by Victoria Barrow | Oct 30, 2015 | Climate Justice, Global Cooperation, News
No, it doesn’t involve pastries or the Eiffel tower.
From November 30 to December 11, over 190 nations will meet up in Paris to plan a new global agreement on climate change. This agreement will replace current policies on greenhouse gas emissions, which expire in 2020.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. What is it?
This conference is formally known as COP21, or the “21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).”
The UNFCCC was created at the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992 and adopted in 1994. It has been ratified by 196 countries.
These countries make up the Conference of Parties (COP): the convention’s decision-making body. Every year the COP meets up and discusses how to meet climate change goals.
This year’s convention in Paris will be the 21st, hence the name COP21.
2. Why does it matter?
Greenhouse gas emissions cause global temperature rises. The threshold beyond which global warming becomes irreversible is 2C above pre-industrial levels.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with today’s emissions we are heading for a rise of 5C. There is still, however, time to limit climate change– just not very much time.
Need I remind you of why this temperature rise could be catastrophic?
3. What makes this conference different?
You may be thinking, “There have already been 20 other conferences. Why is this one so special?” Well, none of the prior conferences succeeded in creating a legally binding agreement accepted by all 196 countries.
In 1997, for example, the Kyoto protocol was produced, which suggested a 5% cut in emissions compared to 1990 by 2012. Because not enough countries agreed to it, however, it never became legally binding. This was largely due to the US’s decision not to ratify. Furthermore, the countries that did make commitments under Kyoto were not sanctioned if they failed to take action.
More than ten years later, at the 2009 conference held in Copenhagen, all of the world’s biggest emitters finally agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Once again, however, the conference failed to produce a legally binding agreement.
The hope for the Paris conference is that a legally binding agreement will finally be ratified by all involved countries.
Source: White House
4. What steps have already been taken?
The good news is that progress has already been made towards creating this new global agreement.
At the 2014 climate summit in Lima, countries agreed to make individual climate pledges that would be submitted to the UN prior to the Paris conference. These pledges, known as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs, will largely determine how countries will tackle climate change after 2020.
INDCs must contain information on how a country plans to reduce emissions. Developing countries, who have contributed less to emissions, must explain how they plan on developing in a sustainable way.
As of today, over 150 countries have submitted their INDCs, covering more than 90% of world emissions.
Even more encouraging is the fact that all of the top polluters have submitted climate pledges:
China: cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60-65% from 2005 levels and cap emissions by 2030
US: cut emissions to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025
EU: 40% domestic reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 compared to 1990 levels
India: obtain 40% of its electricity from low carbon sources by 2030
5. What still needs to be done?
Although it is promising that so many countries have pledged to reduce emissions, the Paris agreement is far from being settled.
Many developing countries, for example, want richer countries to help finance their transition to clean technologies. Rich country governments, however, argue that funding should come from the private sector or from international development banks such as the World Bank.
Furthermore, the commitments that have been made so far will not be enough to avoid the 2C of warming temperature threshold. One suggestion that has been made is to engage “non-state actors” such as businesses, local governments, and municipalities to do more.
In other words, we cannot rely purely on the UN and the Paris conference to solve our climate problems. Every single one of us has a responsibility to reduce emissions and live in a more sustainable way.
Here at Citizens for Global Solutions, we believe that every citizen has a role to play in solving global problems.
Want to make a difference? Become a Global Citizen today!
by Jack Pearce | Oct 29, 2015 | Climate Justice, Global Cooperation
In a prior post in the International Affairs Forum, I tried to outline what Western and Eastern polities might want out of the ever-fractious Middle East, using the P5+1 deal with Iran as a focus point.
Basically, this would be peace, prosperity, citizen-centered governance, and openness to global economic and social systems. In other words, we have had enough of this area’s interminable squabbling. We need to aim for more constructive regional and global engagement.
But there is a deeper set of issues and needs. First, let us take water.
Several analyses suggest that the recent major drought in the area of Syria was a factor in Syria’s unraveling. Water shortages are of even broader scope in the area.
If the people of Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and even Saudi Arabia are impoverished by water depletion, governance systems are likely to destabilize, refugees will multiply, and oil supplies will be prejudiced as a result of civic unrest and violence.
This would be a disappointing future for those in the area. But why should Americans, Europeans, and everyone else care? The temptation is to think or say that the Middle East was dry before we appeared on its scene, and that is not our responsibility.
Enter oil. The Persian Gulf area has roughly half the world’s oil reserves. These are the lowest cost reserves available. The Persian Gulf countries currently originate over ⅓ of global crude oil exports. At present, the Strait of Hormuz (near the opening of the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean) is a potential choke point for the flow of this oil.
If governments in the area become engaged in major hostilities or become dysfunctional from citizen unrest and conflict, liquid fuel prices around the globe would go up, perhaps dramatically; global economies would likely fail to grow as accustomed, financial markets would be roiled, international trade would likely suffer from global economic contraction, and general global hardship could abound.
Now enter sectarianism. The Islamic Sunni/Shia dichotomy is everyday news. One might say this is just history, not the future, and the adherents of each sect can now focus on better integration with the remainder of the world, fatten their bank balances, enjoy vacations abroad, and get on with the future. Unfortunately, not all of the clerical establishments in the area are on board. History has a lot of inertia, carrying into the future. The mixture of national, ethnic, and religious group consciousnesses present the overall picture of a continually waving red flag.
Lastly is sunshine. MENA has lots of it. Combined with low rainfall, this has made the Middle East hot, dry, and limited in population. But the total solar energy flux vastly exceeds the energy value of the oil and gas deposits there and will last for over a billion years. Solar technologies and energy storage systems present the possibility that this energy might economically be translated into water supplies (by desalination and piping water inland), electricity, and even chemical fuels. One can imagine, for example, industrial scale solar PV complexes providing a combination of electricity, desalinated water for local use, and fuels such as hydrogen for fuel cell usages.
If the Middle East effectively embraces such a future, this could provide more biological carrying capacity for the area, productive employment for its abundant youth, a geographically decentralized tax base for governing bodies, and the possibility (but not the guarantee) of more decentralized, more democratized, and less parasitized political structures. In this bargain, one also economizes on greenhouse gas emissions without lowering the prosperity potentials of the Middle East.
At present, the countries in this area lack the capacity to realize these economic possibilities within themselves. As for the technical and economic potentials, they must draw upon the more advanced industrial tools and skills of Europe, the United States, and the Far East.
This provides a powerful, mutually beneficial complementarity. In the short run, the MENA areas can provide petrochemicals and labor to the industrialized areas and markets for the products and skills of those areas. In the longer term, MENA would be a reasonably prosperous and stable part of a globally sustainable ecosystem.
When contemplating how the global system might encourage such a future, one finds that much of the commentary on the Syria situation and the Middle East in general reflects a not-quite post-colonial mindset. See for example Henry Kissinger’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal. However cogently argued, the implicit assumption in this treatment of the issue is that the United States must set boundaries between factions and balance “great power” ambitions, arranging matters for its own national objectives.
That is to ask both too much and too little of the United States. Our generalized interest—and the interest which can get broadest international appeal—is primarily in stable societies open to international economic, cultural and social interchange, not in gerrymandering the Middle East to the primary benefit of the United States or, for example, of Russia.
Many might be inclined to say that the burden of arriving at mutual accommodations in coping with water limitations lies first on the citizens in the area and their governments. This also might be said more generally in regards to reconciling their various national and sectarian rivalries.
This is true. But Syria and ISIL require international interventions to address the crises and to avoid potentially worse outcomes. In doing so, the external powers must take great care to avoid maneuvering for advantage in MENA and sparking a wider cold or hot rivalry among themselves.
Thus the entire global population has some stake in brokering peace between the rival societies of the Middle East and in coping with pressing problems such as water supplies. It would seem wise, therefore, to use whatever set of United Nations, regional, and civil society concords feasible to bring about these goals.
As noted above, the West and East would have much to gain from recycling petrodollars into long term energy and water generation facilities in this arid area, as opposed to arms sales conducive to human misery in MENA and potentially dangerous wider confrontations.
Such an undertaking will not necessarily be easy or clearly understood at all times to all concerned. But former US President Bill Clinton reportedly said, in speaking about dealing with obstreperous and dangerous foreign entities in less than apocalyptic ways, words to the effect of “Well, you can’t just kill them all.”
This is particularly good counsel to the Shia, Sunni, Iranian, Turkish, Kurdish, Iraqi, and Arabian leaders and their citizens. The era in which eliminating or subjugating others through violence can be thought likely to solve any group’s perceived problems is past. There is no local hegemon in sight. Iran might become the “strongest” power in the area, but it could not gain or exploit that status by force of arms if the United States, Europe, and/or other international systems protect other polities in the area from overt conquest or nuclear blackmail. This, indeed, is a part of the reason for the Iran nuclear deal. (Duh.)
Thus, the polities of that area will need to find ways to coexist with each other and participate productively in a global civilization. Or they will massively sacrifice the lives and prospects of tens and hundreds of millions of people who should have rewarding existence.
Even so, the above discussion asserts, global polities and their citizens also have a stake in outcomes in the Middle East. Thus, the agents of global polities — state actors, private sector interests, and civil society all may be involved in trying to help find ways forward, involving water, oil, sunshine, and the subjugation, or sublimation, of sectarianism and belligerent nationalism.
United Nations organizations are particularly relevant (see, for example, UN-sponsored talks on the Yemen conflict). The United Nations has structural and political limitations. Often it is not sufficiently organized to play decisive roles in addressing these challenges. But the exigencies of the Middle East situation might serve as a sort of forced draft on the United Nations structure. In the extreme, the now quiescent ‘trusteeship council’ might conceivably be brought into play.
Whether by coalitions, coalitions of coalitions, and/or UN structures, the primary task is not merely to referee or handicap local rivalries to aid a few external actors. Some refereeing or peacebuilding will be entailed. But the primary objective should be the integration of the Middle Eastern polities into a global system which relies upon them for needed energy supplies, and can help supply them with the technologies and skills required for their long term peaceful sustenance.
by CGS Blog Archive | Oct 27, 2015 | Global Cooperation, World Federation
Let’s take a look at some of the major political and economic crises the world has gone through as of late: Russian and Ukrainian violence, the creation of ISIS, Greece’s economic turmoil, and the refugee crisis across the globe. While the United States has made significant efforts to fight the injustices, it has been quiet compared to its roaring attitude to replace Saddam Hussein’s Government in 2003 as well as to engage in a war for more than a decade.
A country is solely responsible for maintaining its sovereignty and should not be viewed as weak should it choose to not involve itself in international chaos. Moreover, it is the United Nations that must be in charge of international policy in regards to the political and economic stability of each country on a global level.
One of the important reasons the UN was created in 1945 was to prevent wars and conflict in the first place, but should they happen, then to eliminate human suffering and avoid the economic costs. There have been several news posts and reports lately saying that Obama is weak, that Putin is going to take over the Middle East, and that America needs to do something.
Neither Vladimir Putin nor President Obama should feel that Russia and America are in charge of establishing and maintaining peace. Because Obama and Putin have strongly different ideologies about creating strategy to establish peace in the Middle East, neither has agreed to compromise effectively.
This is when it would be nice to have a third party negotiator, perhaps international officials and representatives from the UN. Russia is strong and there is absolutely no doubt that America is strong, but there are so many doubts about who should take charge of the international chaos and injustice occurring throughout the world. In midst of this disagreement and lack of cooperation and involvement, it is the innocent men, women, and children that are dying daily as the victims of ISIS and other perpetrators of violence.
Because its sole focus is to maintain international cooperation and respond to nations on a global level, the UN should be the one in charge of appointing and designating countries to get involved with the Middle East and also be the leader for initiating strategies with the help of all nations. Individual states must primarily be focused on protecting themselves. The US should keep its weapons and strong military to itself and work to develop a strong, safe, and secure nation for the people living in it. And if help is needed to solve any international crisis, then designated US officials for the UN should decide whether it’s appropriate for America to enter the conflict or not.
The campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) has gained significant support, as it has been designed to give “citizens a chance to have their voices represented in global debates,” as well as be able to effectively understand and address global concerns as a whole. A UNPA would handle issues like Russia’s entrance in the Middle East and the lack of other nations’ involvement in world crises.
The UN should be the only organization in charge of holding each nation accountable for peace, harmony, justice, and chaos. Special Envoys, international officials, defense secretaries, strategists, and economists of multiple countries should come together and view the conflict as a whole versus leaving it up to Russia and America, for example.
You can protect yourself from the cold rain yet enjoy it at the same time only with the help of an umbrella. Perhaps it’s time for the UN to be that umbrella and to put Putin on hold!
Do you think the US is not as strong as before and that’s why it is withholding involvement? Do you think Russia and the US can come up with an agreement? What are your thoughts about the UN having its own parliament to promote and maintain peace strategies across the globe? Comment and let me know!
by Rene Wadlow | Oct 16, 2015 | Climate Justice, Global Cooperation
October 16 is the UN-designated World Food Day. The date is the anniversary of the FAO’s creation in 1945 with the aim of “contributing towards an expanding world economy and ensuring humanity’s freedom from hunger.”
Freedom from hunger is not simply a technical matter to be solved with better seeds, fertilizers, cultivation practices and marketing. To achieve freedom from hunger, we need to eliminate poverty. This must draw upon the ideas, skills and energies of whole societies and requires the cooperation of all countries.
As Lester Brown, the American agricultural specialist says,
We are cutting trees faster than they can be regenerated, overgrazing rangelands and converting them into deserts, overpumping aquifers, and draining rivers dry. On our croplands, soil erosion exceeds new soil formation, slowly depriving the soil of its inherent fertility. We are taking fish from the ocean faster than they can reproduce.
To counter these trends, we need awareness and vision, an ethical standard which has the preservation of nature at its heart, and the political leadership to bring about the socio-economic changes needed. For the moment, awareness and vision are unequally spread. In some countries, ecological awareness has led to beneficial changes and innovative technologies. In others, the governmental and social structures are disintegrating due to disease, population pressure upon limited resources, and a lack of social leadership. Worldwide, military spending, led by the US, dwarfs spending on ecologically sound development and the necessary expansion of education and health services.
Lester Brown predicts that food will be the first sector of the economy to unravel. The convergence of soil erosion, fish depletion, water shortages, and rising temperatures are making it more difficult to expand food production fast enough to meet the global demand.
Yet there are agricultural techniques which can increase protein efficiency, raise land productivity, improve livestock use, and produce second harvests on the same land. However, unless we quickly reverse the damaging trends that we have set in motion, we will see vast numbers of environmental refugees—people abandoning depleted aquifers and exhausted soils and those fleeing advancing deserts and rising seas.
David Seckler of the International Water Management Institute writes,
Many of the most populous countries of the world — China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, and nearly all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa — have literally been having a free ride over the past two or three decades by depleting their groundwater resources. The penalty of mismanagement of this valuable resource is now coming due, and it is no exaggeration to say that the results could be catastrophic for these countries, and given their importance, for the world as a whole.
Unfortunately, the International Water Management Institute does not manage the world’s use of water, but can only study it. While there are some planners who would like to be able to tax or make people pay for water, most water use is uncontrolled. Payment for water is a way that governments or private companies have to get more revenue, but the welfare of farmers usually is not a very high priority for them.
As global citizens have stressed, ecologically sound development cannot be the result only of a plan, but rather of millions of individual actions to protect soil, conserve water, plant trees, use locally grown crops, reduce meat in our diets, protect biological diversity, and cut down on our use of cars. We need to stabilize and then reduce world population and to encourage better population distribution through planned migration and the creation of secondary cities to reduce the current growth of megacities. We need to encourage wise use of rural areas by diversifying employment in those areas. We also need to develop ecological awareness through education so that these millions of wise individual decisions can be taken.
Lester Brown underlines the necessary link between knowledge and action:
Environmentally responsible behaviour also depends to a great extent on a capacity to understand basic scientific issues, such as the greenhouse effect or the ecological role of forests. Lacking this, it is harder to grasp the link between fossil fuel burning and climate change or between tree cutting and the incidence of flooding or the loss of biological diversity. The deteriorating relationship between the global economy and the earth’s ecosystem requires an all-out effort to bring literacy to all adults in order to break the poverty cycle and stabilize population.
Education and vision require leadership, and it is ecologically sound political leadership that is badly lacking today. Citizens of the World and all of good will are called upon to provide wise leadership to work for a redirection of financial resources to protect the planet, and to encourage ecologically sound individual and collective action.
by Victoria Barrow | Oct 12, 2015 | Global Cooperation, News, Peace & Disarmament
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its contribution to democratizing the country. The group is made up of four civil society organizations: The Tunisian General Labour Union, The Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, The Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers.
The quartet, formed in 2013, organized a long and difficult national dialogue between Islamists and their opponents, forcing them to work together while dealing with the political unrest that occurred after the Tunisian Revolution. Thanks to their establishment of an alternative and peaceful political process, Tunisia was able to “establish a constitutional system of government guaranteeing fundamental rights for the entire population.”
Today, Tunisia is the only country in the region that has made genuine progress in transitioning to a democracy. After the revolution forced the country’s dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to step down, Tunisia freely elected its current president, Beji Caid Essebsi. Meanwhile, the revolution, which would come to be known as the Arab Spring, spread to a number of other countries in North Africa and the Middle East.
Unfortunately, as the results of the Arab Spring have shown us, abolishing an old political order is just the first step of a revolution. It is extremely difficult to then establish a new, lasting system. Most of the countries who partook in the uprisings have had their battle for democracy and fundamental rights suffer major setbacks. The devastating civil war currently taking place in Syria is just one example of this.
The Nobel Peace Prize, more than just rewarding the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, serves as an encouragement to Tunisia’s civil society as a whole. The prize will hopefully inspire Tunisia to continue working towards democratization.
by Victoria Barrow | Oct 9, 2015 | Climate Justice, Global Cooperation, News
India has just stepped up its efforts in the global fight against climate change.
The country has now joined over 140 others in submitting a climate change plan, or Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), to the UN. India, which is expected to become the world’s most populous by 2028, has pledged to focus on clean energy and obtain 40% of its electricity from low carbon sources by 2030.
Nations are submitting INDCs in preparation for an important UN climate change summit occurring in Paris this December. Here, the UN will attempt to come up with a global agreement to determine how climate change will be tackled after 2020, when current climate targets expire.
Last November, the United States and China kicked off this process by unveiling an agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions, with the US pledging to cut its emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 and China agreeing to cap its emissions by 2030.
Both countries recently submitted INDCs based on this agreement, with China– the world’s largest carbon emitter– further committing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60-65% from 2005 levels. Since then, some 148 other countries have followed suit, submitting their plans before the informal October 1 deadline set by the UN.
Almost 90% of world emissions are currently covered by INDC pledges. Forty-eight countries have yet to submit their climate plans.
The upcoming Paris conference will be highly important, as it will attempt to establish the first legally binding multinational agreement on climate change. Today’s level of greenhouse emissions is putting the world at the risk of a 5C temperature increase. Although that may not seem like much, it will have devastating impacts on ocean levels, plant and animal life, weather patterns, health, and more.
It is important to note that even if all countries stick to their pledges, global warming will not be slowed enough to prevent catastrophic results. For this reason, we cannot rely on the Paris conference alone to solve our climate problems. Non-state actors such as municipalities, businesses, and local governments also must be engaged.
Finally, every one of us has a responsibility to cut back on our emissions and support a more sustainable world.
