PRESS CONFERENCE ON ‘CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE’ REPORT

 

The climate change challenge, while serious and urgent, also had with it enormous economic opportunity, a panel of eminent scientists told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

Presenting a new road map for reducing the risks of climate change, in a report released today, panellists agreed that the solutions to the issue of climate change brought with it many “win-win” solutions for addressing such issues as poverty, the need for sustainable development and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Timothy Wirth, the President of the United Nations Foundation, told correspondents that, while the climate issue could follow the path of hand-ringing and despair, it was not the view of the group today.  If the international community organized itself properly, the opportunities for dealing with the climate issue would be significant for mankind.  How to organize differently would require significant, cooperative political effort across the world.  The issue needed to be addressed, not only by environmentalists, but also at the highest political level.  Stressing the need to engage Finance Ministers in the discussion, he said: “Nobody is left out or can be left out of this equation.”  The Secretary-General’s awareness and leadership in bringing the world to a consensus and developing a strategy for the next 50 years was absolutely imperative.

The report, entitled Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable, is the final report of the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development.  Presented to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today, it was prepared for the current session of the Commission on Sustainable Development at the request of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Also participating in today’s press conference were Peter Raven, Chair, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden; John Holdren, Director, Woods Hole Research Center and Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University; Rosina Bierbaum, Dean, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan; Mike MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programmes, Climate Institute; Peter Mak of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs; and Richard Moss, Senior Director, Climate and Energy, United Nations Foundation and University of Maryland.

Kicking off the discussion, Mr. Wirth noted that the United Nations had requested Sigma Xi to present a report that was not to be a reprise of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but rather an attempt to define the beginnings of a course through what was known about the impact of climate change. 

Describing the report’s preparation, Mr. Raven said Sigma Xi had put together a distinguished 18-member committee representing 11 countries around the world.  The report was consistent with the recent report of IPCC in that it concluded that both near- and long-term efforts to adapt to climate change needed to intensify.  While IPCC reviewed developments in the field and possible courses of action, the panel had focused on the close connection between adaptation and mitigation in relation to climate change, global warning and the United Nations sustainable development goals.  The Millennium Development Goals would not and could not be met without strict attention to mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The report presented a road map, analysing the possibilities and offering solutions for them, he added.  It also made recommendations for priority action for Governments and the United Nations system.  “If climate change continues, the effects that we are seeing already will be intensified and human aspirations simply will not be met,” he said. 

Discussing the report’s mitigation recommendations, Mr. Holdren said the report started out with the proposition that climate change was real, was already causing harm and was accelerating.  “We need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it seriously, starting now,” he said.

Presenting the report’s key findings, he said exceeding global average temperature increases of more than 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above the 1750 pre-industrial level would entail “sharply increasing the risk of intolerable impacts”, putting the world in a ravine, in which the danger of unmanageable impacts would rise very rapidly.  It was essential, therefore, that the world agreed on a target of not exceeding 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial.  The world was already at 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial, and the concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, would boost it to about 1.5 degrees.  The world was already 60 per cent of the way towards what it ought to regard as an absolute upper limit on what civilization should allow in the way of global climate change.

As a result of already being so far along the way, a two-pronged strategy was needed consisting of mitigation -- or measures to reduce the pace and magnitude of climate change –- and adaptation -- or measures to adjust to the degree of climate change that could not be avoided.  On the issue of mitigation, he said the world should agree on a target of not exceeding 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial, which would entail not allowing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and black soot, stabilizing atmospheric concentrations at the equivalent of no more than 450 to 500 parts per 1 million of carbon dioxide equivalent.

To avoid such concentrations in the atmosphere, he continued, it was necessary to bend the curve of emissions away from “business as usual”, including by increasing emphasis on improved efficiency of energy use, major measures to reverse tropical deforestation, reducing the emission of black soot and expanding the use of bio-fuels in the transport sector and avoiding building new coal-burning power plants that were not equipped to be cost-effectively retrofitted to capture and sequester the carbon dioxide they produced.

He said all of these were win-win solutions, in that they brought about benefits, not only in terms of reducing climate change risks, but also in terms of reducing other environmental problems, addressing economic goals, including reduced dependence on imported oil and providing increased flexibility.  Throughout the array of measures the world needed to take, there was a wide variety of benefits that should be considered as opportunities and not just challenges.

Addressing the issue of adaptation, Ms. Bierbaum said change was under way.  Hundreds of species had already changed their ranges and ecosystems were being disrupted.  Total precipitation was increasing and rainfall was coming in more extreme downfalls.  Floods, droughts and storm intensity had increased in recent decades.  Most of the impacts of climate change would be negative, especially for developing countries or poor communities in the developed world.  Climate change had to be increasingly considered within the broader context of achieving sustainability and the Millennium Development Goals.

“If you think about it, we really don’t do a very good job now handling droughts or floods or heat waves or hurricanes,” she said.  Weather-related losses in 2005 had been a third of a trillion dollars.  The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rose and storm surges increased would be in the tens of millions of people.  It was necessary, therefore, to better adapt now and plan for additional changes in the years ahead.  The report recommended, among other things, initiating regional vulnerability assessments, developing new technologies and disaster mitigation strategies, avoiding new development in coastal areas that were less than one metre above the high tide, and bolstering the adaptation fund, which was meant to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.  

She agreed that there were many win-win solutions, including opportunities to advance the Millennium Development Goals and confront climate change at the same time.  It would also be possible to build climate resilient cities, develop new clean energy technologies, manage ecosystems in ways that allowed them to serve human needs and create economic opportunities and reduce global poverty.  The international community, through the United Nations, had a special role to play in advancing action to manage the unavoidable and avoid the unmanageable in several ways, including by helping developing countries and countries with economies in transition to finance and deploy energy-efficient technologies.  The United Nations conventions on environmental issues needed to be evaluated to see how adaptation could be incorporated within them.  It was also necessary to accelerate negotiations to develop a successor international framework for addressing climate change and sustainable development.

Asked how the Secretary-General viewed the issue of climate change, Mr. Wirth said that, while he could not speak for him, he had the sense that the issue was on the top of the Secretary-General’s agenda and that he viewed it as one of the most important issues he would face during his tenure.   In that regard, he wanted to set up a process that would lead to a resolution on a negotiating document in December in Bali, and move to 2008-2009 with an eye on an agreement at the end of 2009.  Most of those agreements tended to have the final point put on them by a large political gathering.  He was pleased with the time the Secretary-General had spent with the group.  The United Nations Foundation’s Club of Madrid had also embarked on a parallel political process. 

Asked why the panel had avoided the impact of the war industry on the environment, Mr. Holdren said that most people worried about war because of its immediate effects and because it diverted resources and human potential from other problems.  It was not so much a question of carbon dioxide emissions, but of the distraction of resources and attention.

Concerning the issue of gas prices, he said the international community had not made a specific recommendation on fuel economy standards.  Using price alone as a way to change behaviour had serious side effects, especially on the poor.  He did not think that society would get it right without additional incentives.

Responding to a question on the issue of mitigation and the need for a substantial increase in money devoted to technological research, he said a wide variety of technologies needed improved investments, including advanced bio-fuel technology.  It was also necessary to learn how to convert cellulose into alcohol and other kind of fuels.  Research was also needed to solve the challenges that had impeded the expansion of nuclear energy, including waste management.  Greater efforts were also needed to reduce the cost of solar electricity.  The United States should rapidly double or triple the federal investments in research and development, as well as raise the incentives for private sector investment in energy development.

Commenting on California’s experience, he said its success had been the result of a number of measures, including rewarding electric utilities for marketing efficiency and developing a wide variety of more efficient heating and ventilation systems.  A similar multifaceted approach needed to be used in other parts of the United States and around the world.  There was no silver bullet, he agreed, but there was a lot of low hanging fruit.  Things could be done to save money and meet other economic goals.

Addressing the issue of climate change and the loss of biodiversity, Ms. Bierbaum said it was clear that a number of species would be lost in the world.  The intersection of efforts to preserve biodiversity and the confluence of climate change needed to be addressed.  The international community could no longer try to solve one problem without thinking about the other.

Mr. Raven added that the world was living in such an unsustainable manner that genetic resources were disappearing.  It was not just a question of intellectual curiosity: building sustainable systems depended on those resources.  The Millennium Development Goals would not be met without attending to the problem of biodiversity.  Longer-range goals could not be met without conserving as much biological diversity as possible.  Social justice would depend on those efforts.  In that respect, the report contributed by presenting a road map on the way forward.

Also responding, Mr. Holdren said the world’s two greatest reservoirs of biodiversity, the tropical forests and the coral reefs, were in immediate danger because of climate change.  The coral reefs were bleaching and suffering from acidification of the ocean.  Fifty years from now, the Amazon, as it was currently known, would not be in existence.

Mr. Wirth noted that the basic framework for the discussion was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.   The Kyoto Protocol was the first step in how to implement the strategy’s broad goals.  Now in phase two, or what followed on Kyoto, one could begin to see some of the outlines of the themes that needed to be a part of the discussion, including, for example, harmonizing industry standards, research, development and demand.  In a carbon constrained world, the economic and political questions would be: Who gets to pollute?  Who got what under the cap?  That would be the negotiation for the next generation.  He hoped the report would be a helpful step.

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