On the first day of the 2015 Climate Conference, Nicaragua became the first country openly refusing to comply with the United Nations mandate to submit a climate pledge.

Lead Envoy Paul Oquist leads the Nicaraguan delegation and announced its country won’t submit an INDC for the climate deal. Credit: Diego Arguedas Ortiz/IPS

Interviewed by IPS, Oquist said this process is doomed to fail since it missed the goal of 2 degrees of global temperature increase set by countries – although some like Nicaragua push for a 1.5 degree goal. Rather, the minister advocates dropping the INDC process and building an agreement based solely on historical emissions.

As a small developing country, Nicaragua contributes barely 0.03% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Reviews of the INDCs show their implementation would result in expected warming ranging from 2.7 to 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, an improvement after the expected 4.5 increase but still insufficient to hit the safe mark.

Oquist spoke with IPS in Paris:

IPS: As a region, Latin America and Central America have similar issues related to climate change, yet the countries move at different paces and groups. Has the region lost its chance to lead as a whole?

First, we need to see where we stand. One of the major themes of this COP21 Conference is the concept of universal responsibility versus historical responsibility. The universal responsibility posits that we’re all responsible, that everyone must participate in solving the problem and that if you don’t solve the problem everyone is equally guilty of not solving the problem.

These nationally determined contributions (INDC) will not work. The first evidence is that on the first round they couldn’t get to the 1.5 – 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase goal, they came to 3 degrees. That’s serious business. Three degrees in the developing countries is 4 degrees. The INDCs will take us there.

There is a proposal on how to fix this, the proposal in the Paris Agreements, by doing another INDC exercise every five years. But in five years we’ll be further away from the 1.5 degree target than we are now. Nicaragua does not agree with an accord that will condemn the world to 3 degrees.

IPS: The first rounds of INDC, depending of the way you measure it, will get us to 2.7 to 3.5 degrees. It could improve in a second round as technologies get cheaper and overall ambition increases. Why drop it?

Twenty-five per cent are dependent on financing. There is no financing for those, and I would be very surprised to see the developed countries taking the hard policy decision on the model of production, consumption, finance and lifestyle that is necessary to bring us back to the 1.5 to 2 degree range.

We have an alternative, which is objective, scientific, measurable, verifiable and transparent: the historical responsibility instead of universal responsibility.

We should measure, since 1750, what is the contribution of each country to climate change. You can also measure what their current contributions are and establish and index that takes into account the historic and current contribution. Then assign mandatory quotas to each country based on this historical contribution.

These countries have profited from this: from cheap energy, from polluting the environment, for their development. So they can be held responsible for replacing the CO2 and trying to drive down the temperature rise. Also, historical responsibility can be applied to losses and damage through indemnification, which should go in a direct and unconditional form to the countries suffering from climate change.

IPS: When did Nicaragua take the decision that they wouldn’t submit the INDC and that the process was a failure as you have said?

So we know from the end of October that this was a failure. Nicaragua has decided a long time ago not to do the INDC because universal responsibility doesn’t work and it’s not the way to go.

The top three emitters release 49.49 per cent of emissions (that’s China, the United States and the EU) and the top 10 comes out to 72 per cent, while the bottom 100 countries represent 3 per cent. The only way to come back to the 1.5 – 2 is to draw out of the top 10 pool. The only way to do this is through large emitters who are also those who are historically responsible.

IPS: This would imply top 10 emitters like India, China, Brazil also have reduce their emissions significantly, more that they have pledged.

It would be everyone in that group. United States, Europe, those you mention, everyone. The question is not which countries, but how to solve this problem. This is a problem of humanity and Mother Earth and all of us. So are we serious about solving this or are we about making political games in here? This is not a negotiation over coffee or cocoa quotas; this is the Earth’s climate.

More than 180 countries are complying with the INDC process, including most of your partners in the Like Minded Developing Group. Are they wrong by trusting the process?

I would say the position we consider correct is the historical responsibility emissions and we hope more and more countries would realize that their INDC are going to fail.

When they started this process, we didn’t know it was going to be a failure. We thought it was going to be a failure because voluntary responsibility doesn’t work. Since it didn’t work, are you going to continue barging ahead?

IPS: Conditions can change, technology can be cheaper (as they are now) and political and economic conditions can change.

Wonderful, then let’s make the changes when they occur, let’s not make the changes based on hypotheticals. Let’s work on the basis on facts, on the ground in 2015. That’s what we have to do.

You know, you ask about the question of the 180 countries. There was a time when France was isolated and under enormous pressure because there was a fever to go to war. France said no as it was a war of aggression that would lead to disastrous consequences.

Now we look back at that and the people who supported the Iraq War, some of them feel quite embarrassed about it and those who opposed it used it as political credentials that they are better at understanding a complex process and the French position looks very good. I would hate to think that the Paris Accord would be remembered in the future as the accord that condemned us to 3 – 4 degrees and the consequences of that.

I know Nicaragua, as any other country here, wants an agreement to come out of Paris. Is this a realistic way to get an agreement? Following INDCs, we went from 4.5 degrees before pledges to 2.7 degrees afterwards.

A process that misses its target by 100 per cent or 50 per cent is not a success. To try to say it’s a success because if could have been worse is kind of an “alegrón de burro” (a fool’s wish). We set the target. The developed countries set the 2 degree target, that wasn’t met by 100 per cent. We are in 3 degrees, so it’s not a success. If we go up to 3.5 degrees and 4 degrees and it floats upwards, then we will not be a success but an absolute disaster.

What if they take the current emissions of historically responsible countries and they don’t add up to solve this? Developing countries are currently emitting more than developed.

You’re in a different logic. Whoever is responsible should contribute to the reduction and to the indemnification. We can get objective figure based on science. Right now we have nothing. 2020? Who said climate change starts in 2020? Whoever said that $100 billion is the figure? It’s based on nothing. So let’s start working on the base of foreseeable goals.

Just one final thing: if this INDC process goes on, will Nicaragua block the negotiations?

We’re going to see what happens. We’ll hopeful that not a lot of countries would want to get back home and tell their farmers, their media and their politician: sorry, the best we can do in Paris was 3 degrees.

By Andreas Sieber
STRASBOURG, Sep 10 2015 (IPS)

Climate change has been held responsible many of the social and economic woes affecting mainly the poorest in the global South and now many are seeing it as one of the root causes of refugee crises.

In his State of the Union speech here Sep. 9 to the European Parliament, even European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said that an “ambitious, robust and binding“ climate treaty is needed to prevent another refugee crisis.Climate change has been held responsible many of the social and economic woes affecting mainly the poorest in the global South and now many are seeing it as one of the root causes of refugee crises

Climate change is one the root causes of a new migration phenomenon,” said Juncker. “Climate refugees will become a new challenge – if we do not act swiftly.”

Calling on the European Union and its international partners to be more ambitious about climate protection, Juncker warned that “the EU will not sign just any deal” at the United Nations climate change conference (COP21), scheduled to be held in Paris in December.

The COP21 meeting is expected to come up with a climate treaty with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

Climate change marked by longer-lasting droughts, more violent storms and rising sea levels is worsening the living conditions of hundreds of millions. Particularly in the poorest countries, climate change has the effect of forcing people who are unable to adapt to leave their homes.

In the Sahelian countries, Bangladesh and in the South Pacific people have already had to flee because of climate impacts.

According to Jan Kowalzig from Oxfam, “climate change is already causing a lot of damage in the global South. It could ruin all progress which has been made in the fight against global poverty over the last decades.”

However, it is the relationship between climate change and the refugee phenomenon that is attracting the attention of many experts.

Earlier this year, a study by a research team from Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) held global warming partly responsible for the civil war in Syria.

The study noted that between 2006 and 2010, Syria faced the “worst drought in the instrumental record”, leading to crop failures and mass migration within the country. According to climate models, this drought would have been highly improbable without climate change.

“For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest,” the study concluded.

The number of refugees entering Europe this year is the highest on record and Syrians are by far the largest group – an estimated nine million Syrians have left their homes so far.

Besides the Syrian crisis, the United Nations warns that, worldwide, climate change could increase the number of refugees dramatically.

Srgjan Kerim, president of the United Nations General Assembly, has estimated that global warming could cause up to 200 million refugees until 2050. “Tomorrow we will have climate refugees and we have to know that,” Juncker told the European Parliament.

Oxfam’s Kowalzig explains what needs to be included in a climate treaty to mitigate a potential refugee crisis: “Climate change expels people from their homes and this is where a potential climate treaty in Paris comes in: first, we need to cut emissions and keep global warming below two degrees; secondly, people in poor countries need support to adapt to climate change; and thirdly, a climate treaty in Paris has to lay down rules for damages and losses caused by global warming where adaption is not possible.”

In his speech in Strasbourg, Juncker also admitted that the European Union “is probably not doing enough” to tackle climate change. The EU has announced greenhouse gas emission cuts of 40 percent by 2030 as part of its ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribution’ (INDC).

INDCs are the commitments every country is supposed to announce before the climate conference in Paris.

However, because a treaty in Paris based on the INDCs will not be enough to keep global warming below 2^oC, many organisations and countries from the global South are demanding a five-yearly “review and improve” process to make climate commitments more ambitious over time.

Any agreement reached in Paris should at least offer a perspective for effective climate protection and this depends heavily on the process of creating a regular built-in review that would enable countries to improve that agreement.

Last week, formal negotiations ahead of COP21 in Paris were held, but while there was support for long-term goals, short-term commitments seemed to be far less popular.

An agreement in Paris with short-term commitments and five-year cycles without a concrete long-term goal might not be perfect. It would lack a perspective beyond 2030, but it would enhance climate protection and greenhouse gas reduction in the next 15 years.

On the other hand, an agreement with an ambitious long-term goal but no effective short-term measures would allow countries to fall far behind with their greenhouse gas reductions and many would just not be able to catch up after 2030.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

Flooding in Nigerian villages is just one of the effects of climate change that the country will have to address in drawing up its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) for the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris in December: Credit: Courtesy of NDWPD, 2011

By Ini Ekott
LAGOS, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Nigeria seems in no haste to unveil its climate pledge with just four months to go before the U.N. Climate Conference scheduled for December in Paris.

However, unlike Gabon, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya – the only African nations yet to submit their commitments – Nigeria has just commissioned a committee of experts to draw up targets and responses for its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs).

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September."The whole exercise [of preparing INDCs] will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases” – Samuel Adejuwon, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment

Ahead of that date, Nigeria says its goals are clear: balancing post-2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cut projections with its development peculiarities, according to Samuel Adejuwon, deputy director of the Federal Ministry of Environment’s Department of Climate Change in Abuja.

Nigeria is Africa’s fourth largest emitter of CO2, and there is no doubt climate change is already a problem it faces.

From the north, encroachment of the Sahara is helping to fuel a bloody insurgency by the jihadist group Boko Haram, as well as resource conflict between farmers and pastoralists in its central region, while the rise in ocean levels and flooding are affecting the south.

In a report issued in October 2014, the Mapelcroft global analytics company said that Nigeria, along with Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines, were the countries facing the greatest risk of climate change-fuelled conflict today.

Nigeria’s hopes for slashing its emission levels as part of its INDCs face several tests.

One is that for an economy almost solely dependent on oil – which accounts for a major portion of its 500 billion dollar gross domestic product (GDP), Africa’s highest – the commitment it takes to Paris will reflect how jettisoning fossil fuel cannot be an urgent priority and why doing so will require significant time and resources.

“The whole exercise will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases,” says Adejuwon.

Another test is Nigeria’s energy shortage. The country produces about 4,000 megawatts for 170 million people, leaving much of the population reliant on wood, charcoal and waste to fulfil household energy needs such as cooking, heating and lighting.

In 2014, Nigerians used at least 12 million litres of diesel and petrol every day to drive back-up generators, according to former power Minister Chinedu Nebo. The country’s daily petrol consumption (cars included) stands at about 40 million litres, according to the state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Cutting the level of pollution that this consumption causes will require big investments in renewable and cleaner energy, says Professor Olukayode Oladipo, a climate change expert and one of three consultants drawing up the INDCs for the government.

Last year, former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the country needed 14 billion dollars each year in energy investments and related infrastructure.

Oladipo argues that the key to the issue lies in striking a balance between a future of lower greenhouse emissions and immediate developmental realities.

“Every country is now exploring how to use less energy … in an efficient manner, how to rely on renewable energy sources.” In Nigeria, we are looking at “how to be able to drive our economy through reduced energy consumption without actually reducing the rate at which our economy is growing.”

Last year, minister of power Chinedu Nebo said that while solar panels were welcome for use in shoring up generation in distant communities, the government will deploy coal in addition to the hydro power currently in use.

“There is no doubt that the potential is there. Clean coal technology can give us good electricity and minimum pollution at the same time,” he said.

Insecurity

Oladipo also stresses that besides fuel, Nigeria’s climate plans will focus on agriculture, partly to diversify from oil and also as a response to growing resource conflict.

“We are not saying it is the only determinant of crisis,” he says of climate change stoking conflict over resources, “but at least it is adding to the degree and the frequency of the occurrence of these conflicts.

Apart from Boko Haram activities in the north which have been responsible for at least 20,000 deaths, clashes between pastoralists and farmers over land has killed thousands in Nigeria’s central region in recent years.

In the latest attack in May this year, herdsmen from the Fulani tribe slaughtered at least 96 people in the central state of Benue, Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported.

The government agrees that climate change is one of the causes of the frequent bloodletting, alongside factors like urbanisation, but not much has been done to address the problem.

Oladipo says he believes that Nigeria’s new leader, Muhammadu Buhari, will do more to address fundamental climate change issues, point out that in his inaugural address on May 29, Buhari pledged to be a more “forceful and constructive player in the global fight against climate change.”

However, Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation argues that proposals put forward by Nigeria and Africa can barely be achieved if the developed nations – the biggest polluters – fail to act more to meet their commitments and cut down on their emissions.

“Nigeria should insist that industrialised nations cut emissions at source and not place the burden on vulnerable nations,” says Bassey.

Urging action from those nations, including the United States, will form a key element of Nigerian and African INDCs, adds Oladipo.

Edited by Phil Harris