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We are used to hearing the likes of US president George W Bush and Aussie prime minister John Howard clamouring for the world to ditch the Kyoto protocol. Their reasons, whether you agree with them or not, are political and economic. But it comes as a bit of a surprise when the scientific journal
Nature publishes a commentary saying the same.
In this week's issue, two UK-based social scientists – Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University – have published a commentary saying it's time for the Kyoto protocol process to take a curtain call.
Rayner wrote to me in an email:
"We see no evidence of Kyoto actually leading to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, much less of stimulating the fundamental technological change that will be required to achieve the 60-80% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us the world will need to achieve in order to prevent what the Framework Convention calls 'dangerous interference with the atmosphere'."
Rayner and Prins think the Kyoto protocol is too simple for too complex a problem. To quote the
Nature piece itself:
"Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution [limiting greenhouse gas emissions] because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing." (Nature, vol 449, p 973)
They go on to say that while there may be no "silver bullet" solution to climate change (such as setting greenhouse gas emissions targets) there may be a "silver buckshot" portfolio of solutions. And they outline five elements which they believe are key to forming such a portfolio.
They are:
- Focusing negotiations of emissions caps on the big emitters rather than trying to achieve consensus among all national governments.
- Allowing financial markets to figure out on their own how they want to trade carbon emissions rather than imposing a global emissions trading market.
- Putting public investment in research and development into energy on a wartime footing.
- Increasing the amount of money that is spent on helping people adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.
- Working on climate change at all different levels, from nations and international conventions down to regions and cities.
I think it's great that some people are thinking about how to improve the political process that is attempting to deal with climate change. There is no doubt this process needs all the help it can get: a recent study suggested that
emissions need to fall more dramatically than currently envisaged for so-called "dangerous" climate change to be avoided.
And their description of climate change as a "symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy" is inspired and accurate. I once met a climate scientist who was running a research programme in West Africa, who told me the beauty of developing nations – and of countries in Africa in particular – is that they have a golden opportunity to look at the Western model, learn from its mistakes, and choose a better, more sustainable development path.
But I confess that I'm not entirely comfortable with a call to scrap the UN process entirely.
And if you look at the five points, what Prins and Rayner are suggesting does, in fact, have quite a bit in common with ongoing UN negotiations. Two of their points – energy R&D and adaptation – are actively discussed in all climate policy forums, and are on the agenda for the UN annual climate summit in Bali in December.
Where they do radically depart from the UN process is in their call to limit negotiations of emissions caps to the big emitters. The pair argue that striving for consensus among nearly 200 governments is unrealistic and counterproductive. I agree. The fact that the US government in September
held talks among the world's top polluters is an encouraging sign that those whose emissions matter most are putting their heads together.
But what is not helpful is when these sorts of talks are not fed into the UN process. Then there comes a risk that one will detract from the other. Bush's climate change meeting in September took place four days after a UN meeting on the same subject, and unlike many of his peers Bush was absent from the UN meeting. Why not attend both meetings?
Bush's government also launched
the Asia-Pacific climate agreement in 2005, which brings together the US, China, Australia, and others, in a pact to develop and exchange clean energy technologies. But, so far, this agreement doesn't seem to have yielded anything. Until such initiatives can demonstrate that they are concretely addressing the problem of rising global emissions, they will continue to appear as mere diversion tactics.
So, to come back to Prins and Rayner's commentary: yes, the process needs to be diversified. But it should not be frayed by a multitude of high-profile, low-impact initiatives.
Catherine Brahic, online environment repoterLabels: climate change, kyoto protocol