The Nation: The Wrong Kind of Green

I think this article articulates and documents well what has been happening to the mainstream environmental movement in the U.S. and globally, when environmentalists become good buddies with big business and polluters. This is no news but this is part of reason why many concrete and necessary actions towards mitigate and adapt to climate change and ensure planetary sustainability left undone. This is part of why since the 1980s (Rio 1992 was when a lot of these mechanisms were legitimized) there have been so many market-based "solutions" to address "resource efficiencies." This is part of the corporate America.

It was uncanny that I just spoke to a women from Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter, who complained about the central office's resistance to more radical actions and causes the local chapters are taking up and fighting for.

Look out for the mainstream environmental NGOs' "partnerships" and praises they give to big polluters. If they cannot do a good job monitoring the big multinationals. We as citizens should add more eyes.

From the Nation

Editor's Note: As the Washington Post reports today, the major conservation group The Nature Conservancy faces "potential backlash as its supporters learn that the giant oil company and the world's largest environmental organization long ago forged a relationship that has lent BP an Earth-friendly image and helped the Conservancy pursue causes it holds dear." The Nation's Johann Hari recently investigated financial ties between environmental groups and environmentally unfriendly corporations for the magazine, offering a wider lens on the relationship between BP and the Nature Conservancy. Hari's piece appears below.
Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path--one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair--president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995--was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

Hair found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world's pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilizing the climate--the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn't make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and in return his organization and others, like The Nature Conservancy (TNC), gave them awards for "environmental stewardship."

Companies like Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw it as valuable "reputation insurance": every time they were criticized for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for being involved in the killing of dissidents who wanted oil funds to go to the local population, or an oil spill that had caused irreparable damage, they wheeled out their shiny green awards, purchased with "charitable" donations, to ward off the prospect of government regulation. At first, this behavior scandalized the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sellout and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled--so they, too, started to take the checks.

Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for Conservation International in 2006. She told me, "About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organization's media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country.... But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organization, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren't supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were 'helping' us, and that was it."

She soon began to see--as she explains in her whistleblowing book Green Inc.--how this behavior has pervaded almost all the mainstream green organizations. They take money, and in turn they offer praise, even when the money comes from the companies causing environmental devastation. To take just one example, when it was revealed that many of IKEA's dining room sets were made from trees ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the company's defense, saying--wrongly--that IKEA "can never guarantee" this won't happen. Is it a coincidence that WWF is a "marketing partner" with IKEA, and takes cash from the company?

Likewise, the Sierra Club was approached in 2008 by the makers of Clorox bleach, who said that if the Club endorsed their new range of "green" household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The Club's Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest--but took it anyway. Executive director Carl Pope defended the move in an e-mail to members, in which he claimed that the organization had carried out a serious analysis of the cleaners to see if they were "truly superior." But it hadn't. The Club's Toxics Committee co-chair, Jessica Frohman, said, "We never approved the product line." Beyond asking a few questions, the committee had done nothing to confirm that the product line was greener than its competitors' or good for the environment in any way.

The green groups defend their behavior by saying they are improving the behavior of the corporations. But as these stories show, the pressure often flows the other way: the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core. As MacDonald says, "Not only do the largest conservation groups take money from companies deeply implicated in environmental crimes; they have become something like satellite PR offices for the corporations that support them."

It has taken two decades for this corrupting relationship to become the norm among the big green organizations. Imagine this happening in any other sphere, and it becomes clear how surreal it is. It is as though Amnesty International's human rights reports came sponsored by a coalition of the Burmese junta, Dick Cheney and Robert Mugabe. For environmental groups to take funding from the very people who are destroying the environment is preposterous--yet it is now taken for granted.

This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming. We have emitted so many warming gases into the atmosphere that the world's climate scientists say we are close to the climate's "point of no return." Up to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, all sorts of terrible things happen--we lose the islands of the South Pacific, we set in train the loss of much of Florida and Bangladesh, terrible drought ravages central Africa--but if we stop the emissions of warming gases, we at least have a fifty-fifty chance of stabilizing the climate at this higher level. This is already an extraordinary gamble with human safety, and many climate scientists say we need to aim considerably lower: 1.5 degrees or less.

Beyond 2 degrees, the chances of any stabilization at the hotter level begin to vanish, because the earth's natural processes begin to break down. The huge amounts of methane stored in the Arctic permafrost are belched into the atmosphere, causing more warming. The moist rainforests begin to dry out and burn down, releasing all the carbon they store into the air, and causing more warming. These are "tipping points": after them, we can't go back to the climate in which civilization evolved.

So in an age of global warming, the old idea of conservation--that you preserve one rolling patch of land, alone and inviolate--makes no sense. If the biosphere is collapsing all around you, you can't ring-fence one lush stretch of greenery and protect it: it too will die.

You would expect the American conservation organizations to be joining the great activist upsurge demanding we stick to a safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm), according to professor and NASA climatologist James Hansen. And--in public, to their members--they often are supportive. On its website the Sierra Club says, "If the level stays higher than 350 ppm for a prolonged period of time (it's already at 390.18 ppm) it will spell disaster for humanity as we know it."

But behind closed doors, it sings from a different song-sheet. Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in Arizona, which refuses funding from polluters, has seen this from the inside. He told me, "There is a gigantic political schizophrenia here. The Sierra Club will send out e-mails to its membership saying we have to get to 350 parts per million and the science requires it. But in reality they fight against any sort of emission cuts that would get us anywhere near that goal."

For example, in 2009 the EPA moved to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which requires the agency to ensure that the levels of pollutants in the air are "compatible with human safety"--a change the Sierra Club supported. But the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the EPA to take this commitment seriously and do what the climate science says really is "compatible with human safety": restore us to 350 ppm. Suckling explains, "I was amazed to discover the Sierra Club opposed us bitterly. They said it should not be done. In fact, they said that if we filed a lawsuit to make EPA do it, they would probably intervene on EPA's side. They threw climate science out the window."

Indeed, the Sierra Club's chief climate counsel, David Bookbinder, ridiculed the center's attempts to make 350 ppm a legally binding requirement. He said it was "truly a pointless exercise" and headed to "well-deserved bureaucratic oblivion"--and would only add feebly that "350 may be where the planet should end up," but not by this mechanism. He was quoted in the media alongside Bush administration officials who shared his contempt for the center's proposal.
...

full story http://www.thenation.com/article/wrong-kind-green

The hype versus the reality of carbon markets

Shefali Sharma 2011-05-11, Issue 529

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/73132

The Africa Carbon Exchange (ACX) was launched in Nairobi on March 24; yet only two days before, Bloomberg headlines announced: ‘Global Carbon Credits Die as Smart Money Backs Indian RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates).’[1]

While the ACX is positioning itself to be the hub of ‘climate change business and sustainable development in the African continent,’ existing and attempted carbon emissions exchanges in Europe and the United States have suffered one blow after another - fraud, carbon credit theft, poor legislative design, even profits for some major polluters - all at the expense of ordinary citizens and the environment.

Moreover, these exchanges have not led to a decrease in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Rather, they threaten to directly increase emissions by diverting capital to the carbon-market casino that could have otherwise gone toward reducing pollution at its source.

The Bloomberg article contends:

‘Today, carbon trading remains a backwater of the global commodities market, and it’s not even included in the benchmark Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index. Without demand from institutional investors spurred by global limits on emissions, the price of carbon has languished compared with the fossil fuels that policy makers are aiming to marginalize.’

There has been a 16 per cent decline in the membership of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Associations (IETA) since the climate talks reached deadlock in Copenhagen in 2009 and carbon-trading platforms such as Intercontinental Exchange Inc. folded up when the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) itself collapsed at the end of 2010.

What happened and what lessons can be learned from these debacles?

Carbon ‘offsets’ - the backbone of the Kenyan ACX - are supposed to work like this: a series of projects are implemented to take planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere, which are then subjected to a complex set of measurement, reporting and verifying (MRV) procedures. These projects would receive ‘carbon credits’ that would be sold to polluters who could neutralise or ‘offset’ their own pollution by buying these credits.

The creation of carbon-offset projects can include a large number of players. The project can be ‘owned’ by an organisation, company or individuals. Local communities will be impacted if the project depends on utilising their time, resources or land. Several other entities will also be involved, such as project design consultants who ensure that the project follows an acceptable MRV methodology, project validators who ensure that the MRV is valid and meets a certain accepted standard, and project verifiers to ensure that the MRV methodology is being followed properly. The project then either receives ‘certified emissions reduction’ credits (CERs) or ‘voluntary emissions reduction’ credits (VERs), depending on whether the project is meant to meet mandatory ‘compliance’ targets of the UN climate treaty or feed into the voluntary carbon market. The cost of setting up such projects can therefore be substantial.

A polluter in an industrialised country can buy these CER credits to offset emissions, and hence continue polluting. In reality, however, these credits can be bought and resold in poorly regulated carbon exchanges as much as a hundred times through complex financial instruments called ‘derivatives’. A buyer without any obligations to reduce emissions can buy these offset credits, package them with credits from other projects and trade them as a carbon emissions derivative for purely speculative purposes. The credits are sold even before there is any proof that such projects have actually resulted in reducing greenhouse gases.

Such trade involves numerous middlemen in the form of traders and various forms of investment firms. Similar derivatives in still-unregulated over-the-counter markets (OTC) led to the infamous Wall Street collapse in 2008 and the ensuing global financial crisis, and regulators still have not developed adequate rules to govern these markets.

EUROPEAN AND US EXPERIENCE WITH CARBON EXCHANGES

In order to put the ‘promise’ of the ACX as an agent for development and environmental good in perspective, let’s examine first the largest climate exchange in the world: The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

The ETS was intended to help Europe meet its binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce GHGs. Launched in 2005, the ETS resulted in increased, rather than decreased, greenhouse gas emissions, while the price of carbon itself crashed to as low as one euro per tonne from a high of about 30 euros. Several complex reasons can be cited for this, but a very simple reason was the over-allocation of pollution permits that were given, at no cost, to major polluters, which were then traded and re-traded in financial markets. In other words, there was no demand for permits from polluters who faced no strict requirement to reduce emissions.

The ETS has shown through its six-year history how susceptible it is to fraud, malpractice and Internet hacking. Just this February, the ETS had to shut down its trading because cyber criminals had hacked into the system, stealing 40 million USD worth of pollution permits and reselling them. The European Law Enforcement Agency (Europol) estimates that up to five billion euros of European tax revenue (approximately 7.1 billion USD) has been lost due to fraud in value-added tax evasion through carbon trading.[2]

The two major ventures related to carbon exchanges in the United States have also suffered major blows. Just the week before the ACX was launched, the San Francisco Superior Court ordered the state of California to suspend its proposed cap-and-trade system, which includes offsets, because it was in violation of environmental laws in California. The judge ruled that the California Air Resource Board had not sufficiently considered alternatives to the cap-and-trade system and needed to do so.

Just months prior, the United States’ only national climate exchange - the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) - shut down its operations at great cost to farmers who invested in it in anticipation of offset credits. The Chicago Climate Exchange shut down because large investors were not interested in a voluntary market and had counted on US legislation to enact a mandatory market. When the climate bill in the US Congress failed, there was little incentive for companies to continue to buy and sell credits in the market.

Emerging controversies in Australia are also relevant for the ACX. The Australian ‘Carbon Farming Initiative’ is being proposed as a major offset scheme for Australian polluters and those abroad to meet Kyoto targets. Market analysts doubt whether there would be an adequate supply of credits for sufficient trading in the initial years.

Concerns are also being raised regarding the environmental integrity of such an offset scheme that could lead to pressure on water and land, given that the CFI is supposed to derive reduction in GHGs through activities such as fertiliser management, reduced livestock emissions, soil carbon and reforestation.[3]

LESSONS FOR THE ASX: WITHER DEVELOPMENT AND REDUCED RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE?

The ACX would sell pollution ‘credits’ generated on African soil through individual projects, thereby enabling companies in the industrialised world to continue polluting and yet comply with their governments’ commitments to meet international and national targets for emissions reductions. ACX registered projects would also aim to generate a sufficient supply of projects to be made available for carbon trading on voluntary markets.

It is now common knowledge that the Cancún climate pledges could lead to the warming of the planet by four degrees Celsius or more. The latest science shows that even a global average warming of two degrees will be devastating for life on Earth. For much of sub-Saharan Africa, a two-degree global average temperature rise would mean even higher temperatures on the ground.

This spells disaster for food security in Africa - with devastated cropping cycles, water scarcity and widespread famine. Carbon offsets are a major exit strategy for polluters to continue polluting while shifting the burden of GHG reductions to African nations that have the lowest carbon footprint on the planet. In the end, the impacts of the failure of this UNFCCC approved ‘market mechanism’ will be acutely felt by the African people who stand to suffer greatly from a warming planet.

In addition, the types of offset projects envisioned for Africa primarily entail ‘land-based carbon’ projects, either through avoiding deforestation, reforesting or reducing emissions from agriculture. This means that projects are banking on receiving credit for changing land-use practices in forests and soils to store carbon relative to what would have happened in a business-as-usual (baseline) scenario.

However, trading carbon from land-based offsets is met with major scepticism by real financial investors because of serious scientific challenges in measuring carbon in soils and forests and understanding previous and future land-use changes.

Moreover, because the bulk of forest and agriculture land is used by local communities, significant risks are associated with land tenure issues and social conflicts, with research showing an increase in land grabs of large areas of customary land in Africa by agribusiness and government agencies.[4]

A recent study[5] by experts in derivatives trading platforms also shows that land-based offsets will meet significant barriers to investment. This is because the land-based asset itself is difficult to define and therefore trade because of the high degree of uncertainty in measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) land-based carbon.

The costs and controversies associated with land-based offsets are also likely to make them a risky venture. It will therefore lead to control of the trade by very few companies given the monopolistic nature of commodity markets (carbon is a commodity) and because very few companies will be able to finance the risk associated with this trade.

The experts therefore conclude that the market for land-based offsets will either fail because of the numerous difficulties inherent in land based carbon accounting or lead to ‘the creation of a substandard, risky and ultimately destructive forest carbon market.’[6] The same applies to agricultural soil carbon where the underlying ‘tradable’ asset is even more varied and uncertain.

Finally, given that energy markets have a high degree of price correlation with carbon, excessive speculation in carbon is likely to adversely affect food and commodity prices.[7]

Bundling carbon derivatives into index funds with other commodities would also tend to destabilise prices, as would trading carbon derivatives without position limits (limits on the number of contracts held). Highly volatile oil and food commodity prices not only have a significant impact on the economic stability of net oil and food-importing countries but also on the agriculture sector as a whole, given the high dependence on fossil fuels for synthetic fertilisers, transport, distribution and storage. Expanding carbon markets that are structurally highly susceptible to fraud and speculation and part of commodity markets, particularly through index funds, thus has serious implications for food production and food security in Africa.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

The most often quoted World Bank figure for the global carbon market is 144 billion USD. However this figure largely includes derivatives trading. Out of this, only around 3,370 million USD goes to offset project developers as total revenue (not profit) with a much more uncertain fraction of that going to local communities who may host the project.[8] The FAO estimates that close to 17 billion euros (approximately 24.3 billion USD) could be required in transaction costs alone to set up soil carbon sequestration projects from 2010 - 2030, diverting scarce resources away from critical adaptation needs.

According to the World Bank’s own estimates adaptation costs to developing countries will range between 2.5 and 2.6 billion USD per year from 2010 -2050.[9] Experts monitoring Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) schemes also find that important institutional and public resources are being diverted to create the technical capacity and infrastructure required to create offset credits to trade on potential forest carbon markets. Rather than diverting scarce resources, this money could be invested directly into institutions and communities to build resilience against climate change and directly address deforestation.

CALCULATING THE COSTS

The Africa Carbon Exchange is being publicised as the next big ticket that will help solve the development gap in Africa, with plans to replicate the exchange in other regional blocs such as the East African Community (EAC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS).

However, before that happens, governments and their parliaments should examine:

- ongoing challenges and investment trends in climate exchanges in industrialised countries,
- investor aversion to land-based offsets,
- environmental and food security risks to Africans by allowing industrialised countries to continue polluting, and
- resources needed for African countries to adapt to climate change.

There is a real danger that carbon offsets will become a major policy distraction and capital diversion from the real climate change challenges that Africa faces: the urgent task of climate change adaptation and ensuring resilience of communities.

ALTERNATIVES EXIST

A financial transaction tax[11] on financial trading, feed-in tariff policies through which clean solar and wind energies are incentivised, and the use of International Monetary Fund (IMF) special drawing rights[12] by developing countries are just some of many alternatives being proposed to both finance the reversal of climate change and to help developing countries adapt to it. Industrialised countries have a legal, historical and moral responsibility to curb their domestic emissions at home and help finance adaptation in Africa and elsewhere. Let’s not let carbon trading and the promises of a speculative derivatives market distract us from these critical goals.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Sharma's work focuses on international trade and financial institutions, and international food and agriculture policies, with a particular interest and focus on India and South Asia. This article is sourced from The Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

REFERENCES:

[1]. B. Sills, Global Carbon Credits Die as Smart Money Backs Indian RECs, Bloomberg Markets Magazine, March 22, 2011. Available at [url=http://bloom.bg/igjsR9[/url]
[2]. World Watch Institute, A Brief History of Fraudulent Activity on the EU ETS, 2011.
[3]. Point Carbon, Australian Greens Challenge Offset Mechanism, March 24, 2011.
[4]. L. Cotula, Land deals in Africa: What is in the contracts?, IIED, London. Available at http://pubs.iied.org/12568IIED.html
[5]. Munden Project, REDD and Forest Carbon: Market-based Critique and Recommendations, 2011. Available at [url=http://bit.ly/kibEbS[/url]
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. In an orderly market, carbon prices should rise with energy prices but haven’t due to the aforementioned crimes, poor legislative design and MRV controversies, and costs.
[8]. FERN, Designed to fail? The Concepts, Practices and Controversies Behind Carbon Trading, 2010.
[9]. FAO, Climate Smart Agriculture: Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security, Adaptation and Mitigation, 2010, 22.
[10]. FERN and Forest Peoples Programme, Smoke and Mirrors: A Critical Assessment of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, February 2011.
[11]. See European Parliament, Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, DRAFT REPORT on Innovative Financing at Global and European Level, also known as the ‘Podimata Report,’ October 2010. Accessed at:http://bit.ly/joj3cs.
[12]. See ActionAid, Using Special Drawing Rights for Climate Finance, Discussion Paper, February 2010.

State Of The Voluntary Carbon Markets Report 2010

http://www.thinktosustain.com/ContentPageMarket.aspx?id=%20334

The Hu-Obama Summit | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Hu is in town! Follow him with CSIS~The Hu-Obama Summit | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Just a starter

Q1: What is the significance of this summit?

A1: On January 19, Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao will hold their eighth bilateral meeting, but only their second state visit (the others were all brief sessions on the margins of multilateral forums like APEC or the G-20). At the last full-fledged bilateral summit in Beijing in November 2009, President Obama hoped to open a more productive chapter in U.S.-China relations through a joint statement with President Hu noting areas of U.S.-China cooperation and highlighting each party’s “core interests.” In the months after the November summit, however, the administration found itself responding to a noticeably more assertive and less cooperative China. As a result, the administration spent much of 2010 reminding Beijing of the depth of U.S. strategic influence in Asia:

• After China’s passive response to North Korea’s attack on the South Korean corvette Choenan in March, the United States tightened security relations with Japan and Korea;
• In June, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates used the annual Shangri-La defense summit in Singapore to highlight the need for greater military transparency from China;
• In July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the annual ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi to stress U.S. interests in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea in response to Beijing’s pressure on smaller states in the region;
• In September, the United States reconfirmed its defense commitment to Japan with respect to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai after tensions rose between Tokyo and Beijing over the contested islands.

In short, this has been a rough year for U.S.-China relations; one characterized more by adjusting false expectations than making real progress on issues. Both U.S. and Chinese leaders hope this summit will now lay the foundation for a more productive relationship in 2011.

Pambazuka - DRC’s magic dust: Who benefits?

Pambazuka - DRC’s magic dust: Who benefits?

Khadija Sharife looks at how commercial and political interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral and natural resources have shaped the country’s history, with devastating consequences for its people, wildlife and environment. Will a new concession with China enable the Congolese to ‘really feel what all that copper, cobalt and nickel is good for’, as President Joseph Kabila says, or will the country continue to be seen as ‘a resource-rich bargain bin, open for business’?

...

This inventory not only ‘commissioned and paid for US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite studies of the country for infrared maps of its mineral potential,’ but also peeled back the skin of the forest and highlands to reveal its finite riches, chiefly coltan – the same magic dust used to develop the technologies underpinning the modernity of high-tech civilisation. Given that 80 per cent of the world’s coltan was located in Africa, and 82 per cent in the DRC, putting friends in high places remained a crucial tentacle of foreign policy.

...

A report in the Inter Press Service (28 October 2009) details how exploitation, primarily from new concessions, save for portions of Katanga Mining Ltd (reimbursed), would see US$3 billion in revenues from the tax exempt Sino-Congolese joint venture, Socomins, used to repay investment, and Gecamines providing US$100 million to finance operating and employment concerns. The following phase of the contract stipulated that 66 per cent of the profit would finance China’s infrastructural works – realised through China Railway Engineering Company (CREC) and Sinohydro, a company specialising in hydroelectric and hydraulic engineering projects. The cost of the projects will be determined in-house, potentially leaving the door open to corporate mispricing. The remaining 34 per cent of profits will be divided among shareholders. In the event that the mines are not as profitable as imagined, China has secured the rights to further mineral concessions. According to the September agreement, China retains the right to extract 626,619 tons of cobalt and 10.6 million tons of copper from the Katanga region, which is part of the copperbelt extending from Angola through to the DRC and Zambia.

China Exim’s loans will pass exclusively through Chinese hands, circumventing the possibility of illicit flight on the part of the Congolese state. Congolese President Joseph Kabila, son of former DRC President Laurent Kabila, described the deal as crucial to the development of the DRC, stating: ‘The Chinese banks are prepared to finance our Five Works (water, electricity, education, health, and transport). For the first time in our history, the Congolese will really feel what all that copper, cobalt and nickel is good for.’ These works include 145 health centres, 20,000 council flats, 31 hospitals, 49 water distribution centres as well as expanded water supplies, four universities and a parliament building. China has also pledged to build 4,000 kilometres of tarred road (prior to Chinese activities, just 200 kilometres existed) in addition to 3,200 kilometres of railway systems). Approximately 50 per cent of loans from China Exim were directed toward the continent, incentivising South- South trade and investment. For this reason, in addition to the necessity of a counterweight, China’s potential as a developing-country investor levels the playing field, shifting investment goals from ‘returns’ to that of ‘access.’ (Africa’s biggest investors however – at 20 per cent – are other African nations.) How well did the DRC and ‘system d’ regions – resource-rich regions located on the peripheries – fare under the conventional system?

...

For the DRC, ‘controlled’ by a fragmented and incoherent state, politically and physically distant from exploited territories, the situation – described by the 2002 UN Report as ‘the systematic and systemic exploitation of the DRC done in the name of resources’ – implies that humans born ‘rich’ in the DRC, are fast becoming as much an endangered species as the gorillas, elephants and other magnificent creatures gunned. Outside and alongside the DRC, in the contiguous world inhabited by ‘everyone else,’ accessorising life with mobile phones and computers and Sony PlayStations, we have become unwitting players in the system; spectators to a nation devoured by the terribly respectable white collar criminals, and their minions, rendering the DRC a large prison without walls, and the ‘unregulated’ free market, a religion of economic mercenaries. After half a century of prayer, the DRC has made into the desired image – a resource-rich bargain bin, open for business.

The U.S. And China: Rivals That May Need Each Other

An interesting article, especially after Vinnie Ferraro's recently lectures on the devolution of American power since 9/11, hence the notion of "post-9/11 era." Militarily it were Afghanistan

and Iraq

that unchained the decline and financially the recent financial crisis, which in many ways was just waiting to happen, was a further blow. Vinnie contend that this in general was not much of an issue for American public, they'd rather the government spend more energy on domestic issues.

But the discussions of who will fill in the rest of the space has long been a discussion. Here this one offers a new point, something valid for China to think about as well.

"Our challenge with China, he says, isn't about competition. "Our biggest problem with them is getting them to come up to the level of responsibility that their networks and their influence around the world actually demands from them."

by NPR Staff - January 15, 2011

Chinese President Hu Jintao's scheduled visit to the White House this week comes at critical moment in U.S.-China relations.

America has entered a new year with a rising national debt and deficit projections. Meanwhile, China continues its ascent as a global economic player. In the years to come, an economically bruised U.S. may have to share the superpower spotlight with the competition.

Still, former Pentagon strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett tells NPR's Guy Raz, American hype over China's rise is overblown, while foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman predicts that China-U.S. relations will get "bumpier" over the next few years.

Bumpy Relations Ahead

Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, says America's "unipolar moment" on the world's stage has passed.

America will most likely remain a preeminent world power in the near future, but "in the aftermath of the financial crisis, we're going back to a world in which [the U.S.] has competitors again," he says. [Yet in Vinnie's words, the super power status had long been altered since 9/11]

Rachman, who wrote Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety, predicts that relations between China and the U.S. are "going to get a bit bumpier over the next five years or more."

"The China-U.S. relationship has always had elements of friendship, cooperation and rivalry," he achman says. "But I think the more rivalrous elements are becoming more emphasized now."

He says that high unemployment rates in the U.S. and global economic imbalances undermine the "assumption that the Chinese economic relationship was equally beneficial to the U.S." and shows that "globalization isn't an unadulterated win for the U.S."

On the other side of the Pacific, a rising China is becoming more assertive in world affairs in ways that the U.S. may find uncomfortable, Rachman says.

"It's not that they want a direct confrontation with the U.S.," he says. "On the contrary, they're very keen to avoid that." Rachman says China is taking a more subtle approach, growing its power and military capabilities at a time when the U.S. is increasingly under financial strain, and has the ultimate goal of shifting the "balance of forces" between the world powers.

Overblown China Hype

Yet Barnett, chief analyst at Wikistrat and contributing editor for Esquire magazine, cautions that Americans' concern over China's rise is "really out of control."

"It's very similar to the way the British looked at us, say, around the turn of the century," Barnett says. "They imagined we could have bought and sold them. The Chinese couldn't do the same with us. Their economy is still a fraction of ours."

That economy may be growing, but it will still be decades before China's people reach an economic status equal to Americans, he says.

Thus, a cooperative U.S.-China relationship is not only a good idea, Barnett says, but it's also "absolutely essential when you consider a global middle class aspiring to a lifestyle that the planet cannot sustain if we use old resource models."

The end of America's status as the world's sole super power wouldn't be a bad thing, either, Barnett argues. Part of the American contribution after World War II was establishing a global economic system that allowed great powers to rise without instigating a war.

"We've created the system for these people to rise, and now we seem uncomfortable with the fact that we're not going to be the sole pole anymore in the system," Barnett says. "And we don't seem to know how to ask for anybody else's help."

Our challenge with China, he says, isn't about competition. "Our biggest problem with them is getting them to come up to the level of responsibility that their networks and their influence around the world actually demands from them."

"We need that help," Barnett says, "because based on our own efforts, we can only do an Iraq and an Afghanistan -- and not much else."

Notes from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development-first intersessional leading up to Rio+20

Folks back in China replied my email introducing this intersessional held in NYC from Jan 10th to 11th and updates of my experiences there and showed interests in further engagement. To my delight, this perhaps was my biggest take-home from the trip to NYC in between the blizzards hit the Northeast region. So here I will give a brief summary of what the meeting is about and its implications for broader youth participation.

If you recall, the first Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 as a monumental event in the formalization of the concept of sustainable development and the adoption of Agenda 21 -- "an unprecedented global plan of action" to achieve SD. It was also where the UNFCCC was officially open for signatures. In 2002 the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation was adopted to provide more concrete steps to implement SD, albeit in slow progress. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development touted 27 principles that recognize the fundamental independence and connection of our earth and aim to protect the integrity of natural environment and development systems.

The aim of this first intersessional meeting is to discuss the role of UN Conference on Sustainable Development, in preparation of the Earth Summit 2012 (or "Rio+20"), of securing renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development and address new and emerging challenges. The meeting will also address the role of UNCSD with regard to the following themes an green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication and institutional framework for sustainable development. It is a somewhat different track of meetings from UNFCCC -- more focus on the ideology,methodologies and implementation strategies and of sustainable development.

As the first intersessional meeting after the first preparatory meeting (mostly logistic) held last May, the meeting itself was more about opening discussions and inviting questions by member states and Major Groups (such as Youth and Children major group) around two of the topics raised previously, namely the green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication and institutional framework for sustainable development.

The organization of the conference itself stands differently from that of a UNFCCC meeting. Scientists, experts and officials from academia, prominent NGOs and relevant UN organs speak and present their understandings of the "new" concept of "green economy" and its relationship to the umbrella goal of "sustainable development," and then invite the delegates from countries organizations and business,women, indigenous people and youth communities to ask their questions and offer their comments and suggestions. There are still quite a lot of debate over what it means by building a world green economy and what it means locally. The goal at Rio+20 next year is to achieve some kind of shared understanding and precious wording of green economy but definitely also leaves room for interpretation and implementation at local level. A synthesis report pulled together by StakeholderForum surveyed over 200 non-governmental organizations and their opinions of the concept of "green economy", which was dissiminated at the meeting and online.

The intersessionals seem to lack the participation of youth -- there were only six of us there (three Europeans, two Americans and myself, despite one of the Europeans' comment that "this is such a diverse group", 我也只有在心里吐痰呸他了).Anyway, we are still all in discussion of how to bring in broader participation of the youth community. There seems to be discussions about setting up funds to facilitate civil society participation. Education, formal and non-formal, also need more devotion by the academic institutions or through national programs but also by youth themselves (as in peer-to-peer training or participating in these meetings). Kyle from SustainUS is thinking about producing a guidebook for youth involvement, so one example of how we as Chines youth could be involved is to adapt that knowledge brochure under a Chinese context. These could also be potential topics at domestic events such as IYSECC 3.0 and or at smaller scales. It is another potentially viable platform for the China-US youth exchange, since one of CUYCE's focus is also on advancing clean technologies for sustainable development.

The reason why I think getting more youth involved in the UN Conference on Sustainable Development is worth pursuing is that it is less politically technical and tedious than the UNFCCC process. It can potentially generate more ideas, actions and projects by the young people inspired by the concepts and framework offered in this set of discussion. And from actions we could potentially lead to changes in the making of policies and business practices.

The following is an article on the second day of Outreach that summarizes some of the issues in our intervention at the official meetings.

http://www.stakeholderforum.org/sf/outreach/

Young people at Rio+20 Intersessional call for a youth-friendly green and fair economy

BEN VANPEPERSTRAETE, ORGANISING PARTNER MAJOR GROUP YOUTH AND CHILDREN

A few young people from across the globe have arrived safe at the first informal. For us, discussions (and even negotiations) on Rio+20 can’t start soon enough. So we where happy to have already the opportunity to go quite directly down to business.

While there would be a fair argument that we young people still have enough time to attend and participate enough conferences, we feel we can not wait with Rio+20.

Green economy – the need for policies and finance

We are not that interested in a sterile academic brainstorm about green economy, but want to see action as soon as possible. Mr. Steiner hit the nail today by stating that “the world is not looking for a treaty/protocol about green economy - it’s looking for policies and finance”. So we should be prepared to take the risk to transition quickly to a fair and green economy when we leave Rio next year. As we think Green Economy seems an interesting method toward achieving Sustainable Development, and to speed up its implementation.

But we understand the hesitation, as we share a lot of questions on a Green Economy:

• Why don’t we talk about a Green and Fair Economy?

• Is there a risk that Green Economy can replace existing language on Sustainable Development, rather complement and even strengthen it with concrete action?

• And why do the national schemes Mr. Steiner mentioned not focus particularly on youth, when it is this generation that needs the prospect of a future and decent jobs?

Young people often hardest hit

We believe that one year ought to suffice to hash out the big details, to converge quickly, and to start putting things into action. The key outcome we want to land is a youth-friendly green and fair economy. As mentioned earlier, young people are often being hit the hardest by the ecological, social and economic crises, despite being the ones needing green and decent jobs the most.

Walk the Talk

We are ready to make own contributions to Green Economy like providing the skills we need through amongst other peer-to-peer education. Another example comes from one of the groups active in the Youth and Children Major Groups, who will organise a green business-plan contest between here and Rio.

So, we are ready and hope the readers start walking the talk. But, within one year we should all be ready to walk, and all walk in the same direction.

Readings and Notes from Social Entrepreneurship Class at Amherst College

First session, Jan 11th 2011

The Social Entrepreneurship has started today and the readings and speakers have been quite fascinating, intriguing and thought-provoking (although I need to take a critical view of the emphasis and structure of the course itself) . My first reaction (to everyone now involved in the Renewable Energy Enterprises Network, REEN) is that in terms of developing ourselves as a social enterprise that seeks to seed more of such, we really need to build our own knowledge base of what it actually means as inspired practitioners. So I would really encourage you to take time and effort to do some studies in the context of REEN and the broader socio-political-economic environment it is situated with a critical eye.

I have the list of very helpful readings from today's class with some highlights and keywords.
You can find the course materials through here http://seinterterm2011.weebly.com/index.html
and I will try to keep my reflections on the readings and class on my blog (yes push me if I do not deliver since I think this is important and will post today's notes later).

Readings from today (in order of relevance and helpfulness of these materials)

"In Kenya, Huts Far Off the Grid Harness the Sun.” Elisabeth Rosenthal – 12-25-2010 – Front page NYT

This article basically outlined the business case and a nascent market for what REEN can provide in its full-fledge especially when it comes to off-grid solar systems. In the article it cited several cases and places where good busniess models seem to be up and running -- potential resources for us. And the rest of the stuff we already know so be proud.

Everyone a Changemaker:SE's ultimate goal

Download File by Bill Drayton

Working with these social entrepreneurs, Ashoka builds
communities of innovators who work collectively to transform
society, and to design new ways for the social sector to become
more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. There
are now over 1,750 Ashoka leading social entrepreneurs, and
Ashoka serves over 60 countries.

Key words: citizen sector, multiplying society's capacity, pattern-changing leading social entrepreneurs, results-based mission and operation, transforming the youth years, underlining skills for young enterprises: applied empathy, teamwork and leadership

Building a Performance Measurement System
File Size:	1777 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File by Root Cause

"Performance measurement provides vital information for advancing
social innovation: the process of developing, testing, and honing
new and potentially transformative approaches to existing social
issues. With the right performance metrics, data, and analysis in
hand, social innovators—nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses that offer innovative, results-driven solutions tosocial problems—can make well-informed management decisions to drive continuous improvement and long-term social impact." This document is a step-by-step, practical guide to create or strengthen a customized performance measurement system for: ƒƒ Start-up or existing nonprofit organizations (including direct service, advocacy, associations/networks, and capacity-building organizations).

Results (magnitude) in various activities and metrics are crucial to measure the social and environmental impacts of REEN or other seedling organizations. Setting the standards prior to the execution of the projects seems to be important if we are to ensure the resource efficiency of our organization and the effectiveness of our work.

Class Notes Jan 11th, 2011:

Notes from social Entrepreneurship Interim class At Amherst

SE: “a social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change.” Wiki

A SE is not a risk taker in the sense that he or she plan, does research, and strategize

Takes Imagination, gives flexibility

“SEs are not content just to fish or teach how to fish. They will not cease until they have revolutionalized the whole fishing industry. " CEO Ashoko

Major themes in the SE concepts in this course:

ü Profitable: could be in several years, not relying solely on grant money

ü Sustainable:

ü Scalable: easy to duplicate and spreadable

ü Measurable:e.g. SE vs private venture: SE has to have a built-in social impact measurement system

*Be aware of unintended processes, contents or products for potential social disasters.

Guest speaker: Dean’s Beans' founder Dean Cycon

Global coffee supply chain:95% of people involved in the raw coffee bean production are marginalized indigenous people.

Cotton uses 50% of words pesticides supply, coffee plantation only the second

Language barriers of indigenous ppl prevent them from broader participation in the global

Kenya: failed case: advocate for bean plantation free of pesticides
because: donated by German and American aid agencies who require Kenyan government to buy these pesticides.

Q:How has your enterprise be able to contribute to the revolutionization of policy making and global supply chain practices? Given the failure in Kenya, what are the situations competing with traditional aid agencies?--> not all aid programs are bad, just need to be cautious of the tie-backs and strings attached to it.

Three pillars of Dean’s Beans' operation and other strategies:

Economics, ecology and People-centered development (meaning trade relationship built on development in the community, identify comunities' priority based on cash and equity available at Bean’s Dean. Some projects go on for 15 years)

Listening and observing

Facilitating program design and funding: gender violence, not a lack of funding, address fundamental challengesn in the community, not necessarily what outsiders see as important.

Case: Guatemala

Designing a women’s healthcare fund financed by the distribution and management of micro-loans. Promoting indigenous radio programs that provide crop and market information for coffee farmers.

Different from having intermediate micro-credit manager who sometimes sucks away a lot of money. We want micro-bank come in to teach women how to run the program. So women run their own banks. Interests payment channeled into a common pool, which took four years. Manageable size matters. Lasted 8 eight years but shrank back after uncontrollable size.

Peru:assisting coops of 300 families to enter the American market. Funding reforestation and women’s loan program.

Question: who monitors the funds? What happens when borrowers failed to reply?-- will continue the discussion with this guy via email.

How does a progressive funders keep its enterprises embedded mission as it progresses on and have a change of leadership, or when facing acquisition attempts by bigger corporations?

Growth is an outcome of business done well, not the ultimate goal

Unwired world: 5.3 billion mobile phone users by year end

Brought up in Vinnie Ferraro's class today at his first lecture during the winter session on Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy(access to full syllabus and reading materials). I will write a separate entry on the first session of class. It is a must for his level of intelligence and knowledge on what is going with the U.S. as the world number one power in decline.

October 21, 2010, San Francisco: The world will have 5.3 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of the year, the International Telecommunications Union has predicted in a new report, publicised at its annual conference in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The report said that mobile phone networks are already available to over 90 percent of the world's population. Mobile phone penetration in developed countries is 68 percent, a saturation level higher than any previous technology.

Internet access is also exploding, the report found. The number of internet users has doubled over the past five years and will reach 2 billion by the end of 2010. An estimated 1.6 billion people have home internet access, up from 1.4 billion people at the end of 2009.

But there's still a huge gulf between the first and third worlds.

By the end of 2010, 71 percent of the population in developed countries will be online by the end of the year, compared to 21 percent of the population in developing countries.

While in developed countries 65 percent of people have access to the Internet at home, this is the case for only 13.5 percent of people in developing countries where Internet access in schools, at work and public locations is critical.

Regional differences are significant: 65 percent of Europeans are on the Internet, compared to only 9.6 percent of Africans

Cancun Climate Negotiation | Center for Strategic and International Studies

Cancun Climate Negotiation | Center for Strategic and International Studies

By Sarah O. Ladislaw Dec 15, 2010

(I have enjoyed many of CSIS's talks on the China-in-Africa discussions from last year. This one seems to be fairly comprehensive. But for better understanding I would suggest you skip through the Copenhagen assessment as well. It's really interesting to note the changes, development and "progresses" taking shape between these big meetings. Again the whole climate change politics and policy extravaganza is a constantly and intriguingly evolving discourse as our understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of our climate and many aspects of our human civilizations)

For the last two weeks international climate negotiators met in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of Parties (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). After last year’s near-catastrophe in Copenhagen (see our assessment of the Copenhagen talks), countries spent the better part of the past year tamping down expectations for this year’s round of negotiations. Instead of shooting for the completion of a legally binding agreement, the negotiators focused on making incremental progress on some of the foundational elements of a new regime while sidestepping the issue of whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol and avoiding a more serious discussion about the diminishing likelihood that the international community will be able to reach its collective climate goals.

What agreements were reached in Cancun?

The climate talks in Cancun successfully “anchored” agreements reached last year in the formal negotiating progress and filled out some of the details in each major area. Last year, the negotiators reached an eleventh-hour political agreement referred to as the Copenhagen Accord. For many developed economies, chief among them the United States, this agreement is meant to serve as the foundation for a new global agreement because it solves some of the deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol (namely, it includes emissions reduction pledges and transparency provisions for all major economies, not just the traditional developed countries). The agreement is broadly supported among the parties but was never formally adopted by the entire group. Todd Stern, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, described the outcome of the Cancun negotiations as “approving and elaborating” on the Copenhagen Accord. This characterization can be derived from the fact that all the key elements of the Copenhagen Accord (i.e., emissions reductions, transparency, financing, technology sharing, forestry and land use, and adaptation) were included in the Cancun agreement. Moreover, while the Copenhagen Accord focused on high-level principles and agreements on each of those issues, the agreement in Cancun begins to set down some substantive detail about how each will be carried out (see the chart below for a partial summary of how the Cancun agreement built upon the major pillars of the Copenhagen Accord).

Does this agreement signify progress or more of the same?

For those paying close attention to the climate negotiation process, the progress made in Cancun is tangible and significant. It solidifies the core achievement from the Copenhagen Accord: all major developed and developing economies are willing to take action and be held to some level of accountability for emissions reductions. This is a significant departure from the world of the Kyoto Protocol and engenders some level of momentum for near-term action on emissions reduction activity.

In other ways, the outcome revealed that the negotiations have become a process that is waiting for the stars to realign before attempting to make any big breakthroughs or address some of the core underlying problems. The decision not to take on major issues seems to be strategic and pragmatic. The negotiators purposely did not take on thorny issues about increasing emissions reduction pledges (which are widely viewed as inadequate for reaching the agreed-upon target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius) or ensuring greater levels of financing for developing country mitigation and adaptation efforts. From a practical standpoint, negotiators recognized that none of the parties were in a position to strengthen emissions or financial pledges due to domestic political and financial constraints, so instead, negotiators focused on things they could accomplish in order to facilitate as much real action on the suite of measures as possible.

Where do the negotiations go from here?

The next round of formal negotiations (there will be preparatory negotiations throughout the course of 2011) will take place in Durban, South Africa, at the end of next year. Many analysts have rightly noted that it be will difficult for the negotiators to make the same type of “incremental progress” next year and avoid some of the underlying disagreements and core weaknesses of the current regime. One example of this is the question of whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol for another commitment period. During the negotiations in Cancun, Japan and several other countries with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol stated that they would not sign on to a second commitment period. All of this is, in some way, political theater. The idea that major developed economies would continue to be part of a legally binding agreement that does not somehow bring in the other major emitters has been a nonstarter for developed country signatories of the Kyoto Protocol for quite some time. However, the Kyoto Protocol is a critically important document for developing countries as it enshrines many of the core principles and structures that they view as the necessary foundation for any and all future action. The agreement reached in Cancun simply puts off a decision about whether to extend the Kyoto Protocol until next year (though it is hard to see how parties will be any closer to an agreement 12 months hence). The underlying strategy here is to build up a “replacement” for the Kyoto Protocol—an agreement that includes all the core principles that the developing world wants to see (e.g., common but differentiated standards, financing for mitigation and adaptation measures, etc.) but breaks down some of the barriers between developed and developing country action that the developed world simply cannot accept. Over time, if parties became more confident in a new agreement, the Kyoto Protocol will seem less important and hopefully fade away (because nobody ever kills these types of agreements). It is doubtful, however, that this type of confidence will be achieved before the deadline for extension comes up.

Perhaps more importantly, the international community seemed reluctant to accept that given current trajectories, the prospect of reaching their stated emissions reduction goals is increasingly unlikely. Most negotiators openly recognize that the world is not on course to effectively limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. This will become increasingly evident as more time passes, especially if major emitters like the United States are not able to make tangible and meaningful progress on emissions reductions. At some point individual countries as well as the global community will have to accept this new reality and come to grips with what it means for our collective action approach.

Progression from Copenhagen Accord to Cancun Outcome (not intended to be comprehensive)
Pillars of a “Balanced Package”	Copenhagen Accord	Cancun Outcome
Emissions reduction pledges	Developed country targets and developing country actions (invited countries to submit targets and actions)	Includes developed country targets and developing country actions as part of the decision (so-called anchoring of pledges)
Transparency	Developed country monitoring, reporting, and verification. Developing country national communication with domestic monitoring review and verification subject to international consultation	Adds detail to the content, frequency, and review of emissions reduction and financial pledges for developed, major developing, and lesser-developed economies Establishes details of the international consultation and analysis process for major developing countries
Financing	$30 billion of “new and additional” resources from developed countries between 2010–2012 Goal to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 High-Level Panel on finance goal Sought to establish Green Climate Fund	Locks in the amounts listed in the Copenhagen Accord for fast-start and long-term financing Establishes a Green Climate Fund as the operational entity for climate finance Establishes the World Bank as the interim trustee for the fund Establishes a Transitional Committee and Standing Committee within the COP with the goal of improving the facilitation of the fund
Technology	Sought to establish a new Technology Mechanism (expressed desire but could not execute outside the realm of the COP)	Establishes a Technology Mechanism to facilitate the technology development and transfer. Will include a Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Center (agreement describes the functions of both)
Reducing Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)	Agreed on the crucial role of REDD and the need to provide positive incentives to such action and enable mobilization of resources from developed countries	Establish a process for developing countries to reduce emissions in the forest sector in such a way that could enable external financing for these efforts
Adaptation	Agreed that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable, and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity building to support adaptation in developing countries [Within financing section] Prioritized adaptation for the most vulnerable developing countries and stated that and that a balanced allocation of funding should go to mitigation and adaptation	Establishes Cancun Adaptation Framework to enhance adaptation action Establishes an Adaptation Committee to promote implementation of enhanced action Establishes a work program to study and address loss and damages associated with climate change

Sarah O. Ladislaw is a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Audio: Post-Cancun Update - What Happened in Cancun and Where do the Climate Negotiations go from Here?

With Johnathon Pershing by CSIS