Pressure will continue to mount this year for negotiators representing countries at UN talks on climate change, culminating at the UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen (COP 15) in December. The December meeting is to agree on a strategy to replace the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned that the world could face a trade war between countries which agree to binding climate change targets and those which do not, if global talks in Copenhagen fail.
Protectionism will be a growing concern for Africa. Even if China and the US agree to binding greenhouse gas reductions for themselves, it will be tricky apportioning responsibility among developed and developing countries. As carbon accounting becomes an integral part of the cost of doing business, countries that agree to strong reductions in emissions will see those that don't as having an unfair advantage. Inevitably, much of the political rhetoric will conveniently ignore the historic advantage that industrialised countries maintain as a result of decades of carbon-heavy economic development.
Developed countries are probably hoping that technology transfer will be enough of a benefit to developing countries that it will counteract the cost of limiting carbon emissions, and thus encourage poorer countries to agree to these limits. Politically, this may work, since it is what the developing countries have been asking for. Practically, it is more likely to be a short-term strategy that will buy time until the need for adaptation to climate change becomes more widespread and severe.
Until recently, the focus has been on mitigation of climate change - strategies to help limit GHG emissions - with the hope that climate change and its impacts could be limited. But now that it is clear that we are already on target to experience some level of global warming no matter what we do, and that some of its effects are already being felt, greater emphasis is being placed on the need for strategies to help communities adapt to change. This shift in emphasis will continue as a wider range of communities, and a growing number of people, start to feel the adverse economic and health effects of climate change.
As this trend continues, technology will become less useful. Or rather, it will continue to be useful for mitigation, as long as it meets the development needs of poorer countries, but it will not help much with adaptation. Adaptation typically is less about adopting new technologies, and more about ensuring that there are support structures in place to make sure that communities are resilient in the face of change and that local economies are robust enough to weather the storm. (Tomorrow I will follow this up with a post on the issue of adaptation.)
The other issue with technology transfer is that it is being requested as another form of aid. Countries are intertwined in the global economy, creating a level of vulnerability for all, but the developing world is further disempowered by dependence on aid. If global economic strategies were carefully considered and rational, African countries might be less at risk than they are; but reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos a month ago suggest that everyone is in reactionary mode and not in control of economic direction. This puts Africa at risk from ill-conceived measures that might be adopted by developed countries.
If leaders of the developed world are at sea in the current economic crisis, perhaps this is an opportunity for Africa to empower itself and break the cycle of dependence. I am not an economist and am not in a position to suggest how this might be done in the international arena, but it seems to me that the way a country survives economically (or not) ultimately comes down to how its local communities survive. Just as local resilience is needed for adapting to climate change, so too it is needed for adapting to global economic shifts. If a country builds this resilience, then, it will be in a stronger position to deal with both challenges.
[Update on 4 March 2009: See also this article quoting South Africa's Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk as being optimistic that some agreement will be reached in Copenhagen, but that "We cannot accept anything that suggests that, because the United States have done so little for so long, we must allow them to do less than required by science in future." He is also asking for international support from developed countries to help South Africa achieve significant emissions reductions. - via GreenBiz on Twitter]
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