Weeks before COP15 at Copenhagen, ChinaDialogue and OpenDemocracy published versions of my ‘Plan B’ blog, where I argued that national initiatives would form the base currency of climate management for the foreseeable future, and the sooner we got with this new narrative the quicker we could work out how to get it done.
In a nutshell, I argued not just that a decent deal would not be done at Copenhagen, but if my accident one was indeed cut, it might prove to be a distraction that absorbed much energy (the human kind) and money, and most of all time, until its inherent shortfalls became apparent.…
Climate finance, now the focus of much of the international climate negotiations, are those funds designed to address the climate challenge and its implications. Framed by the principle of common and differentiated responsibilities, climate finance has become synonymous with the accountability of richer nations to support the mitigation and adaptation efforts of poorer nations. This crucial principle has informed the work of the UN High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance, discussed elsewhere in the paper, and underpins its conclusions and insights.…
Copenhagen was a structured, sovereign-state based negotiation with clear rules of engagement (albeit abused). It had a beginning, middle and (at least in theory) an end. It was designed to reach agreement on a specific set of activities entirely focused on the public good. It was also a veritable ‘walk through babylon’ (as my video clip painfully illustrated), and as we now all know deteriorated into a shambolic, ego-laden, mecantilist dog-fight.…
“We have an Accord that has some of the elements of a legally binding agreement that we need”, opined Achim Steiner from UNEP, “do not under-estimate what we have achieved. And on the trade regime, another year gone and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars investment and income generating on hold and at risk”.
Saturday afternoon, exhaustion showing on peoples’ faces, but an almost full room of folks ponder on the topic of trade and climate.…
Many folks will know the ‘valley of death’ as a stage in the investment cycle of new clusters of investment opportunities where great and potentially profitable ventures cannot progress for lack of the scaled and correctly calibrated risk capital.
Davos this week has exposed a second and far more worrying valley of death. Sessions on water scarcity, deforestation, climate and any number of profoundly relevant topics reveal an underlying cycle.…
Muhtar Kent leads a breakfast discussion about the global challenge of water, leveraging a report launched entitled Charting Our Water Future prepared by McKinsey with numerous other folks. “The global needs of Coca Cola is the equivalent of 8 months use across Mexico City”, we are told alongside Coke’s commitment to become a ‘zero water take’ company.
“We cannot stay as we are, we need to look for another approach…there is a way to deal with the growing gap…today withdrawals are growing at 2% a year, there is a gap of 40% by 2030 between demand (7000 billion cubic meters) and supply…productivity improvements will only deal with 20% of the overall gap, and there is a further 20% of the gap that can be closed by increasing supply in historic ways…that leaves a 60% gap where ‘something different’ needs to be done to address.”
McKinsey has applied the ‘cost curve’ methodology to water and brought crystallized data to the discussion at a high level (see Project Catalyst for how this method has been applied to carbon mitigation).…
A well-worn ritual is that in the days preceding Davos folks like me are asked by assorted bystanders, “what will it all be about this year”. And so as I begin my annual pilgrimage up the Magic Mountain, I find myself musing on this modern koan. Yes, we will surely talk about financial regulation, or perhaps just about the forthcoming assault on bankers.…
