These Zimbabwean farmers with their harvested sorghum are at the mercy of climate change, while the government struggles with meagre financing and tall ambitions to take adequate action. Credit: UNDP-ALM

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

With the U.N. Climate Change conference later this year in Paris fast approaching, Zimbabwe’s climate change commitments face the slow progress on an issue that continues to stalk other developing countries – climate finance.

As it prepares for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Zimbabwe – like many others in the global South – is grappling with radical climate shifts that have seen devastating exchanges of floods and droughts every year, and still awaits green bailout funds from developed nations, with officials here telling IPS, “this support should come in the forms of technology.”

The country’s halting progress on the climate front is being blamed by local climate researchers on the country’s failure to invest in state-of-the-art climate monitoring technology. More still needs to be done as the country heads to Paris, says Sherpard Zvigadza, Programmes Manager, Climate Change and Energy, for the Harare-based ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO)."The country [Zimbabwe] needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies" – Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa

“Zimbabwe should strengthen systematic observation, ensuring improved real-time observations and availability of meteorological data for research,” Zvigadza told IPS.

These concerns arise from what is seen here as repeated failure by the poorly-funded Meteorological Services Department to adequately monitor climate patterns and put in place effective early warning systems for disaster preparedness.

However, these constraints have not stopped Zimbabwe, which for the past two decades has seen a wilting of international financial support for crafting ambitious climate change interventions.

Recurrent climate-induced disasters have shown that this not the time to treat anything as “business as usual”, says Elisha Moyo, principal climate change researcher in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

And these efforts have brought together civic society organisations (CSOs), farmers and ordinary Zimbabweans in what is expected to shape the country’s negotiations in Paris.

CSOs point to the fact that Zimbabwe has been identified by GLOBE International, which brings together legislators from all over the world, as having on the most comprehensive environmental laws in southern Africa, and say that this should be a stimulus for helping the country make greater strides in climate governance.

According to a climate ministry brief issued last month, Zimbabwe’s climate policy seeks, among others, weather and climate modelling, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, mitigation and low carbon development.

However, as tall as these ambitions sound, the climate ministry has acknowledged that in the absence of adequate financing the country could still be far from meeting its United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) commitments.

“There is a need to expand current projects as well as develop new projects throughout the country for the country to position itself to be able to raise funding for these developments,” said Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, a Zimbabwe-based company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects.

“The country needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies,” Wentzel told IPS.

“If the country is serious about moving away from business as usual, awareness raising is key for all stakeholders, including the general population as well as industry,” Zvigadza told IPS. “A vigorous campaign is needed across the country. More importantly, Zimbabwe’s national climate change response strategy has to be operationalised so that the challenges are addressed according to different local circumstances.”

Yet, by the climate ministry’s own admission, progress has remained slow due to the continuing problem of lack of funds, which Moyo believes should be tapped from the richer nations.

“As Africa, and supported by other developing countries from other regions, we believe the rich countries have not yet shouldered a fair share of the burden and should lead by example, in terms of cutting emissions and also providing financial support to poorer nations as stated in the Climate Change Convention,” Moyo told IPS.

And Zimbabwe certainly does need the money. The climate ministry is already wallowing in reduced state funding after the Finance Ministry slashed its national budget from 93 million dollars in 2014 to 52 million this year.

Meanwhile, domestic economic considerations are one of the obstacles to implementation of the country’s troubled climate change policy. Despite seeking to promote clean energy, power generation is still largely fossil fuel-based, where instead of cutting emissions, relatively cheaper coal feeds power generation.

The climate ministry policy brief says the country needs to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production transmission and use”, but economic hardships have made this a tall order where millions also rely on highly-polluting firewood for fuel.

“We are compiling the “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and have been conducting consultations and data collection around the country especially with reference to the energy sector, which has a high potential of emission reductions through adoption of
renewable energy wherever possible,” Moyo told IPS.

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at COP21 in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September.

For its climate change ambitions to succeed, Zimbabwe must go back to the grassroots, says Wentzel, but unfortunately “there is a lack of knowledge of climate changes issues,” he told IPS.

As Washington Zhakata, Zimbabwe’s lead climate change negotiator put it: “The road to the Paris summit remains unclear with many stumbling blocks on the road.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

A Jun. 7 session of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in the Mexican Congress. Nearly 500 legislators from some 90 countries took part in the gathering in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

Latin America’s parliaments have failed to protect the forests and to guarantee their sustainable use, despite the fact that a number of countries have laws on forests, legislators from the region said at a global summit in the Mexican capital.

There are problems in areas such as respect for the rights of local communities, budget allocations for the protection of forests, land tenure guarantees, forest floor carbon ownership, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from sustainable use of forests.

“We aren’t working with the communities, and we don’t have the technical capacity to include international standards; the government is fearful and more worried about bringing in forest investment in activities like mining, without any responsibility for the environment,” Colombian Senator Mauricio Ospina of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole told IPS.

Ospina was one of the nearly 500 legislators from more than 90 countries who took part in the Jun. 6-8 second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators in Mexico City, organised by the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International).

The summit agenda focused on the struggle against climate change and efforts to protect forests and natural capital.

Colombia, which has 60 million hectares of forest, is one of the 18 nations of the developing South taking part in the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (U.N. REDD), which was launched in 2007.

U.N. REDD is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. It finances national programmes to fight deforestation, reduce carbon emissions and foment access by participating countries to technical and financial support to combat climate change.

U.N. REDD was launched as a collaborative programme of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

The aim goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

Preventing deforestation is essential because trees capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into carbon in their trunks and branches and in the soil. When forests are cut down, not only do they stop absorbing carbon, but also the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere as CO2. Moreover, forests are critical to rainfall and play a key role in the water cycle through evaporation and precipitation.

In June 2013, U.N. REDD approved an allocation to Colombia of four million dollars for activities such as the creation of a forest inventory, the development of social and environmental safeguards, and the identification of benefits.

Colombia is carrying out 10 U.N. REDD projects and another 23 forest initiatives. Since 2008, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has approved an additional 3.6 million dollars in funds for the country.

The REDD+ action plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is a platform of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change that incorporates elements like conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks and the sustainable management of forests.

Peru is also moving forward in the design of a REDD+ strategy, facing challenges similar to those of the rest of the region.

“We have to work in the communities, providing them with tools,” Congresswoman Marisol Espinoza, of the governing Peruvian Nationalist Party, told IPS. “Those who take care of the forests are their guardians and should be paid for what they do. We hope the new laws will strengthen this new approach to preserving forests.”

Peru is developing a national REDD+ strategy that has a handicap: it has no mechanism to resolve disputes over land property rights, according to the article “REDD+ Readiness progress across countries: time for reconsideration” published in May in the British journal Climate Policy.

There are currently 19 REDD+ projects and another 18 forest initiatives in that Andean nation, which is set to receive 3.8 million dollars from the FCPF.

The 20 authors of the study published in the Climate Policy journal, who assessed the cases of Peru, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cameroon, found that progress had been made in planning, coordination, demonstration and pilots.

But they said measurement, reporting and verification of forest carbon, audits, financing, benefit sharing, and policies, laws and institutions faced major challenges.

They suggested a “rethink of the current REDD+ Readiness infrastructure given the serious gaps observed in addressing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, linking REDD+ to broader national strategies and systematic capacity building.”

Mexico, which is moving forward in fits and starts in its national REDD+ strategy, has some 65 million hectares covered by trees in the territories of around 2,300 communities, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

“There are still important steps to take to create a legal framework that would provide a sound coherent foundation for the successful application of REDD+,” Mexican lawmaker Lourdes López, cochair of the Globe International forestry initiative, told IPS. “The priority is to support sustainable forest producers and grant facilities to small producers.”

López, of Mexico’s Ecological Green Party, is promoting the reform of the 2003 General Law on Sustainable Forestry Development, to cut red tape surrounding forestry initiatives, foment commercial forest plantations, and step up certification of good management practices.

She also wants to regulate businesses like carpentries and furniture stores, to ensure that the lumber they use was legally obtained.

There are 11 REDD+ projects and another 38 forest initiatives in Mexico. In March, the FCPF and the government signed an agreement for 3.8 million dollars to complete the process of consultation and preparation of the REDD+ national strategy.

The government is about to open up the consultation process in order for the strategy to begin to be implemented next year.

The declaration of the second GLOBE Summit of World Legislators, to which IPS had access before it was released, only alludes indirectly to the forestry issue, by emphasising the approval of robust laws that support sustainable development, including forests and REDD+.

The parliamentarians urged governments and the U.N. to press international financial institutions for environmental programmes like REDD+ to involve national legislators, in order to “develop capacities and share best legislative practices.”

In response to a question from IPS, Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, predicted significant changes in international financial institutions and the nations with the greatest forest capital with respect to the increase in REDD+, at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Kyte said that since December “we have more than 300 million dollars” to support forest projects.

In Espinoza’s view, it is essential that forest protection schemes do not reproduce poverty.

One country that the rest of the region looks to is Costa Rica, a world pioneer in setting the goal of reaching carbon neutrality in 2021. According to official estimates, the Central American nation will emit close to 21 million tonnes of carbon in 2021, and it hopes to compensate for 75 percent of this total by carbon capture in its forests, which cover 52 percent of the national territory.

A carpenter organises a load of mahogany seized by authorities in the Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

How much does a forest cost? What’s the true economic value of an ocean? Can you pay for an alpine forest or a glacial meadow? And – more importantly – will such calculus save the planet, or subordinate a rapidly collapsing natural world to market forces?

On the last day of its World Summit of Legislators in Mexico City, the Global Legislators Organisation (or GLOBE International) released a landmark study Sunday on natural capital accounting, the first comprehensive report that compiles legal and policy efforts in 21 countries to calculate the monetary value of natural resources.

Defining ‘natural capital’ as encompassing everything from ecosystems and solar energy to mineral deposits and fossil fuels, the study recognises the highly degrading impact of human activity on the environment and underscores the “urgent need to develop effective methods and measures for natural capital accounting and to embed these within relevant legal and policy frameworks.”

“[T]he currency of life is life, not money.” – Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology
“The report was conceived very much as a North-South learning partnership,” said lead science author Ben Milligan, a research fellow at the Centre for Law and Environment at the University College London (UCL).

“Equal voice was given to all inputs,” he told IPS, whether they came from the GLOBE International Secretariat or any of the 21 national stakeholders of the featured countries, which include five Asian nations, three European countries, seven African states and six case studies from the Americas.

What the authors found, according to Milligan, was a groundswell of political support for attempts to “recognise the fact that, in addition to nature’s important cultural, spiritual and aesthetic values, it also provides essential goods and services for our well-being and economic existence.”

The purpose of the study, he added, was to “provide a document that supported efforts in these countries to effect positive change.”

Indeed, some of the findings from the report are staggering. In Peru, for instance, where the focus of natural capital accounts is linked to economic valuation, the Ministry of Environment (MINAM) found that “the total value of selected ecosystem services in 2009 amount to 15.3 billion dollars.”

Broken down, this worked out to some 2.5 billion dollars from water and energy, eight billion from agriculture, forestry and livestock and 864 million from fisheries, while natural capital-based exports brought in nine million dollars in 2009.

“The vulnerability of ecosystems is of particular concern as ecosystem services are the productive base for industries such as fisheries, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and pharmaceuticals,” the report noted, adding that the government already utilises various tools to measure the health of the natural environment, including an annual State of the Environment report produced by the National System for Environmental Information.

The Central Bank estimates that extractive industries contributed 45 percent of GDP in 2010, with the mining sector alone accounting for nearly 34 percent.

Keeping these statistics in mind, the government is now in the process of strengthening the sector’s legal and regulatory framework, conducting geological and mining research to expand its knowledge repository of the soil and subsoil, and performing environmental assessments of the impact of mining.

“We can’t sell life”

While proponents of natural capital accounting argue that the system will inform government behaviour and encourage the sustainable use of resources, some say that calculating ‘natural wealth’ is one step away from the complete commodification of the planet’s bounty.

“Evaluation of nature’s ecological services and functions can cut both ways,” Vandana Shiva, author, environmentalists and founder of the Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology in India, told IPS.

Understanding the value of stable and healthy ecosystems for local communities is “necessary and good,” she said. “But the minute you take a complex system with multiple functions and reduce it to a single function that can be appropriated and traded, you are already doing it wrong. After all, the currency of life is life, not money.”

Shiva pointed to the People’s Summit that took place alongside high-level negotiations at the 2012 environmental conference in Brazil (dubbed ‘Rio+20’), during which activists, indigenous groups and scientists rejected the idea of a green economy based on the financialisation of ecological services, fearing that such a scheme would ignore the root causes of environmental destruction.

The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand provides a stark example of this debate, since it recently became the first state in India to begin calculating its gross environmental product (GNP).

With its lush valleys and alpine meadows, this Himalayan state is one of the greenest in the country, retaining nearly 60 percent forest cover despite determined efforts to clear the land for development.

According to the GLOBE study, various reports have valued the land here at roughly five to seven billion dollars per annum. In a bid to ease restrictions on development, the Central Government now offers Uttarakhand a ‘green bonus’ of 0.3 billion dollars a year in exchange for its rich land.

Shiva says such a ‘bonus’ simply serves to distract from the more pressing issues of deforestation and glacial melting in Uttarakhand, which led to deadly floods last year. Even the Supreme Court of India has admitted that dams and hydroelectric projects in the state, which is infamous for its destructive development, aggravated the tragic disaster.

What this clearly shows, according to Shiva, is that “valuation is good if it’s giving you a red light to destruction. When valuation turns into a price, however, it [simply] gives the green light to destroy in smarter and cleverer ways.”

Others fear that natural capital accounting will trample upon the rights of indigenous people, many of whom see themselves as the last remaining custodians of the land.

According to Hugo Blanco, leader of the Campesino Confederation of Peru (CCP), tabulating a country’s ‘natural wealth’ will do little to correct the lopsided pyramid of power that places transnational corporations at the top and indigenous people and the environment on the bottom.

“Take, as one example, the Conga Project,” Blanco told IPS, referring to the massive gold and copper mining initiative in the Cajamarca Region of northern Peru that threatens to poison the waters of 40 high-altitude lagoons, which feed some 600 aquifers and provide drinking and irrigation water to thousands of campesinos before passing into five major rivers that eventually empty into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Even worse, Blanco says, is the impending threat of a dam that, if constructed, will flood the territories of hundreds of campesinos in order to provide electricity for the mine.

“This is an insane system,” he asserted, adding that such development projects highlight the Peruvian government’s true allegiance: not to the national laws protecting the rights of indigenous people or the environment, but to multinational corporations.

He believes Peru stands as a perfect example of the flaws inherent in a valuation system that attaches a price tag to nature.

It is one of the planet’s 10 ‘megadiverse‘ countries, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and hosts the world’s highest number of fish species (over 2,000), the second highest number of bird fauna species (1,736) and  the third highest number of amphibians (322).

“It would be a great stupidity to sell this richness, no matter how many billions of dollars you get,” Blanco insisted “We can’t sell life.”

(END)

By Miriam Gathigah
MEXICO CITY, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

Africa’s climate change legislative frameworks, though a step in the right direction, have come under fire for not being ambitious enough to meet the challenge of a changing climate.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an emerging global actor in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), has been criticised because its REDD+ projects are not supported by a legally binding framework, leaving forest communities in a legal void and vulnerable to economic exploitation.

But Jean-Claude Atningamu, a legislator in the DRC, admitted that while his country may have strategies and policies in place, a law on REDD+ is yet to be developed.

“We have just begun these processes and we are grappling with many challenges,” he told IPS.

He said that although indigenous communities were not benefiting from climate change financing, it was not because of a lack of political goodwill to do so.

“We do not have the full support from the international community who are not providing the funding necessary to help the people of the DRC meet the economic challenges that they are facing,” he said at the conclusion of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) summit that was held in Mexico from Jun. 6 to 8.

He said that while the DRC has the second-largest forest cover in the world “we are yet to receive REDD+ financing.”

“We are expecting to receive the first 60 million dollars from REDD+. With our expansive forest cover we should be receiving at least one billion dollars in a year.

“We need to have mechanisms set up by parliament to help African countries to access REDD+ financing. Without access to this fund, we cannot implement the policies that we are discussing at this GLOBE Summit,” Atningamu added.

He pointed out that in Africa the forest was the wealth of the people, “we need it to feed our people, to get heat, to cook. You cannot tell your wife to stop using firewood and not provide an alternative source of energy.”

But a lack of access to climate financing is not the only issue of concern for the African block of legislators.

The resolutions agreed upon at the summit also raised concerns. These include an agreement to deliver robust legislation in support of sustainable development, particularly climate change, natural capital and forest/REDD as well as strengthening legislators´ capacity to effectively exercise their oversight responsibilities, especially over the executive.

Simon Asimah, chair of the African block at the summit and also GLOBE International vice-president for Africa, said that the resolutions were not comprehensive enough to meet the legislative gaps that Africa is facing.

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The Ghanaian legislator said that “a few clauses will be added to the final resolution to ensure that the African region the position of Africa in climate security is fully represented.”

These recommendations were accepted and clauses include the suggestion that all countries in Africa should have GLOBE chapters in their respective national legislatures and establish an African regional secretariat at GLOBE International to be founded in one of the countries of Africa. There are currently only  four globe international chapters in Africa – in Ghana, Nigeria, the DRC and South Africa,

This is key for coordination purposes, as well as to enhance the sharing of best practices on climate change mitigation and adaptation across Africa, according to the legislators.

Although the summit resolutions encouraged the development of legislation on natural capital, Asimah said that the African block had pushed to have “all countries, particularly those in Africa, to legislate on effective climate change laws, and in these laws, recognise and incorporate natural capital accounting concepts in accounting for their natural resources as part of their total national capital.”

Joyce Laboso, Kenya’s deputy speaker in the national assembly, also raised concerns over changing global perspectives and the impact they were having on Africa.

Laboso told IPS that fossil fuel is increasingly being discouraged at a time when many African countries such as Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola are discovering oil “and now we are being told that we are now moving into renewable energy that is going to be subsidised. How are we then going to achieve sustainable development if Africa cannot rely on its natural wealth?”

The Ghanaian delegation emphasised that developed nations such as the United States and emerging economies like China and Mexico were emitting the most carbon yet Africa was not expected to exploit its forests and become industrialised in the same way Brazil had.

Asimah said that Africa was also not being compensated enough or in some cases not at all for its efforts to keep people from exploiting the forests. “Africa must find a way to develop. But this is not a blame game, climate change is a global problem and it requires global solutions,” he said.

But Jacob F. Mudenda, speaker of Zimbabwe’s national assembly said: “Industrialised countries must submit themselves to climate change conventions, without which there will not be any global synergies.”

The African legislators from countries including, Nigeria, Cape Verde Islands, Sudan and Uganda, said that they were considering making significant financial demands on multinationals that were exploiting Africa’s natural wealth without impacting significantly on their GDP.

In Zimbabwe, Mudenda said that environment laws have now been anchored in the constitution as human rights “anyone who feels that they are being exploited can file a case at the constitutional courts.”

Mudenda further said that besides Zimbabwe, other countries like Botswana are learning from Norway and imposing revenue clauses on multinationals investing in their countries that they must improve the wealth of these African countries through a 51 to 49 percent benefit sharing ratio where the host takes the majority.

In spite of the concerns raised, African legislators have said that the summit was a step in the right direction, particularly as they continued to forge global partnerships on natural resources now that various global processes and goals were coming to an end, especially the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and new ones were beginning to take shape.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has the world’s second-largest tropical forest landscape. Here, slash and burn agriculture and charcoal are the main causes of greenhouse gases emissions. Credit: Taylor Toeka Kakala/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
MEXICO CITY, Jun 8 2014 (IPS)

Developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly leading the way in providing a legal framework for climate security and are being hailed for their continued advancement in formulating climate change laws and policies.

China is not only an important emerging economic actor, but a key actor in any climate change scenario. China’s five-year national plan on climate change is also one of the best in the world, according to climate change legislators at the ongoing  Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) summit being held in Mexico from Jun. 6 to 8.

GLOBE International is an organisation comprising of national parliamentarians from over 80 countries worldwide. An estimated 290 legislators from about 70 countries are present at the summit, including speakers of parliament and presidents. They are expected to develop a new generation of international climate agreements and ensure that climate is placed at the heart of national laws.

The summit has castigated a number of developed countries, particularly Australia and Canada, for their refusal to engage in climate change talks as well as implementing international agreements that can enhance climate security, even as poorer nations such as Bangladesh continue to make significant investments in climate security.

GLOBE International’s director of policy and deputy secretary general Terry Townshend says that there have been a rapid advancement in climate change laws globally. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

In an interview with IPS, GLOBE International’s director of policy and deputy secretary general Terry Townshend says that there has been a rapid advancement in climate change laws globally. Excerpts follow:

Q: Has there been much progress with regards to climate change legislation?

A: GLOBE’s study that involved 66 developed and developing nations has revealed that in recent years, climate change legislations in these nations have risen from 47 laws to 487.

Most of this progress is in developing countries. By tackling climate change these countries are making their jobs easier in terms of addressing other challenges such as poverty.

Although emissions are not very high in African countries and they are not forcing the problem of climate change, they are feeling the impact. When we talk about climate change legislation, it is just as important to talk about adaptation and reducing disasters through mitigation. It is in every country’s best interest to understand what the impacts are likely to be and work towards reducing the risks.

Q: What gaps has GLOBE identified in these legislations particularly in Africa and Asia?

A: While there has been a huge increase in the number of laws on climate change, collectively all of these actions though impressive will not effectively address climate security. Emissions are still rising.

Most of the laws are not ambitious enough. A country can have a law that gives the framework, but just as important if not more important, is the ambition of that law. For instance, if a law says that we need to reduce emissions by five percent while we need to reduce by say 50 percent, then we say that the law is not ambitious enough.

Q: How can GLOBE influence this ambition because to some extent it is a reflection of an understanding that the country has on climate change?

A: GLOBE provides best practices from other countries with similar economic structure. The GLOBE groups that we have in Africa particularly in South Africa, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo are very keen to learn from what other countries have done. Other countries such as Ghana are making tremendous headway in climate-related laws.

Q: What is the scope and grasp of GLOBE in different regions and what is the attraction?

A: GLOBE has expanded rapidly and its geographic representation is broad and well spread. It has many members in Latin America in particular, good representation in Africa, Asia and Europe. We now have more representation in developing than developed countries. This is important because it is not GLOBE selecting people to work with, but working with people elected or chosen by their own people to represent their interests in parliament.

GLOBE offers support to legislators in the form that they need it. Many of them in developing countries do not necessarily have the capacity whether it is in research or support from their parliaments to do the necessary national analysis they need to inform development of legislation.

Q: How does GLOBE ensure that political changes do not interfere with ongoing processes? What happens when a member of GLOBE is not re-elected to parliament?

A: We are very strict about membership at the GLOBE chapters in individual countries. They should represent the political make up of that parliament. It should include government members and not just opposition members. This is crucial, if the government changes and if there was support from the party that was in opposition that is now in government then policies and laws that were made when they were in opposition are more likely to be supported.

Q:  How does this legislative organisation interact with organised Civil Society Organisations and local governments?

A: It is up to the national chapters to decide how they interact with the local groups. If they are developing a law, for example, it is up to them to decide who they would like to involve, or invite into discussions.

It is very much nationally led, GLOBE does not say to country chapters that you must do it this way or that way.

When we respond to legislators demand in a specific country for assistance we provide the assistance however we can. Sometimes it might be that we need to work with this non-governmental organisation or this think tank to develop our law, this is one way we can step in.

For example, in Mexico the GLOBE group wanted to work with Mexican civil society organisations and think tanks to help shape the law. So they held consultation workshops to make sure they use their expertise that is within the civil society community to inform the development of the law. While this is a very good way to do it, we can only share best practices but each country must decide how they want to move forward.

Q: Do GLOBE members have a good grasp of their respective parliaments? How is GLOBE able to determine that the legislators are influencing their respective parliaments?

A: We are always very keen to hear from GLOBE members on what they do with the information that they receive. The agreement that we will establish here will have some commitments for the legislators and we will be keen to hear what they have done with it once they get back to their parliaments.

We invite legislators to tell us what they are doing with that agreement, so we do not just convene and sign papers, we actively encourage them to deliver on the commitments.

Excerpt:

By Sam Olukoya
ABUJA, Jun 8 2014 (IPS)

Nigeria is one of Africa’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. A significant percentage of this pollution takes place in the Niger Delta region thanks to the existence of multination oil companies and the activities of hundreds of illegal refineries where local people process stolen crude oil.

For a country that is at the receiving end of the environmental impact of climate change, there is a growing sense that this West African country should curb its emission of greenhouse gases. Private initiatives and effective legislation are likely to play crucial roles in Nigeria’s drive to curbing its emissions.

Time for Nigeria to Curb its Own Emissions from IPS News on Vimeo.

Carbon Emissions Soon to Become Taxing for Big South African Polluters from IPS News on Vimeo.

An Indian farmer points to his modest plot of farmland, which no longer yields enough to feed his family. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, Jun 6 2014 (IPS)

Ramanjareyulu, a 55-year-old farmer from the southern India state of Andhra Pradesh, has been struggling to find his feet ever since inadequate rainfall dealt a blow to his harvest of groundnut and red gram (a pulse crop that grows primarily in India).

A man who once sustained his family of five off his small patch of farmland, Ramanjareyulu now finds himself in abject poverty, and is considering joining a massive exodus of farmers heading for the big cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad in the hopes of finding work as unskilled labourers.

“I don’t know why nature is so unkind to us,” the desperate farmer told IPS.

Dr. Y. V. Malla Reddy, director of the Bangalore-based Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre, which works with farmers in the region, has the answer to that question and is quick to articulate it: climate change.

"How do we adapt to disasters like [...] flash floods, to drought, to unseasonal rains, to multiple cyclones - all of which occurred in 2013-2014?" -- Chandra Bhusan, deputy director-general of the Centre for Science and Environment
“The farmers are now living in dire straits,” he told IPS. “Of the nearly 700,000 farmers in Anantapur [the largest district in Andhra Pradesh], 500,000 are in this situation due to a drastic reduction in the number of rainy days per year.”

All across India, similar warning signs indicate that the country is on a dangerous trajectory. From the disappearing Sundarbans (the largest single bloc of mangrove forest in the world situated in the Bay of Bengal), to the vast tracts of parched farmland in southern, western and northern India, to the plight of all those caught in the disaster-struck Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, extreme weather is taking its toll.

With carbon emissions increasing by 7.7 percent in 2012 – and CO2 emissions from coal plants shooting up by 10.2 percent that same year – the country seems to be contributing towards its own demise.

And the “worst is yet to come”, according to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found that the highly fertile Indo-Gangetic plains are under threat of a significant reduction in wheat yields.

Currently the area produces 90 million tons of grain annually, accounting for nearly 15 percent of global wheat production, but projections indicate a nearly 51 percent decrease in the highest yielding areas due to hotter temperatures.

Such a scenario could be disastrous for the roughly 200 million residents of the plains, whose food intake is dependent on harvests, experts say.

India is also one of the 27 countries that are “most vulnerable” to sea level rise caused by global warming.

According to the Geological Survey of India, a one-metre rise in sea level is expected to inundate about 1,000 square kilometres of the Sundarbans delta.

Nearly half of the 102 islands that comprise the U.N.-protected biosphere reserve have become uninhabitable due to rising seas and coastal erosion over the last four decades.

About a fifth of the southern part of this delta complex, the heart of a major tiger reserve, is already submerged. At the current rate of erosion, scientists are predicting a loss of 15 percent of farmlands and a further 250 square km of the national park.

Increased soil salinity has resulted in miserable agricultural yields and thousands of climate refugees.

Another major red flag for India was last year’s Uttarakhand tragedy, when cloudbursts and glacial leaks caused a flash flood that swept away thousands of pilgrims and tourists in the northern state in what scientists called a ‘Himalayan tsunami’.

International legislation

Against this backdrop, Indian lawmakers are joining some 500 delegates descending on Mexico City on Jun. 6-8 for the second World Summit of Legislators organised by GLOBE International for the purpose of drafting an international climate agreement centered on national legislation.

India Ready for ‘Robust’ Stand on Climate Change from IPS News on Vimeo.

According to Pranav Chandan Sinha, director of GLOBE India, the Indian public is waking up to the realities of climate change, thus pushing the government to seek a balance between development and environmental protection.

Sinha told IPS the new government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has an absolute majority in parliament, is likely to pursue sustainable development goals, in line with GLOBE International’s emphasis on the importance of wealth accounting, valuation of ecosystem services and legislative reforms.

Ever since the Uttarakhand disaster, for instance, GLOBE India has been engaging legislators from various states, particularly in the north, on the need for legislative reforms and combined efforts to tackle climate change.

The purpose of forums like the summit currently underway in Mexico “is not only to educate but to demystify international negotiations on environment, sustainability and climate change and communicate them at the national and state level,” Jayanat Chaudhary, former Indian parliament member and founder of GLOBE India, told IPS.

Although these meetings cannot hope to generate binding action, they serve to inform lawmakers who can push their respective governments to take a more robust stand on issues like emissions targets, said Chandra Bhusan, deputy director-general of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, India’s leading green pressure group.

Bhusan says India has to meet multiple challenges on the climate change front, particularly due to the centralisation of power that stymies action on a local level.

“One challenge is adaptation itself,” he told IPS. “How do we adapt to disasters like the Uttarakhand flash floods, to drought, to unseasonal rains, to multiple cyclones – all of which occurred in 2013-2014. This has been a period of extreme weather and we have to adapt to the variability,” he asserted.

“There is an energy challenge too. About 800 million people in India still cook on cow dung and firewood stoves. So we need clean energy for all and we cannot say we will not do anything,” Bhusan added.

Still, the forecast is not entirely bleak, with various local governments taking some positive steps towards accountability and sustainability.

Uttarakhand, for instance, recently became the first state in India to start tabulating its gross environment product (GEP) – a measure of the health of the state’s natural resources – to be released annually alongside its GDP figures.

In partnership with Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Economic Systems (WAVES), the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh has begun tabulating costs of timber, water and minerals.

A 2013 report entitled Green National Accounts in India also spells out the Union Government’s plans to include the value of natural resources in its annual economic calculations.

Green activists say these positive steps give India a stronger voice in the international arena, which it should use to press polluting western nations for a binding agreement on carbon emissions.

(END)

Mangroves in the Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve, which has the most extensive mangrove forest system along Mexico’s Pacific coast, could be lost if the Las Cruces hydroelectric dam is built, warn environmentalists and local residents. Credit: Courtesy of WWF

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 5 2014 (IPS)

The Las Cruces hydroelectric project in the northwestern state of Nayarit is one of the threats to biodiversity in Mexico, according to activists.

“It will have an impact on the Marismas Nacionales wetlands reserve, because the dam will retain 90 percent of the sediment which is necessary for the survival of the ecosystem,” said Heidy Orozco, executive director of the non-governmental organisation Nuiwari.

Besides, “the hydrological regime would be modified and the low-lying jungle would be flooded,” she told IPS.

Nuiwari, which forms part of the Free San Pedro River Movement, has been dedicated since 2006 to protecting the San Pedro river basin, where the dam would be built.

The Federal Electricity Commission plans to build and operate the hydropower plant 65 km north of the city of Tepic, in Nayarit. It will have an installed capacity of 240 MW and a 188-metre high dam, with a reservoir covering 5,349 hectares.

The environmental impact study for the dam acknowledges that subsistence-level farming and small-scale livestock production will be replaced by fishing activities in the reservoir.

The Marismas Nacionales Biosphere Reserve, the most extensive mangrove forest system along Mexico’s Pacific coast, is the year-round habitat for 20,000 water birds and is a winter home to more than 100,000 migratory birds.

The reserve is recognised as a Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention.

In the Marismas – which means marsh – Reserve more than 300 species of animals have been reported, 60 of which are endangered or threatened, especially due to overuse and destruction of habitat, and 51 of which are endemic, according to the Ramsar Convention, in effect since 1975.

Fishing activity that depends on the wetland ecosystem generates between 6.5 and 13.5 million dollars a year for local communities, according to official figures.

Furthermore, the dam would destroy 14 sacred sites and ceremonial centres of the
Náyeri or Cora, Wixárica or Huichol, Tepehuano and Mexicanero indigenous communities.

Protection of biodiversity and the distribution of benefits are the core focuses of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilisation, signed in Nagoya, Japan in 2010.

The protocol, which complements the Convention on Biological Diversity, in force since 1993, stipulates that every signatory must adopt measures to ensure access to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources and held by indigenous and local communities.

The protocol establishes that such knowledge must be “accessed in accordance with prior informed consent” and under “mutually agreed terms”.

“Parties shall in accordance with domestic law take into consideration indigenous and local communities’ customary laws, community protocols and procedures, as applicable, with respect to traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources,” the protocol adds.

Pedro Álvarez-Icaza, general coordinator of Biological Corridors and Resources in the government’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), described the difficulties in complying with these stipulations.

“The big problem is how the benefits are to be distributed,” he told IPS. “Who do they go to – the community? The person providing the information? A group of people? I’m also worried about false expectations – about the idea that a plant could give rise to a medicine, and people spend 10 years waiting for that to happen.”

The government official also said “the legal framework is not necessarily the most up-to-date. The key is to strengthen the capacity of local and indigenous communities and raise their awareness of their right to the fair distribution of benefits.

“The important thing is information, so that if a country wants to patent a resource, it has to demonstrate that the information was obtained through a benefit-sharing agreement, with prior, informed consent,” he said.

With financing from Germany’s technical cooperation agency, GTZ, CONABIO is carrying out the project “Governance on Biodiversity: Fair and Equitable Benefit-Sharing Arising from the Use and Management of Biological Diversity”, to establish a group of pilot cases to serve as reference points.

The initiative, which has a budget of six million euros (8.2 million dollars), is to run though 2018.

“As long as the autonomy of indigenous peoples is not recognised and traditional knowledge is not valued, it is a mere expression of good intentions. There will be no fair and equitable distribution of benefits,” independent consultant Patricia Arendar told IPS.

Mexico is one of the 12 most biologically diverse countries in the world. The country has identified 2,692 species of fish, 361 amphibians, 804 reptiles, 1,096 birds, 535 mammals and over 25,000 plants, according to CONABIO statistics.

The Commission also indicates that there are 127 officially extinct species, 475 endangered, 896 threatened and 1,185 species subject to special protection in Mexico.

The Sectoral Programme of Environment and Natural Resources 2013-2018 indicates that natural ecosystems have been lost in nearly 29 percent of Mexican territory while the ecosystems in the remaining 71 percent are surviving with different levels of conservation.

Natural capital is one of the issues on the agenda of the Jun. 6-8 Second World Summit of Legislators of GLOBE International (the Global Legislators Organisation) in Mexico City, which will draw nearly 500 parliamentarians from more than 80 nations.

With financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Mexico’s environment ministry is leading the analysis of options for adapting the country’s legal framework to the Nagoya Protocol. The alternatives are modifying the law on wildlife, passed in 2000, or creating a specific new law.

So far, 92 countries have signed the Nagoya Protocol. But only 36 of the 50 needed for it to enter into force have ratified it. The only Latin American countries to have done so are Honduras, Mexico and Panama.

“Without a state policy for the protection of biodiversity, it is very difficult to develop strategies around the Nagoya Protocol, for example,” Arendar said. “It’s not a priority in today’s politics. There are more natural land and marine areas, and greater knowledge about biodiversity, but we’re still losing biodiversity.”

“The dam shouldn’t be built,” argued Orozco. “It is unacceptable from any point of view; the few benefits don’t justify the terrible permanent impacts. We demand that Mexico live up to international environment and human rights treaties, but experience from other cases indicates to us that this doesn’t always happen.”

By Sujoy Dhar
NEW DELHI, Jun 5 2014 (IPS)

As hundreds of legislators descend on Mexico City for the second GLOBE Summit, slated to run from Jun. 6-8, many rising nations are taking stock of their national policies in relation to climate change and global warming.

As one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases, India is preparing itself for a predicted onslaught of climate-related catastrophes in the coming years. Already it is one of the 27 countries deemed “most vulnerable” to sea-level rise, according to the Geological Survey of India.

Last year the South Asian nation saw a 7.7 percent increase in carbon emissions, with emissions from coal growing by a staggering 10.2 percent, according to a report by the Global Carbon Project.

With a newly elected government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India is poised to play a leading role in international climate talks, and will be testing the waters at the World Legislators Summit currently underway in Mexico.

India Ready for ‘Robust’ Stand on Climate Change from IPS News on Vimeo.

By Terry Townshend
BEIJING, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

With leading politicians meeting next month for the World Summit of Legislators in Mexico City, it is clear that a new global climate deal is needed.  Each year, the world is seeing signs of climate change’s accelerating impacts, from longer, more intense droughts to stronger storms and rising seas.  

In contrast to the slow pace of international negotiations to combat climate change, national legislation is advancing at a startling rate.  This is a major surprise to many of those who ascribe to the conventional wisdom that progress has waned.

Remarkably, since 1997, almost 450 climate-related laws have been passed in 66 countries covering around 88 percent of global greenhouse gases released by human activities.  And, this surprising legislative momentum is happening across all continents.

Terry Townshend

Encouragingly, this progress is being led by big developing countries, such as China and Mexico.  Together, these emerging markets will represent some 8 billion of the projected 9 billion people on Earth in 2050.

These are the key findings of the 4th edition of the GLOBE Climate Legislation Study released in February.  This is the only compendium of climate legislative action created by legislators from around the world, and the most comprehensive audit yet of the extent and breadth of the emerging legislative response to climate change.

Our message is that we believe national legislation should be at the heart of a new international agreement to tackle climate change.  And this study is proof that it can be achieved in every country.

While optimistic, we must also be honest. These laws are not yet enough to limit global average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the level scientists say we must not breach if we are to avoid the worst risks of climate change.

Yet these actions are putting into place the legal frameworks necessary to measure, report, verify and manage greenhouse gas emissions – the cause of man-made climate change.“Legislators must be at the centre of international negotiations and policy processes, not just on climate change, but also on the full range of sustainable development issues” – Terry Townshend

As the formal U.N. negotiations move towards Paris in 2015, the scheduled conclusion of negotiations on a post-2020 framework, this legislation is creating a strong foundation on which a post-2020 global agreement can be built.  And, at the World Summit of Legislators we will discuss precisely how best to make this happen in practice.

It is increasingly clear that not only is agreement in Paris dependent on national legislation in place in advance, implementation of the Paris agreement will only be effective through national laws, overseen by well-informed legislators from all sides of the political spectrum.

A national “commitment” or “contribution” put forward at the United Nations will only be credible – and durable beyond the next election – if it is backed up by national legislation.  And this must ideally be supported by cross-party legislators who put in place a credible set of policies and measures to ensure effective implementation.

That is why legislators must be at the centre of international negotiations and policy processes, not just on climate change, but also on the full range of sustainable development issues. And it is why, on climate change, governments must prioritise supporting implementation of national legislation between now and 2015.

GLOBE members recognise this and have been at the forefront of developing the legislative response to climate change. In 2008, in the United Kingdom, for example, members shaped and strengthened the Climate Change Act. In 2009, South Korean members saw “Green Growth” legislation passed.

In 2013, members in Micronesia were instrumental in the passage of climate-related legislation showing the power of island voices, and in Costa Rica a draft General Law on Climate Change was introduced.  Meanwhile, members in China, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Peru, among others, are developing legislation now.

However, we need to do much more. And that is why, in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations, GLOBE has launched the Partnership for Climate Legislation to promote the advance of climate-related laws.

Of course, the role of legislators does not end when legislation is passed. It is one thing to pass legislation and another to implement it. That is why GLOBE is equipping legislators to be as effective as possible in holding their governments to account. This is crucial if the agreement made in Paris in 2015 is to deliver.

Legislators – with their formal responsibilities on legislation and oversight – are a fundamental part of an effective strategy to tackle the world’s environmental and sustainable development challenges. To maximise the chances of success, they must be at the centre of all international processes and negotiations.

Success in Paris to create a climate agreement, the follow-through to implement the accord, and the fate of our planet depend on our actions. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

A tea farmer in Nyeri County, central Kenya contemplates what to do after his crop was damaged by severe weather patterns. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

Daniel Njau, a small-scale farmer from Nyeri County, central Kenya, is torn. He just may have to give up his six-hectare tea plantation in favour of farming climate-resilient food crops.

“Tea is very sensitive to climate change. Any drastic weather changes spell doom for the cash crop. In recent years, I have made more losses than gains,” he told IPS.

But statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture show that Njau is only one of an estimated 500,000 small-scale tea farmers facing uncertainty when it comes to their livelihoods.

United Nations scientists have also warned that as maize-growing areas become warmer, production of maize — the country’s main staple crop — will reduce by a fifth. Yields of other staple foods, including beans, will shrink by 68 percent.

At least 300,000 maize farmers are affected, says the Ministry of Agriculture.

For sometime now, experts have blamed the low adaptive capacity on the lack of a national policy and law on climate change in this East African nation.

When it comes to a climate change policy, Kenya’s legal framework is sectoral and fragmented, with each sector containing its own legislation. A 2012 Climate Change Authority Bill was rejected by Kenya’s former president Mwai Kibaki in 2013.

But Kenya’s National Assembly deputy speaker Joyce Laboso told IPS that while the 2012 bill was rejected because of a lack of public involvement in its discussion, “the new Climate Change Bill 2014 has garnered significant political goodwill.”

The 2014 bill is expected to provide a legal and institutional framework for climate change mitigation and adaption efforts.

Once it becomes law, the bill will also advise national and county governments on regional and international conventions, and treaties and agreements on climate change to which Kenya is a party or should be a party to. The bill will also facilitate their implementation.

John Kioli, the brains behind the Climate Change Authority Bill 2012 and chairperson of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, says that the 2012 bill “has now been resurrected in the form of the Climate Change Bill 2014.”

According to the deputy speaker Laboso the 2014 bill was introduced in parliament in January “and it has already gone through the first reading and is now at the committee level awaiting its second reading.”

Kioli pointed out that “allocation of funding for climate change is a major challenge.”

He explained that had the 2012 Climate Change Authority Bill been enacted, it would have established an independent climate change authority, with legal powers to self-regulate, and a climate change trust fund to finance adaptation projects.

The new 2014 bill will establish a climate change fund to facilitate climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Government estimates show that the country’s five-year National Climate Change Action Plan will require a substantial investment of about 12.76 billion dollars. This is equivalent to the current 2013 to 2014 national budget. The action plan is a blueprint on how to operationalise Kenya’s National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS).

Although Kioli said that in as far as legislation was concerned the country is heading in the right direction. He pointed out that challenges abound particularly when it comes to “the lack of understanding on the difference between environment and climate change.”

Kioli said that this was evident from the fact that some quarters have been calling for the revising of the 1999 Environment, Management and Coordination Act to serve as a solution to climate change.

“We carried out research on the effects of climate change on various sectors, including agriculture, and concluded that there were significant legislative gaps,” Kioli pointed out.

Kioli said that the country’s first tangible commitment to combating climate change was in the December 2009 promulgation of the NCCRS — a plan that would ensure robust measures were put in place to combat climate change.

Climate change experts say that though significant, NCCRS is just a plan of action. It is neither a national policy nor law.

Although a policy is not enacted by the national assembly and therefore not legally binding, it is an important framework implemented through an act. And the National Climate Change Action Plan highlighted the need to have a policy and law specifically on climate change.

Meanwhile, Laboso said that the Environment and Natural Resources Committee together with the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources have been meeting various stakeholders, including senators and members of the county assembly, to iron out any contentious issues and to make relevant amendments to the Climate Change Bill 2014.

“The amendments will be tabled in parliament in a report together with the bill for discussion once parliament resumes from recess this month [June]. The pace is good since both the national policy on climate change and the 2014 bill are been developed concurrently,” Laboso said.

By Alejandro Encinas
Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

It is now two years since Mexico passed the General Law on Climate Change, a landmark piece of national environmental legislation.

This was a truly significant move and came at a time when the country had also just approved a far-reaching REDD+ law that has set the benchmark for international best practice on tackling deforestation and forest degradation.

Alejandro Encinas

Passage of Mexico’s far-reaching climate law (which was supported, significantly, on a cross-party basis) highlights the progress on climate change now being made globally. Numerous national economies have passed landmark climate and energy-related legislation over the last few years.

These countries are advancing laws at a pace that contrasts sharply with the U.N.-brokered climate change talks that formally convene again in Peru in November.

This trend comes at a time of pivotal change in international relations with a period of economic downturn in recent years in the West being counterpoised with the increasingly rapid shift of power to some emerging economies.

Mirroring this is a fundamental repositioning of the centre of gravity of the global climate change debate towards domestic climate change legislation. This is nothing less than game changing.“Until now, it [the political debate on climate change] has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimise their share” – Alejandro Encinas

In the last two years, there has been substantive legislative progress right across the developing world.

In the Americas, for instance, Bolivia passed its Framework Law on Mother Earth and Integral Development to Live Well; El Salvador adopted its National Climate Change Strategy; In Ecuador, Decree 1815 established the Intersectoral National Strategy for Climate Change; and in Costa Rica a draft General Law on Climate Change was introduced, and subsequently approved this year.

In the Asia-Pacific region, China published its National Adaptation Plan and made progress in drafting its national climate change law; Indonesia extended its forest moratorium; Kazakhstan introduced a pilot emissions trading scheme; and Micronesia passed its Climate Change Act in late 2013

In the Middle East and North Africa, Jordan passed its National Climate Change Policy; and the United Arab Emirates launched a mandatory Energy Efficiency Standardisation and Labelling Scheme.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya adopted the 2013-2017 Climate Change Action Plan; Mozambique adopted the 2013-2025 National Strategy for Climate Change; Tanzania passed its National Strategy on REDD+; Nigeria’s Legislative Council approved the adoption of a National Climate Change Policy and Response Strategy.

As in Mexico, adoption of such initiatives is – with a few notable exceptions­ – largely cross-party.

One key reason for this encouraging move towards political consensus is that many legislators increasingly recognise the positive co-benefits of climate change legislation. These range from greater resource efficiency and increased energy security to the reduction of air pollution.

All this, in turn, mirrors a crucial shift in the political debate on climate change. Until now, it has been largely framed by the narrative of sharing a global burden – with governments, naturally, trying to minimise their share.

Now, legislators increasingly view the issue as one of national self-interest, with each nation trying to maximise the benefits of climate change legislation.

Indeed, those countries with strong national legislation are in a better position to promote inward investment on low-carbon technologies because there is greater business certainty rather than high regulatory risk.

Encouraging as this shift is, it is as yet insufficient to avoid dangerous climate change of greater than 2 degrees Celsius.

Nonetheless, the national legal and policy frameworks to measure, report, verify and manage carbon that are now being created have the potential of significant tightening.

This will be the more likely as governments experience the benefits of lower energy use, reduced costs, improved competitiveness and greater energy security.

As this happens, the goal must be to translate such progress into a comprehensive, global deal in 2015 in Paris. And, this will be a key focus of the June 6-8 World Summit of Legislators that the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE)is hosting in Mexico City.

Such a deal will be made more likely when even more countries are committed to taking action on climate change because it is to their advantage rather than out of perceived altruism. In other words, such a deal will reflect domestic political conditions, not define them.

The U.N. negotiations should be used as the forum for countries to invest more in climate diplomacy and practical international cooperation.

This will help to expedite the creation of conditions within nations, both developed and developing, as well as its provincial regions, municipalities, specific cities and its metropolitan areas, that will enable them to agree a comprehensive global treaty in 2015.

It is ironic that countries that have found it hard to agree to international action are now outdoing their commitments in domestic legislation.

Having taken those steps at home they will find it much easier to commit to a global agreement which confirms the decisions they have already taken of their sovereign free will. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

Moses Ginindza (l) and Mphumuzi Magwagwa, Swazi firewood vendors. While wood poaching is illegal under environment laws in many African countries, researchers note that nothing is being done in providing alternative sources of energy to curb deforestation.Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Despite a raft of legislation dealing with the environment, African countries are still falling short when it comes to enforcing the legal instruments that respond to challenges posed by climate change, researchers say. 

“Most African countries have robust legislation on the environment. But good on paper as they are, they fall far short of implementation,” Samuel Ogalla, programme manager at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), a coalition of civil society organisations from the continent, told IPS.

Many countries have acts of parliament and statutory laws in place that, for example, punish those contributing to global warming. Deforestation is a huge challenge towards implementing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) programmes and while wood poaching is illegal under environment laws, researchers note that nothing is being done to provide alternative sources of energy to curb deforestation.

While there has been a push to familiarise African parliamentarians on climate change issues to assist them with drafting climate legislation for their local realities, existing country laws have also failed to follow up on climate change concerns.

“African countries need to go beyond mere crafting of environmental laws to full implementation of such laws with clear monitoring, reporting and verifiable mechanisms if the continent must address climate change and other environmental challenges facing the region,” Ogalla said.

One such example is Zimbabwe. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), this country has one of the most comprehensive environmental legislations in southern Africa.

Yet Zimbabwe faces huge drawbacks in addressing and meeting its REDD+ commitments because of decades-long deforestation.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southern Africa, the German Green Political Foundation, says Africa lacks comprehensive legal frameworks and this “may present barriers to the implementation of adaptation responses, and possibly increase the vulnerabilities of certain groups such as women and the poor.”

The organisation has also noted that while there are campaigns to raise climate change awareness, there has been “fewer investments in legislative aspects.”

Researchers say this has relegated the climate change drive to the periphery of public policy at a time when the call is for African countries to domesticate international conventions of which they are signatories such as the UNFCC.

Laws must go beyond punishing wood poachers and polluters to addressing the core issues, says Charles Ndondo, director of Carbon Green Africa, a company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating REDD projects in Zimbabwe.

“Legislation to address climate change issues [in Zimbabwe] has always been there if you consider the Forestry Act … and various legislations which deal with the environment,” Ndondo told IPS.

“The only challenge with these acts is that they are more punitive rather than addressing the root causes of climate change. The Forestry Act prohibits people from cutting firewood for fuel purposes but does not provide alternatives and hence the challenge,” he said.

The South African-based Trade Law Centre, in recommendations to Africa’s regional blocs, including the Southern African Development Community, East African Community, and the Common Market for East and Southern African, noted that the constraints that African countries face in implementing successful strategies to address climate change include “weak institutional and legal frameworks.”

“Regional and national legal frameworks can enable countries in the region to build adaptive capacity and reduce their vulnerability to the effects of climate change,” the centre observed.

These are the “bottlenecks” GLOBE International legislators across the continent are trying to address, says Innocent Onah, director of GLOBE Nigeria.

GLOBE International brings together parliamentarians across the world and helps them draft laws “in pursuit of sustainable development” and convenes the World Summit of Legislators to advance relevant climate legislation.

“While it may be correct that without climate change legislation a lot would not be achieved domestically, I am of the opinion that even where laws exists, if there’s lack of capacity to implement or enforce the laws, we are back to square one,” Onah told IPS.

“Legislation is one of the tools that governments can use to tackle climate change problems, in Africa, [but] the major issue is not the absence of laws but lack of resources and the political will to implement established laws and policies,” he said.

While Onah observed that “parliamentarians from different countries have different levels of environmental competencies,” PACJA’s Ogalla says that more laws are not necessarily the answer.

“More and new legislation are being crafted on environment across the continent but the irony is that with all these laws, the continent still remains the vulnerable hot spot to climate change and other environmental problems,” Ogalla said.

Domesticating international agreements allows “countries [to] forge ahead with distinctive national actions that run alongside international collective action,” says the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Efforts are underway to restore the tidal flatlands in Mikawa Bay in central Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. Credit: Aichi Fisheries Research Institute (AFRI)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Undaunted by Japan’s national consensus to boost the economy, which has been mired in lackluster growth for decades, environmentalists are taking baby steps towards incorporating climate change into national legislation.

Proponents of the plan to make Japan more environmentally friendly are up against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s popular ‘Abenomics’ regime that promises to accelerate the country’s two-percent GDP growth through a combination of fiscal stimulus packages and structural reforms.

Crippled by the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, Japan has seen an increase in fuel imports to make up for the deficit of nuclear power, which once supplied 30 percent of the country’s energy needs.

The world’s third largest economy, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of 5.93 trillion dollars, Japan now imports 90 percent of its energy, an arrangement that has left it with a deficit of 10.5 billion dollars.

"[Parliamentarians] need to realise that economic growth can only be sustainable by calculating the contribution of natural resources." -- Jinichi Ueda, deputy director of GLOBE Japan
It has also resulted in a sharp spike in carbon emissions – by 2012 the country had recorded an emissions rate of 2.46 tons per unit of GDP, compared to 2.3 tons in 2010. Japan now ranks among the world’s ‘top 12’ emitters of greenhouse gases.

Against this backdrop, environmentalists have watched with dismay as the Abe administration has backed away from the previous government’s promise to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Now, with their eyes on the upcoming GLOBE Summit of World Legislators scheduled to take place in Mexico City from Jun. 6-8 with the aim of formulating an international agreement on climate legislation, Japanese environmentalists and lawmakers are struggling to revive old promises.

GLOBE Japan – a case for environmental accounting

The Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE, was founded in 1989 with the express goal of leveraging national legislation in response to urgent environmental challenges.

Now linked to the legislators’ protocol adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 2012, GLOBE prioritises lawmakers’ role in shaping a nation’s budgetary allocations to account for increasing natural disasters as a result of global warming, and to prevent the destruction of natural environments that has long been justified as necessary for economic growth.

One of the organisation’s projects that resonates particularly in Japan is the Globe Natural Capital Initiative (GNCI), which is based on the cold reality that the unsustainable use of natural resources does not, in the long run, accelerate a country’s GDP; in fact, it can actually make a country poorer.

“We are working hard to win the support of parliamentarians to implement legislation that will make environmental accounting a criteria for policy making,” Jinichi Ueda, deputy director of GLOBE Japan, told IPS, hastening to add: “It’s not easy.”

Environmental accounting considers the impact of economic activity on a country’s natural resources and calculates all related costs of development including, for example, the bill for cleaning up a contaminated site, waste management expenses, or environmental fines and penalties.

Ueda assists GLOBE Japan Head Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former foreign and environment minister known for her insistence on calculating the economic benefit of ecosystems.

Kawaguchi, now a member of the House of Councilors – the upper house of Japan’s National Diet – has launched study sessions for parliamentarians to deepen their understanding of the country’s natural capital, and gain their support for the GNCI.

“The first step to including environmental accounting in mainstream policy is to convince Japanese politicians through study programmes. They need to realise that economic growth can only be sustainable by calculating the contribution of natural resources,” Ueda asserted.

Already, Japan has embarked on meticulous research that can be deployed to motivate its political leaders.

A case in point is the Aichi Fisheries Research Institute (AFRI), which, under the leadership of Dr. Mitsuyasu Waku, is carrying out a multi-million-yen project to restore the tidal flatlands in Mikawa Bay, located in central Japan’s Aichi Prefecture.

Coastal wetlands formed from mud deposits, tidal flats are essential ecosystems, providing fertile breeding ground for hundreds of species and preventing coastal erosion. The tidal flats in Mikawa Bay are considered one of Japan’s most fertile fishing grounds, supporting a diverse array of marine species as well as the local economy.

Despite their documented benefits at the local and national levels, the tidal flats are an endangered ecosystem in Japan where, in the 1970s, 1,200 hectares of the rich land in the eastern part of Milkawa Bay was cleared in preparation for the construction of a harbour.

The result was a significant increase in ‘red tides’, also known as algal blooms – unusually high concentrations of aquatic microorganisms that can release natural toxins that are fatal to marine and coastal species. Red tides have long been associated with the high mortality rates of manatees, and can devastate fishing yields.

Speaking to IPS, Waku explained that the restoration and preservation of Mikawa Bay – famous for its massive catches of short-necked clams that provide a livelihood for thousands of fisher folk – strengthens the economic argument for protecting natural capital.

Clam catches in Aichi total roughly 20,000 tons annually, representing profits of some 39 million dollars for the local fishing industry every year.

“The economic benefits alone of maintaining tidal flats, not even including their natural water purification contribution, is pretty obvious,” Waku told IPS.

Other GLOBE proponents, such as Akiri Omori, a macro economist at Yokohama City University, believe that the key to implementing environmental accounting lies in highlighting the economic benefits of such legislature.

In an interview with IPS, he explained the challenge of changing the deeply-entrenched notion that protecting natural resources could undermine the nation’s per-capital GDP, a long-held belief that has put out roots during the reign of Abenomics.

“Balancing economic and environmental benefits is not easy,” he said, adding that the “fundamental clash” is caused by people wanting short-term results and refusing to exercise the patience required to “understand the limitless wealth provided by natural resources.”

Omori is currently developing robust indicators – such as calculating the economic benefits stemming from the sale of environmentally sustainable goods – that make a strong case for preserving natural capital.

An excellent example of this is the popular organic farming movement in Toyooka City in western Japan that is encouraging collaborative projects between food producers and local financial institutions.

Hirotaka Wakamori, head of the promotion section at an organisation called Eco Valley, told IPS that the number of eco businesses in Toyooka doubled to 41 in the last year, the result of a 2005 regulation passed by city councilors.

Termed the Environment Economic Strategy, the regulation allows the city to allocate up to 300 million dollars annually to support ventures between local companies and farmers.

“The project was started with the aim of protecting the environment from chemicals used in farming,” Wakamori explained. “The economic benefits for local farmers and the city financiers have convinced legislators to act faster.”

Organic farming constitutes a major breakthrough in Japan, which is second only to Israel in terms of the quantity of pesticides applied each year to agricultural land, totaling roughly 1.55 tons for every 247 acres.

Studies have shown that the manufacture and use of pesticides contribute about three percent of the 100-year global warming potential (GWP) from crops.

A movement towards organic food production, experts say, is just one of the many initiatives that require the support of strong national legislation in Japan.

(END)

The sea level near the Federated States of Micronesia is rising by 10 millimetres per year, more than three times the global average. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, May 29 2014 (IPS)

The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a western Pacific Island state located north of Papua New Guinea and east of Palau, has become a regional pioneer in drafting national legislation centred on climate change.

In December last year the government passed the Climate Change Act, making it compulsory for state sectors, including those responsible for the environment, disaster management, transportation, infrastructure, health, education and finance, to mainstream climate adaptation in all policies and action plans. The president is also required to report to congress annually on the Act’s implementation.

“The legislation is a first in a Pacific Island country and a small island state, so we broke new ground,” Lam Dang, legislative counsel to the Micronesian congress, told IPS.

"One alternative for a small island country to the deadlock in international climate change negotiation [is] to pass our own domestic legislation." -- Lam Dang, legislative counsel to the Micronesian congress
The legislation acknowledges the profound challenge that extreme climate hazards pose to human security and economic health. It reinforces, too, the rationale that action on climate change will only have an enduring effect if enforced.

When high tides flood coastal areas or a typhoon descends on the Pacific Island state, local – and often low-income – communities suffer the most. Thus their experiences and input were crucial to the development of the new policy, said Dang.

“The main concern at the community level is sea-level rise with the resulting loss of agricultural capacity and pollution of drinking water,” Dang said.

Most of Micronesia’s population of 104,000 live in close proximity to coastlines and are engaged in subsistence fishing, as well as farming of crops like taro, banana and yam. The average subsistence household income is close to 11,000 dollars per year.

But the sea level near the island state is rising by 10 millimetres per year, more than three times the global average, leading to more aggressive ‘king tides’ and coastal erosion. Flooding has damaged villages and infrastructure and contaminated arable land and fresh groundwater supplies, affecting thousands of people. As a result, food and water insecurity is a consistent challenge for communities and the government.

According to the Pacific Climate Change Science Program, Micronesia will experience increasing air and sea surface temperatures; rising sea levels; higher rainfall; and typhoons with faster-than-average wind speeds during this century.

The country is already vulnerable to natural disasters and endures an annual typhoon season from July to November.

Suzie Yoma, executive director of the Micronesia Red Cross Society in Pohnpei, recalled the devastation wrought by Typhoon Chata’an in 2002 when a landslide triggered by excessive rainfall tragically buried 47 people in Chuuk state. In 2004 Typhoon Sudal damaged 90 percent of homes and infrastructure on Yap Island and affected more than 6,000 people.

Small islands on the global stage

The groundbreaking reform was informed by FSM’s participation in international meetings of the Global Legislators Organisation, otherwise known as GLOBE International, whose objective is to support national lawmakers in developing legislation that promotes sustainable development.

At a time when the international community seems unable to reach consensus on a carbon emissions peak – which scientists have warned is essential to prevent a global temperature increase of two degrees Celsius – Small Island Developing States like Micronesia struggle to be heard at the global level, compared to industrialised super-powers, such as the United States, Russia and China.

Talks at the GLOBE summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012, followed by the conference on climate change adaptation in Beijing in 2013, were clear calls to action.

“It became clear after discussions with the large number of gathered legislators from around the world that one alternative for a small island country to the deadlock in international climate change negotiation was to pass our own domestic legislation,” Dang explained.

By demonstrating action with clear accountability at the national level, developing nations hope to galvanise movement towards a binding international climate change agreement that includes high carbon emitting industrialised nations. Currently, the Pacific Islands as a region produces some 0.006 percent of greenhouse gases, yet the people here are bearing the brunt of melting ice and rising seas.

The potential of global warming to increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters and their impact on human settlements, livelihoods and economic infrastructure prompted the government of Micronesia to integrate disaster risk management into its climate law.

Over the past 60 years natural disasters have affected 9.2 million people in the Pacific Islands region, incurring damage costs of 3.2 billion dollars.

Micronesia’s policy is aligned with a broader regional Pacific Islands strategy to incorporate climate change and disaster risk management into policies and legislation. Regional development organisations such as the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) have supported this approach since 2008.

Andrew Yatilman, director of FSM’s office of environment and emergency management, said the integrated policy would strengthen the operation of his division.

“Activities [related to disaster risk and climate change] tend to be carried out by staff separately, with climate change generally viewed more as an environmental issue,” he said. “We are now in the process of realigning our programme to make the two more complimentary.”

Benefits include reducing the duplication of tasks and more effectively utilising limited funding and resources.

President Emmanuel Mori has called the Climate Change Act “essential [for] protecting our nation and furthering the interests and wellbeing of our people.”

The country’s leadership will play a critical role in making that objective a reality.

“We can pass the best law but it is up to the executive branch to implement it,” Dang emphasised. “If there is enough political will, the legislation itself is very flexible and allows for continual input.”

Micronesia’s leaders have advocated tirelessly for international action to address climate change, especially at the United Nations.

At the 19^th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Warsaw, Poland, in November 2013, Micronesia was a key supporter of a proposal to reduce the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) through the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that aims to gradually eradicate substances that contribute to ozone depletion.

HFCs, manufactured gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning, are believed to be highly detrimental to the atmosphere and their use is increasing by 10 to 15 percent per year.

According to GLOBE International, worldwide legislative action to date will not limit the global average temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, widely accepted by the international scientific community as the global warming safety threshold.

Micronesian leaders would like their commitment to inspire a global sense of responsibility for the future environmental fate of all nations and their peoples.

(END)

South Africa, the world’s 12th highest emitter of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is attempting to transition to a low-carbon economy. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
CAPE TOWN, May 28 2014 (IPS)

To curb greenhouse gas emissions, South Africa wants to put a tax on carbon emissions from big polluters.

The aim of making polluters pay for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere is to help South Africa, the world’s 12^th highest emitter of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, transition to a low-carbon economy.

“We have one of the most carbon intensive economies in the world,” Anton Cartwright, a researcher on the green economy at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities, told IPS.

Coal-burning power plants provide close to ninety percent of South Africa’s electricity, making the economy highly carbon intensive.

“We don’t get a great bang for buck on our coal,” said Cartwright. “We use a low-grade coal with a very high CO2 content.”

The tax was slated to take effect in 2015 but in February this year National Treasury announced it would be pushed back to January 2016, citing the need for “further consultation.”

Offsets to cushion blow to industry

Initially, the carbon tax would see big polluters, including companies in the mining, fossil fuel and steel sectors, paying 11.50 dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent on between 20 and 40 percent of their total carbon emissions.

To cushion the effect on industry, the National Treasury has proposed allowing polluters to lower their tax liability by investing in carbon offsets.

“The combination of a tax and offsets is very sensible,” said Cartwright. “You’re priming the market and then providing flexibility.”

A carbon offset is a measure that reduces, avoids or sequesters emissions. Polluters buy credits, each equivalent to one tonne of carbon, from verified projects — including, for example, reforestation programmes and initiatives that increase energy efficiency in the housing sector — at prices cheaper than the tax.

South Africa’s large-scale carbon offset market is currently stagnant.

“There is no trading happening at the moment,” Robbie Louw, director of Promethium Carbon, a South African carbon and climate change advisory firm, told IPS. “The international price for offsetting credits is very low at the moment.”

In Europe, carbon credits are selling for less than 50 cents, Louw said.

Without the carbon tax big South African emitters have no obligation to reduce their emissions or engage with carbon offsetting programmes, Carl Wesselink, director of SouthSouthNorth, a Cape Town based non-profit organisation that focuses on climate change and development, told IPS.

The carbon tax should change that.

The proposed carbon tax and offset legislation will increase demand and price for carbon credits, Roland Hunter, a consultant at C4 EcoSolutions, told IPS.  C4 EcoSolutions is a firm that consults on a government offset project which involves reforesting degraded parts of the Eastern Cape province with Spekboom, a succulent tree with a high potential for capturing carbon.

Flagship offset project faces challenges

South Africa’s flagship carbon offsetting initiative, the Kuyasa CDM Pilot Project, which is registered with internationally recognised credit scheme the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — established under the Kyoto Protocol — has been slow to issue carbon credits.

The initiative involved retrofitting 2,300 low-cost homes in Khayelitsha, a semi-informal township outside Cape Town, with solar water heaters, ceiling insulation, and energy efficient light bulbs.

These energy efficient measures save 7,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. But despite being registered with the CDM in 2005, and being completed in 2010, the award-winning project has not yet issued any carbon credits.

A combination of bureaucratic red tape, from local and national government, combined with the CDM’s protracted verification process, is to blame for the lack of credit trading at Kuyasa, said Wesselink, whose organisation developed the project and, as a partner to the City of Cape Town, is responsible for trading the carbon credits.

An estimated 10,000 CER (Certified Emissions Reduction) credits should be issued this year, he said.

The money from the credit sales will go into maintenance costs, which are currently being shouldered by SouthSouthNorth with donor funds.

The funds are needed since the solar water heaters made by a Chinese company, and numbering 1,500, are prone to rusting and leaks, and have a short-life span, Zuko Ndamane, project manger for the Kuyasa CDM project, told IPS.

“A day, maybe about 10 people will come and report their geyser is leaking,” he said. “If I’m [not in the office] they’ll go to my house.”

When the credits are sold, the project will invest in replacing the rusting geysers with units from a South African company, which have a 20-year lifespan, he said.

Kuyasa was not established to make a financial profit. With the project costing about 3.5 million dollars it would take decades to recoup the costs through selling carbon credits alone.

“Putting solar water heaters and insulation in houses is something government, or someone, should be funding — it’s a good thing,” said Wesselink. “A project like Kuyasa will happen because it’s a social good but it won’t happen because carbon is a kicker.”

The return on investment from a public health and social development perspective is worth the financial outlay. But such projects need to be done at a larger scale to make financial sense, he explained.

Tax still to be finalised

The carbon tax and associated offset options should see an uptick in trade for carbon offsetting projects in South Africa. But industry remains concerned about the looming tax, especially state-owned power supplier Eskom.

Eskom would not be able to absorb increased production costs from the carbon tax, Gina Downes, Eskom’s corporate consultant for environmental economics, told IPS.

“It’s unfortunately not like we can switch off any of our production, particularly now with the low reserve margin,” said Downes. “We probably can’t, in the short-term, even try to optimise based on emissions.”

The utility has been in talks with National Treasury about ways to account for the costs associated with the implementation of the Department of Energy’s 2010 Integrated Resource Plan, which lays the path for the share of coal-fired electricity generation in South Africa to drop from around 90 percent in 2010 to 65 percent in 2030, Downes added.

Analysts expect to see some changes in the final tax related to its impact on the national utility.

“I think there may be substantial changes in [the tax’s design], especially relating to the Eskom emissions,” said Louw, of Promethium Carbon. “That’s the thing that has got the biggest impact on the economy.”

By IPS Correspondents
May 27 2014 (IPS)

The global canon of climate legislation has undergone significant changes over the last four decades. These changes in recent years have included a growing body of signature laws and initiatives spearheaded by countries in the global South, many of which are disproportionally affected by decades of uncurbed global environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions.

The following three infographics provide historic context alongside key data from the fourth edition of the GLOBE International Climate Legislation Study and to illustrate the long-term and more recent evolution of laws that accompany a growing global awareness of the negative impacts of climate change and the need for international cooperation on collective responses.

 
A timeline of events that contributed to increasing willingness to address climate change:
 

 
How do developed and developing countries compare in recent policy responses to climate change?
 
 

 
 
How does your country compare in the number and types of climate laws?
 

Logs stacked in Riau, Sumatra, which has one of Indonesia’s highest rates of deforestation. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

By Sandra Siagian
JAKARTA, May 27 2014 (IPS)

Comprised of over 17,000 islands that are highly susceptible to rising seas, Indonesia is taking stock of its position as the world’s third leading emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China.

Faced with the upcoming GLOBE Summit of World Legislators, scheduled to take place in Mexico City next month to test a new international climate change agreement centered on national legislation, the Indonesian government is in a race against time to evaluate its existing climate change policies, and bring its laws in line with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s promise to slash carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020.

The international community is largely agreed that the next two years will be crucial in determining the planet’s future vis-à-vis global warming. At the end of 2015, Paris will host the 21^st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an event scientists are calling the “last chance” for world leaders to agree on a global emissions peak.

"What we need [now] is to encourage frank and open dialogue between legislators and the government.” -- Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Center (ICCC)
Indonesia is poised to play a significant role in negotiations, with local initiatives like its Green Economy Caucus (GEC) – a sustainable development model launched last year – offering valuable lessons for the international community.

But environmental experts here say that unless swift steps are taken to boost dialogue between legislators and government officials, the country will not advance far down its path towards sustainability.

Farhan Helmy, manager of the Indonesia Climate Change Centre (ICCC), is hopeful that the GLOBE summit will provide the basis for exactly this kind of conversation.

“The conversations so far [on climate change] have not been very well connected, even in Warsaw last year,” Helmy, who was a lead negotiator with the Indonesian delegation on climate change at the 2013 UNFCCC in Poland, told IPS.

“I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel with less than two years left… What we do need is to encourage frank and open dialogue between the legislators and the government.”

Helmy strongly supports platforms like the GEC, comprised of a team of lawmakers who are plotting the country’s transition to a green economy, including identifying environmentally friendly methods of exploiting natural resources.

According to Satya Yudha, GEC’s president and a member of Indonesia’s House of Representatives who was recently re-elected for another five-year term in office, the caucus also focuses on devising green bills, creating a renewable energy strategy, and implementing the United Nations-backed REDD+ initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

The latter, Yudha told IPS, is essential for the management of land usage and for monitoring forest conservation and protected areas.

“Seventy percent of [Indonesia’s] carbon emissions come from land usage, and 30 percent from the energy sector,” he said, adding that legislators must push parliamentarians to prioritise environmental policies when setting the government’s annual budget.

Setyo Budiantoro from Prakarsa – the local NGO that helped set up the GEC – told IPS that one of Indonesia’s biggest obstacles was its parliamentarians’ mistrust in the very notion of climate change.

“That’s why there’s no…sense of urgency for parliamentarians to act on a climate change law,” the NGO’s executive director explained. “So that’s one of GEC’s main objectives, to create more awareness.”

The case for a multi-sector approach

Indonesia’s attempts to cut emissions caused by deforestation also serve as an excellent case study on the need for collaboration between lawmakers and various government sectors.

Deforestation has been rampant here in recent years, mainly due to the world’s hunger for palm oil, pulp and paper. According to a 2013 study published in ‘Science’ magazine, the country’s rate of deforestation between 2000 and 2003 totalled roughly one million hectares a year, and doubled to two million hectares a year between 2011 and 2012.

The destruction has led to deadly flash floods, landslides and the loss of habitat for endangered species like orangutans and rhinos.

Last year Yudhoyono extended a 2011 moratorium, which barred new logging and palm-oil plantation permits under a one-billion-dollar deal with Norway.

The extension of the landmark ban on clearing primary rainforests and peat lands will preserve 64 million hectares until 2015. However, environmentalists have been sceptical that some protected areas continue to be exploited due to corruption, illegal fires and logging.

A recent Human Rights Watch report argued that Indonesia’s forestry ministry failed to “accurately map forests, land use, and concession boundaries, and did not fairly allocate use rights.”

Citing an investigation by the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), the report, entitled ‘The Dark Side of Green Growth’, found that these “weaknesses were central causes of persistent corruption and lost government revenue, as well as high levels of deforestation.”

Muhammad Farid from REDD+ believes that Indonesia “needs to enforce policies from the top level to monitor all land sectors for unplanned deforestation, illegal logging, encroachment and forest fires.”

“REDD+ can’t fix everything,” he told IPS. “We need support from other ministries within Indonesia to really make a difference. Mining, agriculture, home affairs, they all need to coordinate with the government. This is not an easy task, but it will eventually be done.”

Locally, the jury is still out on Yudhoyono’s voluntary pledge to severely reduce carbon emissions by the end of the decade. Some experts, like Yudha, admit the president is on the right path, but are concerned about balancing an “ambitious” target with savvy economic policies.

Others, like Farid, are more optimistic, convinced that the right policies and incentives could put the country within reach of the goal in six years.

“If we [successfully] reduce encroachment and [improve] the state of our forests, and also…reduce unplanned deforestation and illegal logging, I think this goal can be reached,” he said.

With presidential elections scheduled for July, it remains to be seen whether or not the new government will follow in Yudhoyono’s footsteps.

“My hope is that whoever leads the country understands that we are not alone in [these] efforts,” Helmy asserted, adding that Indonesia is just one of many countries actively participating in global negotiations on climate change.

“I think the stakes for us are quite high… we have small islands and rising sea levels.”

Given that reality, if Indonesia fails to take concrete steps to strengthen its national legislation it will stop being part of the solution and join the ranks of the “troublemakers in the global society,” he added.

The new, relocated village of Vunidogoloa on Vanua Levu, the second largest island of Fiji. Credit: Government of Fiji

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, May 25 2014 (IPS)

Still a long way off in many parts of the world, climate displacement is already a reality in the Pacific Islands, where rising seas are contaminating fresh water and agricultural land, and rendering some coastal areas uninhabitable.

In Fiji, where the survival of 676 communities is now precarious, the government is set to establish the region’s first national policy to address the challenges of internal migration as the last option in adaptation.

Home to over 870,000 people in the central South Pacific Ocean, the 300 volcanic islands that comprise this nation include low-lying atolls, and are highly susceptibility to cyclones, floods and earthquakes. Thus Fiji is no stranger to the devastation wrought by climate change, and its national policies hold valuable lessons for all governments bracing for climate-induced population movements.

During its recent chairmanship of the Group of 77 nations plus China (G77), Fiji brought the plight of Small Island Developing States to the international arena, highlighting the disproportionate nature of the climate crisis.

The Pacific Islands, for instance, are responsible for only 0.006 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet they are experiencing its worst impacts. According to the Pacific Climate Change Science Program, the sea level near Fiji rose by six millimetres per year over the past decade, double the global average. During this century, ocean acidification, temperatures and the intensity of rainfall are also predicted to increase.

When adaptation measures, such as building seawalls and planting mangroves, no longer stem the tide, survival depends on moving the affected population to new land and safer ground. The London School of Economics estimates that across the Pacific Islands, home to 10 million people, up to 1.7 million could be displaced due to climate change by 2050.

Mahendra Kumar, director of the climate change division at the ministry of foreign affairs and international co-operation in the capital, Suva, told IPS that “the Fiji government recognises it has a primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and assistance to people at risk of climate change.”

"[T]he Fiji government recognises it has a primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and assistance to people at risk of climate change.” -- Mahendra Kumar, director of the climate change division at the ministry of foreign affairs
The guidelines for internal population movements will become an addendum to the national climate change policy, introduced in 2012. They will be aligned with the broader policy’s principles of community ownership, involvement and consent, equitable benefits for all, including disadvantaged social groups, and the mainstreaming of climate change issues into national planning and budgeting.

The new “relocation procedure is to be followed in all cases when communities seek the assistance of the government,” Kumar clarified.

The preference of many Pacific Islanders is to relocate within their own country. More than 80 percent of land in Fiji is under customary ownership and has been for generations. Land is the main source of livelihoods, food, social security and ancestral identity for clans and extended families.

Melanesian society places great importance on community self-reliance with solutions to local challenges historically driven by traditional leaders. This has determined people’s survival for generations and is one reason why, today, many refute the term ‘climate refugee’.

But that doesn’t diminish the socioeconomic repercussions of, or financial resources needed, for physically moving large numbers of people, housing and infrastructure.

Vunidogoloa: An exercise in inclusive adaptation

Now in its final draft, the climate policy was first informed by the move and reconstruction of the Vunidogoloa village on Vanua Levu, one of Fiji’s two main islands, back in January.

Living by the edge of Natewa Bay, as the people of Vunidogoloa had for generations, became untenable when the encroaching sea breached seawall barriers, daily flooding homes, while saltwater degraded the soil and destroyed crops like taro and sweet potato.

While villagers had watched the gradual encroachment of the sea over a period of years, the ultimate loss of their traditional ancestral land and homes, they say, was distressing.

The move, which took a total of three years, began in 2010, before the relocation policy was conceived last year. However, since then the experiences of both the government and local residents have been incorporated.

“We are happy in our new village,” Suluwegi, a villager from Vunidogoloa, told IPS. “The houses are good and we are able to grow new crops for food.” The ministry of agriculture provided the new community with pineapple plants and technical support to promote new farming livelihoods.

The ministry of rural and maritime development and national disaster management led the multi-sector process of moving 150 people and building 30 new houses, with each costing approximately 5,400 dollars.

Suluwegi said that villagers actively participated in the decision about where the new settlement would be situated. Plans for relocation only went ahead after the community had given consent. Fortunately, customary land owned by the community was available about two kilometres away on higher ground, which was quickly identified as the preferred new site.

“There were no land issues or disputes, which made our work much easier,” George Dregaso of the national disaster management office told IPS, hinting that the acquisition of additional customary land could have involved long, complex negotiations and substantial compensation to host landowners.

Various ministries and authorities responsible for local government, agriculture, water, fisheries, forests and labour contributed funding and resources for the provision of basic services and new livelihoods.

New water tanks and a solar power system were installed in the community. Villagers received assistance in re-establishing agriculture, including plants, breeding livestock and farming materials, as well as new ponds for fish farming as an income-generating initiative.

Government funds covered 75 percent of costs associated with the relocation of Vunidogoloa, which totalled close to 535,000 dollars (about 978,000 Fijian dollars). The remainder represented the value of the timber that the community contributed to the project.

While the villagers of Vunidogoloa were fortunate enough to find refuge close to their old home, others who are impacted by climate change might not be so lucky.

Globally there is a critical lack of policies and laws to address the plight of climate migrants, either within states or across national borders. For instance, people internationally displaced due to climate extremes are not recognised under the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention.

But last year international lawyers, climate change experts and U.N. representatives devised the Peninsula Principles on climate displacement within states as an initial guiding framework for policy and lawmakers, based on current international law.

Many of those principles, such as community participation and consent, provision of affordable housing, land solutions, basic services and economic opportunities to those affected, have been observed in Vunidogoloa.

Kumar emphasised, however, that formal discussions about the legislative implications of Fiji’s relocation policy are yet to occur.

“We are taking this one step at a time,” he said. “The policy will need to be considered by all stakeholders, including relevant ministries, before it can be considered by cabinet. Cabinet’s decision and response to recommendations will be key to determining what the next steps will be.”

Fiji’s current climate change policy is supported by existing laws and a new constitution established last year, which recognises that all Fijians, irrespective of ethnicity or status, have equal rights to housing, public services, health and economic participation.

However, all Pacific Island states face challenges in fully implementing government policies due to limited technical, human resource and financial capacities. According to Kumar, further work on solutions to issues of land availability and sustainable funding ahead of future relocation projects will be needed as the policy draft enters its final stages.

The learning process for all concerned continues, with the government still to undertake post-relocation monitoring and evaluation at Vunidogoloa in order to address any long term or unforeseen impacts.

(END)

The Costa Rican legislature, which has to decide on the future of the country’s climate change legislation. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, May 21 2014 (IPS)

Eight months after it was introduced in the Costa Rican legislature, a bill to create a framework law on climate change is faltering after undergoing modifications that have run into criticism from environmentalists and experts – a situation made even more complex by the recent change of government.

The bill presented to this Central American country’s single-chamber parliament in August 2013 was aimed at establishing “an operational framework for the development of public policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation.”

But it stalled just ahead of the second and final vote.

Due to mounting opposition from the climate change officials of the previous administration, groups of climate change experts and a significant number of lawmakers, the bill was sent back and modified.

On Apr. 9, in the last month of the previous legislature, an amended version of the bill was presented in the Environment Commission, with a new name: “law on institutional adaptation for climate change”.

Negotiations of the bill are now resuming in the 57-seat Legislative Assembly sworn in on May 1, whose makeup changed significantly.

“The bill in its present shape and form is appalling, it doesn’t solve anything, it just makes things worse,” the director of climate change questions in the Ministry of the Environment and Energy, William Alpízar, who has been in his post since the administration of former President Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014), told IPS.

He said his office had told the Environment Commission that the bill should be eliminated.

Alpízar remains in his post even though centre-left President Luis Guillermo Solís took office on May 8, putting an end to the domination of the country by the two traditional parties: Chinchilla’s National Liberation Party (PLN) and the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC).

Solís, who heads the Citizen Action Party (PAC), won 77 percent of the vote – the largest margin ever seen in a free election in Costa Rica.

Alpízar complained that the concerned sectors were not consulted for the bill, which he said creates unnecessary red tape, fails to take into account prior legislation, and is not even up-to-date.

“This is something that requires a dialogue with citizens in vulnerable areas, and with the public transport sector,” Olga Corrales, the coordinator of the Carbon Neutrality Strategy at the University of Costa Rica, told IPS. “Effective citizen participation is needed in the drafting of the law.”

But the bill’s sponsor, Alfonso Pérez, says the law is necessary because it creates an institutional framework for addressing the phenomenon of climate change.

Pérez, a leader of the PLN, which had a majority in the previous legislature, is no longer a lawmaker.

He said the Ministry of the Environment and Energy’s climate change office – the highest-level authority on the subject – is a technical body that lacks the necessary political clout.

The original draft of the framework law created two councils, one political and the other technical, to regulate Costa Rica’s climate change practices.

But the amended version would only create a National Commission on Climate Change (Conclima), conceived of as an effort to integrate several ministries – Environment and Energy, Agriculture and Livestock, Education, Health, and Public Works – along with other centralised institutions.

The main change in the new draft of the bill is the creation of Conclima, which would be given nearly two dozen different functions, ranging from promoting education on climate change in schools and universities to monitoring changes in zoning and a restructuring of transportation with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Pérez is the representative in Costa Rica of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), made up of parliamentarians from over 80 countries committed to developing and overseeing the implementation of laws in pursuit of sustainable development, in areas like forests, climate change and natural capital.

In its fourth report on climate legislation, GLOBE International highlighted Costa Rica’s bill and said it was slated to pass this year.

“The term ‘framework’ gave rise to certain expectations,” Pérez told IPS. “The second bill presented talks about ‘institutional adaptation’. But it does put the right emphasis on creating the necessary institutional framework in the country. The previous administration and minister did support it.”

But the new government has doubts about the bill, which the PAC had opposed in the prior legislature. Minister of the Environment and Energy Édgar Gutiérrez told IPS that the bill needs to be reviewed, although he preferred not to offer details.

In the new parliament, where bills need a boost from one or two legislators, no one has yet taken the initiative under his or her wing.

The bill’s critics include lawmakers considered “leaders” on the environment in the legislature.

“The bill doesn’t say anything, it is a statement of good intentions and creates more red tape, while it fails to establish clear mechanisms and policies,” said Edgardo Araya, a parliamentarian with the left-wing Broad Front, told IPS.

Araya, one of the country’s leading environmental lawyers, asked to form part of the Environment Commission, which has to approve the bill before it can continue wending its way through Congress.

Olga Corrales and Araya agreed that the bill fails to establish that climate change is a development issue, even though it does point in that direction by indicating that Conclima should promote multisectoral measures to tackle climate change.

Environmental organisations like Costa Rica Limpia or ARCA, as well as the country’s most prominent climate scientist, Lenín Corrales, are also opposed to the bill.

Pérez said the initial spirit of the draft law harked back to a 2011 report by the comptroller’s office which asserted that the climate change office is merely a technical body lacking in operational capacity.

What is clear is that Costa Rica does not have a comprehensive law on climate change.

During the election campaign, the current president’s environmental team promised to create a super ministry on climate change, overseeing several different ministries.

The future of another bill introduced by Pérez in parliament is also uncertain: the law on “valuation of natural capital and integration of green accounting in planning for development”, which would set a value on biodiversity, water and soil.

The value determined would be added to the technical criteria used in the process of granting construction or operating permits, and could also help to assess the weight of natural assets in the national economy.

The high level of pollution in the Rocha river, which runs across the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, is clearly visible during the dry season. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, May 19 2014 (IPS)

The law for the defence of Mother Earth passed by Bolivia a year and a half ago has not yet moved from good intentions to concrete action.

The Framework Law on Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well, in effect since Oct. 15, 2012, outlines principles for making a shift from classic development models to an integral model “in harmony and balance with nature, recovering and strengthening local and ancestral knowledge and wisdom.”

The law enshrines the legal rights of nature, condemns the treatment of Mother Earth’s environmental functions as merchandise rather than gifts from nature, and requires efforts to prevent and avoid damage to the environment, biodiversity, human health and intangible cultural heritage.

Chapter four of the law establishes an institutional framework on climate change, centred around an office called the “plurinational authority for Mother Earth”.

The director of that unit, Benecio Quispe, was appointed on Feb. 18 and is still in the process of naming a team and setting up an office.

The first activity organised by Quispe’s office was the First National Workshop on Climate Change Policies targeting social, academic, public and private organisations and representatives of the different levels of government: central, departmental (provincial) and municipal.

The aim of the two-day workshop that ended Saturday May 17 was to help conceive of climate change policies with community participation and input.

The framework law could be used to create controls and monitoring systems in regions exposed to deforestation and fires in forested areas, lawmaker David Cortés of the governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), who is also a member of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), told IPS.

The biggest study so far on environmental legislation, published by Globe International and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, praised the Mother Earth law as a “sweeping overhaul” of the national management of natural resources, climate and ecosystems.

But it also said the legislation failed to set out quantifiable targets that would make is possible to assess its implementation.

Application of the law is moving ahead slowly with great difficulty “because the means of production, neoliberal policies” and business community are characterised by the careless exploitation of natural resources, lawyer Víctor Quispe (no relation to the director of the Mother Earth authority), who is also an adviser to the lower house of Congress, told IPS.

Environmental awareness has grown since the law was passed, said Cortés, who cited, for example, efforts by the authorities to generate water saving habits among the population.

Two million of Bolivia’s 10.5 million people still lack clean drinking water and just under four million have no sanitation, Environment Minister José Zamora said last year.

But while the framework law requires new legislation to enable its application and enforcement, other initiatives are seeking solutions to concrete problems, like water.

This was a central theme in Cortés’s presentation at the latest meeting of Globe International, held Feb. 27-28 in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C.

In Bolivia, climate change has led to the melting of glaciers, which has reduced supplies of water to cities in the dry season. At the same time, it has intensified rainfall and flooding in the months of December and January, Cortés said.

To preserve water, the government launched the “My Water Programme” in 2011, aimed at improving supplies for human consumption and irrigation while helping to guarantee food sovereignty, reduce poverty and boost agricultural productivity.

So far, the Programme benefits 2,937 projects in 98 percent of the country’s 327 municipalities, with an investment of 118 million dollars, a source with the Productive and Social Fund, which is carrying out the initiative, told IPS.

These projects respond to demand for water for consumption and irrigation, in urban areas by means of systems of distribution to households and in rural areas by harnessing sources and building mini-dams.

Pollution is another problem. For instance, the authorities are attempting to clean up the Rocha river, which runs across the central city of Cochabamba. Some 50 factories dump waste into the river.

When rainfall is abundant, the tree-lined Rocha river runs clear. But in the dry season it becomes a source of pollution, with nitrates and sulphates above the permitted levels, according to the Cochabamba city government’s Mother Earth protection office.

The director of the office, Germán Parrilla, told IPS that the authorities were implementing “an integral basin management plan that starts at the headwaters” of the river which runs through both rural and urban areas.

The efforts include the removal of solid waste dumped into the river by local residents and rubble that locals have used to fill up part of the basin to gain land, as well as fines for polluters, in line with the 44 recommendations issued by the comptroller’s office in 2011, Parrilla explained.

In the meantime, Quispe the lawyer is pushing for parliamentary approval of a bill on the reforestation of mining areas in the department of Potosí, to improve air quality in places where waste from tin, zinc and wolfram mines was abandoned.

But the congressional adviser’s main objective is the clean-up of the Pilcomayo river, which emerges in Potosí and runs north to south across the municipalities of Chuquisaca and Tarija before crossing the border into Argentina and Paraguay.

The Pilcomayo river carries mineral waste dumped by companies mining near its headwaters, which kills off fish life downstream.

“It is a question of life or death,” said the lawyer, who hopes the Economic Development Commission will pass the bill he submitted.

The initiative would bring together a number of municipalities to carry out an environmental impact study, adopt prevention measures and clean up the river with financial support from the governments of Potosí, Chuquisaca and Tarija.

By IPS Correspondents
May 19 2014 (IPS)

For our interactive world map showing all climate laws per country going back four decades, click here:

By IPS Correspondents
May 19 2014 (IPS)

The Ajusco forest, one of Mexico City’s green lungs and water sources. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 8 2014 (IPS)

The rural communities of San Miguel and Santo Tomás Ajusco, to the south of Mexico City, are preserving 3,000 of their 7,619 hectares of forest in exchange for payment for environmental services. But the inequality in the communities is far from ecological.

The 484 men and 120 women who own plots of between half a hectare and eight hectares are organised in the Comisariado de Bienes Comunales (“commissioner’s office for communal goods”). To preserve the forest and care for the water, they receive trees, seeds, greenhouses and other supplies from the federal government and the authorities in the state capital.

There are numerous jobs, ranging from guarding the forest to prevent logging or fires to filling out official paperwork.

And the benefits provided are not insignificant.

Since 2012, this group of ‘comuneros’ – peasants farmers who work communal lands – has been participating in the programme for payments for environmental services financed by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) and the private construction firm Ingenieros Civiles Asociados (ICA), who provide 123 dollars a year per hectare for keeping the forest clean, growing living barriers, and planting trees.

The work is not done on all plots at the same time, but in a rotating fashion, so the benefits circulate around a surface area of 220 hectares.

In addition, between 2012 and 2013, CONAFOR granted them around 300,000 dollars for the restoration of micro-basins.

But women only participate in reforestation and garbage collection activities.

“We’re going to reforest up to July, when the rainy season starts,” Alma Reyes, a 42-year-old mother of three who is one of the 120 female ‘comuneras’, told IPS. “The problem is that the jobs available to women are very limited.”

Reyes overcame decades of exclusion in 2010, when she successfully ran for the position of secretary of the Comisariado, one of the organisation’s three highest-level posts.

But her term ended in August 2013, and Reyes doubts that another woman will be elected to the position.

“A sexist majority prevails, and the laws are not enforced,” she said. “Women have no influence over what is done, in the distribution of benefits or in decision-making.”

In 2013, similar payments were approved for 52,000 hectares of forest land around the country. And for a period of five years, CONAFOR earmarked 77 million dollars in environmental services on 471,000 hectares.

At first glance, the projects have borne fruit: most of the children in the communities attend school, people eat three meals a day, and villagers have stopped leaving. But statistics are needed to gauge the improvement in living conditions for both men and women.

The case of the ‘comuneras’ from Ajusco illustrates how the role of women is not taken into account in Mexico’s laws on climate change.

The General Climate Change Law in effect since 2012 makes virtually no reference to participation by women.

The only mention of the subject, in article 71, says the plans drawn up by the states must “always seek to achieve gender equity and the representation of the most vulnerable populations.”

“All laws can be perfected,” legislator Lourdes López, chair of the congressional commission on the environment and natural resources, told IPS. “We are reviewing it, because when the law is applied, details are found. We want to ensure follow-up on the climate change plans and on how the executive branch implements them.”

López, who belongs to the Green Ecological Party and heads the Mexican chapter of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), is one of the advocates of greater reforms.

The law made the target of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020 obligatory, subject to the availability of funding and technology transfer, according to the most comprehensive study on climate legislation, which analysed the laws of 66 countries and was published in February by GLOBE International, a global network of parliamentarians concerned about the environment.

Martha Lucía Micher, a lawmaker from the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), believes laws and decision-making must do a better job of including women.

“How can policies be developed if women are ignored?” asked Micher, chair of the gender equality commission. “How can sustainable projects be promoted if women don’t participate? We aren’t sufficiently represented in decision-making on climate change.”

The two legislative commissions presided over by López and Micher, as well as female activists and academics, set up a working group to propose changes to laws on climate change, with the aim of including a gender perspective.

This country of 118 million people is highly vulnerable to climate change and is already suffering the manifestations of global warming, such as more frequent and devastating storms, severe drought, a rising sea level, and a loss of biological diversity.

Over half – 51.3 percent – of the population lives in poverty, and many women, especially in rural areas, bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, because they are responsible for making sure their families have clean water and food, and for taking care of their families in case of disasters.

The absence of a gender focus in the country’s climate laws contrasts sharply with other areas.

The National Development Plan 2013-2018 stipulates that a gender angle must be incorporated in all government programmes, in order to achieve equality between men and women.

And the National Programme for Equal Opportunities and Non-Discrimination against Women 2013-2018 orders the incorporation “of a gender focus in the detection and mitigation of risks, emergency response and reconstruction in natural and manmade disasters,” and in “policies on the environment and sustainability.”

Leticia Gutiérrez, a policy adviser with the Alianza MéxicoREDD+ (REDD+Mexico Alliance), told IPS that “under the prevailing approach, women are still seen as a vulnerable group and the focus is on the promotion of productive projects without managing to have an impact on the structural causes of gender inequality.”

The Alianza sponsored a study that analyses Mexico’s main laws and policies, as well as public spending dedicated to equality between men and women in relation to the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism.

The document, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Gender Office, concluded that although there is a legal and institutional framework that requires the inclusion of gender considerations, a gender focus is not yet sufficiently included in a cross-cutting manner in forestry, agriculture, environment and climate policies.

Mexico is ranked 21 out of 72 countries on the IUCN Environment and Gender Index (EGI). The top country on the list is Iceland, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is in last place.

The achievements and proposals “sound great,” said Alma Reyes. “I hope they are put into practice, because gender equity is demanded from all sides.”

Commercial logging and firewood extraction for domestic use have accelerated Myanmar's deforestation rates in the last three decades. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, May 6 2014 (IPS)

Between 2008 and 2013, when Myanmar remained largely closed off to the rest of the world, it suffered a terrible toll at the hands of nature that remained largely unknown.

In those five years, the country of 60 million suffered at least eight major natural calamites that killed more than 141,000 people and affected 3.2 million.

The worst of these was Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 that killed more than 130,000 and affected 2.4 million.Myanmar is still covered with some of the most pristine jungles in East Asia, but the deforestation rate is alarming.

Myanmar has been vulnerable to increasing extreme weather events like many of its neighbours. But as the Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group of Myanmar noted in an extensive analysis last year of the nation’s disaster preparedness levels, the dangers have been amplified because the country has been slow to take remedial measures against changing climate patterns.

The East Asian country’s ranking 167 out of 176 countries surveyed by The Global Adaptation Institute “is as much a reflection of Myanmar’s exposure to climate change as it is of the country’s low capacity to manage climate risks,” the report said.

Such under-preparedness comes at a terrible cost. The same report found that over 2.6 million people live in areas vulnerable to natural disasters ranging from cyclones in the south to earthquakes in the north.

Since the reformist Thein Sein government took office in May 2011, there has been renewed attention to put in place measures that will help the country meet the challenges posed by changing climate patterns.

“I think the government is pretty serious about taking action on this, they know how important it is,” Helena Mazarro, the focal point for disaster risk reduction in Myanmar at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IPS.

In June 2013 the government unveiled the new Disaster Management Law and the National Natural Disaster Preparedness Working Committee under the President’s Office. A new building code is being formulated to make sure the current building boom does not undermine standards and put more people at risk.

On Apr. 1 this year a total ban on exporting of unprocessed timber was put in place to bring about controls on logging.

“Disaster preparedness levels have improved substantially since Cyclone Nargis. In mid 2013, Myanmar was significantly better prepared to respond to the approaching Cyclone Mahasen,” said Maciej Pieczkowski, programme manager with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Myanmar.

Mahasen caused limited damage and around 200 deaths. More than 120,000 persons were evacuated from the cyclone’s path in the western Rakhine region before the storm made landfall.

Pieczkowski said that after Mahasen the government carried out further evaluation of its disaster preparedness levels.

But despite the new disaster management law, coordination with the government and various non-governmental agencies is yet to be streamlined. While the international agencies tend to be structured along clusters working on different areas like emergency shelter or water or sanitation, the government still does not have such a structured approach, the OCHA’s Mazarro said.

The main government agency that coordinates relief and preparedness work is the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement. “We are trying to bring clarity to such coordination and further enhance the disaster management laws. It is a work in progress,” the OCHA official said.

Jaiganesh Murugesan, a disaster risk specialist with UN-HABITAT told IPS that while at the national level preparedness levels had improved, rural areas still lag behind. “The focus should be on long-term risk reduction while preparedness is essential for immediate work,” he said.

Peeranan Towashiraporn, director at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) said that lack of resources was a major concern given the list of vulnerabilities the country faces.

“Different geographical areas of Myanmar face different kinds of risks. The Delta region, as we have seen from Cyclone Nargis, could suffer from the impact of cyclone and coastal flooding. Rakhine state in the northwest is facing threats of cyclones, river and coastal flooding, earthquakes. The central plain along the Irrawaddy River faces not only the risk of flooding, but also earthquakes.”

Towashiraporn said that the new building code which takes into account threats posed by earthquakes and storms, would need to be implemented strictly to be effective.

Myanmar is still covered with some of the most pristine jungles in East Asia, but the deforestation rate is alarming. About half of the country is still covered in forest, but Myanmar could be losing 466,000 hectares of forest a year if not more, according to the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (UN-REDD).

Between 1990 and 2005, its forest cover reduced by 18 percent. Many experts say deforestation has accelerated due to commercial logging and firewood extraction for domestic use.

The timber export ban that came into effect in April is partly aimed at controlling illegal logging. In the 12 months prior to the ban, export earnings through timber were estimated to be above one billion dollars, up from the average annual rate of between 600 to 800 million dollars, according to the Myanmar Timber Merchants Association.

Kevin Woods, the author of the report ‘Timber Trade Flows and Actors in Myanmar: The Political Economy of Myanmar’s Timber Trade’ told IPS that the government was making all the right statements but needed to shore up on implementation.

“The government also has plans to dramatically decrease the quota for cut logs. So far nothing has been implemented to the best of my knowledge, although there is increasing political will to see this through.”

Firewood is still the main fuel used by Mexico’s poor, like this woman cooking in the southern state of Chiapas. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 21 2014 (IPS)

When Mexico’s climate change law went into effect in October 2012, it drew international praise. But what has happened since then?

The best illustration of the lack of action so far is the Climate Change Fund, created under the law to finance adaptation and greenhouse gas emissions reduction initiatives, with national and international funds.

In 2012 it was assigned just 78,000 dollars for administrative operations, but was given no funds to finance projects. And this year there is not even a specific budget allocation for the Fund. Its operating rules are ready, but they have not been published.

Other problems in the implementation of the law have to do with the creation of a national climate change system, the effective reduction of greenhouse gases, and an assessment of adaptation and mitigation measures, according to public policy analyst Carlos Tornel with the non-governmental Mexican Environmental Law Centre (CEMDA).

These aspects are essential “in order to know what is being done at the three levels of government [federal, state and local], which would give us more concrete information on priorities for adaptation and mitigation,” Tornel told Tierramérica.

“Moreover, no mechanisms were established to evaluate the impact of the measures and to know where the money goes and how efficiently it is used,” he added.

Mexico was one of the first countries in the world to pass a specific law on climate change.

The law made the target of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020 obligatory, subject to the availability of funding and technology transfer, said the most comprehensive study on climate legislation, published in February by the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), which analysed the laws of 66 countries.

Mexico is the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Latin America, after Brazil, emitting 748 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year.

In June, the government published its National Climate Change Strategy, which is to guide policy-making over the next 40 years.

It also created the Intersecretarial Commission, made up of 13 secretariats or ministries, and the Council, which includes scientific researchers.

A more concrete measure was the updating of the methodology used to measure contaminants released by motor vehicles.

But of Mexico’s 32 states, only 14 have drawn up a state plan on climate change, just seven have passed their own laws, and only 11 have measured their CO2 emissions.

“The government has failed to align all policy-making instruments behind the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Greenpeace Mexico’s communications director, Raúl Estrada, told Tierramérica.

Mexico, which is highly vulnerable to climate change, is already suffering the manifestations of global warming, such as more frequent and devastating storms, severe drought, a rising sea level, and a loss of biological diversity.

Mexico’s climate change law establishes measures to guarantee the optimal use of gas in industrial and oil installations, to promote the harnessing of the energy potential of waste products, and to create economic and financial incentives for the development of environmentally responsible businesses and industries.

But none of these actions has been carried out.

A new tax of three dollars per tonne of CO2 generated by the mining industry, the burning of gasoil and other fossil fuels, and the production of steel and cement was put into effect in January. Natural gas, considered less polluting than other hydrocarbons, is exempt.

But the energy reform that entered into force in December 2013, which opened up the oil industry to foreign investment, threatens compliance with the emissions reduction goals.

The reform is aimed at exploiting more “oil and shale gas, which would increase greenhouse gases…something that contradicts the climate change law, which seeks to minimise them,” Estrada said.

“The reform is a risk…if we start to exploit unconventional hydrocarbons like shale gas,” Tornel said.

“But it creates a window of opportunity, because it opens up competition in the generation and distribution of electricity so renewable energy sources can start to compete,” he added.

However, this “is possible only if the government generates incentives for those sources to become more competitive,” he said.

Mexico’s target is for 35 percent of the electricity generated in 2024 to come from clean sources. Nuclear energy and hydropower dams currently account for 17 percent of the total.

To comply with the climate change law, the government must present an evaluation of adaptation and mitigation policies in October.

But the process for selecting the non-governmental members of the team charged with that task, who will come from the scientific, academic, technical and industrial communities, did not get underway until Apr. 4.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Climate change effects, such as extreme weather events, drive up environmental remediation costs. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 2014 (IPS)

National governments across the globe have taken surprisingly robust action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, putting in place policies that researchers say collectively offer a strong foundation for ongoing international climate negotiations.

Developing countries, particularly China and Mexico, led much of this progress over the past year, according to the first comprehensive review of country-by-country climate-related legislation, released at the U.S. Senate on Thursday. Overall the report finds that 66 countries, accounting for almost 90 percent of global emissions, have nearly 500 national climate laws on their books."This report confirms what many have suspected: that international climate negotiations are the realm of the lowest common denominator." -- Daphne Wysham

The findings “inject positive momentum to the U.N. climate change negotiations. The study shows that countries across the world – from Africa to the Americas and from Asia to Europe – are legislating to tackle climate change and strengthen resilience to its impacts,” Terry Townshend, a co-author of the new report and deputy secretary-general for policy development with the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE), told IPS.

“This legislative activity is putting in place the national mechanisms and institutional structures to measure, report and manage greenhouse gas emissions, which is a fundamental pre-requisite to an effective international agreement.”

Townshend calls the findings “impressive”. But he hastens to note that the laws that have been passed are not enough to meet the overarching goal agreed upon by the international community: to keep the rise in global average temperature to within two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“So much more needs to be done, and governments and international institutions must prioritise the support of national legislation between now and 2015,” Townshend says. “No international agreement would be effective, or credible, without commensurate legislation at the national level.”

Arzu Begum testifies at the climate hearings for women in the deltaic village of Char Nongolia in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

The 700-page report was jointly produced by GLOBE International, the world’s largest organisation of sitting legislators, and the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE). Although the study is the fourth in a series, the new edition covers far more ground, having doubled the number of countries studied in the previous version.

Of the 66 countries reviewed, 64 have put in place “significant” legislation climate or energy legislation, or are in the process of doing so. In addition, 61 have laws to promote clean energy sources within their borders, while 54 have mandated strengthened efficiency standards.

“More countries than ever before are passing credible and significant national climate change laws,” John Gummer, GLOBE’s president, said Thursday at the U.S. Senate.

“This is changing the dynamics of the international response to climate change and poses a serious question to the international community about how we can recognise credible commitments made by governments within their national legislature. It is by implementing national legislation and regulations that the political conditions for a global agreement in 2015 will be created.”

2013’s transition

Final negotiations for a new international agreement on collective action on climate change are currently slated to take place in Paris in 2015, to come into effect after 2020.

Floods devastated the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis, but locals can expect the island to be affected by more floods, landslides and cyclones in the coming years because of climate change. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

Against this backdrop, the GLOBE and LSE researchers dub the past year a “period of transition” in international diplomacy on the issue. During that time, substantive legislative progress was seen in 8 of the 66 countries and additional “positive advances” in another 19.

The researchers highlight President Barack Obama’s unveiling of a national climate plan for the United States, as well as his strengthened attempts to tackle the issue through regulation rather than legislation. They also note that the European Union, having slowly begun to stabilise in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn, has been increasingly able to turn its focus to climate-related policy steps.

Australia and Japan, meanwhile, are called out as exceptions, having been two of the few countries to have backtracked on climate action over the past year (Canada and others are also reprimanded for as yet having no “flagship” climate legislation). Australia’s new government has pledged to repeal a landmark clean energy law, while Japan, in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster, has revised its emissions targets downwards.

Yet the other end of this transition is marked by a flurry of action by developing countries.

“[T]he momentum in climate change legislation [is] shifting from industrialised countries to developing countries and emerging markets,” the report states.

“This has gone hand in hand with a rise in legislation covering adaptation. The stock of climate laws in developing countries is still lower than in industrialised nations, but many have started to close the gap by passing sophisticated new legislation.”

Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have seen particularly movement in this regard.

Over the past year alone, nearly all countries in sub-Saharan Africa saw some sort of progress, particularly the passage of national climate strategies that set the grounds for future legislation. This process is even further along in many countries in Latin America, led by Mexico, Bolivia and Costa Rica.

“This report confirms what many have suspected: that international climate negotiations are the realm of the lowest common denominator, where powerful countries compete to lower, not raise, the bar for climate action,” Daphne Wysham, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“The impetus for aggressive climate action is strong at the national level, and even stronger at the subnational – or state – level. This suggests that the principle of subsidiarity” – whereby action should be taken at the lowest level – “ought to apply to this urgent problem, and, in some ways, that international climate negotiations may have outlived their usefulness.”

Domestic advantages

Building on this national-level focus, GLOBE, the United Nations and the World Bank on Thursday announced a new initiative that will work with legislators in each of the 66 countries covered by the new study. The Partnership for Climate Legislation will help policymakers create and implement climate legislation, while also examining federal budgets and social policies to offer assessments of their climate impact.

“During this critical year of 2014, nations have determined that they will assess the contributions they will make to a new universal climate agreement slated for 2015,” Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told 115 senior policymakers from 50 countries here for a two-day summit.

“…None of these countries are doing this to ‘save the planet’. They are doing it because they see specific social and economic advantages from these policies. And, each of these countries strengthens their position in climate talks with concrete targets and demonstrated openness to policy solutions.”

Unless leaders act promptly, climate change and environmental degradation will only worsen and cause greater global damage, scientists warn. Credit: Crustmania/ CC by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 15 2013 (IPS)

A majority of major economies have made significant progress in addressing climate change, with countries like South Korea and China taking aggressive action so they can benefit from energy- and resource-efficient economies, a new report released Monday found.

The study by GLOBE International and Grantham Research Institute profiled 33 major economies in an annual examination of climate and energy legislation. 32 of them, including the United States, made significant progress in 2012, while only Canada regressed.

“The study reveals a major trend is underway. More and more countries are acting on climate,” said Adam Matthews, secretary general of GLOBE International, an organisation of legislators.

While major international climate conferences such as the Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Doha in November and December 2012 have made little progress, cities, states and national governments around the world are taking action.

The political reality, Matthews told IPS, is that local and national climate regulations and legislation must come first. “An environment minister in Doha couldn’t commit his country to an ambitious carbon reduction target unless the country has already decided to chart a new economic course,” he said.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed with Matthews’ analysis. Countries do not have the “political space” to move at the international level unless they have already moved at the domestic level, she said in a statement.

“Domestic legislation is critical because it is the linchpin between action on the ground and…international agreement,” she said.

Wide-ranging discussion at local, regional and national levels will be needed before countries can draft and pass legislation that will actually shift their economies onto a low-carbon pathway.

In many parts of the world, these discussions are already taking place, with the study reporting significant progress in this area by 18 of 33 countries in 2012. South Korea and China are among the 18 countries along with emerging economies such as Mexico and Indonesia.

“What’s happening in South Korea is really impressive. They are striving to be the leader in the shift to a low-carbon economy,” Matthews said.

In 2012, South Korea passed legislation to begin emissions trading in 2015, while Japan introduced a carbon tax. Mexico passed The General Law on Climate Change to reduce its emissions by 30 percent by 2020. Bangladesh passed the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Development Authority Act. Kenya developed its Climate Change National Action Plan.

China has begun to draft its national climate change law, and local legislation was passed in the city of Shenzhen to manage greenhouse gas emissions.

China doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves for its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, Matthews said. “Careers are being made there on making those reductions,” he added.

The United States made some progress with a regulation change that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions. Although the fossil fuel industry appealed, courts upheld the decision in late December.

Canada was the only country to reverse course by abandoning its climate obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. “Canada has clearly gone backwards. It is a great shame,” Matthews said.

Countries that take action on climate change understand that their national and local economies will benefit from improved energy efficiency and security, reduced costs and increased competitiveness, said Terry Townshend, co-author of the report.

“There is a major shift in the dynamic around climate. Countries are now seeing great opportunities for their national interests by taking action now,” Townshend said in an interview.

National climate-related legislation has surged in the past three or four years. Although these laws aren’t always designated as climate legislation and instead are measures to improve energy use or reduce air pollution, they do have positive impacts on the climate, Townshend said.

At the last U.N. climate conference in Doha, nations confirmed details for a new negotiation process with the goal of a new global climate treaty ready for ratification in 2015 and entering into force in 2020. If a new international climate treaty is to be ready by 2015, many countries will need to have national legislation in place or pending, Townshend added.

But this upcoming timetable may not take action soon enough. Climate scientists have warned that global carbon emissions must begin to decline before 2020 in order for a two-degree (Celsius) limit on climate heating to remain a reasonable possibility. Many countries, especially the least-developed ones and small island states, want the global target to be less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

National legislation has a long way to go in order to keep a global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius, Townshend said. In order to help countries, the first GLOBE Climate Legislation Summit is being held this week in London, where senior legislators from 33 countries are meeting to share their experiences of putting domestic climate legislation into place.

“There’s a lot of experience, sample legislation and lessons learned to be shared,” he said. Between now and the end of 2015, GLOBE International hopes to facilitate more bilateral and multilateral meetings in order to help more countries become involved with domestic climate legislation.

“There is an awful lot of work to do, but this is a very positive development,” said Townsend.