Technology ultimately plays a large role in the actual, physical mitigation and adaptation plans established by different parties and organizations. However, it should be noted much of the discussion of “technology” that goes on in the COP21 is pretty far removed from the actual science. Many bodies of scientific experts such as the SBSTA that are part of the COP simply compile and submit relevant recommendations for the COP to consider and can only influence the negotiations indirectly. Policy initiatives and mechanisms that integrate technology and are designed to aid for instance, Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), seem to be largely set up to provide “technical assistance” or “capacity-building” and act as networks that connect these government entities with other firms that are concentrated bodies of expertise.
US Center at the COP21
During one of the side events I sat in on, I found that the Climate Technology Center & Network (CTCN) is exactly that, and is coincidentally recognized as the operational arm of the COP21 in this regard in conjunction with Technology Executive Committee (TEC) which is the policy recommendation arm. Through the CTCN, no finance is provided for projects nor actual technological solutions, but simply feasibility studies and other “requests” for technical assistance which governments who need the help must actually formally submit for through Nationally Designated Entities (NDEs) defined by the requesting country and then pay up to hundreds of thousands of USD ($100,000-200,000) for the services. Arguably, these countries can seek funding from other sources to pay for these services, but it brings to mind questions about whether technology is really being effectively implemented in this way given their already limited resources. If this is the process that a developing country must go through in order to simply identify which technologies to implement, I fear how the combined lag of international policy bodies to make decisions, these intermediate phases of technological development, and the actual implementation of technologies will affect our ability to cope with climate change when our preparation time is already in short supply.
Buses waiting to take COP21 participants from the train station to the meeting site.
Would you cross the road if there was a one-in-three chance you’d be hit by a bicycle? (Maybe.) Would you cross the street, holding the hand of a child, if there was a one-in-three chance you’d be hit by a bus? (Probably not.)
I’ll bet that the above questions grabbed your attention more than this would:
Limiting the warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions alone with a probability of … >66% to less than 2°C since the period 1861–1880, will require cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources to stay between … 0 and about 1000 GtC (3670 GtCO2) since that period. These upper amounts are reduced to about… 790 GtC (2900 GtCO2) … when accounting for non-CO2 forcings as in RCP2.6. An amount of 515 [445 to 585] GtC (1890 [1630 to 2150] GtCO2), was already emitted by 2011.
The latter is a quote from the “Summary for Policymakers” in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The former is an example of how to communicate essentially the same idea in a different way, focusing on the 1/3 risk of surpassing 2° C even with the quoted emissions budget, and how extreme and dangerous that would be. The example comes from Keith Tuffley, one of the speakers at a very interesting session I attended on Monday. The event was organized by the IPCC, requesting feedback on how they could better communicate the results that they present in their assessment reports. The IPCC is the body charged with assessing the science related to climate change, and their reports are widely viewed as the gold standard in presenting a consensus view of scientists about these issues. At the same time, the reports have also been criticized for being hard to read and understand.
To distill a very interesting discussion down to its essence, the bottom line of the contributions of the panel members, and the questions and answers that followed, was this: as human beings, we respond to stories. So to communicate the results of climate change, we need a layer of storytelling between the technical details of the reports and the listening ears of the world. As a scientist and a teacher, I think that is exactly right. And indeed it is the same message that my Swarthmore colleague Tristan Smith has been conveying, bringing the work of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science to Swarthmore’s campus via a series of workshops for our students on how to be better communicators. I’m also assigning the students in my Climate Change class this semester to make one-minute videos of themselves explaining the real science behind one “climate myth” of their choice.
The session did not ultimately answer the key question of whose job this is. Is it the IPCC’s job to tell more compelling stories? Personally, I don’t think so—their primary focus has to be to continue to convey the latest science, including its technical detail and its uncertainty. And, as Paul Lussier of Yale pointed out in the session, what resonates with one group may not resonate with another—your story may not be my story. Lussier is the founder of the Science Communication with Impact Network (SCWIN), and he argued that effective climate change communication should start by connecting with values: Do you care about food? About the oceans? About livable cities? About social justice and equity for low-income people? Any of these things can connect with climate change, and Lussier argued that you will be more willing to dive into understanding the science of climate change if your point of entry into the issue is via something you value, rather than climate change being a (relatively abstract) idea in and of itself.
In that light, it’s encouraging to see the number of organizations here at COP21 that are focused on telling the climate change story in different ways and engaging people via particular issues that resonate with them. As for me, I’ll keep telling the stories in the ways that I can, and I hope that you will, too.
** Will upload voice recordings and videos to youtube channel at some point. Files are too large to process through wordpress
Today I tried branching out from the side event proceedings (which were getting increasingly stale) to try and mingle with delegates, observers, and participants from other countries and try my luck in the plenaries. This worked out far better than I imagined it would. Although there were individuals from all sorts of different backgrounds, everyone was open to talking about their problems and solutions though asking for hopes seemed to be a bit of a contentious issue. I managed to land some solid conversations and even interviews with quite a few people. I talked to a geologist from the Comoros about the effects of climate change on their nation as island-state, a lady from the French delegation about how France engages civil society in matters involving environmental initiatives, and a participant from Denmark from the Nordic Council of Ministers. I also got to hear about how Saudi Arabia is pursuing Carbon Sequestration technologies (most of which ironically involve producing byproducts to process more fossil fuels).
Plenary Hall
Additionally, today seemed to be a good day for sighting some higher level delegates. I recorded (Coming soon) some remarks by Kevin Rudd, the former PM of Australia who dispensed some helpful advice on pushing the political agenda for the purpose of combating climate change, and got to piggyback onto an ongoing interview with the President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, who apparently had been in some unsatisfying meetings with President Obama earlier on in the COP (also coming soon). Also, in addition to having a satisfying day connecting with a broader set of individuals, I attended the “fossil of the day” award mock ceremony which is usually held to highlight “awards” to the Parties of the day who were the most obstructive to the progress of negotiations. Today, however was different. Instead of a fossil, the Phillippines and Costa Rica were lauded for being part of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) with other LDCs such as Bangladesh and Afghanistan to declare their intentions through the Manila-Paris agreement adopted on November 30th to move to 100% renewable energy and decarbonize their economies by 2050 in an attempt to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Pretty exciting for Day 2.
It was the usual unease of trying to navigate where to set my tray down in a bustling cafeteria. Except the scenario was a bit different at the UN conference because I happened to sit across from a Ghanaian party representative.
I assumed that this man of high-level position would be disinterested in engaging with a student, but instead he immediately lit up when I sat down and we had a stimulating lunch discussion.
Mr. Ramses Cleland had just had a meeting with French President, Francois Hollande, and the other African nations about climate mitigation plans across the continent. Cleland particularly described to me his worries and the projects that related to West Africa.
Cleland focused on the shrinking of Lake Chad, an important fishing and water resource for the 5 countries that surround it. “When hope shrinks”, Cleland lamented, “it causes countries to despair.” He then detailed the climate-related migration of young people from the Lake Chad region who were no longer able to sustain a livelihood. Many residents thus take the journey across the Mediterranean to find work, are often rejected, and then sometimes even turn to terrorist groups for support. Climate change, he said, is linked to migration and terrorism. It makes people feel hopeless. With this example, Cleland explained to me how “the world is one” and that we must think of climate resiliency on a global scale.
Climate projects in Africa affect Europe and the vice versa. Mitigation now means less adaptation later. On a more hopeful note Cleland described initiatives to channel economic and environmental growth in the Lake Chad region instead of sending its inhabitants away. He talked about massive tree plantings via the Green Belt Movement to absorb increasing temperatures and to slow the desertification spreading southward from the Sahara.
I am excited to find out what passionate person I share a table with tomorrow at the COP.
The first day of the COP21 started off at full tilt. Signs, graffiti, and artwork highlighting the event paved my way from the airport all the way to Le Bourget. After making a brief cameo at the hostel for a much-needed shower after my red-eye flight, I bolted over to the COP area to get my badge and throw myself in the mix. I got in later than most people since the registration was closed for NGOs this morning, but luckily security took pity on me and I managed to worm my way in just a bit early with enough time to scout around before attending my first side event. I was blown away. As soon as I entered the exhibit hall, scores of delegates from every country you can name flowed past me like schools of fish, weaving their way through the oceans of stands with their multi-colored climate-related flyers, jabbering heatedly to one another in a trifecta of different languages. I passed gigantic rows of tables full of reporters and observers plugged into their computers, all simultaneously plugging away at their Macbooks and watching streams of the Leaders’ event being held in the massive plenary halls across the way. On one hand, it was definitely overwhelming to witness, but at the same time comforting to know that there were so many people invested in the outcome of the COP. After getting my bearings (by which I mean getting lost several times and also getting booted out of the press area), I finally settled down at the first of side events I attended that day, “COP21: The Key Issues”
Mural depicting hopes for the COP21
During the course of this event in which the delegates chairing the panel discussion trickled in and out, I was able to listen to representatives of developing countries including India, China, and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) voice their thoughts on their own intentions for the COP21, what they believed the key issues on the agenda to be, and the results they wished to see. Each group had a different perspective on how they were approaching the COP, but there was a surprising amount of overlap between these nations especially in regards to the role of developed nations and the issues they viewed to be crucial. All of the parties named adaptation and mitigation strategies to be the most important agenda items for this COP, and called for developed nations to take a bigger role in supplying technology and financial resources to ensures the success of these strategies. Both India and China in particular stood by their usual ground, using the argument of historically generated emissions from developed nations as the case for setting up “Common, But Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR) for developing nations and call for technology transfers and other aid to be provided to them by developed countries on this basis. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised.
First Side Event
The next side event I attended was centered on the inclusion of indigenous people in the Reducing Deforestation and Degredation (REDD) mechanisms (http://www.un-redd.org/aboutredd). Traditionally, REDDs are set up in such a way that the indigenous people living on the land may get persecuted for their way of life by the legal boundaries set by the REDDs without reaping any of the benefits which instead go to the governments or NGOs implementing them, bypassing indigenous people as stakeholders in their own cultural lands. The panel for this side event consisted of a coalition Peruvian and Canadian indigenous peoples who laid out suggestions and an alternative framework for ensuring that above all, the territorial and cultural rights of their people were preserved under REDD schemes. This framework stresses the importance of continued stakeholder involvement, proper implementation monitoring among other improvements to the existing REDD mechanisms.
Media Area
Finally, I attended a side event on the role of civil participation in the Green Climate Fund. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of the busts of my day, as basically all the panelists really had to say on this matter is that more civil society participation would be good for the GCF in a general sense to offer more feedback, insights, and opinions beyond the ones already there. Given that this would probably happen no matter who they added to the GCF board, I would say that this was sort of a cop-out answer. On the plus side, I did catch an interesting debate about the role of small-scale renewable energy distribution in Indonesia as a potential way of averting some effects of industrialization, and that made me happy in a nerdy sort of way.
