by national boundaries.

Full piece here.

Over at ThePeopleSpeak.org, Elisa Lai makes a really excellent argument that climate change disproportionately affects women. It’s a very clear and compelling point, and one that I frankly don’t see a ton of.

Worth a read when you have a minute:

In most developing countries and most least-developed countries, women often have lower social statuses and have lower accessibility to social/political affairs participation than do men. The same is true in the context of international climate change negotiations, where women’s efforts are often downplayed, and women’s opinions are underweighted. Attention on international climate change negotiations and their agendas is not focused on climate-vulnerable women in the developing world. To reach gender equality and gender justice in terms of climate change issues, the harmonious role many women play in managing natural resources with minimal ecological footprint needs to be recognized and valued more. In order to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts, it is critical for the international community, through women empowerment, to involve women’s participation and reinforce women’s capabilities in the face of climate change disasters.

Africa will lose out if money pledged by rich countries at the Copenhagen climate change meeting last December does not come in addition to their existing aid promises. This is the stark message in a research paper from leading development think tank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), commissioned by ONE.

The report states that if finance for climate change adaptation were to come from existing and promised aid flows it would necessarily result in a money being taken away from health and education, and reallocated to sectors such as agriculture, coastal defence and water.

While sub-Saharan Africa receives 38% of global aid, the World Bank estimates that their share of adaptation needs is 22% – in part because there is less expensive existing infrastructure to protect. ODI conclude that “It is crucial to underline the importance of additionality of climate finance to aid. If this is not explicitly stated and implemented, the possibility of aid diversion allocated according to adaptation needs is likely to lead to the neglect of aid to Africa.”

The findings come just days after Bill Gates warned in his annual letter that health funding could be cut if the $100bn target set at Copenhagen took money out of other development priorities. “If just 1% of the $100bn goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases” he wrote. If countries do not avoid this type of dangerous double counting, the already off track Millennium Development Goals will be dealt another heavy blow.

The millions of people around the world who took action in the run-up to Copenhagen, including tens of thousands of ONE members, will now be needed more than ever as we attempt to make sure that vital work on climate does not come at the expense of the world’s poorest people.

Read the report ‘Climate financing and Development – Friends or foes?’

Update: The Financial Times today published a letter from ONE’s co-founder and Executive Director Jamie Drummond on this important issue. Read the letter here.

In a speech last week to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI criticized world leaders for failing to reach a climate change agreement at Copenhagen. He said failure to act could put the future of some nations—particularly in Africa—at stake:

I share the growing concern caused by economic and political resistance to combating the degradation of the environment…I would like to stress again that the protection of creation calls for an appropriate management of the natural resources of different countries and, in the first place, of those which are economically disadvantaged. I think of the continent of Africa, which I had the joy of visiting last March during my journey to Cameroon and Angola…The Synod Fathers pointed with concern to the erosion and desertification of large tracts of arable land as a result of overexploitation and environmental pollution. In Africa, as elsewhere, there is a need to make political and economic decisions which ensure forms of agricultural and industrial production capable of respecting creation and satisfying the primary needs of all.

The Pope also noted that the environment and national security were closely linked:

How can we forget, for that matter, that the struggle for access to natural resources is one of the causes of a number of conflicts, not least in Africa, as well as a continuing threat elsewhere? For this reason too, I forcefully repeat that to cultivate peace, one must protect creation.

Pope Benedict has been dubbed the ”green pope” for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed solar panels and joined a reforestation project in Europe. To read the Pope’s entire speech, click here.

As world leaders fly home from the climate change summit, the agreement reached in Copenhagen could add up to nothing unless the funding offered is not double counted from existing aid promises.

Late last night an agreement was brokered by the US, China, South Africa, India and Brazil. This included $10bn a year in so called ‘fast track’ financing for the next 3 years and $100bn a year by 2020 for poor countries to cope with climate change. But currently these sums will largely be subtracted from promised resources to help these same countries fight poverty.

ONE has been campaigning hard against this dangerous double counting, which undermines both sustainable international development and a good global deal on climate change. Last week we handed over a petition from more than 80,000 ONE members to the Danish government, as chair of the summit, and the US delegation. We called on them to ensure that new funding is additional to existing and promised aid flows and that development promises are kept in full.

Here’s what ONE’s Executive Director Jamie Drummond had to say on the agreement that was reached last night:

“Climate change is putting additional stress on poor countries – which is why they need additional funds to cope with it – on top of existing and promised aid levels.

Promises of aid made by the G8 in Gleneagles in 2005 must not be lost in Copenhagen. Without a clear commitment that these climate funds are additional, the dollar amounts are next to meaningless.

This debate over ‘additionality’ might seem arcane, but within the details lie billions of dollars – and very real impacts on millions of lives. Without this additionality, Copenhagen adds up to nothing.

It is not clear how a cap on 2 degrees will be achieved, but it is very clear that much more can and must be done, including harnessing the potential of African and other developing countries to be renewable energy hubs and help capture carbon through growing trees.”

ONE supports the African proposal for an interim target of US$50bn by 2015 on top of existing and promised aid to help the poorest countries – many of them in Africa – with pressing adaptation needs. The “Copenhagen Accord” mentions a High Level Panel to assess how alternative sources of funding can contribute to raising genuinely additional funds.

This urgent High Level Task Force should be convened immediately to look into alternative sources of climate finance to complement additional public funding from rich countries. These sources could include: revenue from aviation and shipping, international auctioning of emissions allowances, a financial transactions tax and the proposal to use the IMF’s own currency, known as Special Drawing Rights. The need for accountability and transparency for these new funds is also paramount.

With the agreement in Copenhagen weaker than we hoped, we now know we have much more work ahead of us.

Yesterday I had the honour of speaking to Senegalese singer and guitarist Baaba Maal after he had performed at a special event here in Copenhagen.

Watch the video:

Baaba Maal, one of Africa’s most famous musicians, is attending the Copenhagen summit as the climate change ambassador for Africa Talks Climate, a ground-breaking research and communication initiative that explores the views of African citizens on climate change.

Baaba Maal performing at the event in Copenhagen last night

World leaders are arriving in Copenhagen Wednesday night and Thursday, but there has been slow progress in the negotiations. Therefore, they have to negotiate a long list of unsettled issues. Their very difficult task will be to build consensus – fast and wide-ranging. The pressure from personalities like Desmond Tutu, civil society and even the private sector is enormous.

Meanwhile, chances to get leaders to agree to “new and additional resources on top of existing and committed” funding are fading. There are two types of wording for additionality in the current draft [no consensus yet], one for fast track and one for long term financing.

Fast track funding (2010 – 2012) is supposed to be “new and additional”, which is to be interpreted as additional to existing ODA (funding) flows, whereas post 2012 funding is “scaled up, predictable new, additional and adequate.”

There will be a figure for 2010 – 2012 climate financing, presumably 10 billion, and an annex specifying the amounts per country. There seems to be relatively wide agreement on establishing REDD, but no intention to use carbon market mechanisms, so funding will come from the (limited) public sources. There is a general placeholder for aviation and maritime bunkers so support of a high level task force to investigate innovative financing seems sensible.

-Andreas Huebers, ONE’s German office

It’s week two of the climate talks. And while world leaders continue to confront the challenges of climate change in Copenhagen, Africans have been gathering together in their communities for months to share stories and search for solutions to help fight the effects.

Throughout the fall, Oxfam conducted dozens of these community-wide climate hearings across the African continent.

In the town of Assella, Ethiopia, over ten thousand people ran, walked, even rode to a local stadium to make their voices heard.

In Hadado, Kenya, a local man told the crowd, “I have never seen the situation this bad—there is no water at all. Cattle are our livelihoods, and when they are gone we have nothing left. Our children can’t go to school because they have to spend all day looking for water for the cattle. We desperately need another borehole and more water here.”

In Cape Town, South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a packed room that “We will drown if you don’t act. We are going down the tube together. Some might go in Mercedes Benz, others in local taxis.”

The Climate Hearings are an Oxfam project, as part of the tcktcktck.org Climate Campaign. Find out more about the Oxfam hearings in Africa here (don’t miss the photo essays, too)—and read about their global hearings here.

Just some notable names that are in Copenhagen this week: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Laureate Wangari Matthai, and many other leaders from across the spectrum – business, government, non-profit.

The US delegation is ramping up after a steady stream of cabinet officials the first week. Sen. John Kerry will be delivering a major speech here on Wednesday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making a surprise visit on Thursday. And President Obama is here on Friday. Other members of the US delegation on the ground are Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, and Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern.

Over 110 heads of state are expected for the high-level summit on Friday. Representing the Africa Group will be Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.

National Public Radio ran a report on some of the tension and decision-making taking place in Copenhagen as African leaders aggressively advocate for the continent’s role in climate change negotiations.

You can listen to the full report here: