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Archive for climate

Greening the healthcare sector: Policy Think Tank

by CAHA
September 12th, 2013

The second annual CAHA – AHHA think tank on sustainability on the health care sector was held in Melbourne on 30th August 2013.

We heard from international speaker Dr Blair Sadler from the University of California and the successful Healthier Hospitals Initiative as well as local and interstate sustainable healthcare professionals sharing their experiences. Josh Karliner from Health Care Without Harm shared a innovative new communications platform that’s connecting people working on greening the health sector initiatives worldwide!

Check out this report via Croakey for a Twitter report of the day’s events.

Click here for Program details.

Full report coming soon!

Categories Climate, Emissions, Energy, Energy policy, Health, healthcare, Sustainability
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The Human Cost of Power

by CAHA
September 11th, 2013

Film Screening

A new short film, ‘The Human Cost of Power’, produced by award winning science journalist, Alexandra de Blas will be previewed at a public forum in Melbourne on Wednesday 18th September 2013.

The film, ‘The Human Cost of Power’ explores the health impacts associated with the massive expansion of coal and unconventional gas in Australia.

The public forum will feature expert speakers including University of Melbourne researcher Dr Jeremy Moss, climate scientist Professor David Karoly, Friends of the Earth campaigner Cam Walker, and Dr Jacinta Morahan from Surf Coast Air Action.

The Human Cost of Power is produced for the Climate and Health Alliance and the Public Health Association of Australia.

The forum is supported by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Melbourne.

The public forum and film screening will be held from 6.00pm-7.30pm at the Laby Theatre, Room L108, Physics South Building 192, University of Melbourne on Wednesday 18th September 2013.

Eventbrite - The Human Cost of Power

For more information about the film, and CAHA’s work on this topic, check out our Healthy Energy Projects page.

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Coal, Emissions, Energ policy, Energy, Energy policy, Health, Public health, Public policy
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Have you signed the DOHA Declaration on Climate, Health and Well-being?

by CAHA
February 4th, 2013

Health Must Be Central to Climate Action

The international health and medical community have developed a joint statement on climate health and wellbeing calling for health to be central to national and global climate action.

Signatories include the World Medical Association, the International Council of Nurses, International Federation of Medical Students, Health Care Without Harm, Climate and Health Alliance, European Public Health Association, Public Health Association of Australia, Royal College of General Practitioners (UK), Climate and Health Council, OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate & Health Council, NHS Sustainable Development Unit, Umeå Center for Global Health Research, Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) and many others.

The Doha Declaration outlines why health experts are extremely worried about slow progress on climate action, and highlights how the health co-benefits of emissions can build support for ambitious climate strategies.

If you want to support this statement, sign up here: www.dohadeclaration.weebly.com

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Emissions, Energy, Health professionals, Uncategorized
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Protecting children from climate change

by CAHA
January 8th, 2013

The Climate and Health Alliance is particularly concerned about the health and well-being of children in relation to climate change. Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change and suffer around 90% of the disease burden from climate change.

As part of its advocacy efforts, along with child health researchers and child advocates  the Climate and Health Alliance has written a letter to child advocates and research institutions, asking that they include climate change as an urgent priority area for child advocacy, research, policy and practice.

The letter, co-signed by leading children and health researchers and advocates, sent to all Children’s Commissioners, child health research centres and advocacy groups in October 2012, states:

“We are only beginning to understand the impacts that climate change will have on children’s development, health and mental health. In addition to a greater emphasis on mitigation, more research at the regional and local levels is desperately needed so that we can adequately understand, prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Because climate change poses such a significant threat to our children and future generations we believe that child advocate and research institutions have a responsibility to have it as a priority area for advocacy, research, policy and practice. We have attached a list of ideas for inclusion in a research, policy and practice agenda.  

We also believe that, in order to reduce harm to children and future generations, child advocate and research institutions should have a policy to reduce their organisation’s carbon footprint (e.g., by switching to Green power, purchasing carbon offsets for air travel, and monitoring the carbon footprint of suppliers).

As concerned scientists and child advocates we should also publicly call for effective climate change mitigation strategies at the local, national and international levels to help limit the threat to the development, health and mental health of our children and future generations. Strategies to reduce emissions would have the added public health benefit of decreasing the incidence and severity of many chronic and avoidable diseases associated with our high-carbon lifestyle.”

The full text of the letter can be found here.

Responses received by January 2013:

  • Commissioner for Children and Young People WA
  • Children & Young People Commissioner ACT 

 

Categories Advocacy, Children, Climate, Ethics, Health, Research, Sustainability, Well-being
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A “dismal” response to “big, unprecedented, threats” to human survival: McMichael on McKeon

by CAHA
October 8th, 2012

This post was first published on Croakey as http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2012/10/06/more-mckeon-malarkey/ on 7th October 2012.

In an email to CAHA he agreed to make public, Professor Tony McMichael provides another critique of the McKeon review’s narrow approach to health and medical research.

This McKeon Review ‘consultation paper’ contains, for the wider social enterprise of public health research, a dismal but predictable set of recommendations.  The name  ’NHMRC’ incorporates the words ‘Health and Medical’, but the McKeon Review panel membership comprised ‘medical’ rather than ‘health’ persons — eminent researchers in laboratory and clinical science — along with a strong representation of the private for-profit business (including biotech) sector.

Of course, it’s easy to rail against this McKeon Review output and the restricted, orthodox, and somewhat closed-shop NHMRC mentality. However, the document also provides a sobering reminder of the fundamental problem that societies face today in their need to expand their concern, research effort, resources and policy to abating the big, and unprecedented, systemic threats to population health and survival from human-caused climate change and other extraordinary global environmental changes. These threats to health are of a kind not previously faced, and a broad and distinctive genre of research in relation to them is required.

The committee members are very able people who, variously, have great intellectual, reputational and financial investments in the status quo; they are at the top of their professional pyramids; and they probably cannot imagine a different world in the near future with a radically different spectrum of health-risk issues.

History has seen it all before. As prolonged droughts closed in on the Maya civilisation in the ninth century, contributing greatly to the weakening of the agricultural base (already stretched by a population that had expanded substantially), the rulers and opinion-leaders opted for ever larger edifices and grander ceremonies. They had, presumably, little understanding or interest in the increasingly precarious longer-term prospects of their society. Hay was to be made while the sun shined. It was business as usual, but always with a growing appetite for ever-more resources.

Dubai today is following suit, in a region of the world where they have had to give up trying to grow their own grains, now that their once-only aquifer supplies have been depleted. Meanwhile, the sheikhs and financiers opt for world-tallest buildings and creating (and selling) artificial island ‘nations’ in the Gulf that have been built to a mere couple of metres above the (rising) sea level.

The McKeon Review perspective is of a kind with these assumptions of business-as-usual (in a stable world).  It is not surprising that the Chief Executive of Medicines Australia, Brendan Shaw, has been quoted as saying this week: “We are encouraged by the McKeon Review’s recognition of the importance of clinical research both as generator of economic benefit, but more importantly as a generator of health benefits for Australian patients, and the recognition of the important role the medicines industry plays in this.

Categories Climate, Health, Research, survival, Sustainability
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Crowdsourcing a new e-publication on climate and health

by CAHA
September 3rd, 2012

CAHA’s suggestion for a publication focused on the ‘health implications of climate change’ was chosen from a pool of ideas for a workshop at the Melbourne Writers Festical last month.

The idea was conceived by Melissa Sweet from the health blog Croakey who invited readers to submit ideas for new, health related online publications so that one could be selected for development at the New News Conference as part of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.

Around thirty eager participants showed up for a high speed product development workshop dubbed “crowdsourcing a new publication”.

Workshop participants were asked to come up with strategies for community building, editorial, digital news and business development as well as next steps.

After just one hour, we had a core idea: a publication/website that would to showcase the benefits of healthy sustainable societies through user generated content which was underpinned by scientific research and literature.

A key message was that it should be about ‘showing’ not ‘telling’, and the content ‘brains trust’ advocated the creation of an appealing visual narrative – to help show what low carbon living IS, feels like, looks like, and in doing so, illustrate what the benefits are – creating a pull rather than push factor.

Read about some of the ideas generated and observer’s thoughts on this fast moving workshop on Croakey and in a Melbourne Press Club report.

CAHA’s take on the outcome appears below in a brief overview of what a proposal for publication might look like:

******

Purpose/Aim of the publication

To communicate climate change and global environmental issues in a public health frame that leads to changes in policy/influences policy

Strategy

To aggregate and connect community efforts to respond to climate change in a visible way through social media and digital platforms using stories, pictures, personal narratives and profiles

Audience

Various groups – community, policymakers, media

Groups with various levels of engagement with the issue – the unsure, the confused, the early adopters

Partners/Collaborators

Others who are driving changes in community whether it is local initiatives such as a suburban food forest or transformation change through to national initiatives such as thought leadership and research on low carbon pathways

Methods of Engagement

Launch through social media and social networks

Link to environmental and health groups

Use various mediums to connect with various groups ie include blogs, research papers

Need to approach from the point of view of “showing” not “telling”

Opportunities and challenges  

The Big One: Capturing, modelling and communicating what healthy sustainable societies look like, feel like, are like!

While there may be a range of different audiences requiring different strategies of engagement and messages/stories it may be possible to influence other groups ( ie policymakers through demonstration of community engagement)

Building a community of interest around a personal connection to environmental change using a public health frame

Provides an ability to interweave the evidence with community experience

Using data journalism to demonstrate the cumulative impacts of individual action and sectoral change ie demonstrate the real life implications of policy ie Bill’s compost achieves the following results for him, but what the implications of rolling out his approach to every household?

Ie what are the economics involved in scaling up? What might the savings be – in emissions, and in financial terms?

Challenges – How to connect with different audiences eg experts, policymakers, community, media?

*********

Do you think you’d like to see this idea developed further?

If you would like to be involved in taking this project forward, contact [email protected]

Categories Advocacy, Health, Health policy, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Wellness
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Transforming economics and governance for better health

by CAHA
August 31st, 2012

We’re very excited about our upcoming workshop at the Population Health Congress in Adelaide on 9th September. We’ll be really giving our brains a workout as we think about how to transform Australia, and society for that matter, to more sustainable, healthier ways of living.

Sunday 9th September – Pre-conference Workshop, Population Health Congress,  Adelaide Convention Centre

This workshop will bring together some of the thinking that is emerging around the world that recognises that as a species, we are responsible for driving changes that are affecting global systems and our current systems of economics and governance are contributing to destructive practices that mean we are hitting up against ecological limits.

What can we do about this? What contribution can health professionals make to reshaping our thinking about what it means to have healthy sustainable societies? What new systems are being envisaged and/or are emerging to respond to these challenges?

Come and join us for a stimulating Sunday afternoon sesssion in Adelaide, from 1-4.30pm on the 9th of September 2012.

PROGRAM

1.00pm               Welcome to country, introduction to workshop – Peter Tait

1.10pm               Presentation: Transforming democracy – Peter Tait

1.25pm               Presentation: Reshaping economics for better health and sustainability – Fiona Armstrong

1.40pm               Presentation: The nuts and bolts of making things happen – Bob Douglas

1.55pm               Questions and discussion

2.10pm               Break into small groups: What does this mean for me and my practice?

3.00pm               Afternoon tea and networking

3.30pm               Report back from groups

4.00pm               Synthesise discussions, brief outline of workshop report, and next steps            

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS:

Dr Peter Tait is a general practitioner who worked in Alice Springs for 20 years before relocating to Canberra in 2011. He is involved in clinical work, public health and teaching. He has had a long involvement in the environment and peace movements. He was RACGP General Practitioner of the Year in 2007. He recently completed a Masters of Climate Change at the Australian National University.

Fiona Armstrong is a health professional, journalist, and climate and health policy expert. She is the founder and convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance, a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development, and author of Our Uncashed Dividend: The Health Benefits of Climate Action and Shifting from Fear to Hope: Climate Policy Options for Australia.

Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas is the former director of the National Centre for Population Health and Epidemiology at ANU. Following his retirement in 2001, he founded Australia 21 – a non-profit organisation developing research networks on issues of importance to Australia’s future. Bob is the founder and chair of SEE-Change Inc which seeks to empower local communities to take action on climate change and their ecological footprint. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2000.

Download the Workshop Flyer here (pdf) and download the Workshop Registration Form here. The Workshop Program is available here.

The full program for the 2012 Population Health Congress is available here.

This workshop is sponsored by the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) Ecology and Environment Special Interest Group (SIG).

Categories Advocacy, Behaviour change, Climate, Ecology, Health, Health policy, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Wellness
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Health ministers’ attacks on climate change action are just sick

by CAHA
August 12th, 2012

This article was published on The Conversation on 10 August 2012 via the following link: http://theconversation.edu.au/health-ministers-attacks-on-climate-change-action-are-just-sick-8671

By Stephan Lewandowsky and Fiona Armstrong

The ACCC has been vigilant about following up the 45 or so carbon price gouging complaints it gets each day. But who can stop the politicians? Their relentless carbon price scare campaigns seek to frighten, rather than inform, an increasingly polarised public who should be getting the facts on health and climate change.

Take, for example, the Liberal Health Minister in Victoria, David Davis. His recent contribution to the climate discussion was a leaflet for distribution across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs which suggested that the “carbon tax will hurt patients”. He said that hospitals will face a $13 million “tax bill” because “Julia Gillard doesn’t care.”

In actual fact, there is no such tax bill. Even if electricity costs rose by $13 million, it would reflect less than 0.1% of total health expenditure. Given that the Commonwealth will be footing the bill for 50% of the cost of hospital care from 2014, the states can hardly claim the burden as their own.

The most effective method of protecting the health sector against future price rises would be to invest in energy efficiency and distributed energy generation systems. This would help manage future price increases as well as reduce harmful air pollution from burning fossil fuels for electricity. Air pollution puts many people in hospitals with respiratory disease and cancer. Because of this, the previous Victorian government set aside $460 million to make public buildings, such as hospitals, more energy efficient and therefore healthier.

Carbon pricing is in fact a health protection measure. The World Health Organisation, the World Medical Association, the CSIRO, the United Nations Human Development Program, and the Australian Medical Association all call, and have been calling for years, for a policy to discourage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions because of the harm they pose to human health.

Motor vehicle pollution is a killer: moves to reduce it should be welcomed. According to the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics, between 900 and 2,000 early deaths occur annually in Australia from motor-vehicle related air pollution alone. Coal-fired power generation carries a similar toll – creating a health burden that, if reflected in the costs of electricity would effectively double the cost of coal-fired power.

Mr Davis is Health Minister of a wealthy state in a developed nation. He cannot possibly claim to be unaware of the substantial body of evidence, present in thousands of peer reviewed scientific journals over several decades, that climate change poses far bigger risks to health than a small rise in energy prices – especially when it is offset by generous subsidies to prevent those on low incomes from energy poverty. Indeed, the EU expects that a substantial proportion of the costs of emission reductions will be offset by co-benefits arising from improved health. And the cumulative health benefits are doubled if action is taken immediately, rather than delaying till 2015.

The basis for Mr Davis’s claims is a report commissioned by the Victorian Government. It was prepared by commercial consultant Sinclair Knight Merz and released to the Herald Sun, but otherwise not available publicly. According to the Herald Sun, it estimates an increase of $13 million in health care costs as a direct result of the carbon price.

Mr Davis is not alone in making such claims; similar statements have been released by the NSW and Queensland governments. The Federal Shadow Health Minister Peter Dutton has attacked the (Labor) Tasmanian Premier for refusing to frighten her electorate with similar claims.

These politicians have the job of preserving and safe-guarding public health. Instead of heeding the recommendations of every major medical body, those politicians see fit to attack a measure that is in their constituents’ best interests. In addition to the direct harm to health from fossil fuels, climate change already claims 300,000 human lives annually.

If not from science, where are Mr Davis and others getting their advice? Could it be from the Sunshine coast doctor responsible for the recent LNP motion to ban climate science from schools in Queensland, who thought he could disprove 150 years of physics in his back yard with two eskies and glad wrap?

While the current legislation is hardly a sufficient effort to reduce emissions to the extent required, it is in line with widely accepted policy settings around the world and it is a first step in the right direction.

What are the likely consequences of Mr Davis’s claims and other egregious misrepresentations of the price on carbon?

There is good reason to fear that those claims may be quite successful: we know that once a myth has been put into the public arena, it often resists any corrective effort, no matter how readily it can be debunked. Claims that arouse fear can be politically very effective, especially when combined with a seductively simple antidote – getting rid of the carbon tax.

The Australian media are notoriously incapable of differentiating fact from fiction, especially when it comes to the price on carbon. Indeed, we are not aware of any challenge to Mr. Davis’s claims, and those of his colleagues, in the corporate media.

George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” has been enshrined into Western culture as a symbol for the chilling inversion of reality that results when facts become irrelevant and propaganda paramount.

Victorians should be concerned that their “Ministry of Health” may likewise become known for opposing, rather than facilitating, public health measures that are aimed at managing the consequences of climate change.

Authors

Stephan Lewandowsky

Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at University of Western Australia

 

 

Fiona Armstrong

Convenor, Climate and Health Alliance

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Energy, Health, Health policy, Uncategorized
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A conversation with the Climate Commission

by designscope
July 23rd, 2012

Climate and Health Alliance members and other health professionals and health service executives met with the Australian Government Climate Commission on Wednesday 25th July 2012 at Sunshine Hospital to discuss health and climate change.

The meeting was hosted by Western Health CEO Kathryn Cook at the new Sunshine Hospital and made possible by Friends of CAHA and Doctors for the Environment member Dr Forbes McGain and his colleague at Western Health, sustainability officer Catherine O’Shea.

Commissioners Tim Flannery, Lesley Hughes, Roger Beale and Gerry Hueston and Commission media advisor Amanda McKenzie attended the meeting with around 25 people including health professionals from medicine, nursing, allied health, psychology and public health disciplines, as well as health care services and policy people.

Some of the topics of discussion included: What does health sector know about climate change? What can be done to build a greater awareness among health professionals about the risks to health from climate change? What are the opportunities for the health sector to demonstrate leadership in responding to, and being seen to respond to, climate change?

A lack of awareness among health professionals about the implications of climate change for health was raised as a barrier to the sector effectively responding. The education of all health professionals on climate and health was considered vital and urgent – including from  undergraduate level to continuing professional development for the existing workforce.

Professor Lesley Hughes presented the findings from the Commission’s report on climate change and health and its latest report on climate impacts and opportunities for Victoria. Professor Tim Flannery explained why they were keen to engage with health professionals: to raise awareness about the implications for health from climate change but also to encourage health professionals to use their own status as respected members of the community to help build community understanding about the need to respond urgently to climate change.

Professor Flannery’s comments to media before the meeting summed this up: “Climate change is one of the serious threats to Victoria’s health, especially those in our community who are most vulnerable, like the elderly and the very young. Few Australians are aware of the risks to their health and the health of their family and community. While much of the public discussions on climate change have emphasised the environmental impacts, a greater focus needs to be on the health consequences. Climate change must be considered a public health priority.”

The meeting was then opened to discussion, with participants encouraged to ask the Commission questions about their report http://climatecommission.gov.au/report/the-critical-decade-climate-change-and-health/ and to discuss what needed to be done to raise awareness among the health community about climate change.

Some of the challenges that were raised included:

  • the quarantining of public health sector budgets separating capital from operational expenditure made it difficult to make the case for the implementation of energy efficiency measures as the impact of costs were felt in one budgetary area and the savings realized in another.
  • Other socio-cultural challenges include the complex psychological responses to climate change and the difficulties in finding effective ways to communicate such a complex science in ways that are not disempowering and alarming. Serious concerns were raised about the neglect of mental health risks and the lack of preparedness to respond to severe risks to mental health.
  • The need to engage young people in particular was noted and the importance of including their voices and their concerns in relation to how we respond to climate change.
  • A lack of climate ‘literacy’ among health professionals was considered a barrier to health professionals understanding the implications of, and the need to respond to, climate change. Education about climate change and health is needed in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula for all health professionals, as well as in continuing professional development for current practitioners, the meeting heard.
  • There is also a need for the health sector to gain an understanding of the gendered nature of the health implications of climate change and climate policy, especially in relation to the differential effect of climate change on women.
  • Other concerns were raised about the mistruths being promoted in the community by the Victorian Health Minister David Davis in a recent brochure claiming the carbon tax would hurt health by driving up energy costs.
  • While there is some degree of preparedness that will help the health sector respond to climate change, with emergency power supplies, and heatwaves plans, overall the health sector is not well prepared to respond to climate impacts. Responses to other risks to health from increased ozone, affecting respiratory health; food and water borne disease and threats to infrastructure from extreme weather event were not well developed and pose potentially serious risks.

Climate Commission media advisor Amanda McKenzie advised health professionals to see the issue as an opportunity for the health sector to make a strong case for action to cut emissions that will also benefit public health and urged health professionals to use their respected and trusted role to build community understanding and action.

Ms McKenzie’s final question to the participants: “What can the Commission do to elevate the voice of health professionals on this issue?” is the subject of continuing discussion, and CAHA will share further feedback from members on this subsequently.

The meeting closed with the message that the climate communications evidence suggests that when climate change is talked about as a health issue, people are much more likely to respond as they see it in an individual context and as something that is personally relevant to them, rather than as a global environmental issue which is distant in time and space (“in the future, someone else, somewhere else”).

Coupled with the evidence that action on climate change can help reduce many existing disease burdens, and the esteem with which health professionals are held in the community, this makes for a powerful combination and a great opportunity for health professionals to influence this national and international conversation to help achieve better outcomes for health and wellbeing.

Categories Advocacy, Allied health, Climate, Health, Health policy, Health professionals, Medical, Nursing, Uncategorized
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Rolling the dice at Durban

by CAHA
December 9th, 2011

By Fiona Armstrong December 9th, 2011

 In the final week in Durban a sense of frustration is permeating the COP, where aspirations for a global  deal remain high, but expectations swing between mildly hopeful and almost absent.

The tone of the Australian delegation is one of determined but checked progress, maintaining there will be positive outcomes on some issues while keeping expectations low.

Australia continues its dream run in terms of public sentiment here, where many international delegates are under the impression that Australia’s carbon price legislation has real significance in terms of emissions reductions, seemingly unaware of the tiny step it actually represents. Still, the misconception is creating goodwill and perhaps even pressure on other countries to commit to binding targets at the international level, so what is lacking in policy efficacy is being made up in PR kudos, at least for now.

In terms of progress in the discussions, China is signalling a openness to legally binding obligations but stonewalling by New Zealand, Canada, Russia, the US and Japan means there is little hope of any final decisions on legal form. Many negotiating efforts by the big polluting nations appear to be about delaying decisions for as long as possible, with the staggeringly irresponsible date of 2020 for mandatory emissions cuts being advocated by the US.

The options currently being pursued range from: retaining some aspects of the Kyoto Protocol, but with limits to offsets, greatly enhanced measurement, verification and reporting, and the development of a new legally binding instrument to be agreed at COP18; to securing some agreement on mitigation measures but with the decision on legal form delayed until 2020. A review of global targets is being proposed to raise the level of commitments, but India, the US and China all want that delayed until after a scientific review slated for 2015.

Filling the coffers of the Green Climate Fund, for adaptation and mitigation in developing nations agreed to at Cancun, is also proving difficult; promised funds are failing to materialise and many nations are reluctant to name the figure they will commit in order to realise the agreed goal of $US100 billion per year by 2020.

Hopes of a fast start, that would see substantial funds committed between 2010 and 2012, are now looking a bit shaky. Ensuring these funds are a) delivered and b) new and additional (i.e. not rebadged aid funding) is the main game. Too little discussion has been had about additional ways of raising funds, however redirecting fossil fuel subsidies is an obvious choice, with the Robin Hood tax (a minuscule tax on financial transactions that could potentially raise US$400 billion a year) another obvious contender.

Bad behaviour by countries here at the COP is rewarded with the title of “fossil of the day“. Winners to date include: Turkey (for its 98 per cent growth in emissions post 1990 plus seeking Kyoto $ to spend on coal and roads); the US (for turning up but only wanting to discuss climate action in nine years time); Canada (for refusing to cooperate with just about everything); and New Zealand and Russia (joint first place for wanting to benefit from Kyoto but not be bound by it).

In the meantime, global emissions increased 6 per cent last year and millions of hectares of forests disappeared. The rate of global deforestation is 14.5 million hectares each year, as forests are converted to agricultural land to feed the inexorably rising global human population.

The gap between reality and commitment makes these a rather surreal set of discussions, the nature of which is well captured in this quote from Climate Action Network Australia Director Georgina Woods:

“We are all struggling to find a way to describe the kind of banal failure that is at risk of emerging here. I arrived steeled for major drama, hysterics and intensity; what’s happening instead is potentially worse – a slide into oblivion masked by the veneer of progress. Because there certainly is progress. The LCA text [long term cooperative action] represents a huge amount of work by negotiators in the last 12 months, and encompasses many things that the people of the world need and want to deal with climate change… and yet… putting off the major decisions… leaves open the possibility that they will find the important decisions all too hard, and find shelter together in their cowardice, and guiltily cobble together agreements that have the semblance of cooperation, but do not change the trajectory we are already on: towards a four degrees warmer world.”

Current existing pledges fall well short of what the science indicates is needed to give us only a modest chance (66 per cent) of limiting warming to 2°C (itself a target that is not considered desirable or safe), so it’s no wonder a lot of talk here is focusing on the ‘gigatonne’ gap, or emissions gap, that exists between pledges and the actual emissions cuts needed. Global emissions leapt in 2010, but a recent UNEP report says this puts us on track to be 12 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2e over what we can afford to emit if the world is to have any hope of staying below 2ºC, a goal described by NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen as a recipe for disaster.

What do we really want from Durban? Ideally, Ministers would go home having agreed to a multilateral approach to addressing climate change, with a combination of legally binding instruments, decisions, rules and guidelines. These should be, in the words of the COP President, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s International Relations Minister, “pragmatic, effective, timely and appropriate.” This would require documented commitments for which there are consequences if countries fail to keep them: mechanisms for ensuring emissions trajectories are consistent with the timeframe that science indicates; sufficient climate financing for developing nations to adapt as well as begin their own low carbon transitions; and action from all countries, led by the industrialised nations.

It’s not the case that there have been no genuine efforts to reach agreement. Indeed it seems there has been many constructive discussions, some of which may well have been influenced by the COP President’s invocation of ‘Indabas’ – a traditional form of South African participatory democracy in which people come together in the spirit of ‘Ubuntu,’ being motivated by the common good, to discuss a matter of great importance and to solve intractable or difficult collective problems in ways that benefit the community as a whole. (Sound familiar?)

So, what have we got without a global deal?

It seems increasingly likely that we will see emerging cooperation between nation states, as bilateral and regional deals are made. Some pressure may come from developing nations who refuse to provide offsets for wealthier countries who fail to act. Aside from those, we are left, largely, to rely on domestic policy commitments to deliver emissions reductions and the hope that commercial competitiveness and the actions of individual nation states will deliver a sufficiently broad rollout of clean renewable energy to see emissions peak in the timeframe left to avert runaway climate change.

The German Advisory Council (WGBU) remains cautiously optimistic this can be achieved and is working to facilitate that by offering a roadmap for a transformation to sustainability to any country or group of countries willing to take the lead. Their Social Contract for Sustainability offers willing leaders the opportunity to showcase how ambitious and committed actions can create a new pact for sustainability and demonstrate how breaking away from existing destructive pathways can deliver greater equity, social wellbeing, and economic security.

WGBU estimates the global cost of transformation would require $US200-$US1000 billion a year by 2030. This may seem a massive investment, but one they consider manageable through innovative business and financing models. They warn if it is not made, the costs associated with the economic, environmental and social disruption that a wildly unstable climate would be much, much more.

To create a bit of perspective, we already spend $500 billion globally each year on fossil fuel subsidies – a source of finance that would be more usefully deployed in a renewable energy transformation than driving dangerous climate change and causing millions of deaths from harmful air pollution.

In light of a less than optimum outcome from our governments, it’s encouraging other actors are not only envisioning but developing the roadmaps we need as a global community to reverse our current destructive path and shape a new future for our planet and our species.

But we should also prepare to be surprised, in the hope that those negotiators in Durban will reveal their hands as stronger than we thought. After all, they won’t be revealing all their cards till the very last. And before they do, may we hope they recall the words of that esteemed South African, Nelson Mandela, when he said: “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

Categories Advocacy, Climate, Health, Uncategorized
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