Photo: Kris Krug

Following on some of the ideas I thought about during the recently concluded Aspen Environment Forum, and also reflecting upon a very insightful class I took at the Hertie School of Governance during my first year there – a class on multilateral governance taught by Professor Inge Kaul (world expert on public goods) and Thorsten Benner (director of the Global Public Policy Institute), I wrote a piece for FutureChallenges.org on new climate change governance architectures.

Here’s the full-length article (but please visit the entire platform, as other authors feature some really instructive pieces):

Finding the right type of climate change governance architecture and driving humanity on a more sustainable path might just be the tip of the iceberg of future challenges and megatrends featured on Futurechallenges.org. Why? It is intimately linked with all of them: new governance structures (see the magic scenarios below), demographic issues (climate refugees “complement” an unsustainable industrial production and consumption pattern, which will most likely make it impossible for us to feed a growing planet of 9 billion people by 2050), biodiversity and natural resources (because of human consumption of natural resources – the same that induced climate change – ecosystems have degraded at a 30% rate between 1970 and 2003, and our ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s capacity by about 25% as of 2003, says WWF’s Living Planet Report, 2006 edition, security (climate change-induced resources scarcity and migration will increasingly become a source of conflict, specialists indicate, and have done so already, as the infamous case of Darfur points out).

Defining climate change is a daunting task. It’s a phenomenon that has shaped politics, economics and social activism around the world in the last couple of decades. As a result, few definitions are value-neutral. Ever since 1990, scientists summoned by the United Nations in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) define the phenomenon as “the change in average weather, which may occur in the next century as a result of human activities”. Regular dictionaries seem to ignore the alleged anthropogenic nature of climate change and define it as “periodic modifications of Earth’s climate brought about as a result of […] interactions between […] atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic factors within the Earth system”. No humans around, it seems…

The recent international negotiations at Copenhagen proved that virtually no government in the world denies the man-made nature of climate change – at least not according to their leaders’ statements. On the people’s side, some nations are still deeply distrustful of the phenomenon: Just over a half of the American adults (51 percent) are either alarmed or concerned about global warming, says audience segmentation analysis “Global Warming’s Six Americas”.

Leaving the “why” aside and assuming that humans did it, as the shadow side of the success of their industrial production (for more info on the “science” behind climate change, check out the Learn Section on Futurechallenges.org, let’s take a look at the “how”. How are humans supposed to address climate change?

Scenario 1: Integrated approach via multilateral treaty and emissions reduction protocol

Climate change is a global problem and climate change mitigation is a global public good. Formal modeling exercises point out that an integrated climate architecture is the most effective solution for climate change abatement (Biermann et al., 2010). In English, please?  A multilateral agreement bringing on board all countries of the globe, containing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Mandatory and ambitious individual emission reduction targets.  After all, scientists claims that no single actor (country, region or sector) can achieve the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to stabilize atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases at the level necessary to avoid a global catastrophe.

Scenario 2: Leave it to the nation state

Climate change is affecting countries as we speak. 300,000 people die every year because of unusual climate patterns (floods, droughts, monsoons, etc.). Human and economic losses occur everywhere in the world, so it’s in the individual interest of each country to address this issue. China, California and the European Union, most experts say, have adopted very ambitious unilateral emission reduction targets. A less effective scenario than an integrated global accord (emissions and climate catastrophes don’t really use a passport for getting across countries and continents…), yet maybe a more realistic one. The caveat: under this scenario, some countries will end up paying the bill for climate change mitigation, while others will free-ride on their efforts (e.g.: neighbouring states are clear free-riders on California’s investments to combat climate change).

Scenario 3: Bring in non-state actors

Experts sometimes highlight coordination venues (partnerships, networks, the International Energy Agency, etc.) and non-state actors (businesses, NGOs) as promising locations for climate change governance. The market-based solution of carbon cap and trade (also known as emissions trading, i.e. a market-based approach of offering incentives to firms for achieving reductions in the emission of pollutants)  is considered by many the perfect economic solution for curbing emissions. Public-private governance arrangements (e.g. United Nations Global Compact, “type-2” agreements concluded at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development, etc.) might also be superior to traditional forms of inter-governmental co-operation.

Scenario 4: The Elite Club solution

Only 24 countries are responsible for 70 percent of world emissions. Why try to bring in 192 into a global deal? Multilateral global governance institutions such as the the United Nations General Assembly or Framework Convention for Climate Change have proven inefficient and slow time and again. Thus, wouldn’t it be better, analysts argue, to have the issue of climate change and climate security dealt with by a small group of elite states, in a G-like climate arrangement? Prominent American analysts such as Strobe Talbott, former United States Deputy Secretary of State and currently the President of the Brookings Institute seems to think so (at least according to his intervention at the recently concluded Aspen Environment Forum 2010). The arrangement might definitely work, but how do you deal with issues such as democracy, inclusivity and free-riding in this case?

As a European, whenever I attend international environmental events I never cease to be amazed by the admiration EU climate change policies are triggering globally. When I’m at home, the same set of policies seems packed with stumbling blocks. The EU has adopted the 20-20-20 Climate Package (under these mandatory energy targets, member states must achieve a reduction of 20% greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels, 20% of consumption from renewable sources, and a 20% reduction in primary energy use via improvements in energy efficiency) – and all of these, at a EU-wide level, by 2020. However, current trends indicate that 3 (Italy, Spain, Denmark) out of 15 old EU member states won’t even meet up their Kyoto targets, let alone something more ambitious. An East – West divide on climate change inside the European Union has steadily taken hold (Source: Euractiv). For instance, Poland’s energy mix is 80% dependent on coal, and the Polish government has clearly stated it needs more time to meet the 20-20-20 objectives. Bulgaria goes against mainstream EU opinion and advocates for nuclear energy as the only way of achieving its targets. A bird’s eye assessment of the climate change governance architecture promoted by the EU seems to indicate both a national model (Scenario 2) and a push for an integrated global regime (Scenario 1: the EU usually takes up stewardship in negotiating global consensus among world powers). How does the national/ union-wide ambition score given 27 different economic and energy supply patterns? How does the discourse of global leadership and “arbitrage” match the sad reality that EU leaders weren’t even present in the room when the loose Copenhagen Accord was brokered? For the moment, Europe seems to be begging both questions…

Is there a perfect climate change architecture? Not really. All four scenarios mentioned above indicate an inevitable trade-off between efficiency and realism. As efficient as an integrated global agreement might be, pushing it through regular multilateral negotiations is close to fantasy. National or regional unilateral targets are achievable, but California’s saved CO2 will easily be nullified by Texas’s rampant emissions. Most likely, striving (and striving fast!) towards a combined architecture will achieve some positive results. After all, we only have one planet, but we act as if we had four…

Photo: Kris Krug

Following on some of the ideas I thought about during the recently concluded Aspen Environment Forum, and also reflecting upon a very insightful class I took at the Hertie School of Governance during my first year there – a class on multilateral governance taught by Professor Inge Kaul (world expert on public goods) and Thorsten Benner (director of the Global Public Policy Institute), I wrote a piece for FutureChallenges.org on new climate change governance architectures.

Here’s the full-length article (but please visit the entire platform, as other authors feature some really instructive pieces):

Finding the right type of climate change governance architecture and driving humanity on a more sustainable path might just be the tip of the iceberg of future challenges and megatrends featured on Futurechallenges.org. Why? It is intimately linked with all of them: new governance structures (see the magic scenarios below), demographic issues (climate refugees “complement” an unsustainable industrial production and consumption pattern, which will most likely make it impossible for us to feed a growing planet of 9 billion people by 2050), biodiversity and natural resources (because of human consumption of natural resources – the same that induced climate change – ecosystems have degraded at a 30% rate between 1970 and 2003, and our ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s capacity by about 25% as of 2003, says WWF’s Living Planet Report, 2006 edition, security (climate change-induced resources scarcity and migration will increasingly become a source of conflict, specialists indicate, and have done so already, as the infamous case of Darfur points out).

Defining climate change is a daunting task. It’s a phenomenon that has shaped politics, economics and social activism around the world in the last couple of decades. As a result, few definitions are value-neutral. Ever since 1990, scientists summoned by the United Nations in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) define the phenomenon as “the change in average weather, which may occur in the next century as a result of human activities”. Regular dictionaries seem to ignore the alleged anthropogenic nature of climate change and define it as “periodic modifications of Earth’s climate brought about as a result of […] interactions between […] atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic factors within the Earth system”. No humans around, it seems…

The recent international negotiations at Copenhagen proved that virtually no government in the world denies the man-made nature of climate change – at least not according to their leaders’ statements. On the people’s side, some nations are still deeply distrustful of the phenomenon: Just over a half of the American adults (51 percent) are either alarmed or concerned about global warming, says audience segmentation analysis “Global Warming’s Six Americas”.

Leaving the “why” aside and assuming that humans did it, as the shadow side of the success of their industrial production (for more info on the “science” behind climate change, check out the Learn Section on Futurechallenges.org, let’s take a look at the “how”. How are humans supposed to address climate change?

Scenario 1: Integrated approach via multilateral treaty and emissions reduction protocol

Climate change is a global problem and climate change mitigation is a global public good. Formal modeling exercises point out that an integrated climate architecture is the most effective solution for climate change abatement (Biermann et al., 2010). In English, please?  A multilateral agreement bringing on board all countries of the globe, containing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Mandatory and ambitious individual emission reduction targets.  After all, scientists claims that no single actor (country, region or sector) can achieve the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to stabilize atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases at the level necessary to avoid a global catastrophe.

Scenario 2: Leave it to the nation state

Climate change is affecting countries as we speak. 300,000 people die every year because of unusual climate patterns (floods, droughts, monsoons, etc.). Human and economic losses occur everywhere in the world, so it’s in the individual interest of each country to address this issue. China, California and the European Union, most experts say, have adopted very ambitious unilateral emission reduction targets. A less effective scenario than an integrated global accord (emissions and climate catastrophes don’t really use a passport for getting across countries and continents…), yet maybe a more realistic one. The caveat: under this scenario, some countries will end up paying the bill for climate change mitigation, while others will free-ride on their efforts (e.g.: neighbouring states are clear free-riders on California’s investments to combat climate change).

Scenario 3: Bring in non-state actors

Experts sometimes highlight coordination venues (partnerships, networks, the International Energy Agency, etc.) and non-state actors (businesses, NGOs) as promising locations for climate change governance. The market-based solution of carbon cap and trade (also known as emissions trading, i.e. a market-based approach of offering incentives to firms for achieving reductions in the emission of pollutants)  is considered by many the perfect economic solution for curbing emissions. Public-private governance arrangements (e.g. United Nations Global Compact, “type-2” agreements concluded at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development, etc.) might also be superior to traditional forms of inter-governmental co-operation.

Scenario 4: The Elite Club solution

Only 24 countries are responsible for 70 percent of world emissions. Why try to bring in 192 into a global deal? Multilateral global governance institutions such as the the United Nations General Assembly or Framework Convention for Climate Change have proven inefficient and slow time and again. Thus, wouldn’t it be better, analysts argue, to have the issue of climate change and climate security dealt with by a small group of elite states, in a G-like climate arrangement? Prominent American analysts such as Strobe Talbott, former United States Deputy Secretary of State and currently the President of the Brookings Institute seems to think so (at least according to his intervention at the recently concluded Aspen Environment Forum 2010). The arrangement might definitely work, but how do you deal with issues such as democracy, inclusivity and free-riding in this case?

As a European, whenever I attend international environmental events I never cease to be amazed by the admiration EU climate change policies are triggering globally. When I’m at home, the same set of policies seems packed with stumbling blocks. The EU has adopted the 20-20-20 Climate Package (under these mandatory energy targets, member states must achieve a reduction of 20% greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels, 20% of consumption from renewable sources, and a 20% reduction in primary energy use via improvements in energy efficiency) – and all of these, at a EU-wide level, by 2020. However, current trends indicate that 3 (Italy, Spain, Denmark) out of 15 old EU member states won’t even meet up their Kyoto targets, let alone something more ambitious. An East – West divide on climate change inside the European Union has steadily taken hold (Source: Euractiv). For instance, Poland’s energy mix is 80% dependent on coal, and the Polish government has clearly stated it needs more time to meet the 20-20-20 objectives. Bulgaria goes against mainstream EU opinion and advocates for nuclear energy as the only way of achieving its targets. A bird’s eye assessment of the climate change governance architecture promoted by the EU seems to indicate both a national model (Scenario 2) and a push for an integrated global regime (Scenario 1: the EU usually takes up stewardship in negotiating global consensus among world powers). How does the national/ union-wide ambition score given 27 different economic and energy supply patterns? How does the discourse of global leadership and “arbitrage” match the sad reality that EU leaders weren’t even present in the room when the loose Copenhagen Accord was brokered? For the moment, Europe seems to be begging both questions…

Is there a perfect climate change architecture? Not really. All four scenarios mentioned above indicate an inevitable trade-off between efficiency and realism. As efficient as an integrated global agreement might be, pushing it through regular multilateral negotiations is close to fantasy. National or regional unilateral targets are achievable, but California’s saved CO2 will easily be nullified by Texas’s rampant emissions. Most likely, striving (and striving fast!) towards a combined architecture will achieve some positive results. After all, we only have one planet, but we act as if we had four…

Aspen Meadows Campus, hosting Aspen Environment Forum 2010

Without even pretending to do justice to the 100+ very impressive names on the speakers’ list at the Aspen Environment Forum, I thought of sharing the work of some of the people I’ve listened to and/ or engaged with during the forum. Their creativity and intellectual profundity are an incredible source of inspiration for many.

It was only during the third day of the conference that I met probably the most charismatic and inspirational speaker of the forum, the Iraqi-born American urban planner T.H. Culhane, who runs the German – Egyptian NGO Solar CITIES. Maybe that happened for a reason, as the day’s title was “New Horizons: Building a Sustainable World”. T.H. brings tech-knowledge into the world’s poorest neighbourhoods, from Cairo to Guatemala, educating people on industrial ecology solutions for their communities. The results: “integrated solar water and kitchen-waste-to-cooking-fuel-and-electric-generator-fuel biogas systems”, composting systems, rooftop gardening systems and a bunch of other hyper cool innovations. I’ve asked T.H. whether he thinks his solutions are scalable given the unprecedented rate of migration from rural to urban areas. His solution: ask each and every newcomer to produce his/her own energy! I’m a bit skeptical on the feasibility of that one, but his solutions are nonetheless amazing.

The third day made me run into America’s first eco-friendly cowboy, Doug Fine. He has authored the bestseller “Farewell, My Subaru” (which sold out during the forum, without me being able to get my hands on a copy). He’s intensely funny and shows by example how people can live petroleum free in one year, without giving up any digital age comforts (his solutions include a sustainable diet, vegetable-oil powered autos and solar power). Without preaching that everybody should move to New Mexico and herd goats, he makes a pretty convincing case on small steps we can all take to reduce oil dependency. And he’s damn funny.

A puzzling presence at the summit was Sudanese Ambassador and chief negotiator of the G77 on climate change, Mr. Lumumba Di-Aping. The developed world has pretty much blamed and shamed his stubbornness for the Copenhagen negotiations failure. I’ve talked to him a bit about the responsibilities of developing countries in the face of climate change; his position is that developing countries have to factor in their development needs and that their only fundamental responsibility is to develop (albeit, following a different path). Still, he was saying that China can and should be brought to contribute by a universal cap on carbon emissions. Easier said than done, but then again, it’s valuable to try to really understand how G77 leaders think about these issues…

Great insights on sustainable food and agriculture came from sustainable chef Barton Seaver (his website is amazing, totally recommend it), from program director for Animal Welfare Approved Andrew Gunther (independent food labeling granted to small farmers across the US for raising their animals with highest welfare standards – despite talking to Andrew, still a dilemma for me how to get the political will to factor in negative externalities, like environmental costs, in the price of the food we buy, so that finally sustainable food became affordable for all), and from Melina Shannon-DiPietro (who’s managed to implement some really effective and creative marketing communication tools to implement sustainable dining in the Yale University campus).

So many, many more amazing speakers to highlight… TBC (on energy and the oil spill in particular).

Till then, to your emotional enjoyment, I give you some recommendations from the Aspen Environment Forum co-organizer, the National Geographic. A remarkable part of the speakers and participants were NG Explorers (check out more about their Emerging Explorer and Explorer-in-Residence programs). Each day of the forum was accompanied by photographic storytelling with photographers Joel Sartore (America’s most prominent photographer of rare and endangered species… check out this absolutely amazing short movie of his) and George Steinmetz (an expert in aerial landscapes).

PS: I was a Scholar at the Aspen Environment Forum, and I hope many more fellows of the Aspen Young Leaders Programme of the Aspen Institute Romania will attend future editions of the forum.

Un proiect la care muncesc de ceva vreme creste din ce in ce mai mare… Thank you, dear team, for making it happen. Thank you, dear high-school coordinators, for being creative and brave. Vineri, 26 februarie, 16 licee din 10 orase din Romania proiecteaza simultan filme green in cadrul Cluburilor de Film One World!

Mai jos, comunicatul de presa!

În ultimii ani, cineaştii români câştigă constant premii internaţionale prestigioase, de cele mai multe ori în ciuda susţinerii precare din partea statului sau a sistemului de educaţie. 

Continuând o tradiție regională inaugurată de People in Need din Republica Cehă, Asociaţia Oricum, organizatorul festivalului de scurtmetraje ShortsUP, a adus în România Cluburile de Film One World, care se concretizează în proiecții și dezbateri lunare în 16 licee din Bucureşti şi din ţară. Proiectul încearcă să suplinească lipsa educaţiei cinematografice în şcoli şi constă în organizarea unor cluburi de film documentar cu tema drepturilor omului și chestiunilor globale. Filmele de lungmetraj, dar şi cele de mediu şi scurtmetraj ating tematici globale precum migraţia, discriminarea, sărăcia, rasismul, schimbările climatice sau conflictele armate. (more…)

I had to deliver this last week a 10 minute informative presentation on this topic, for my “States and Markets” class. I’m sharing some thoughts with you here and would be really curious to see what non-economists/ non-policy students think about the proposed solutions. Since I am surrounded by such folks, though, views from the community are also welcome

The figures
- there’s great news: the proportion of people living in extreme economic poverty, i.e. on less than $1.25/ day (at 2005 prices, adjusted for purchasing power parity) had dropped worldwide from 52% in 1981 to 26% in 2005

- the bad news: there are great regional disparities - China and East Asia in general, which used to be the poorest in the 80s (80% of the population affected by extreme poverty) have reduced their percentage of poor drastically (18% in 2005); however, sub-Saharan African has kept its poverty rate unchanged in the last 40 years, at about 50% of its population. Moreover, because of population increase, in absolute numbers the number of the poor has doubled (from 200 million in 1981 to 380 million in 2005) (more…)