New approach needed as opportunities slip by forever

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16), which ended  last weekend in Cancún, Mexico, was as close to a non-event as it could get. Short of a miracle it seems most unlikely that momentum is to return to climate diplomacy in the foreseeable future – and most probably not before COP17 to be held in about a year’s time in South Africa.

As the convention was moving into its final phases Ban Ki-moon, the head of the United Nations, made an impassioned plea for the world to agree a new deal on climate change, warning that "nature will not wait while we negotiate".

While the UN secretary-general said he is “deeply concerned that our efforts so far have been insufficient", he added:.  "Science warns that the window of opportunity to prevent uncontrolled climate change will soon close."

More diplomatic energy seems to have gone into side-issues like the composition of the supposedly scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change than finding consensus on binding agreements on what to do.

According to one of the reports coming out of Cancún one of the newly leaked dispatches indicates that the United States is taking a stance of: “If you don't play, we won't pay,” when it comes to key personnel decisions. “The State Department, the document seems to indicate, leaned on a financial lever to get its way” it is reported.

While most developed nations are struggling politically and socially to implement tough, unpopular austerity measures aimed at saving their ailing economies, they are resisting grants as opposed to loans for developing countries to help fund green economy initiatives.

WikiLeaks “confirmed that the UK has been lobbying for climate finance to be provided as loans through the much-loathed World Bank, instead of grants through the more democratic UN. Unless the UK and other rich countries have a wholesale change of heart, millions of people will be locked into deeper debt and poverty, as well as a climate crisis they have no historical responsibility for causing. There are also serious concerns about the ever decreasing space for civil society. We are far from an outcome that has justice at its heart,” climate campaigner Kristy Wright for example told The Guardian from Cancún.

The whole process is becoming more-and-more political and self-lnterest driven and less-and-less scientifically grounded and focused on finding globally holistically positioned solutions.

In the same Guardian-report Alberto Gomez, from La Via Campesina is quoted as saying: “It's a disgrace that the UN space intended to tackle climate change has been converted into a platform to legitimise the commercial strategies of transnational corporations [TNCs]. Multinationals benefit from an ever-increasing number of compensating mechanisms for carbon capture, all of which are only new opportunities for them to grow and consolidate their control over water, land and seeds. We denounce the false solution of carbon markets and the fact that numerous governments have reconciled themselves to it and don't seek a compromise with their TNCs.

Against this background increasing numbers of commentators are starting to call into doubt the wisdom of what they describe as the top down, UN-driven process that is presently being followed.

In a think piece for the website openDemocracy Andrew Pendleton, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London, recently, wrote:

“Just as climate science itself is constantly developing and deepening, so much more needs to be known about the politics of climate change. Many assumptions have been made about the need to champion energy security or green growth as frames for climate action, but so far without much of an evidence-base.

“Meanwhile, many climate-focused researchers are still searching for the kind of clinching cost-benefit analysis or ultra-dire scientific prediction that would (as if by magic) unlock the secret of transforming the agenda. Most don’t even seem to recognise that the consent of everyday people matters, and is now lacking.

“Along with better knowledge of the politics, a new story of climate change is needed. It needs above all to be grounded in the truth of what is happening, but also located close to what really matters to people. This in turn requires a preliminary focus on the local and national levels, then building support for those from an international process - rather than starting at the top and working downwards (or backwards).

“An approach of this kind, in the context of the urgent attention of most people to their economic security, would also benefit from shifting the relationship in public discourse between the economy and the environment. Again, to argue for a halting or reduction in economic growth at a time when people are already under severe pressure from a downturn carries little persuasive power. But reversing the usual line of questioning - not what can the economy do to save the climate, but what action on climate change can do to save (and boost) the economy - might do.”

He argues that in practice, popular support for the kind of governmental action that is needed is narrow and shallow. It is therefore highly unlikely that governments are going to take risks and go for “better” rather than the usual.

The dilemma is for instance apparent even in Europe, where - according to reliable opinion-poll figures from Eurobarometer - 47% per cent of people think that climate change is the most serious problem facing the world, yet the issue is not a priority in determining the vote of more than a fraction of this figure. This is a pattern found throughout most of the world.

The reason for this is simple. Those areas that appear immediate and visceral in terms of citizens’ everyday experience matter to them more than distant threats, however significant the latter may be, Pendleton argues.

“This makes climate change a desperately difficult issue for governments both seriously to deal with and to remain in power –  because the threat, vital as it is, is still distant, and because the actions needed to avoid that threat conflict directly with the concerns people do see as direct priorities. The implication is that climate campaigners can raise the alarm - wave the environmental ‘shroud’ – until they are hoarse or exhausted, without being able to change the reality that people’s primary focus will remain their economic security,” he wrote.

He worte at the time that a number of factors - continued financial turbulence and the threat of contagion, the currency friction between the United States and China, wider trade tensions, and overriding concerns over jobs and welfare - make the chances of a climate deal, and even any real focus on climate change at all, more remote than ever.

The results, or non-results, at Cancún seem to have proven him right. Maybe as the practical realities of climate change start setting in, it will force governments across the globe to shift their focus to adaption rather than attempting to re-engineer nature. The likely tragedy is that for millions around the globe is will probably come too late and Ban Ki-moon will have been proved right and the the window of opportunity would have closed.