On the road to Copenhagen, international climate negotiations remain plagued by the same (intractable?) challenges they have faced for decades. Will negotiators and nations find a new framework that can break old impasses and pave the way for global cooperation before it's too late?
By Johanna Peace, Devon Swezey, and Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellows
It's official: India won't accept binding caps on its emissions of greenhouse gases. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh made the case clear last Thursday:
"India will not accept any emission-reduction target--period," Ramesh said. "This is a non-negotiable stand."
India's announcement is the latest frustrating news for those following the efforts of climate negotiators as they struggle to eke out an international agreement by this December's UN summit in Copenhagen. It's frustrating because the fundamental dissonance between what developed countries demand and what developing countries are willing to give appears to be the single most intractable roadblock standing in the way of a successful treaty. In fact, this very problem has impeded progress on international climate negotiations for decades.
Continue reading "Road to Copenhagen: The Need for a New Framework" »
Driven largely by strong economic growth in developing nations, world energy consumption will grow 44% between 2006 and 2030, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Developing nations will demand cheap, abundant energy. The question remains: will it be clean?
Driven largely by strong economic growth in developing nations, world energy consumption will grow 44% between 2006 and 2030, according to updated projections released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The EIA reports:
World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2006 and 2030, driven by strong long-term economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2009 (IEO2009) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The current global economic downturn will dampen world energy demand in the near term, as manufacturing and consumer demand for goods and services slows. However, with economic recovery anticipated to begin within the next 12 to 24 months, most nations are expected to see energy consumption growth at rates anticipated prior to the recession. Total world energy use rises from 472 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2006 to 552 quadrillion Btu in 2015 and then to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030.
In the decades ahead, the world's rapidly developing nations will clearly demand abundant and affordable energy to power their economic growth. The question remains: what will the nations of the world do to ensure that demand is met by clean and cheap energy technologies?
Continue reading "EIA: World Energy Use Will Rise 44% By 2030; Developing Nations Demand Abundant, Affordable Energy" »
The departure of Brazil's environment minister signals the end of the small-is-beautiful vision of sustainable development in the Amazon. Since the U.N. conference in Rio in 1992, everyone has learned that there are no simple solutions to deforestation. It's now time to realize that there are no small ones either.
When Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva quit her office last month to protest President Lula's decision to move forward with dam and road building in the Amazon, environmentalists in Brazil and the U.S. rightly worried that her departure was a harbinger of accelerated deforestation to come. But the episode also revealed the failure of the small-is-beautiful vision of sustainable development for the Amazon, represented by "extractive reserves," which have been championed by conservationists, Silva, and her late mentor, Chico Mendes, since the late 1980s.
Mendes came to worldwide fame in the late 1980s as a rubber tapper who had created a political alliance with indigenous groups and American environmentalists. He organized forest communities to engage in civil disobedience to block logging operations. He lobbied international banks to stop financing deforestation. And he proposed that extractive reserves be created throughout the Amazon where rubber tappers, peasants and Indians could sustainably harvest nuts, oils and other products from the forest.
Mendes was killed by landlords in 1988 but his vision took off in 1992, the year the United Nations held an environment meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Foreign governments subsidized the reserves and sympathetic foreign companies like Ben and Jerry's and the Body Shop announced deals to purchase their nuts and oils. Many foreign observers saw in the extractive reserves the seed of a new kind of development, one that could leave most of the forest standing while also creating jobs for poor Brazilians.
But extractive reserves never became self-sustaining, much less capable of generating the billions Brazil needed to service its gargantuan $500 billion debt. By 2005, Leonardo Coutinho, an intrepid reporter for Brazil's largest newsweekly, Veja, reported that many if not most of the residents of the reserves turned to cattle ranching to survive. Even Mendes' widow was raising cattle within a reserve named after her husband. In many cases poor migrants gravitated to extractive reserves for work, but with no work available, turned to logging and cattle ranching. Poor Brazilians -- and Amazon ecosystems -- would have been better off had foreign investments been made to create jobs in cities, not the forest. In short, the problem with the small-is-beautiful approach is that it too often loses sight of the big picture.
Continue reading "When Small Isn't Beautiful" »
Environmentalist efforts to save the rain forest tend to brush over the plight of the Brazilian people, but until the country's widespread poverty is addressed, Brazilians will keep hacking down trees to eke out a living.
Brazil is a country of stark contrasts. It is the land of the Amazon and the favelas. Of breathtaking natural beauty and rampant violence. Its forests hold what some have called "the lungs of the earth," but the desire for a better life is driving their destruction. Environmentalist efforts to save the rain forest tend to brush over the plight of the Brazilian people, but until the country's widespread poverty is addressed, Brazilians will keep hacking down trees to eke out a living.
Continue reading "Brazil: "Lungs" - or Bowels - of the Earth?" »
