Copenhagen Consensus - four years on

Four years ago, academic Bjørn Lomborg put together a panel of economists under the banner of the Copenhagen Consensus Center to come up with a prioritised list of projects to address a selection of the world's great contemporary challenges. Lomborg's assumption was that money allocated to address climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and water, and subsidies and trade barriers could be most effectively spent if priorities were based on rational economic assessment. The resulting list put climate change strategies down at the bottom of the pile.

Lomborg's panel is meeting again this month for a fourth anniversary update, so it's worth considering why climate change fared so badly last time, and what might be different now. SourceWatch has noted that the Copenhagen Consensus "has been strongly criticised by NGOs such as Oxfam for drawing attention away from the existing consensus built up over several years and codified in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals." Given the political will needed to put significant resources towards any of these development challenges, this is a serious charge.

the planet will survive - but can we?

Today is Earth Day. Joseph Romm explains why he thinks our attention is misdirected.

green blogs highlighted on Talk Radio 702

I am happy to announce that Carbon Copy did not win "best green blog" in the SA Blog Awards last week (because, after all, Urban Sprout deserves the title), but thanks to everyone who voted. The main purpose of the awards is to raise the profile of blogging in South Africa, and I am sure that has been achieved. Climatologist Simon Gear mentioned the green blog finalists in today's edition of Redi's Green Tip of the Day on Talk Radio 702. (I think the podcast is only available for a day.)

UK eco-towns raising hackles

With the UK government planning a series of eco-towns to act as models for zero-carbon urban development, there are a few objections. The Campaign to Protect Rural England says that the towns shouldn't be on greenfield sites. They could rather be "eco-extenstions", or other forms of development that are potentially less damaging to the environment by avoiding sprawl and improving existing urban areas. The CPRE suggests a number of tests by which the eco-towns should be judged before their plans are finalised.

Urban planner Nicholas Falk adds that some of the eco-towns are on sites that were previously rejected as locations for new towns on other grounds, suggesting that criteria for sustainability aren't being applied properly. The objections don't seem to be over the concept of eco-towns, but over appropriate locations for development.

But a DCLG spokeswoman said the policy would encourage “well planned sustainable growth” on brownfield and greenfield land.

“The statutory planning process will ensure that areas will be protected from inappropriate development,” she added. “These settlements will be designed to the highest standards, make the most efficient use of land, and be designed sustainably and to zero-carbon objectives.”

think globally, bake locally

It's got skylights, natural ventilation, a grey water system, a car that runs on biodiesel... and it's a gingerbread house. That's right, the folks at bakeforachange held a competition to see who could come up with the most sustainable gingerbread house design. It's too late to enter, but you can view the results on Flickr. [via SCQ]

ectopias of the world

We all like lists, right? Here is a compilation of places vying for the title of "greenest community" - some built, some still on the drawing board. I guess a bit of rivalry is good for innovation. Courtesy of Wired:

• Costa Rica: plans to become the first carbon neutral country by 2021.
• Dockside Green in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: will promote bicycle use and carsharing, and build structures out of trees that were submerged by reservoirs.
• Dongtan, Chongming Island, China: to be powered from renewable sources, fuel-cell-powered transport and organic farming.
• Green Mountain, Libya: luxury hotels to be powered by wind turbines and solar farms.
• Guangtang Chuangye Park, Liuzhou, China: biogas from human waste to generate electricity, and filtered rainwater for bathing.
• Masdar, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: wind turbines, photovoltaics, grey water recycling, transport by light rail and walking only.
• Northstowe, Cambridge, England: brownfield development on an old airfield, with water recycling, photovoltaics, wind power and buildings insulated with recycled paper.
• Norway: plans to cut emissions by 30% by 2020, and become carbon neutral by 2050.
• Treasure Island, San Francisco, USA: brownfield development on a former naval base, to grow food and use congestion charging to discourage car use.
• Vauban, Freiburg, Germany: passive houses designed to minimise energy consumption, carshare service, and 40% of residents pledge to live car-free.
• Växjö, Sweden: already one of the world's greenest cities, with half its power from renewable sources, and one of the lowest per-capita carbon output rates in Europe, aiming to be fossil-fuel free by 2050.

There are a few others missing from the Wired list. Iceland and New Zealand have also pledged to achieve carbon neutrality as countries. They have joined the UN's Carbon Neutral Network, announced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at its special session in Monaco last week. Costa Rica and Norway are also part of CN Net, as well as Sweden's Växjö and three other cities: Vancouver in Canada, Arendal in Norway, and Rizhao in the northern China province of Shandong. There are five corporate members, one being South Africa's Nedbank.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP executive director, says of CN Net:

This new initiative supports the formal negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here governments need to navigate the Bali Road Map to a successful conclusion in Copenhagen in 2009.

The CN Net can assist in building confidence through demonstrable action at the national and local level on the art of the possible.

measuring green performance can be tricky

Sustainability is about performance, not about picking the "correct" technology. No individual strategy is right for every occasion - it's a question of what moves the world forwards instead of backwards. Responding to a Popular Science ranking of America's 50 greenest cities, Alex Steffen of WorldChanging raises the interesting challenge of how to define "forwards" and "backwards", and makes a few initial suggestions:

• Instead of measuring the amount of electricity coming from renewable sources, compare energy use with GDP: who's getting most prosperous using the least energy?
• Instead of counting how many people use public transportation, measure vehicle miles traveled per capita and car ownership rates: we should be reducing the need to travel, and distance travelled.
• Instead of assessing the best buildings in a city by counting the number with green accreditation, assess building codes and what the average building is like.
• Instead of assessing how comprehensive recycling systems are and how much material they take in, consider the percentage of solid waste that still goes to landfills: we want to reduce total waste, not just increase recycling.

Unfortunately for the politicians, it's often the more mundane actions and low-profile strategies that make the biggest impact. They are also harder to measure, but I believe we'll have to try.

dirty cities

According to the American Lung Association, 55% of Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. In South Africa, Johannesburg has vehicle emissions, dust from mine dumps and untarred roads, and excessive burning of coal especially in informal settlements. Cape Town contends with tyres being burned illegally to recover scrap metal. And even small rural towns have to deal with pesticides blowing through houses. But what are the world's dirtiest cities? [via Trash Media]

degradable plastics in South Africa

After writing about agricultural waste on Monday, I picked up a copy of Farmer's Weekly in a bookstore and noticed an article about biodegradable plastics that can be used as sheets for suppressing weeds, maintaining soil moisture, and other applications, or as bags. A company called Self-Destruct Plastics is selling oxo-biodegradable plastics in South Africa beginning this year. The product can be custom-manufactured to degrade at different rates, depending on the intended application.

As noted by British manufacturer Symphony Environmental, plastics made from crops are subject to the same criticisms levelled at biofuels, notably that they compete with food for land and water.

Degradable plastics are a good idea, but Symphony produces oxo-bio bags made from naptha, a waste product of oil refining which would otherwise be wasted, and no crops are involved in its manufacture. Oxo-bio can be recycled and made from recyclate, but if not recycled it will self-destruct in a short time, leaving no fragments, no methane nor harmful residues. As it is made with the same machinery as normal plastic, oxo-bio has little or no extra cost.

[Update on 14 March 2008: Here's some more research into plastics in South Africa from Engineer Simplicity.]

greening Paris - and Mumbai, Beijing, Chicago...

From Inhabitat, two innovative building projects in Paris.

Anti Smog is a project that takes "air rights" to new levels of sustainability:

[Architect] Callebaut describes the process as an intention to “absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect the cloud of harmful gases (Smog) from the intense traffic near Paris.” Under the smog eating exterior, the building houses public spaces with a central courtyard and natural lagoon, a place Callebaut envisions for teaching opportunities about urban ecology and renewable energy. The Solar Drop also harvests rainwater from green space on the roof for use inside the building.

Energy Plus is an office building intended to be zero-energy, generating all its energy requirements:

How does this building achieve its goal? For starters, the building will be heavily insulated - enough to reduce its energy use to about 16 kilowatts per square meter, which is considerably lower than that of a standard building. Cold water from the Seine river will be pumped throughout the offices eliminating the need for a standard air conditioner unit. And to actively contribute to the highest standard of energy efficiency, designers have engineered the building to have the largest solar array in the world installed in the roof. It is this solar array which will provide all the energy needs of the building, as well as providing additional energy to be fed back into the grid.

And the Wall Street Journal showcases the energy-saving strategies of nine cities from around the world. As usual, Africa doesn't feature.