COP21 & Climate Finance, investment or assistance?

As the discussions in Paris are getting hotter, some serious dilemmas are getting more obvious – unfortunately, we are still far away from having a common and targeted response to the questions posed. Let’s see the example of Bangladesh. With a population of 140 million, Bangladesh is one of the world's most populated countries. It is also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Cyclones, floods and droughts have long been part of the country's history and they have intensified in recent years. As a result of the long exposure to these hazards, Bangladesh is a world leader in adaptation strategies but this has come with a heavy price tag. Bangladesh’s Ministry of Finance has been working with the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative to launch its first comprehensive climate change accounting system. The results of the financial review were really astonishing.

Bangladesh currently spends $1 billion a year, 6 to 7% of its annual budget, on climate change adaptation. This is roughly 20% of the World Bank’s forecasted adaptation budget for the next 35 years! But it was spent just for one year (but this is another story, there are a lot of questions about the reliability of those long-term forecasts and their documentation). The facts reveal that 75% of money spent on climate change in the country comes directly from the government, while 25% comes from international donors. There is one more shocking detail: the average European citizen emits as much carbon in 11 days as the average Bangladeshi in an entire year.  

Then, allow me to come back to my previous post on Climate Justice. We can’t put the burden for fighting climate change and funding adaptation strategies to the citizens of Bangladesh, we simply can’t ask them to pay for their protection from the pollution that the Western World has created – but this is exactly what’s happening now, in many cases, as the case of Bangladesh. If we don’t stop this practice, we simply erode any reliable agreement on Climate Change – as I have already written there is no real agreement without Climate Justice.

Ok, but someone can say that rich countries are committed to provide 100 billion dollars to developing countries by 2020. On December 2, the US special envoy for climate change Todd Stern had told a press conference that donor countries were “well on the way to beating that pledge”. But allow me to mention that I have some doubts about those 100 billion dollars. Initially, I doubt a little bit about if those money will be, finally, available and also, I have my questions regarding the time horizon in which they will be given. In addition “If today’s public adaptation finance were divided among the world’s 1.5 billion smallholder farmers in developing countries, they would get around $3 each year to cope with climate change – the price of a cup of coffee in many rich countries,” as Oxfam’s climate policy adviser Jan Kowalzig recently said.

But, unfortunately, I have a more important doubt. Are those 100 billion dollars going to be given as loans (which means actually as an investment that will provide a certain profit) or as grants? Is it going to be recognition that rich countries have to pay a big part of the bill they have created or it will be one more way to create long-term dependencies of the poor countries? Gambia’s environment minister, and representative of the least developed countries group, Pa Ousman Jarju was absolutely right when he said: “We cannot take loans to pay for climate change and take that as climate finance. For us it needs to be grant-based finance because we are not responsible for what is happening.” So, let’s hope he will be heard, but let’s think that if the rich countries follow the path of loans, any climate deal will be fragile, ineffective and it will create much more problems than it will resolve.

Hurricane Patricia and Future Trend #6: Climate Change

Hurricane Patricia headed toward southwestern Mexico yesterday, as a monster Category 5 storm, the strongest ever in the Western Hemisphere that forecasters said could make a "potentially catastrophic landfall" later in the day, according the latest reports.   The hurricane is expected to bring accumulated rains ranging from 6 to 12 inches which could easily produce "life-threatening flash floods, mud slides (especially in areas of mountainous terrain), and high winds up to 130 m.p.h.," NOAA warns.

Well, this hurricane is one more extreme wether phenomenon and there are a lot of great research papers for the relation between climate change and extreme weather phenomena (this is one I like a lot by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute). And as much as we are preparing our cities to adapt themselves in the new emerging climate patterns, as much we should realise that waste management and recycling patterns will be certainly affected a lot by the climate change policies and science. 

Obviously, a first influence regards the financial resources: already there are a lot of funds available for waste management activities related to GHGs reduction (have a look at Climate Funds Update for more).

Another, also obvious trend regards the global cooperation required for fighting climate change - it seems that we are on the way for a new agreement in Paris. Countries have agreed that they would adopt a new climate agreement in 2015 at the Paris Climate Conference this December. The Paris 2015 Conference needs to result in the adoption of an international agreement, setting the framework for a transition towards resilient, low-carbon societies and economies. The Conference has the potential to mark a decisive step forward in the negotiation of the future international agreement that will enter into force in 2020,  with the aim that all countries, including the greatest greenhouse gas emitters – both developed and developing countries – should be bound for the first time by a universal climate agreement. 

In case this global agreement is achieved, then there will be a lot of new instruments to motivate GHGs reduction and certainly waste management sector will benefit of them. As an idea of the actual expectations and intentions of the recycling and waste management industry, the recent ISWA's Declaration on Climate Change and Waste Management provides a brief but thoughtful overview. 

But there are further, not so obvious impacts. 

Globalisation of environmental impacts: GHGs and marine litter are the most obvious ways to highlight that local SWM has a global environmental footprint. Under the current conditions and the global political agenda about Climate Change, the link between SWM and GHGs is the most important tool to create a universal understanding for how our local decisions in SWM contribute to global phenomena.

GHGs and the sense of time: human beings tend to underestimate or even ignore the importance of events that are out of their natural time scale. GHGs impacts are also a very good example in order to prove how previous and current SWM practices create Long Term results which substantially deteriorate the life of future generations.

GHGs and developing countries: I think that the global agenda for GHGs provides a unique opportunity to rethink the way international aid or Official Development Assistance (ODA) is distributed - there are many problematic situations at this field and the most important ones are two. A. the overall amount of ODA related to waste management is ridiculously small (less than 0.3% of the overall ODA) and, B. the poorest countries receive much less support than the developing to developed ones. This has been proven by a report that was made within the framework of the "Globalisation and waste management" project that was implemented by ISWA - for more check "A review of international development cooperation in Solid Waste Management".  If we are going to fight seriously the Climate Change, if we are going to prepare substantial adaptation and mitigation plans, then certainly we need to change completely the way ODA is managed. 

And last but not least is the challenge of adaptation, which is certainly underestimated when we speak about waste management. I have written again about it, but unfortunately nothing has changed. It seems that the most vulnerable waste management systems are the ones that happened to be in growing and transition megacities, where informal sector plays a certain role in waste management and infrastructure either is not in place or it is not adequate. In those urban areas, the environmental and health risks from a potential disaster related to waste management are really high and under certain conditions they might be proven more than local ones. Take into account that dumpsites, which are the dominant practice in those cases, are usually located at low levels and excavated with no plan and hydraulic protection and you will understand that this is a serious problem.