A paradox surrounds the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Nairobi (6-17 November 2006). The climate-change issue is more urgent than ever; yet there was no obvious sense of urgency in Nairobi at all. It was a bit like being given two weeks to do some homework and spending the first week doing anything but the homework.
Adam Poole studied African history at Stirling University and SOAS and then ran an African-affairs consultancy whose projects included helping return Nigeria to democracy. He now works for the company Engineering Relations
Also by Adam Poole in openDemocracy:
"Climate change: new game, new rules, new outcome"
(6 November 2006)
The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. It has not been a success because China, India and the United States (amongst others) are not on board; and those who have signed up are not keeping to their targets, which are, in any case, too modest.
The question now is: does the world talk up Kyoto, keep it going and use it as the basis for the new treaty that needs to take its place in 2012 - or is this the time to scrap it and start again? Are policymakers, activists and concerned citizens in all countries in a stronger position with Kyoto or without it? We don't seem to know, and it was this "not knowing" that formed the essential agenda for the Nairobi conference.
The stated theme was "adaptation". This, in climate-change-speak, means technical fixes. Adaptation is a term that usually cannot be divorced from "mitigation" - which means policy fixes. It is curious to be looking at one without the other because technical fixes need targets, which can only be established within a policy framework; and then seek to achieve economies of scale to achieve these targets. The adaptation focus was read by many in Nairobi to mean that mitigation was off the agenda. The Kyoto boat was not about to be rocked - and yet it was.
The equity initiative
There were strong calls for greater equality in adaptation; these came from both the COP12 president (Kivutha Kibwana, Kenya's environment minister) and from Kofi Annan. Each called for more equality in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding.
The Kyoto protocol divides the world into developed (Annex 1) and non-developed nations. CDM is the means the rich world pays the poor world to minimise the amount of carbon it uses in its development. Africa does poorly in the CDM "market" with only four projects out of the 300 so far awarded. "Equality" in CDM-speak means that Africa wants more of the CDM cash.
Also in openDemocracy on the politics of global climate change:
Tom Burke, "Climate change: time to get real" (29 September 2006)
Simon Zadek, "Accountability: the other climate change" (31 October 2006)
Andrew Simms, "The climate-change choice" (1 November 2006)
John Elkington, "After Stern: fixing the climate machine"
(2 November 2006)
Saleemul Huq & Camilla Toulmin, "Climate change: from science and economics to human rights"
(7 November 2006)
Simon Retallack, "Climate change: the global test"
(10 November 2006)
It is not clear that Kyoto can deliver this since it is Africa's relatively low development and thus the smaller scale of business operation that penalises it in the CDM stakes. This is the background to explain why British and other diplomats have called for a new multi-million pound United Nations adaptation fund to paper over the cracks in CDM, pay out to Africa and keep the Kyoto boat afloat.
Nicholas Stern was at the conference and his report launched on 30 October - The Economics of Climate Change - was a subtext to the conference. Stern's message is that the problem is serious, we can easily afford to solve it and solving it will not affect growth. It is a welcome message, but as Kyoto only has six years to go and Stern is looking at a ten-to-fifteen year programme it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Stern has costed something that has still to be created. Since CDM features in the solution, it seems probable that Stern envisions a post-Kyoto world that is not very different from the arrangement currently in place.
Stern was asked at a fringe event: "Why haven't you based your calculations on paying for carbon reduction on equal atmospheric shares? Is this because your way is going to be cheaper for the developed world?" The questioner was from an NGO in Cameroon. Stern's reply was to say that this was the "contraction and convergence" position, and while he agreed that equity was a crucial element in the solution it was not within his remit to recommend one equitable solution over another. He did not say whether a post-Kyoto framework based on equal atmospheric shares would be a more expensive solution; but then the cost of saving the planet is not really the point.
What did the Nairobi conference achieve? If the agenda was "not knowing" what to do, then it kept to it: nothing was ruled in and nothing was ruled out. The Stern report has offered a new description of the problem and this became a point around which nations could agree (even Australia's representatives were seen waving the document). But agreeing on the scale of a problem is not the same as acting, and the clock is ticking. A historic opportunity has been wasted and Kyoto has been kept in play when work is urgently needed on designing its replacement.
