By Steve Schwartzman

Aldo Rebelo, Brazil's new Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation denies climate change is real or caused by humans. Above: Rebelo takes his new position in a Jan. 2 ceremony in Brasília. Source: Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff  has repeatedly claimed international leadership for Brazil on climate change in international forums, based on successes in reducing Amazon deforestation.

But days before the start of the new year, Rousseff appointed two ministers who cast doubt on Brazil’s leadership and bode ill for the atmosphere – especially given increases in Brazil’s deforestation rates from 2012–2013 and signs that deforestation may be once again be on the increase.

President Rousseff’s recent statements on climate change

Just three months ago in her address to the UN General Assembly in New York, President Rousseff discussed the challenge of climate change and lauded the Secretary General for convening a leaders' summit, which she said would strengthen the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our times. To overcome it, we need a sense of urgency, political courage and the understanding that each of us should contribute according to the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities…

The Brazilian Government will strive to ensure that the outcome of negotiations leads to an agreement that is balanced, fair and effective.

President Rousseff went on to highlight Brazil’s success in the last decade in reducing Amazon deforestation nearly 80% below the 1996–2005 annual average.

Brazil’s actions to control Amazon deforestation (conceived and put into action under the previous administration), and President Rousseff’s assuming international leadership on climate change are good signs for the global struggle to avert disastrous climate change. But her late-December selections for the ministries of Agriculture and Science seem to tell a very different story.

Bad choice #1: Katia Abreu, Minister of Agriculture

The new Minister of Agriculture Katia Abreu was the president of the National Confederation of Agriculture (the national association of large and middle-size landowners and ranchers). As senator, she led the Congress’ powerful anti-environmental, anti-indigenous “bancada ruralista”, or large landowners’, caucus and earned the title among environmentalists of “chainsaw queen.”

The choice was clearly aimed at shoring up precarious support for Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) in the Congress, but at the potential cost of both indigenous rights and the environment. In the polemical 2012 revision of Brazil’s Forest Code, Abreu vehemently promoted radical weakening of forest protection legislation, which was opposed not only by environmentalists but the National Academy of Sciences and Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science.  She also supports proposed Constitutional Amendment 215, strongly opposed by indigenous peoples since it would effectively halt the legal recognition of indigenous territories.

Bad choice #2: Aldo Rebelo, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation

Rebelo is clearly out of touch with modern science on climate change.

The new Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Aldo Rebelo is a long-time Communist Party of Brazil congressman and vocal anti-environmental advocate, and the principal author of the divisive and controversial Forest Code revision.

Rebelo is also on the record rejecting climate science. Note his frankness in a July 2014 letter to his former colleague in the Congress and current policy director for the Brazilian NGO Instituto Socioambiental, Márcio Santilli, in response to Santilli’s critique of his proposed revision to the Forest Code. (Note: I’ve translated part of the fourth paragraph from Portuguese, broken up the paragraph for ease of reading online, and added italics for emphasis.)

The positivist scientism that you call natural science and contrast with my devotion to dialectical materialism is not magical enough to convert me to the article of faith that is the theory of global warming, which is incompatible with current knowledge.

Science is not an oracle. In fact, there is no scientific proof of the projections of global warming, much less that it is occurring because of human action and not because of natural phenomena. It is a construct based on computer simulations.

In fact, my tradition links me to a line of scientific thought that prioritizes doubt over certainty and does not silence a question at the first response. Parallel to the extraordinary advances and conquests that Science has bequeathed to the progress of Humanity, come innumerable errors, frauds or manipulations always spun in the service of countries that finance certain research projects or projections.

I am curious to know whether those who today accept the theory of global warming and its alleged anthropogenic causes as unshakeable dogma, are the same ones who some years ago announced, with identical divine certainty, global cooling.

Interestingly, old-line Communist Rebelo is on exactly the same page on climate science as the hardest of the hard-core tea partiers in the United States: it’s all speculation – “scientism” – not real science.

I wonder what he does with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its 2,000+ climate scientists and experts, its ever-increasing certainty that climate change is mostly caused by human beings and will, if not urgently addressed, lead to catastrophic consequences? Or the clear evidence, rehashed at every climate conference for at least the last decade, that the poorest countries that have contributed the least to the problem are those that are already suffering the most drastic consequences in the form of sea level rise, floods and droughts?

Out of touch

Naming agribusiness darlings Abreu and Rebelo to the cabinet is good for the PT’s legislative body count. Less clear is how to square these selections with the government’s stated opposition to the ruralistas’ efforts to repeal environmental and indigenous rights legislation. Even harder is to square Brazil’s longstanding international support for climate science and climate action, not to mention its national climate change policy, with Rebelo’s explicit rejection of climate science as “an article of faith” and “incompatible with current knowledge.”

Rather than expressing an understanding of modern Brazil’s real and very considerable accomplishments and capabilities as an emerging world leader, Rebelo's worldview is shaped by the bogeys of 19th century geopolitics.

What’s really sad about this choice, though, isn’t just that Rebelo is clearly out of touch with modern science – and indeed the numerous world-class scientists of the Brazilian National Academy and Society for the Advancement of Science – on climate change.

It’s also that it completely unnecessarily makes Brazil look really provincial and silly on the world stage. (Memo to Dilma: Picking a Science Minister who thinks the overwhelming consensus of the international scientific community is “positivist scientism” – as opposed to dialectical materialism – and whose idea of state-of-the-art thinking on the relation between humanity and nature is the 19th century Karl Marx protégé  Friedrich Engels, is making your friends in the international community roll their eyes and cringe.)

Sadder still is that someone whose worldview is so much shaped by the bogeys of 19th century geopolitics, rather than expressing an understanding of modern Brazil’s real and very considerable accomplishments and capabilities as an emerging world leader, was named Cabinet Minister just days before the start of 2015.

By Nat Keohane

At the Lima climate negotiations, negotiators reached a narrow outcome that provided a little more clarity on the path to reaching a new international climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Source: Flickr (UNEP)

In the wee hours of last Sunday morning, negotiators at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru, finally concluded this year’s talks with a narrow outcome that provided a little more clarity on the path to reaching a new international climate agreement during the December 2015 talks in Paris.

Although the talks have been characterized as the “first time” all countries have agreed to cut emissions, that’s actually not the case.

Although the talks have been characterized as the “first time” that all countries have agreed to cut emissions, that’s actually not the case. That key development came in South Africa in 2011, where the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action established a process to develop a new agreement “applicable to all Parties” (the same accord that will be finalized in Paris).

And Durban itself built on the progress made in 2009 in the Copenhagen Accord, which included pledges by developing as well as developed countries to undertake mitigation actions. That put a crack in the so-called “firewall” that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol had raised between developed countries (which took on binding emissions reductions) and developing countries (which did not).

Nonetheless, the Lima accord did take an important step forward in reaffirming this trend. The key language says the 2015 agreement should reflect:

the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.

The last part of that sentence is critical, for a simple reason: Circumstances change. With those six words, the Lima decision for the first time recognizes that differentiation among countries is an evolving and dynamic concept. As countries grow and develop, their circumstances change — and hence their responsibilities and capabilities may change as well.

Perhaps as important was where the language came from: the China-US bilateral agreement announced in Beijing in November. Having China and the US find common ground on the key issue of differentiation augurs well for international cooperation more broadly.

Momentum outside the negotiating rooms

While the new language on differentiation could prove to be a breakthrough going forward, the talks were notable mainly for how long they took to achieve so little. Even with a very short task list negotiators barely managed to reach a decision.

Yet despite the limited progress inside the negotiating rooms, the growing global momentum on climate change was on full display outside the talks.

Indeed, one of the highlights of my week in Lima was a breakfast hosted by Glen Murray, the Ontario Minister of Environment who — with his counterpart from Quebec and Secretary Matt Rodriguez of the California Environmental Protection Agency — announced a “Climate Summit of the Americas” to be held in July. They, along with other states and provinces, are not waiting for either the UN or their own governments to take action.

The road to Paris

Despite these small signs of progress, we should not expect Paris to result in a “global deal” with internationally legally binding emissions reductions targets that will limit global warming to the widely recognized target of two degrees Celsius. That is not what a single international agreement can achieve — and unrealistic expectations are a recipe for failure.

Rather, an effective outcome in Paris will create a robust and durable framework to support and promote ambitious domestic action, including by:

1. providing clear “rules of the road” on key technical issues such as how countries account for their emissions (to ensure, for example, that the same ton of emissions reduction doesn’t get counted twice);
2. establishing a system for countries to transparently measure and report their progress in reducing emissions, and fostering their capacity to do so; and
3. facilitating — or at a minimum not impeding — the cooperative development and use of high-integrity market mechanisms, such as emissions trading. These tools can drive low-carbon innovation and cost-effective mitigation, while also stimulating the international cooperation needed to reduce emissions even further.

Rather than trying to solve climate change in one fell swoop, the goal should be a durable and robust framework that will build confidence and trust among countries over time, in order to create a “virtuous circle” of increasing ambition.

In the coming months, countries will begin to announce their initial emissions targets for the post-2020 period — known as “intended nationally determined contributions.” Those headline numbers deserve attention, to be sure. But it will be all too easy to overlook the importance of the nuts-and-bolts issues enumerated above.

The focus for Paris should be not only on the trajectory of emissions, but also on the trajectory of institutions. To make real progress on climate, we need to summon the patience and vision to craft a climate regime that is built to last.

By Derek Walker

California state Senate President Kevin de León arrives at the conference center for the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Image used with permission from Senator de León.

The chattering classes of the climate policy world are abuzz with their customary post-mortems following the latest breathless two-week session of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change 20th Conference of Parties (also known simply as COP 20), held in Lima, Peru.

Consensus is forming around a “slightly better than nothing” assessment of the Lima Call for Climate Action, which was adopted in the wee hours of Sunday amidst the usual skirmishes over money, monitoring, and mandates.

The big breakthrough in Lima is that all countries must come forward, over the next six months, with “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions,” INDCs in COP shorthand.

Notwithstanding the softness engendered by the word “intended,” at least we aren’t firmly stuck in the “old world order” where only developed countries are taking on mitigation actions.

Subnational cooperation and pathways to climate progress outside UN process

While nations squabbled about intentions, another story was playing out on the sidelines of the COP, showcasing real, groundbreaking and consequential progress at the subnational level – within states, provinces, and cities.

After spending the vast majority of my time in Lima with innovative and dynamic subnational leaders, I came away with an unbridled sense of optimism and renewed hope that there are pathways to climate progress, even if many of them go around rather than through the formal UN process.

California, laboratory of climate change solutions

California's delegation to the Lima climate negotiations. Image used with permission from Senator de León.

California has long been a laboratory of climate change solutions and will be launching the world’s first cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation fuels in two short weeks.

Meetings with the California contingent are always a sought-after ticket at the COPs, and California delegates are always eager to learn from and trade ideas with their counterparts around the world.

California’s low-carbon leadership was amplified in Lima by Senate President Kevin de León, who regaled delegates with his always charismatic case for the connection between climate action, jobs, and economic growth, pointing to California’s cap-and-trade system as an example of how California can "lead the world and show other nations the way to de-carbonize their economies."

A very encouraging trend is the evolution of subnational cooperation from platitudes to concrete plans.

Partnership between California and China

I moderated a panel highlighting the collaboration between California and China, a partnership that involves a substantive, two-way exchange of ideas and expertise on issues such as emissions trading, clean vehicles, sustainable infrastructure, and technology deployment.

In less than two years, cities and provinces in China have developed pilot cap-and-trade programs that are paving the way for a future national emissions trading system in China. California has a lot to learn from the Chinese experience, and Chinese leaders studied the design of California’s system as the pilots were being developed.

Cooperation among North American states and provinces

Subnational partnerships in North America are taking off, in part because of the lack of action at the national level, particularly in the U.S. and Canada.

California and Quebec recently completed a successful joint allowance auction, the final step in fully linking the two jurisdictions’ cap-and-trade systems.

In Lima, the top environmental officials from California, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec issued a joint statement resolving to “work together towards mid-term greenhouse gas reduction goals,” a key step towards locking in long-term action and unleashing innovation in low-carbon technologies.

California Governor Jerry Brown announced his support for a 2030 GHG target at the UN Climate Summit in September, and legislation has been introduced in California that would establish a 2050 mandate and require interim targets in 2030 and 2040.

Commitments from subnational governments

While countries are submitting their INDCs, subnational governments are also putting their commitments to paper.

An important initiative called The Compact of States and Regions, launched at the UN Climate Summit by The Climate Group, will aggregate and evaluate the commitments being taken by subnational governments around the world.

States, provinces, and cities are not waiting for the UN or their national governments to act.

Meanwhile, Governor Brown’s indefatigable policy czar Ken Alex is spearheading a “subnational INDC process,” wherein subnational leaders around the world will be invited to sign an agreement, to be unveiled over the next year, committing to reducing their emissions at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, or to cutting their per capita emissions to below two tons.

Thankfully, states, provinces, and cities are not waiting for the UN or their national governments to act. There is a lot to be optimistic about, and subnational and subnational governments are showing leadership and forging ahead in what could be seen as a friendly competition to develop and implement the boldest and most successful climate change initiatives.

These leaders are restless, motivated, and they realize that the future of people and the planet are at stake. As my friend Glen Murray, Ontario’s Minister of the Environment, said time and again in Lima: “We’re going to do this.”

By Jennifer Andreassen

A map at the Lima climate negotiations shows sea temperatures around the world. Source: Flickr (UNclimatechange)

The annual United Nations climate talks concluded in Lima, Peru, with a narrow outcome that provides some additional clarity on the path to finalizing a new climate agreement next year in Paris.

Nations were able to make limited progress on the modest goals expected of them, including:

1. clarifying how countries will report their “intended nationally determined contributions” in early 2015; and
2. identifying the main elements of the agreement to be negotiated next year and wrapped up in Paris.

When the talks ended well past their Friday deadline, Nathaniel Keohane, Vice President for international climate said:

The foot-dragging in Lima is out of step with the urgent signs of climate change that are already apparent in Peru's melting glaciers and threatened fisheries, as well as around the globe. To finalize an effective climate agreement in Paris next year, negotiators will have to move past the tired tactics and old ways of thinking that were on display these last two weeks.

We will not solve climate change with a single UN agreement. What an agreement in Paris can do is build a structure that spurs countries to be more ambitious, makes them accountable for their progress, and gives them the confidence that other countries are taking action as well.

With each passing year, more and more momentum on climate change is building outside the UNFCCC. The UN talks remain a valuable forum — the one place where all countries come together to discuss climate change. But as we have seen in the past few months, there are now multiple ways forward on climate change, including direct cooperation between nations, action by states and provinces, and engagement by the private sector. To make progress at the scale and pace required to meet the challenge of climate change, we need to take advantage of every pathway we have.

State, provincial governments increasingly visible

A striking aspect of these negotiations was the increasing presence and visibility of state and provincial governments, who are not formal participants in the talks but in many cases are implementing climate policies of their own.

The progress made in states and provinces underscores a growing theme: Despite the slow pace of these talks, momentum continues to build on climate action outside the UN negotiations.

Examples of momentum happening outside the UN process include:

• Public and private sector actors came together at the Leaders Summit in New Yorkin September to launch a number of “working coalitions” on deforestation, agriculture, oil and gas production.
• The U.S. and China announced major actionson climate change in November.
• California will have the world’s first economy-wide emissions trading system beginning next year, as it extends that program to include transportation fuels.
• California and Quebec held their first joint auction last month, cementing the year-old linkage between the two states’ emissions trading programs.
• Ontario announced in Lima that it will host a Climate Summit of the Americas in July, focused on building subnational action.

Derek Walker, Associate Vice President in EDF’s U.S. climate and energy program said:

Momentum is building in North America on climate action and carbon pricing. State and provincial leaders do not have to wait for Washington or Ottawa or the UN to take action. They are seizing the opportunity that is in front of them and taking concrete steps to build thriving low-carbon economies.

Now going into 2015, countries need to focus on creating an agreement that facilitates domestic climate action, fosters accountability and increasing ambition, and supports adaptation in the poorest, most vulnerable nations. Learn more about EDF’s policy initiative to create “A Home for All: Architecture of a Future Global Framework for Mitigation,” at edf.org/HomeForAll.

By Nat Keohane

Coming into this year’s UN climate talks in Lima, countries were riding a wave of positive momentum generated by good news.

As climate talks in Lima enter their final week, the main question is how much progress negotiators will make toward an effective international agreement for the long run. Source: Flickr (UNclimatechange)

In Beijing last month, the leaders of the world’s two largest economies — and largest emitters — stood together to underscore their joint commitment to addressing climate change.

A few weeks prior, the European Union announced its plans to reduce emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

As a result, the three jurisdictions that account for nearly half of annual carbon pollution worldwide have all made significant commitments to reduce or limit their emissions (although more ambitious cuts are needed to put the world on a path to climate safety).

As with many important topics, however, to get a full sense of how the UN climate negotiations are going requires also looking beyond the headlines.

As the talks enter their second and final week, some of the developments outside of the spotlight are raising concerns even as the US-China bilateral agreement continues to be the basis for broader optimism.

Tasks for Lima negotiators

To be sure, the first week of the annual international climate negotiations – known as the Conference of the Parties, or “COP” – is almost always slow going. Ministers do not arrive until the second week. In their absence, country negotiators — who are professional staff, rather than “politicals” — have little room for maneuver on issues of importance. Instead, they arrive at the COP with a set of positions, and stick to them.

The first week is an exercise in the process of elimination — finding the areas of overlap among initial positions, in order to whittle down the areas of disagreement to a manageable number. Then the ministers, with their greater scope of action and authority to compromise, arrive to try and hammer out a deal.

And these talks were never intended to yield major results. Negotiators in Lima are charged with three modest tasks:

1. They are supposed to agree on the form of the intended “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) that are to be announced by countries in the first quarter of next year. NDCs represent initial pledges of what countries will do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under a future international agreement, to be finalized in Paris in December 2015 and take effect in 2020.
2. They are supposed to make progress in accelerating the implementation of national actions to reduce emissions before 2020.
3. Negotiators are supposed to agree on the main set of “elements” that would constitute the international agreement expected to be finalized in Paris next year.

At Lima, and indeed between now and the Paris talks, the NDCs are likely to get the headlines. That is not without reason: the ultimate objective of these climate talks, after all, is reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the pace and scale needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. What countries commit to do in curbing their emissions should get attention.

Framework, transparency, and other nuts and bolts of a climate agreement

But while the NDCs are important, they are not all that matters — because what drives climate change is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not the amount emitted in one year or even one decade. Climate change is a long game. An effective international agreement is one that will promote greater and greater ambition over time — not just promises to reduce emissions at a single point in time.

If you really want to assess progress, you have to look beyond the numbers to the nuts and bolts of the agreement.

In turn, that requires a framework that not only asks countries to make commitments, but demands that they demonstrate credibly and transparently how they are making progress against those commitments. Such transparency is crucial to building the confidence and trust among countries that is a necessary foundation for greater ambition. Transparency will also help nations to understand where opportunities for emissions reductions lie in their own country, and assess and improve the efficacy of their emissions reductions over time – again contributing to greater ambition over time.

If you really want to assess progress, therefore, you have to look beyond the numbers to the nuts and bolts of the agreement: issues like consistent accounting rules for emissions, or for monitoring, reporting, and verifying emissions (known as “MRV”).

Accounting and MRV sound boring and technical, and to some extent they are. But that’s where the meat of the agreement actually lies. Indeed, one can argue that the “nuts and bolts” of the agreement are as important as the headline numbers. Impressive headline numbers won’t mean much without clarity on what emissions are being reduced, or consistency in how they are counted, or transparency to ensure that countries are doing what they committed to do.

First week sees slowdown in technical discussions

This brings us back to the signs of concern. In some key technical areas out of the spotlight, negotiators have been able to reach agreement on even less than usual.

Take the issue of “double counting.” The principle is simple. Suppose emissions reductions in country A — say, from building a wind farm instead of a coal plant — generate credits that are sold to emitters in country B and used to comply with their own emissions targets. The atmosphere doesn’t care whether the emissions took place in country A or B, so long as emissions go down overall.

Of course, in keeping track of emissions reductions, it’s important not to count the same emissions reductions twice. If country B claims the credits against its own emissions target, country A can’t do the same.

So far, however, countries have not agreed on the simple, transparent double-entry bookkeeping standards that would be sufficient to prevent such double-counting. Indeed, countries haven’t even agreed to agree that such standards are necessary. Instead, during the first week, a small but important group of major developing countries put the brakes on the discussions where these issues are being considered, insisting that there is no need to make progress on such technical points of the negotiations.

Second week begins

This result is not irrevocable. From a formal point of view, the slowdown in technical discussions has been applicable to the discussions around pre-2020 ambition rather than the post-2020 agreement. Countries pushing for more transparency may yet succeed in making progress in Lima, at the higher-level talks around the 2015 agreement that will take place in the second week. And negotiators have also kept the door open for talks to continue at a technical level next year, promising to come back and continue their conversations in the run-up to Paris.

But the delay is troubling nonetheless — both because it hinders progress on an important substantive area of the agreement, and because of what it signals about the willingness of some nations to allow work on the nuts and bolts to go forward.

Progress beyond the headlines?

Climate change is a long game. An effective international agreement is one that will promote greater and greater ambition over time — not just promises to reduce emissions at a single point in time.

Regardless of what happens in Lima this week, the US-China bilateral agreement remains a game changer. It shows that progress in international climate is possible — and will continue to provide grounds for optimism.

Even so, the UN negotiations can play an important role of providing a framework for transparency and accountability that can help ensure that countries follow through on their commitments and encourage even greater ambition over time.

Beyond the headlines, the main question for Lima is how much progress negotiators will make toward a genuinely effective international agreement for the long run. The sooner work begins in earnest on the nuts and bolts of the agreement, the better the prognosis for the planet.

By Dana Miller

Against a backdrop of tree-covered mountains, negotiators from all over the world are meeting for the next two weeks in Lima, Peru for the United Nations annual climate change conference. Before the meeting, Environmental Defense Fund and partners coordinated a workshop in Lima, where a group of country negotiators and other experts discussed how to bring forests and other land uses front and center in the global climate agreement to be signed in Paris next year. Participants agreed that the agreement needs to include land use in a simple, flexible and transparent way to encourage as many countries as possible to take action in this doubly important sector, which both accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and also absorbs a significant fraction of the world’s carbon emissions every year.

At the UN climate conference in Lima, a group of country negotiators and other experts discussed how to bring forests and other land uses front and center in the global climate agreement to be signed in Paris next year. Source: Flickr (UNEP)

Among other conclusions, participants generally agreed on the need for an approach that allows comparisons of different countries’ mitigation efforts – one that takes into account both the commonalities between land uses in various countries, as well as the range of capabilities and complexities among them (such as distinctions between tropical forests of Peru and temperate forests in the United States, or between croplands and forests). Participants also agreed that such an approach is important in ensuring the overall environmental integrity of the 2015 agreement.

As a starting point for the workshop, a briefing paper on land use in a 2015 agreement was prepared by a group of land use experts with support from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (see presentations here). The workshop laid out four policy options for including land use, which ranged from complete uniformity in accounting rules to complete differentiation in accounting. Most participants agreed that they preferred a middle approach that fell between those options, starting with the three systems of accounting rules that already apply to different countries, and working toward more harmonization and common elements among them. This path could help Parties move towards a simpler and more comprehensive approach over time, while still building flexibility into the framework, so that Parties could select the system that best fits their own context. The report summarizing the discussion in the workshop can be found here.

Parties will continue the discussion on how to include land use in the 2015 agreement here in Lima this week. EDF will also continue the discussion on land use during our session at the Global Landscapes Forum in Lima from 10:45 to 12:15, which is open to civil society, businesses, and Parties.

By Jennifer Andreassen

The annual UN climate conference kicked off today in Lima, Peru, and over the next two weeks delegates from more than 190 countries will be seeking to build on the momentum created by the recent US-China bilateral agreement and efforts launched at September's Climate Summit.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres opens the latest round of UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Source: Flickr (UNclimatechange)

Nathaniel Keohane, vice president of EDF's International Climate Program and a former economic adviser in the Obama administration said in EDF's opening statement:

Lima signals the bell lap in the current round of talks leading to a climate agreement in Paris next year. Countries won’t finalize an agreement in Lima, but they should make progress in setting out fundamental elements of such an agreement.

No single UN agreement will solve climate change. What an agreement in Paris can do is to build a structure that spurs countries to be more ambitious, makes them accountable for their progress, and gives them the confidence that other countries are taking action as well.  The talks in Lima can lay the groundwork for such an outcome.

The Lima conference (COP 20) rounds out a year of positive developments in tackling climate change, including:

• Last month’s pact between China and the United States to cut their national emissions demonstrated a positive new dynamic of bilateral cooperation between the world’s two largest emitting nations.
• The Climate Summit 2014 hosted in September by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon served as the launch pad for broad commitments among governments, intergovernmental organizations, the private sector, and civil society to curtail climate change.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency introduced in June the groundbreaking Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the current fleet of U.S. power plants, which account for almost 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions from energy.
• The state of California, now wrapping up the second year of its carbon market, has cut by 4% emissions covered by its cap while its gross domestic product has grown 2%.

An important area for discussion in Lima concerns the framework that the 2015 agreement will put in place to support and promote ambitious actions by countries to address climate change. An effective framework will elaborate key integrity standards for transparency and environmental efficacy, create incentives for early emissions reductions before 2020, and facilitate the use of well-designed carbon markets to help nations take ambitious action to reduce emissions.

Forest issues likely won't provide headlines in Lima, after negotiators last year built on years of technical discussions and finalized the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). However, my colleague Chris Meyer says some forest issues will be up for discussion, including "Safeguard Information Systems" and how REDD+ goals might fit into REDD+ countries' Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

Read EDF's full news release on Lima here: Lima UN climate conference focuses on 2015 Paris talks as countries take on foundational issues.

By Chris Meyer

Starting next week, the UN’s annual climate negotiations are being hosted by Lima, Peru – one of the nine countries that make up the Amazon Rainforest, under the shadow of the murder of Ashaninka indigenous leader Edwin Chonta and three others last September in the Peruvian Amazon. Chonta and the other indigenous activists had long protested illegal logging in their territory. The murders remain unresolved.

At last year’s negotiations, forests were big news, as negotiators built on years of technical discussions by finalizing the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Forests aren’t likely to provide headlines again this year, but a couple of items will be up for discussion – and what’s happening on forests elsewhere in Peru is noteworthy independent of the UN process.

During the first week of the negotiations, we expect the Subsidiary Body for Science and Technologic Advice (SBSTA) to discuss two topics: 1) guidance, if any, on Safeguard Information Systems (SIS), and 2) Bolivia’s Joint Mitigation and Adaptation Mechanism.

Safeguard Information Systems: There is already minimal guidance for Safeguard Information Systems and hesitancy from many parties, especially REDD+ countries, to have more explicit guidance. In EDF’s joint submission on the subject, we propose focusing on good processes in designing the system and capturing the information at the national level, rather than defining more specific categories of information to capture. We do not expect significant new guidance to be agreed upon, as many REDD+ countries are just beginning to create or design these systems and will be skeptical of more explicit guidance that may not be relevant to their country context.

Joint Mitigation and Adaptation Mechanism: Bolivia’s proposal for a Joint Mitigation and Adaptation Mechanism (JMA), known as the ”non-market approaches to REDD+” mechanism, was discussed thoroughly at the negotiation session held in June this year. Countries expressed to Bolivia everything they are proposing to do with the JMA can be accomplished under current REDD+ rules and with other existing development assistance programs. Bolivia wants its own mechanism, while other parties do not want to set a precedent that every country can create its own mechanism. Time will be spent discussing Bolivia’s mechanism, but we do not expect any specific guidance or progress on the subject.

During the first and second week at the general UNFCCC negotiations, there will be two areas of discussion that impact REDD+.

Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC): The first important area is the finalization of what should be included in an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), or the contributions countries intend to pledge next year leading up to the Paris agreement. EDF wants REDD+ countries to explicitly include their REDD+ goals in their respective INDCs. This could be structured in a way that would include what the country is willing to reduce by itself and what more it could do with international support (Indonesia did this with its commitment in the Copenhagen Accord). What would be needed is a matching “external” or “international” commitment represented in tons of greenhouse gas emissions reduced from a developed country in addition to their own domestic commitments. REDD+ needs ambition by developed countries; including explicit support for REDD+ in their INDCs is one way ambition can be demonstrated.

Land-use issues: Land-use issues that include REDD+ need a place in the post-2020 agreement and at the moment, there is a risk that there will not be an explicit reference. There are already rules established for the Land Use sector (CDM projects, Warsaw Framework for REDD+, and Land Use, Land Use Change Forestry (LULUCF) for Annex 1 countries in Kyoto), but they need to be recognized in the Paris post-2020 agreement. There needs to be a process created to start to bring the LULUCF rules to the higher standards of the REDD+ rules and provide guidance to countries on how to account comprehensively for their Land Use sector.

Peru’s REDD+ and land-use outside the COP

Perhaps more interesting than REDD+ discussions within the UN negotiations is what’s happening in Peru on land use and REDD+ issues outside of the conference center.

Peru has engaged in REDD+ for years, and its national REDD+ strategy has grown from a more “bottom-up” REDD+ projects-based approach to a national system.

The country also recently signed a Letter of Intent with the Norwegian and German governments that could reward it with at least $300 million for meeting certain land use and land titling goals and then for reductions of emissions from deforestation. However, in June the Peruvian federal government weakened the environmental laws regarding impact assessments for mining and petroleum exploration, blaming the decision on the need to maintain economic growth.

Linked to those pre-existing and new threats, a recent journal article by remote sensing scientist Dr. Greg Asner found that a significant amount of Peru’s above-ground biomass (i.e. forests) are at risk from land-use change.

Finally, indigenous peoples have been very active in REDD+ policy development; their advocacy secured $14 million of Peru Forest Investment Program grant for land titling efforts and another $5.5 million from the program’s Dedicated Mechanism to spend on REDD+ related activities to be implemented directly by them. Significant progress in the implementation of REDD+ is occurring in Peru, despite the expected paucity of advances in REDD+ discussions to occur at the conference center.

By Ilissa Ocko

Photo: IPCC

It was released two days late for Halloween, but an international report on the dangers of climate change still has plenty of information about our warming planet that will chill you to the core.

The report is the latest from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC releases a series of reports every six or seven years that assess the latest data and research on climate change. This latest is the Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report—a culmination of three earlier reports in this series.

The Synthesis Report summarizes the physical science of climate change; current and future impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation of the human and natural worlds; and mitigation opportunities and necessities.

More than anything else, the report underscores the urgent need for action.

Here are 13 details from the report that illustrate why:

1. “Warming of the climate is unequivocal… The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.”
2. Changes in climate have impacted all continents and the oceans.
3. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere. Glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide. Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has continued to decrease.
4. Permafrost temperatures have increased in most regions since the early 1980s. Arctic sea-ice has decreased in every season and in every successive decade since 1979
5. From 1901 to 2010, global mean sea level rose by more than half a foot. The rate of sea-level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia.
6. In the future, it is virtually certain that there will be more frequent hot and fewer cold temperature extremes in most areas, on both daily and seasonal timescales. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer. The oceans will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise.
7. A large fraction of species face increased extinction risk due to climate change during and beyond the 21st century. Most plant species cannot naturally shift their geographical ranges sufficiently fast to keep up with climate change.
8. Climate change puts humanity at risk from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity, sea-level rise, and storm surges. Climate change is projected to undermine food security.
9. “Human influence on the climate system is clear.” Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.
10. Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.
11. It is virtually certain that global mean sea-level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions.
12. Many adaptation and mitigation options can help address climate change, but no single option is sufficient by itself. Adaptation can reduce the risks of climate change impacts, but there are limits to its effectiveness.
13. Substantial emissions reductions of greenhouse gases – including carbon dioxide and methane — over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st century and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term, and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development.

According to the IPCC Synthesis Report, planet Earth is in pretty dire shape – but the report isn’t hopeless.

Imagine our planet as a patient at a doctor’s office. It’s too late to just stay healthy – we’ve already caught a cold. But we can prevent the cold from deteriorating into pneumonia.

In order to do that, though, we need to act now. We need people, and governments, across the world to join together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support adaptation efforts, and help reduce the damages from climate change.

This post originally appeared on the Climate 411 blog.

By Andrew Hutson

Andrew Hutson is EDF's Director, Global Value Chain Initiatives.

The world’s attention has been on Brazil lately. With an exciting World Cup this past summer, an election season full of drama (including a plane crash), and the coming Summer Olympics in 2016, it has been easy to overlook the piece of news that has the greatest impact on all of our lives: the remarkable decreases in rates of deforestation in the Amazon. With little fanfare (at least from the general public), deforestation decreased 70% since 2005 and Brazil has become the world leader in reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

But while this progress impressive, it is important to note that we’re still losing over 5,000 square kilometers of forest a year in the Amazon. More importantly, we’ve seen a slight uptick in the rate of deforestation over the past two years, with an increase of 29% from 2012-2013. That number looks likely to increase again this year.

As the number of companies, governments, NGOs, and indigenous peoples who signed the New York Declaration on Forests last month demonstrated, there is an eagerness to address this issue across all sectors of society. Among other goals, signatories to the Declaration seek to halve the rate of loss of forests globally by 2020 and end natural forest loss by 2030. To get there, we need a scalable and systematic approach to meet this ambitious, yet achievable goal. EDF believes one solution is the creation of Zero Deforestation Zones (also referred to as jurisdictional approaches) – nations or states that are able to demonstrate reductions in deforestation within their borders as the most effective way to save forests the scale of entire landscapes, rather than individual parcels of land.

A new report by Datu Research, Deforestation in the Brazilian Beef Value Chain, supports this notion.

The report, commissioned by EDF, finds that progress in decreasing deforestation rates could easily be reversed unless ranchers are offered the right incentives to switch practices on their ranches and the right policy frameworks are adopted by companies and governments. It currently makes far more financial sense for a rancher to clear new forest than to move to sustainable pasture management. As a result, they may be forced to either continue to deforest or switch to other crops such as oil palm, which is expected to more than double by 2020 in Brazil.

The initial production costs of ranchland management show adopting deforestation-free "pasture management" is currently much cheaper than deforestation. Source: Datu Research

The report also concludes that jurisdictional approaches have the potential to address many of the root causes of deforestation and

trim administrative costs across the value chain, reduce leakage, and increase retailer and consumer confidence in the veracity of deforestation-free products.

So, ranchers need financial incentives in order to make the necessary investments to drive production intensity increases and meet the requirements for the various certification schemes covering deforestation. Such incentives could come from a number of sources including financial mechanisms such as policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), or bilateral aid from the international community dedicated to ending deforestation. Norway, for example, has pledged to donate $500 million per year and has spent nearly $750 million on the Amazon Fund since 2009. We also should not forget that there are plenty of domestic resources to address these challenges as well. Brazil is a rapidly growing economy with a GDP of over $2 trillion. In addition, one of the strongest incentives can come from the preferences of buyers in supply chains, who may simply refuse to purchase beef associated with deforestation.

But more importantly, public and private sector initiatives to end deforestation need to be more comprehensive. Moving forward, efforts need to move beyond the focus of single crops or supply chains and build on the progress of lessons from certification and commodity roundtables. Important synergies exist between a jurisdictional approach to supply chains, like Zero Deforestation Zones, and public policy. Implementing supply chain commitments at the jurisdictional level reinforces the incentives for governments to put in place policies that reduce deforestation within an entire jurisdiction, and builds off the existing structure for monitoring and verifying reductions in deforestation at a jurisdictional level. The two approaches are mutually reinforcing and can help solve this challenge in an affordable and achievable manner.

For additional reading, see Dom Phillips's piece in The Washington Post: Small ranchers the key to Amazon deforestation. This post originally appeared on the EDF+Business blog. 

By Steve Schwartzman

Who’s responsible for the 70% reduction in Amazon deforestation that’s made Brazil the world leader in reducing greenhouse gas pollution, keeping 3.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere since 2005?

Who, if anyone, is responsible for the 29% increase in deforestation from 2012 – 2103 (which looks to repeat in 2014)?

Simon Romero’s New York Times story, Clashing Visions of Conservation Shake Brazil’s Presidential Vote, asks these questions from the vantage of wild-west frontier town Novo Progresso, Pará.

Part of the answer lies just up the BR-163 highway from Novo Progresso, in the indigenous territories and protected areas of the Terra do Meio region of the Xingu River basin. When Marina Silva took over as environment minister in 2003, the Terra do Meio was overrun with gunmen working for land grabbers busy threatening forest communities, opening roads and clearing forest.

After Marina put together the national Plan to Prevent and Control Amazon Deforestation – and after American nun Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered nearby in 2005 – the government created about 7 million hectares of protected areas in the previously lawless Terra do Meio. The land grabbers and their hired guns left, because they knew they weren’t getting land titles in officially recognized indigenous territories and protected areas – and deforestation stopped.

This illustrates why legally recognizing indigenous territories and creating protected areas have been so effective in reducing deforestation on the Amazon frontier. Public lands not designated for any specific use (e.g., park, indigenous territory, national forest), like the Terra do Meio before 2005, are historically subject to invasion by land grabbers, who clear forest in order to claim the land. Once government declares land a park or reserve, it can’t be treated like no man’s land anymore, and the incentive to drive out local communities and clear forest goes away.

The science on how and why Brazil reduced Amazon deforestation agrees across the board that while various factors are in play (consumer and government pressure through commodity supply chains, law enforcement, increasing agriculture yields on cleared lands), creating protected areas and particularly legally recognizing indigenous lands is a very important part of the answer. (For more, see Nepstad et al, 2014; Soares Filho et al, 2010; Assunção, Gandour and Rocha, 2012; and Busch and Ferretti-Gallon, 2014.)

Going back to the question of who can claim credit for stopping deforestation, it is then notable that President Rouseff protected just 5% of the forest in indigenous territories and protected areas that her predecessor Lula did – with the large majority of Lula’s gains coming under minister Marina.

At a conservative estimate, Marina, not Dilma, protected an area of forests nearly the size of France on the Amazon frontier.

Indigenous Territories and Amazon Protected Areas Officially Designated 1995 – 2014 Government Indigenous Territories Officially Designated (#) Indigenous Territories Officially Designated (Million Hectares) Amazon Protected Areas Created (#) Amazon Protected Areas Created (Million Hectares) MILLION HECTARES — TOTAL Dilma Rouseff (2010 – 2014) 21 3 5 N/A 3 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003 – 2010) 168 32 49 26.3 58.3 Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995 – 2003) 263 77 38 14.8 91.8 Source: Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) (Note: The table does not include the five Amazon protected areas Dilma created in the last leg of the election campaign, but they wouldn’t change the picture much.)

 

It’s too bad that in his otherwise very good story on Amazon deforestation today, Simon Romero didn’t point out this huge disparity.

As for why deforestation was up in 2013, and likely will be again in 2014, Beto Veríssimo of Imazon put it well in the Times:

We’re witnessing an increase in speculative deforestation and forest destruction for the government’s own infrastructure projects… There’s been a rearrangement of priorities

It doesn’t have to be this way.  If Brazil improved average pasture yields from the current 30% of sustainable potential to 50%, it could meet all the demand for agriculture commodities until 2040 with no more deforestation. Unilever, Nestle, and Cargill are only a few of long list of major consumer goods companies that have committed to zero-deforestation supply chains in recent years.

Brazil could be the go-to source for zero-deforestation commodities in emerging low-carbon, high-environmental quality markets – if it can avoid backsliding into business as usual on the Amazon frontier.

By Nat Keohane

My forecast had been for a Climate Week “on steroids” and that’s exactly what we got.

(Image: Jane Kratochvil)

We saw the largest climate rally in history draw 400,000 people – up from the 250,000 we had initially hoped for – and then the United Nations Climate Summit, where 125 heads of state joined business and civic leaders to discuss ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Another highlight for the week was the growing momentum for putting a price on carbon. More than 1,000 businesses and investors, nearly 100 national, state, province and city governments, and more than 30 non-profit organizations called for expanding emissions trading and other policies that create market incentives for cutting pollution.

Could it be that we’re finally reaching the point of meaningful action on climate change? To find out, I asked colleagues at Environmental Defense Fund who participated in the Climate Summit for their key take-aways from the week.

Here’s their report:

1. PEOPLE’S CLIMATE MARCH

Eric Pooley, Sr. Vice President, Strategy and Communications: This march shot down, once and for all, the old canard that Americans “don't care” about climate change. And it reminded me what an extremely big tent the coalition for climate action really is — with plenty of room for groups with vastly different views.

More than 1,000 EDF members and staff, plus 300 members of the Moms Clean Air Force, were proud to be marching alongside all kinds of people from all kinds of groups from all over the country. To win on climate, we need a strong outside game and a strong inside game. EDF is helping to build both.

2. METHANE EMISSIONS RISE TO THE TOP

Mark Brownstein, Associate Vice President, U.S. Climate and Energy: Methane is becoming a top priority in the fight against climate change. Last week, EDF helped to launch the Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil & Gas Methane Partnership, which creates a framework for oil and gas companies to measure and reduce methane emissions and report their progress.

At the summit, I watched the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, turn to Fred Krupp to say that his company was interested in joining the six companies that already agreed to sign on. While the ultimate test of the partnership will be the reductions that it achieves, it has gotten off to a promising start.

3. COMMON GROUND ON FORESTS

Stephan Schwartzman, Senior Director, Tropical Forest Policy: One of the high points of the week, no doubt, came when 35 national and state governments, more than 60 non-profits and indigenous organizations, and 34 major corporations pledged to halve deforestation by 2020 – and to completely end the clearing of natural forests by 2030. EDF was proud to be part of the coalition that put the New York Declaration on Forests together.

4. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES GOT THE RECOGNITION THEY DESERVE

Christopher Meyer, Amazon Basin Outreach Manager: Indigenous groups from the major rain forest basins pledged to continue to conserve 400 million hectares under their control. Those 400 million hectares are important for cultural and biodiversity purposes globally, but they also hold an estimated 71 gigatons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 11 years of emissions from the United States.

I was honored to accompany Edwin Vasquez Campos of the Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin, and to watch him deliver a stirring speech to a room that included the leaders of Norway and Indonesia. It was the first time an indigenous leader was given such an opportunity at the U.N.

5. US-CHINA LEADERSHIP ON CLIMATE?

Fred Krupp, EDF President: On September 23, EDF hosted a meeting with Chinese government officials, who reiterated their plans for a national carbon market in China, and said they’re interested in working with the United States to combat climate change. Later that day, I heard President Obama speak at the United Nations General Assembly.

I was encouraged and inspired to hear him say that the U.S. and China, “as the two largest economies and emitters in the world … have a special responsibility to lead.”

6. CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE – NO LONGER JUST A CATCH PHRASE

Richie Ahuja, Regional Director, Asia: After a three-year global effort involving a large number of diverse stakeholders, we finally launched the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. Its purpose: To help the world figure out how to feed a growing population on a warming planet.

The alliance will use the latest technology and draw on the experience of farmers to improve livelihoods and build resilience – while at the same time cutting greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. This is climate action that truly counts.

7. CORPORATIONS ARE ON BOARD

Ruben Lubowski, Chief Natural Resource Economist: One thing that made the Climate Summit unique was that it included corporate leaders, not just heads of state. In addition to signing the New York Declaration on Forests, chief executives of major global companies that buy and trade palm oil and other tropical commodities that drive deforestation – companies like Cargill, Unilever, and Wilmar – spoke strongly about their plans to change sourcing practices.

Already, companies accounting for about 60 percent of the world’s palm oil trade have made commitments to eliminate deforestation from their products.

8. CALIFORNIA DOES IT AGAIN

Derek Walker, Associate Vice President, U.S. Climate and Energy: California has served as a proving ground for climate change policies that can be adapted by other jurisdictions, whether in the U.S. and abroad – and there’s more to come. My highlight for the week: when Gov. Jerry Brown said that California will set a post-2020 emissions limit and ratchet up its 33-percent renewable standard – already the nation’s top target.

California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols also told us that the state is preparing to develop rules on how to incorporate forest carbon credits into its carbon market – a key step toward reducing deforestation.

This post originally appeared on EDF Voices on Sept. 29.

By Steve Schwartzman

In an oped in Saturday's New York Times (To Save the Planet, Don't Plant Trees), Nadine Unger argues that reducing deforestation and planting trees won't help fix climate change but will rather make it worse. One might ask how the 2,000-plus scientists and experts on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) got this one wrong – they found tropical deforestation the second largest source of carbon pollution, after burning fossil fuels for energy– but in fact it's Unger who's way out on a limb here.

Steve Schwartzman, Director of Tropical Forest Policy

When trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in their trunks, branches, leaves and roots. When people cut the trees down and burn them to clear forest for cattle pasture or crops, as they have at a rate of 13 million hectares of forest per year in the tropics over the last decade, this releases CO₂ back into the atmosphere.

Unger argues that forests absorb more sunlight than crops or grassland, which reflect more sunlight back into space and cool the earth. But that's not true in the tropics. In tropical forests like the Amazon, where deforestation is happening and thus where the Climate Summit's attention is focused, trees take up water from rainfall and evaporate it through their leaves, and create cloud cover. These clouds reflect even more sunlight than grasslands or bare earth, thus cooling the earth more. This is why large-scale deforestation disrupts rainfall regimes – and why deforestation in the Amazon, if unchecked, may reduce rainfall in California.

Emissions from tropical deforestation are, from the perspective of the atmosphere, just the same as emissions from burning fossil fuels – carbon that was wood, coal, oil or gas is turned into CO₂ and released to the atmosphere. In a living forest, trees do die and, over time release CO₂ to the atmosphere. But then new trees grow, and absorb that CO₂ again – not the case when forests that have stored carbon for centuries are replaced by grass to feed cattle or oil palm plantations.

Contrary to Unger’s claims, the "high risk" is to ignore the 200 billion tons of at-risk carbon stocks in the world’s tropical forests. In fact, as the IPCC has concluded, stopping tropical deforestation is a critical priority for controlling climate change.

By Chris Meyer

By Chris Meyer, Amazon Basin Outreach Manager; Alisha Staggs, Corporate Partnership Project Manager; and Dana Miller, Terrestrial Carbon Policy Fellow. This post, which originally appeared on the EDF+Business blog, is our second in a series on how companies can reduce deforestation from their supply chains. Read the first post here.

What do companies, governments, civil society organizations and indigenous peoples have in common? Despite their differences, they share a common interest in reducing deforestation, the second largest source of global emissions after fossil fuels.

On September 23rd, leaders from all of these groups will meet at the UN Climate Summit in New York City to spark action on climate change issues including deforestation. The Climate Summit hopes to rally action around two forest efforts, creating incentives to reduce deforestation in tropical countries through REDD+ policies (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) and eliminating deforestation from the supply chains of commodities such as palm, beef, soy and paper.

The Board of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)—a group of 400 companies with combined sales of around $3.5 trillion—has committed to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. However, CGF has also recognized that they cannot solve deforestation on their own, and have called on governments to make REDD+ a priority in a legally binding UN climate agreement in 2015. 

At EDF, we believe that REDD+ is the best way to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable economic development and that consumer goods companies are in a prime position to support REDD+ in the countries they source from.

Acre: REDD+ in practice

Acre, Brazil. Image: Wikipedia

The state of Acre, Brazil provides an example of how REDD+ can bring governments, companies and local communities together to reduce deforestation and increase economic development. Acre has committed to reduce deforestation by 80 percent by 2020 compared to a historical baseline from 1996-2005, which would prevent 182 to 221 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions using REDD+ policies. Also, Acre installed a robust monitoring system of its forests, including satellite imaging to track deforestation.

To reduce deforestation, Acre has created various incentives programs, including:

• Supporting timber certification through the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and investing in manufacturing plants to produce more valuable wood products;
• Designing strategies for zero deforestation beef growth to produce more cattle on already cleared land; and
• Rewarding indigenous peoples for protecting forests. Indigenous peoples have already received $2.9 million to restore degraded lands using traditional land use practices, to protect habitats and watersheds, and to preserve their cultures.

As a result of its efforts, Acre reduced deforestation by 60 percent in 2010 compared to a 1996-2005 baseline, while increasing its real GDP by 62% since 2002, nearly doubling the national average GDP growth.

In Acre, Brazil, deforestation decreased by 60 percent compared to a 1996-2005 baseline, while GDP per capital increased by 70 percent and cattle size increased by 14% since 2005. Source: Acre Government

Scale and international recognition

In contrast to smaller REDD+ projects, Acre’s REDD+ program covers the whole state, and aligns all policies and land-use planning around the joint objectives of reducing deforestation, increasing agricultural productivity, and improving livelihoods. Acre has also harmonized its reduction target, reference level, and monitoring system with Brazil’s National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) so the state can link up to the national REDD+ program.

Acre will become the first pilot project for Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) programs by the Verified Carbon Standard, an offset standard setter, and will become the first jurisdiction to supply compliance grade REDD+ credits. Acre signed a Memorandum of Understanding with California (along with Chiapas, Mexico) and agreements with the Brazilian states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) to develop guidelines for including REDD+ in  the states’ existing or projected carbon markets. Acre has also received an initial payment of $20 million from the German Development Bank.

Lessons from Acre

Acre holds valuable lessons for governments and businesses on how to reduce deforestation across a whole jurisdiction while increasing sustainable economic development.

To meet their deforestation-free commitments, companies should source commodities from jurisdictions like Acre and encourage countries and states that they source from to adopt REDD+ programs so that companies can benefit from the strong policy framework, robust monitoring systems and incentives that these programs provide.

Chris Meyer and Alisha Staggs will present on how to eliminate deforestation from company supply chains using REDD+ at The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) Member Summit in Berlin from September 30th to October 2nd.

Additional reading:

• Moving Beyond Commitments: Collaborating to End Deforestation
• Ready for REDD: Acre’s State Programs for Sustainable Development and Deforestation Control

By Christina McCain

California Governor Jerry Brown and Mexican officials pose after signing climate pact. (Credit: Danae Azuara)

When California Governor Jerry Brown kicked off a three-day trade and investment mission to Mexico last week, he didn’t do it by meeting with the minister of finance (though that did come later in the trip).

Instead, Governor Brown presided over a marquee event where he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mexico’s federal Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources to cooperate on combating climate change – a key priority that complements a broader joint economic agenda very well.

The Governor, staff, high-level administration officials, and legislators on the California delegation had a packed agenda that covered not only climate change, but also trade, investment, education, energy and immigration.

As a participant in the large delegation, I attended official events focused on energy and climate that were both substantive and informative. Both sides spoke thoughtfully and enthusiastically about implementation of the MOU.

But it was the meetings we had after the delegation had departed that gave me additional insight – and hope – that this agreement can truly signal the beginning of a new chapter in Mexico and California’s history, and one with global significance.

Still, it is fair to ask: In a world where MOUs are plentiful but action often seems in short supply, why is this agreement actually, as my colleague Nat Keohane argues, a sign that momentum is growing on climate action? I provide here some perspective on what we know about California’s and Mexico’s past and potential future paths on climate change.

Climate change optimism in Mexico

Mexico is currently the world’s 13th largest economy, though it’s projected to grow to the 5th largest by 2050. The country boasts a stable currency, saw modest growth in the middle class over the last decade, and is California’s biggest export market. Mexico’s foreign minister, José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, had no shortage of such statistics at hand when he explained to a group of business delegates in Sacramento why Mexico is such a good place to invest and build partnerships.

But Mexico is also a good place to invest in working to combat climate change. The current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has inherited a legacy on climate change leadership, through high-profile international emissions-reduction targets and a sweeping domestic climate change law that passed just before he took office. It is also a country poised for big changes, in no small part because its congress just approved a national energy reform, with potentially enormous implications for its energy future and emissions trajectory.

Regardless of whether Mexico’s climate change law passed on Peña Nieto’s watch, it is his to interpret, to implement, and potentially to capitalize on immensely. Ratcheting down Mexico’s national emissions toward the 2020 target of 30% below business as usual can be achieved by implementing smart energy and economic development policy that also drives the growth of a sustainable, low-carbon economy. There is enormous opportunity in Mexico to achieve significant, economy-wide emissions reductions (many at low cost) to meet the country’s ambitious mitigation goals and to stimulate green investment and economic growth, particularly in the energy sector.

California-Mexico climate partnership opportunities on display

Given that opportunity, EDF staff met last week in Mexico City with policymakers, NGOs, think tanks and other experts to understand how this MOU could help propel Mexico and California forward, and serve as an important impetus for even broader ambitious action.

What we heard repeatedly, especially from those close to the California-Mexico climate agreement, was optimism and a multitude of perspectives on ripe opportunities to work together.

The MOU itself outlines cooperative work on policy and technical tools, such as putting a price on carbon (the price being a key ingredient to drive investment in low-carbon technologies and increased efficiency); potential harmonization of measurement, monitoring, and tracking of greenhouse gas emissions; and promoting the development of renewable energy (an area where California has enormous expertise and Mexico a huge untapped potential).

California’s bet on win-wins for the environment and the economy is paying dividends, with a state economy back on track after weathering a recession and implementing the second largest cap-and-trade program in the world. And California sees the lion’s share of green investments in the country, with green job growth outpacing all other sectors ten-fold.

Mexico has the opportunity to strengthen its investment in a green economy and benefit the health of its citizens and the planet, while showing itself as a shining example of global vision and leadership. And in California, it has found the ideal partner to help make it happen.

Could the energy on both sides fizzle? Could Mexico’s President decide to walk away from Mexico’s climate leadership?

Sure, it’s possible – but it’s hard to make a case for doing so. The very same strategies reduce emissions – improvements in technology, efficiency, increasing green investment, and making smart decisions on fuels, transportation, and infrastructure – also provide short- and long-term economic gains for Mexico, and ultimately, could do so for the entire region.

Governor Brown spoke passionately last week about the reality and the urgency of climate change, and both governments reflected a sincere desire to do something real to make a difference together. For my part, I was convinced.

 

Related:

• Blog post: 3 takeaways from the California, Mexico climate agreement, by Nathaniel Keohane, Vice President, International Climate:
• Blog post: California Cements Latest Climate Alliance, this Time with Next-Door Neighbor Mexico, by Lauren Faber, West Coast Political Director
• EDF’s press release: Historic California-Mexico agreement boosts international climate collaboration

By Jennifer Andreassen

This post by Alisha Staggs originally appeared on the EDF+Business blog August 27.

Deforestation can pose significant operational and reputational risks to companies, and we at EDF are seeing companies start to take action in their supply chains. Deforestation accounts for an estimated 12% of overall GHG emissions worldwide–as much global warming pollution to the atmosphere as all the cars and trucks in the world. In addition, deforestation wipes out biodiversity and ravages the livelihoods of people who live in and depend on the forest for survival.

Tropical deforestation in Mato Grosso do Sul, Pantanal, Brazil (Source: BMJ via Shutterstock)

Unfortunately, it’s a hugely complex issue to address. Agricultural commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, paper and pulp—ingredients used in a wide variety of consumer products—drive over 85% of global deforestation. Companies struggle to understand both their role in deforestation, and how to operationalize changes that will have substantive impacts.

When the drivers of deforestation are buried deep in the supply chain, innovative and collaborative solutions are required. In the past several years, we have seen many in this space make big commitments toward solving the problem, but gaining transparency into tracking against these commitments has been almost as difficult as gaining transparency into the supply chains themselves.  For many companies, the hope for making good on their promises may come in the form of powerful partnerships.

Change Starts with Commitments

In 2010, the board of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)—a consortium of 400 companies with combined sales of around $3.5 trillion—committed to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020, mobilizing the resources of the world’s largest companies to achieve their goal. This commitment is focused on the key commodity drivers of deforestation: soy, beef, palm oil, paper and pulp.

In the last four years, to encourage their members to implement this commitment, CGF has published commodity specific sourcing guidelines, created an Activation Toolkit, and launched the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. However, despite making many resources available, there has yet to be a concerted effort to measure or track against the commitment, leaving many in the NGO community skeptical.

Partnerships to Build Transparency

Enter The Sustainability Consortium (TSC®) with its membership of non-profits (including EDF), government agencies, university partners and consumer product companies with combined revenues totaling over $2.4 trillion. The Consortium’s goal is to create systems that accurately measure and report environmental and social impacts associated with particular product categories in order to help retailers–and eventually consumers–make smarter decisions about what goes onto shelves and into shopping bags.

To create common ways to measure and report impacts, TSC membership has developed Product Sustainability Toolkits for 110  product categories (and counting), including all of the major commodity drivers of deforestation. For the last two years, Walmart has been implementing these toolkits through their Sustainability Index. Walmart has been able to extrapolate the toolkits to cover over 700 categories and more than 2,500 suppliers.

While Walmart’s achievements are very exciting for EDF, what’s even more exciting is that what was once only happening in-house at Walmart is now easily implementable by all TSC members and others across the consumer goods industry through the new SAP Product Stewardship Network –an online community that enables companies and their supply chains to efficiently exchange sustainability data.

This marks a major milestone in TSC and a huge opportunity for action.  TSC will deliver an updated version of its TSC Product Sustainability Toolkits, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), in October, which will offer even more harmonized and easily comparable metrics across commodities.

A Call to Action

Many companies have taken extensive steps internally to reduce their risk of deforestation, often, though, the efforts are disjointed in relation to supply chain activity and consequently do not easily ladder up to meet an umbrella goal like that of CGF. TSC’s KPIs provide a much-needed solution for this.

Alisha Staggs

TSC has developed broad, globally applicable, outcome-based metrics for tracking land transformation/deforestation. Because these metrics are nonprescriptive, they are compatible with a wide range of strategies. In addition, TSC has included specific KPIs to track the use of certification as way to address issues such as deforestation, including RSPO and FSC, both of which have been endorsed by CGF.

TSC is working to drive adoption of the toolkits within its own membership, which has more than 30 member companies in common with CGF—including Walmart, Ahold, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Kroger. CGF and TSC officially joined forces in 2012 when they announced a partnership between the two organizations, but we have yet to see this partnership live up to its potential. CGF has recognized that they cannot stop deforestation by themselves and have called on governments around the world to “secure an ambitious and legally binding global climate deal” at the UN Paris Climate Summit in 2015 and to prioritize the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) policies, which will be the focus of our next blog in this series.

Call us optimists, but we see 2015 as the year that their combined efforts of setting industry goals and using key performance indicators to measure progress can take deforestation beyond commitment and towards broad measurement, reporting and progress for this issue.

Look for Alisha and her EDF colleagues at the TSC Member Summit in Berlin, Germany, September 30 to October 2, where they will be leading discussions on commodity-driven deforestation during the sector working groups.

By Nat Keohane

California Governor Jerry Brown and Mexican officials sign climate pact. (Photo credit: Danae Azuara)

This post originally appeared on EDF Voices on July 30

If you are looking for a sign that momentum is growing on climate action, this week’s groundbreaking agreement between California and Mexico to cooperate on climate change is a good place to start.

Most of the agenda at the four-day gubernatorial event was what you would expect to find at a trade and investment mission: agreements to cooperate on education, immigration, investment, but the inclusion of serious talks on climate change was surprising and hopeful.

The most tangible impact of the collaboration will be seen in the technical cooperation, information sharing, and potential policy alignment that are envisioned in the climate change agreement. But this week’s pact also suggests three less tangible but no less important takeaways:

1. Combatting climate change is sound economic policy

The fact that the climate change agreement was one of a handful of issues highlighted on California Governor Jerry Brown’s trip underscores the increasing importance of climate change to economic growth.  The impacts of climate change in California and the United States are becoming increasingly apparent, and Mexico faces similar issues of rising temperatures, increasing wildfires, and extreme precipitation.

With the growing evidence that climate risk will bring significant economic costs in the near term, and that delay will drive up the costs of taking action, smart climate policy is increasingly a key component of sound economic policy.

At the same time, the agreement also highlights the enormous opportunities for smart policy to drive clean energy innovation and investment on both sides of the border.  California’s leadership on climate change has already helped to make it a world leader in clean technologies. For its part, Mexico is poised to tap its enormous potential in solar, wind, and geothermal energy to help drive economic growth and energy security.

2. Carbon pricing continues to gain traction

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed on Monday by Governor Brown and Rodolfo Lacy, Undersecretary of Mexico’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, highlights carbon pricing as one of the key issues for cooperation under the agreement.

Both sides are already taking action in this area: California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) includes the world’s most comprehensive emission trading program for greenhouse gases, while Mexico has instituted a partial carbon tax on fossil fuels that represents an important initial step that could lay the groundwork for a more effective price on carbon in the coming years.

A price on carbon is a crucial policy tool to achieve the deep emissions reductions the world needs to avoid dangerous climate change. By ensuring that the true costs of climate pollution are reflected in the price of fossil fuels, and rewarding emissions reductions, carbon pricing ensures deployment of cost-effective climate solutions — and creates a powerful incentive to develop new technologies.

The agreement by California and Mexico adds another boost to the growing momentum on carbon pricing around the world. About 40 national and more than 20 sub-national jurisdictions, accounting for more than 22 percent emissions already have a price on carbon, according to the World Bank.

3. A new model for cooperation

The agreement between California and Mexico can provide a model for collaboration in the emerging “bottom-up” approach to climate change, in which national policies take center stage, rather than a “top-down” global agreement negotiated at the UN. Bilateral and regional cooperation will be all the more important in a bottom-up world, to foster greater ambition and give countries confidence that others are taking action as well.

California and Quebec have already linked their carbon markets. Now with carbon pricing a centerpiece of cooperation between California and Mexico, it does not seem too far-fetched to envision a “North American carbon market” emerging in the not-too-distant future.

California and Mexico face joint challenges from a changing climate. Together they can demonstrate to the world concrete progress on practical solutions to reduce carbon emissions, drive clean energy innovation and promote low-carbon prosperity.

By Chris Meyer

By Chris Meyer, Outreach Manager, Amazon Basin and Lauren Newton, Program Associate, International Climate Program

en español  |  Indigenous peoples  have relied on the rainforests for their survival for thousands of years. Their knowledge of the forests and dependence on the lands make them effective protectors of the forests — and particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

An indigenous technician takes the measurement of a cuipo tree in Darien, Panama. The measurements will help researchers calculate the quantity of carbon stored in the forest. (Credit: Chris Meyer)

The indigenous group Organization of Embera and Wounaan Youth of Panama (OJEWP) formed teams that recently started measuring and recording the size of trees in the territories of five indigenous communities, with technical guidance from academics from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and McGill University.

In May, the OJEWP team started their work in the community of Arimae, located in the Darien, an eastern province of Panama. The team is now nearing completion of the data-gathering project, which will ultimately help researchers calculate the quantity of carbon stored in the forest.* The results will also contribute to identifying the overlap between Panama’s valuable forest carbon “stocks” and its indigenous territories, which are home to more than half of Panama’s forests.

Access to this accurate forest carbon stock data for indigenous territories is crucial for indigenous peoples when they discuss policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) with government officials. It's also helpful for policy makers who design policies to conserve forests and their respective carbon stocks.

Deforestation accounts for as much as 15% of all manmade global warming pollution. This measuring of forest carbon stocks is an important step in the measuring, reporting and verification step that ensures the integrity of REDD+ policies.

STRI's Javier Mateo discusses measuring plot boundaries with indigenous technicians in Darien, Panama. Proper measuring of plots will allow the technicians to take accurate measurements of the forest’s carbon stocks. (Credit: Chris Meyer)

Before heading to the forests, the team first needed to become “technicians” in accurately measuring trees. STRI and McGill University trained them in the fundamentals of accurate tree measurement, including how to measure tree diameter (width) and height, collect plant and soil samples, set up the 100m x 100m (1 hectare) plots, and use GPS technology to tag these measurements. Once in Darien, STRI’s Javier Mateo-Vega said the group’s forest carbon measurements went well, and that:

Our team, comprised of mostly Embera [people] from various territories across Darien, has been instrumental in carrying out rigorous scientific research that will inform future REDD+ related policy and on-the-ground work.

Nakibeler Lopez of OJEWP added that the team also learned “the potential contained in the natural resources of the territories of indigenous peoples in Panama." With this potential in the forest’s natural resources, and the historical role indigenous peoples have played in protecting them, ensuring the indigenous groups receive a fair distribution from any future REDD+ program will be essential for the program’s success.

An effective solution to global climate change must include REDD policies that engage indigenous peoples, and EDF will continue to support the effort to integrate lessons learned from the implementation of this work into REDD+ policy discussions.

*Note: The fifth and final field visit for this project is scheduled for August. Once measurements are completed, the data collected will be fed into territorial carbon maps and shared with the participating indigenous communities. STRI, McGill University, OJEWP, and EDF – with the support of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facilities’ capacity building program – plan to present the results in December at the United Nations climate change convention in Lima, Peru. 

By Alex Hanafi

This post was co-authored by Alex Hanafi and Andy Parker, and originally appeared on The Washington Geoengineering Consortium.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its last report in a three-part series  assessing the latest data and research on climate change.  The new report discusses actions we can take to limit the magnitude and rate of climate change, while previous reports focused on the scientific basis for climate change, and on potential ways to reduce vulnerability to the risks presented by our rapidly changing climate.

The morning sun reflects on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean as seen from the Apollo 7 spacecraft during its 134th revolution of the Earth on Oct. 20, 1968. Image Credit: NASA

For the first time, these IPCC reports also include significant attention to the topic of “solar radiation management” or SRM.  Also known as “solar geoengineering,” SRM describes a controversial set of theoretical proposals for cooling the Earth, and thereby potentially counteracting the temperature-related impacts of climate change, by reflecting a small amount of inbound solar energy back into space.

With the impacts of rising temperatures already being felt and the IPCC drawing into sharper focus the range of impacts expected in the coming decades, SRM is attracting increasing attention as a potential cheap, fast-acting, albeit temporary response to some of the dangers of climate change.

SRM’s potential effects are only poorly understood, however.  And most discussions to date on SRM research governance, as well as most research activities, have taken place in developed countries.  Yet people in developing countries are often most vulnerable both to climate change, and any potential efforts to respond to it.  The scientific, ethical, political, and social implications of SRM research are necessarily global. Discussions about governance of SRM research should be as well.

Recognizing these needs, in 2010 the Royal Society, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences) launched the SRM Governance Initiative (SRMGI), an international NGO-driven initiative, to explore how SRM research could be governed. SRMGI’s activities are founded on a simple idea: that early and sustained dialogue among diverse stakeholders around the world, informed by the best available science, will increase the chances of SRM research being managed responsibly, transparently, and cooperatively.

SRMGI is neither for nor against SRM. Instead, it aims to foster inclusive, interdisciplinary, and international discussion on SRM research and governance.

Much of the work of SRMGI concentrates on bringing in new voices and perspectives, particularly from the developing world. For example, in late 2013, SRMGI and the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) published a report on a series of SRM research governance workshops held around Africa in 2012 and 2013.  These workshops were made possible by funding from the IAP (the global network of science academies) and UNESCO. The workshops took place in Senegal, South Africa, and Ethiopia in 2012 and early 2013, bringing in over 100 participants from 21 different African countries.

The workshops followed the same approach developed by SRMGI at previous meetings held in China, India, Pakistan and the UK, with three factors perhaps most important to their success:

First, local partnerships have been crucial. As with previous local SRMGI partners (such as the Sustainable Development Policy Institutein Pakistan, or the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in India), AAS’s convening power, networks of experts, and reputation were invaluable assets.

Second, participant interaction is prioritized over expert lectures.  After introductory talks on the science of SRM and the range of socio-political concerns it raises, discussion turns to local participants drawn from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. Quickly breaking down into small groups, they are encouraged to explore and express their own concerns, hopes and ideas regarding SRM research and governance.

A third important element of SRMGI’s success has been the decision to avoid identifying preferred or consensus options among different governance arrangements. Instead, SRMGI aims to ‘open up’ discussions of SRM governance by exploring and recording the different perspectives and options that participants express—from no special governance to complete prohibition of research activities.  Knowing that there is no meeting statement to sway, and that opinions will simply be discussed and recorded, often leads to a broad and thoughtful exchange. This decision to avoid “picking winners” has been seen among both developed and developing country stakeholders as a key component in establishing trust and encouraging participation in SRMGI activities.

To build the capacity for an informed global dialogue on geoengineering governance, a critical mass of well-informed individuals throughout the world must be developed, and they must talk to each other, as well as to their own networks. An expanding spiral of distinct, but linked outreach processes could help build the cooperative bridges needed to manage potential international conflicts, and will help ensure that if SRM technologies develop, they do so cooperatively and transparently, not unilaterally.

With SRM research in its infancy, but interest in the topic growing, the IPCC’s inclusion of SRM in its report is a reminder of the importance of establishing governance mechanisms to ensure that where SRM research does proceed, it is safe, ethical, and subject to appropriate public oversight and independent evaluation. Well-informed voices from civil society and other stakeholders can play an important role in guiding these evolving international discussions.

No one can predict how SRM research will develop or whether these strategies for managing the short-term implications of climate change will be helpful or harmful.  But early cooperation and transnational, interdisciplinary dialogue on geoengineering research governance will make it more likely that the global community can make informed decisions about research into SRM and other emerging geoengineering technologies.

 

Alex Hanafi is Senior Manager of Multilateral Climate Strategy at EDF, where he coordinates a range of research and advocacy programs designed to promote effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the globe.

 

 

 

Andy Parker is a Research Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  His research focuses on the politics and governance of solar geoengineering.

 

 

 

By Kritee

This post was co-authored by Kritee, Senior Scientist, International Climate; Richie Ahuja, Regional Director, Asia; and Tal Lee Anderman, Tom Graff Fellow – India Low-Carbon Rural Development

National Geographic's May cover story, “Feeding 9 billion,” offers valuable insights into how to feed a growing global population while reducing agriculture’s environmental impacts. But it omits some key connections with a critical issue: climate change.

Drought in the U.S. causes withering of corn. (Photo credit: Ben Fertig, IAN, UMCES)

As the Food and Agriculture Organization recently documented in great detail, climate change is likely to fundamentally alter the structure of food systems around the globe. With about 43% of the world’s population employed in agriculture, it’s vital that farmers have the knowledge and tools they need both to adapt to climate change and to help mitigate it.

Author Jonathan Foley, who directs the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, lays out several steps for “Feeding 9 billion.” Though he starts by acknowledging that agriculture emits “more greenhouse gases than all our cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes combined,” he doesn’t explicitly mention how his plan relates to a changing climate.

The first of his steps – halting conversion of additional forests and grasslands to agriculture – is crucial to stopping climate change, given the vast quantities of greenhouse gases released in these conversions. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on mitigation noted, protecting forests and increasing carbon content of the soils can decrease global emissions by as much as 13 gigatons CO2eq/year by 2030 – more than a quarter of current annual global emissions.

Foley also highlights the need to reduce meat consumption, because only a very limited portion of calories consumed by animals yield edible food for humans, and to reduce food waste. According to the IPCC, these consumer-level steps have the potential to decease agricultural emissions by 60% below the current trajectory. While Foley didn’t acknowledge these mitigation potentials, we agree that these are important steps to feeding the world’s population and protecting our environment.

But it’s his steps calling for improving productivity – both by growing more food on existing farms, and by using fertilizer, water and energy more efficiently – where the interactions with climate are more complex and need special attention.

Climate adaptation and resilience in agriculture

Foley rightly points out that to feed the world’s future population, more food needs to grow on existing farms. However, he doesn’t note that some of the effects of climate change – droughts, floods and heat waves in many parts of the world – are already reducing crop yields, and these effects and their consequences are expected to worsen.

The IPCC’s recently published 5th Assessment Report on adaptation concludes that:

• Climate change is already negatively affecting yields of crops and abundance of fish, and shifting the regions where crops grow and fish live
• Future changes in climate will increase competitiveness of weeds, making it difficult and more expensive to control them
• By 2050, changes in temperature and precipitation alone will raise global food prices by as much as 84% above food prices projected without these two climatic factors
• Major grains like wheat, corn, and rice could see as much as a 40% decrease in yield from a 20C increase in local temperatures. That’s because of the changing rainfall frequency and intensity, unpredictability and irregularity of growing seasons, and higher ozone levels that often accompany high CO­2 levels

To deal with these consequences and ensure food security and livelihoods, adaptation to climate change is essential. Indeed, adopting carefully chosen adaptation and resilience measures could improve crop yields as much as 15-20%. The IPCC recommendations include:

• Altering planting/harvesting dates to match the shifting growing seasons
• Using seed varieties that might be more tolerant of changing climatic patterns
• Better managing water and fertilizer use

A farmer training session, led by EDF’s partner NGO in India (Photo credit: Accion Fraterna)

Achieving high yields requires enabling farmers all over the world to adapt, build and restore the resilience of agricultural ecosystems in the face of continued climate change. Given that many farmers in developed countries have already reached what are currently maximum possible yields, it’s particularly urgent to work with farmers in the developing world.

A vast majority of these farmers in developing countries own small-scale farms (less than two acres in size) and have limited resources, and as a result are on the frontline of experiencing the unfolding impacts of climate change. These farmers are already growing the majority of the world’s food – more than 90% of the world’s rice, over 65% of its wheat and 55% of its corn. Notably, as opposed to our recommendations for farmers in the developed countries, some of them might need to increase their fertilizer use to achieve better yields as opposed to decreasing it. Feeding a world of 9 billion thus requires facing the disproportionate effect that climate change has on the 2 billion people who depend on small-scale farms for their livelihood.

Barriers to climate adaptation & mitigation in agriculture

The latest IPCC report also noted that the “nature” of the agriculture sector means:

“there are many barriers to implementation of available mitigation options, including accessibility to … financing, … institutional, ecological, technological development, diffusion and transfer barriers.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Many farmers, especially small scale land-owners in developing parts of the world, lack access to reliable scientific information and technology. In some cases, relevant information has not even been generated.

An Indian peanut farm where EDF is monitoring yield and greenhouse gas emissions. (Photo credit: Richie Ahuja)

For example, small-scale rice farmers in Asia lack access to information enabling them to determine what amounts of water, organic and synthetic fertilizer will optimize yields while also minimizing release of the greenhouse gases methane (which is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after it is released), and nitrous oxide (which is nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide). EDF is working with the Fair Climate Network in India and with Can Tho University and other partners in Vietnam to help generate that information and facilitate its use by farmers.

More generally, agricultural institutions at all levels – international, regional, national and local – need to work closely with farmers to learn and promote evidence-based, locally appropriate agricultural adaptation and mitigation technologies and practices. Farmer access to finance can further help improve the adoption rate of these technologies. Larger investments in farming infrastructure and science from government and private sector also need to be channeled to promote food security through low-carbon farming.

Our food system cannot achieve high yields without building and restoring the resilience of agricultural ecosystems, and the system won’t be sustainable if agriculture doesn’t do its part to mitigate climate change.

To feed 9 billion people, we must overcome barriers to reducing climate change’s effects on agriculture, and agriculture’s effect on climate.