CANADA'S
MAURICE STRONG AT AN EARLIER UNITED NATIONS PRESS CONFERENCE (MaximsNewsNetwork)
UN Photo: Mark Garten
Maurice
Strong’s Outlook on COP15 Climate Change Negotiations, Exclusive
Interview by Fred Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: 14/10/2009 (MaximsNewsNetwork)
UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews
Network
/ 14
October 2009 - Maurice
Strong has been at the forefront of international environmental negotiations
for over 40 years, namely as the Secretary-General of both the 1972 United
Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which launched the world
environment movement, and the 1992 Earth Summit.
More recently, Mr. Strong has
been actively advocating international compromise for tackling climate change.
As the international community is frantically attempting to broker a new
global climate treaty to combat climate change (set to be adopted in
Copenhagen this December), we turn to Mr. Strong for perspective.
Fred Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya:
What is the crux of the climate change challenge?
Maurice
Strong: The
unsustainable nature of our current
economic
system
was dramatically revealed by both the climate change and the economic crises.
They are inextricably linked on a systemic,
integrated basis
and cannot be managed as separate and competing issues.
The climate change
challenge requires us to make changes in the fundamental nature and
functioning of our economic system and resist the temptation merely to patch
up the existing system to enable to continue, however, temporally, on the
pathway that led to its crisis.
Only through fundamental change can we
transcend these crises and rebuild the economic and social foundations of our
civilization to ensure its survival and sustainability.
Fred Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya:
How important is it for the world’s governments to reach agreement in
Copenhagen in December?
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Maurice
Strong: When
climate change was first cited as an environmental risk at the Stockholm
Conference in 1972, it was seen as a more distant prospect but requiring
immediate attention and action to avoid.
The world was not listening then. As
one of my first initiatives as Executive Director of the United Nations
Environment Program I convened leading experts on the subject.
Now the Inter
Government Panel on Climate Change, a representatives group of the world’s
leading scientists which had its genesis in these earlier initiatives, has
sounded the alarm that greenhouse gas emissions have been growing more rapidly
and the risks to which they give rise more imminent.
We cannot afford, and
must not allow, further delay as it is clear that some of the consequences of
climate change are already irreversible.
A
recent study by Global Humanity Forum headed by former UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, estimates that the economic and human costs of climate change has
already amounted to an estimated USD125 billion per year and loss of 300,000
lives.
This
underscores the urgent necessity of agreement in Copenhagen on new measures
beyond the terms of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
This must
include binding commitment designed to ensure that global emissions do not go
beyond the threshold of irreversibility. It is shaping up to be the most
difficult and most important international agreement ever attempted.
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Maurice
Strong, Secretary-General of U.N. Conference on Human Environment,
answering questions at a press conference in 1972.
The
two-week U.N. Conference on Human Environment (5-16 June 1972) was
called by the UN General Assembly with the aim of producing an
international political consensus on ways of preserving and improving
the environment for this and future generations.
Maurice Strong,
Secretary-General of the Conference, answering a question put to him by
a correspondent during his press conference held at the Old Parliament
Building. 04 June 1972 Photo ©Yutaka Nagata, UN Photo # 186102
|
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: One
of the critical elements of these climate change negotiations is the balance
of responsibility between developing and industrialized countries. Will
developing countries ever agree to curbing their emissions, despite the fact
that most of the CO2 emissions currently in the atmosphere were
spewed by the West?
Maurice
Strong: All
countries will suffer the consequences of climate change and all will need to
cooperate in the measures required to reduce and mitigate its effects.
Developing countries which have contributed the least to these crises are
likely to suffer most. Yet they have the least capacity to deal with it.
|
Their
responsibilities must clearly be recognized as common but differentiated from
those of the principal industrial countries which have produced the
accumulated emissions that produced the crisis and enjoyed the economic
benefits which accompanied this.
Greenhouse gases from every source contribute to their global accumulation and
it is in the interest of all countries that developing countries be fully
engaged in the global efforts to manage the crisis.
This makes it imperative
that in the fundamental transformation we must make in our economy, developing
countries be accorded full and equitable participation in its benefits.
We
cannot achieve security and sustainability of our civilization if the majority
of the world’s people continue to be deprived of its benefits and
opportunities. Indeed, it would be compounding the already tragic and
dangerous situation we face if the current crises were to lead to deepening
rather than bridging the rich-poor divide.
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This
is the broader context in which we must view the position of the developing
countries. They cannot be expected to agree to curb their emissions unless it
is accompanied by massively increased international support, not only for the
actions they must take to reduce their emissions, but for their entire
economies.
This must go beyond the aid they have been so often promised but
not delivered to enable them to share the benefits of the world economy much
as the disadvantaged regions of most nations share the benefits of their
national economy.
While it would be too much to expect this kind of
fundamental change to be fully agreed in Copenhagen it could be accepted as a
priority objective and a process established to negotiate agreement on its
achievement.
In the meantime Copenhagen must produce specific commitments to
provide developing countries with access to the technologies and financial
support to enable them to achieve the levels of economic efficiency to
accelerate their development while limiting their greenhouse gas emissions.
This
does not have to come from new money requiring increases in already strained
budgets. It is primarily a matter of changing priorities in the allocation and
use of existing resources to be capable of meeting the needs of reconstituted
economies on a continuing basis.
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: What
must governments imperatively agree to in order to avert climate change
doomsday scenarios?
Maurice
Strong: We
must treat climate change as a security issue – the greatest security risk
that we have ever faced to the survival of life as we know it.
Only thus will
we be able to agree to the specific level at which global emissions must be
caped and commitments made by each country to the reduction of its emissions
that will be necessary to achieve this.
The positions of the principal
emitters will be the main determinant of success at Copenhagen and substantial
differences continue to divide them.
To
limit temperature increases to 1.5 degree centigrade below pre-industrial
levels will require the more developed countries to reduce their collective
emissions by more than 85% from 1990 levels by the year 2050.
If a higher
temperature range is accepted this will clearly require much more radical
measures by the principal emitters. Despite increased awareness and concern,
it would clearly be a daunting challenge for governments to accept firm and
binding commitment to this in Copenhagen.
But they must at the very least
establish the framework for it and agree on certain key issues and a
continuing process of negotiation. Further delay can only exacerbate the risks
and increase the costs of action.
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: Who
are the decisive actors in these climate change negotiations?
Maurice
Strong: Together
the United State and China account for some 40% of global greenhouse gas
emissions. Their cooperation in meeting the climate change challenge is
essential, indeed decisive.
Although the Obama Administration accords high
priority to climate change, it may be difficult to obtain congressional
approval for the kind of commitments that will enable it to take the lead in
Copenhagen.
China’s situation is
different. Although it has now surpassed the United States in current emission
levels, it is still well behind the United States in per capita terms, the
average Chinese produces only 1/5 as much in carbon emissions as the average
American.
Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the United States has
produced more than 1 trillion tons of carbon emissions from fossil fuels
compared to China’s 300 million tons.
Thus China can be expected to require
actions on the part of the United States that take account of its role as the
largest contributor to the current crisis.
Paradoxically,
China will be able to demonstrate in Copenhagen that it is already taking more
action than the United States to limit some of the main sources of its
emissions, as for example, imposing stricter limits on emissions from vehicles
and committing to a 20% improvement in its energy efficiency by 2010.
China’s energy and resource institute has suggested that by 2020 the country
could reduce its current emission growth rate by half and effect a reduction
of 1/3 in its absolute emissions by 2050.
This is certainly an ambitious goal
but like many goals that China has set for itself throughout its history, it
is one it could well achieve.
Recent China initiatives to undertake
constructive cooperation with the U. S., and others in addressing climate
change are certainly encouraging.
On the other hand, there are still many
bridges that have to be crossed before the positions of China and the United
States can be more fully reconciled.
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: Can
the international community and our governments really meet the challenge?
Maurice
Strong:
The
climate change and economic crisis require a degree of international
cooperation that has only been achieved on a limited basis in wartime and
never on the global scale.
Global government is neither necessary nor
practical.
What is necessary is a global system of governance through which
the nations of the world cooperate to address issues which none can deal with
alone.
Highest priority must be given to those issues which affect the
security, sustainability and survival of all humanity.
This is certainly true
of both climate change and the related needs for fundamental changes in our
current economic system.
I believe in the principle of subsidiary that all
actions should be dealt with at the levels closest to the people concerned.
On
this basis, the role of global government would be to provide the framework of
principles and context required to facilitate actions which can be best taken
at the local, national or regional levels.
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: Switching
to a carbon-free economy entails huge financial costs, i.e.: countries will
need to redesign their energy grids, build new infrastructure, etc. How will
the world pay for this?
Maurice
Strong: Moving
to the carbon-free economy requires, as I already have said that Copenhagen
produces a commitment to a Climate Security Program and at least the main
elements of it as well as establishment of a “Climate Security-Fund” to
finance its implementation.
This would require firm and continuing commitments
by the more developed countries based on their emissions and their Gross
National Products (GDP).
The initial scale of this Fund will need to be on the
order of USD 1 trillion over the initial ten year period. This will inevitably
be viewed as unrealistic in the current financial crisis which will be used to
justify such resistance.
But it must go well beyond foreign aid as
conventionally defined and be integrated into the process of fundamental
changes in our economy. It will ultimately exceed the initial target figure of
USD1 trillion which is the estimated cost to the United States alone of its
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It
will take a strong will and binding commitments by the more developed
countries to undertake the changes of their economies that this will require
and for the developing countries to be in the position to absorb the resources
they receive to build sustainable and competitive economies.
Some
of the measure which could contribute to this process would be the fees on the
use of the global commons – the ocean, the atmosphere and outer space that
are not under national jurisdiction,
a Tobin-type tax on financial transactions, taxes
on fossil fuels and other sources of emissions
and by shifting subsidies from those substances
and
practices which contribute to climate change to those which contribute to the
reduction of carbon emissions.
Developing countries must also be accorded
expanded opportunities to earn credits by their ability to reduce emissions at
much lower cost than can be achieved in more developed countries which will
pay them for this.
This will involve an improved and extended version of the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established under the Kyoto Protocol Trading
where these emissions credits have already become a rapidly growing business
and where developing countries must be supported in fully accessing and
benefiting from these markets.
Fred
Dubee & Marisha Wojciechowska-Shibuya: Having led and witnessed so much of
the world’s international environmental movement, are you hopeful that we
can avert the climate change debacle?
Maurice
Strong: Throughout
human history, civilizations have risen and fallen, often due to mismanagement
of their environment and the resources on which they depended. The
consequences were clearly devastating for those affected, but there was always
somewhere else for them to go.
The climate change crisis is fundamentally
different because it is global in scale and affects the survival and
sustainability of all nations and people. It is also different in that we know
its causes and probable consequences.
We know, too, that we are the first
generation ever to have responsibility for our own future. What we do, or fail
to do, will determine the future of life on Earth. This requires unprecedented
levels of cooperation both within and amongst nations.
But it does not require
homogeneity in our life styles or cultures. After all, we can learn from
nature that the healthiest and most sustainable natural ecological systems are
those which maintain the highest degree of diversity
and variety.
For while the fundamental changes I believe must take place at the level of
individual people as well as nations, it promises to produce improved
conditions of life and a more secure and sustainable future for all people.
It
is instructive to reflect on the fact that the conditions required to support
life as we know it have only existed on Earth for a small portion of its
history and within relatively narrow parameters.
The unprecedented growth of
human numbers and the extent and nature of human activities are now impacting
the conditions on which our survival and well-being depend.
Our very existence
is now at risk and its future is literally in our own hands. We have the
knowledge and capacity to ensure our survival. The real question is do we have
the will to make the fundamental changes that this requires.
-
Frederick C. Dubee is Executive Director, International,
Global Management Education Institute, Shanghai University, Associate
Director, Asia Research Centre for the UN Global Compact and Professor (hc)
Beijing Genomics Institute.
-
Marisha
Wojciechowska-Shibuya is Senior International Editor of MaximsNews.com
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