letters and articles

1989 - 2002
relating to the provenanceand presentation of“Contraction & Convergence”

GCI’s contribution to realising the objective of
the United NationsFramework Convention on Climate Change

1

“It’s not a question of whether, but how much, how soon”
John Knaess.

Second World Climate Conference Geneva November 1990

2

GCI at the UN in 1996, COP-2 Geneva

UN Climate Negotiations April 1997

3

Contents
1989 ............................................................... 12
April 17 - W
orld Rainforest Movement ..................................... 12World
Penang Manifesto .......................................................................................... 12
Call to Action for Forests & their Peoples .......................................................... 12

November 3 - Guardian ........................................................... 14
Last chance to save the rainforests ................................................................... 14

November 09 - Kilburn Times .................................................. 15
Green Campaigners deliver letter to P M ......................................................... 15

November 23 – Kilburn Times .................................................. 16
Annihilation ................................................................................................... 161990 ............................................................... 17
January - BBC W
ildlife .............................................................. 17
Wildlife
How to tell the green from the camouflage ....................................................... 17

February - Geographical Magazine ......................................... 19
The Campaign Continues ............................................................................... 19

June 15 - Guardian ................................................................... 21‘The leagues of cruel numbers’ ....................................................................... 21

June 18 - Guardian ................................................................... 22
Climate change; urgent message to the world .................................................. 22

1991................................................................24
March - GCI ............................................................................... 25
Freeloading on Global Warming Benefits ......................................................... 25

April - GCI ................................................................................. 28
Carbon Fixing First World CO2 in 3rd World Forests, ‘Sinks without Trace’ ......... 28

June 9th - Guardian ................................................................. 29
Cold War of Global Warming ......................................................................... 29

July 23 - Guardian .................................................................... 31
Ecological debt to the Third World ................................................................... 31

September 9 - The Independent .............................................. 32‘Britain’s role in climate targets’ ....................................................................... 32

September - Guardian .............................................................. 32
Drunken drivers on the road to global warming ................................................ 32

September - Guardian .............................................................. 33
The climate of change .................................................................................... 33

October 4 - Guardian .............................................................. 34
The global debt that Britain must pay ............................................................... 34

October 21 - Guardian ............................................................. 35
The liberty agenda and the right to survive ....................................................... 35

1992 ...............................................................37
4

February 10 - Guardian ............................................................ 37
Emissions impossible ...................................................................................... 37

March 2 - Guardian .................................................................. 37
Kamikaze growth economy ............................................................................. 37

March 9 - Guardian .................................................................. 38
Obscure view of the global crisis from our political penthouse ........................... 38

March 20 - The Times ............................................................... 38
Letter to the editor .......................................................................................... 38

April 9 - Guardian .................................................................... 39
Green card .................................................................................................... 39

April 21 - Guardian .................................................................. 39
Royal hoot on the oily road to Rio ................................................................... 39

April 24 - Guardian .................................................................. 40
Scapegoats of the Third World ........................................................................ 40

May 11 - Guardian ................................................................... 41
Arms cuts to defend the planet ........................................................................ 41

June - The Centre For Our Common Future and the IFC .......... 42
A Package Marked, ‘Return to Sender’. ............................................................ 42

June 1992 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ................................................. 42
PUBLICATION“Pay Now – Live Later – the Road to Rio and the UNCED” – ............................. 42

June 8 - Guardian ..................................................................... 46
Opposing polluter sovereignty ......................................................................... 46

June 12 ...................................................................................... 47
How British aid measures up in the Third World ................................................ 47

July - Euro Chemical News - Environment R
eview .................. 48
Review
Green Rights for all; the earth view .................................................................. 48

August 14 - The Guardian ........................................................ 53
Stop sniping, save the planet ........................................................................... 53

August 17 - Guardian ............................................................... 54
Mind big mother, not little brother ................................................................... 54

December 16 - The Guardian ................................................... 55
Fighting for the air we breathe ......................................................................... 55

October 1992 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ............................................ 56
PUBLICATION“Climate Change, Population and the Paradox of Growth” - ............................. 56

December 1992 – GCI PUBLICA
TION ........................................ 56
PUBLICATION“GDP:CO2 = B-A-U:I-O-U” – ....................................................................... 56

October 21 - Guardian ............................................................. 57
Survival & ‘innocence’ .................................................................................... 57
in the postmodern environment ....................................................................... 57

1993 ...............................................................58
March 20 - Guardian International .......................................... 58
Power subsidy from the poor ........................................................................... 58

1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION .......................................................... 58
PUBLICATION“Global Climate Change and the Noose of Equity and Survival” – ..................... 58

March 22 - Inter Press Services - UN ....................................... 59
LDCs footing $3.4 trillion bill for ..................................................................... 59
North’s energy practices ................................................................................. 59
5

March 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ............................................... 59
PUBLICATION“Climate Change and the Precautionary Principle”- .......................................... 59

May 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION .................................................. 61
PUBLICATION“Who Provides Global Benefit; who causes Global Disbenefit” – ....................... 61

June 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ................................................. 61
PUBLICATION“Making Way for Decision-Taking Under Uncertainty”- ...................................... 61

August 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ............................................. 62
PUBLICATION“Joint Implementation – in a Globally Sustainable System Equity and Efficiency
Converge” – ...................................................................................................... 62

1994 ...............................................................63
July - Guardian ......................................................................... 63
Commons and goings .................................................................................... 63

June 1994 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ................................................. 63
PUBLICATION“The Unequal Use of the Global Commons” – ................................................. 63

July 01 - Guardian .................................................................... 64
Why some lives come cheaper than others ....................................................... 64

July 4 ......................................................................................... 65
Now we know ................................................................................................ 65

July 20 - The Standard .............................................................. 65
Industrialised nations blamed .......................................................................... 65

Juy 29 - Guardian ..................................................................... 66
Commons people given green light ................................................................. 66

1995 ...............................................................67
Planetary Connections .............................................................. 67
NEVER GIVE UP! ............................................................................................ 67

1995 - Tom W
akeford and Martin W
alters ISBN 0-471-95283-4
TomWak
akefordWalters
68“Science for the Earth” .................................................................................... 68

Earth Island Journal ................................................................. 68
The True Cost of Climate Change ................................................................... 68

July 23 - Independent ............................................................... 69
One Western life is worth 15 in the Third World, says UN report ........................ 69

August 3 - Nature ..................................................................... 70
Developing countries dispute use of figures on climate change impacts .............. 70

August 3 - New Scientist ........................................................... 71
Global row over value of human life ................................................................ 71

October 1995 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ............................................ 72
PUBLICATION“A Recalculation of the Social Costs of Climate Change” – ................................ 72

October - ASEED Newpaper ...................................................... 73
Is one American worth fifteen Bangladeshis? .................................................... 73

September 30 - New Scientist ................................................... 74
Costing Calamity ........................................................................................... 74

November 1 - Guardian ........................................................... 75
Who says that life is cheap? ............................................................................ 75

November 09 - Nature ............................................................. 78
6

UN climate change report turns up the heat ..................................................... 78

November 24 - Times Educational Supplement ....................... 80
Green economist faces picket ......................................................................... 80

November 30 - Nature ............................................................. 80
Economics of climate change .......................................................................... 80

November 30 - Nature ............................................................. 82
Temperature rises ........................................................................................... 82
in dispute over costing climate change ............................................................. 82

December - Appropriate T
echnology ........................................ 83
Technology
Second victory on climate economics ............................................................... 83

1996 ...............................................................84
May - Climax ............................................................................. 84
Tough… but true ............................................................................................ 84

July 29 - The Big Issue .............................................................. 88
Global mission impossible .............................................................................. 88

November 17 - Scotland on Sunday ......................................... 89
Sharing fuel is the only way to save the planet .................................................. 89

1997 ...............................................................92
February - Countryside Magazine ............................................ 92
Now the big one ............................................................................................ 92

March 1997 - ZEW Centre for European Economic R
esearch ... 93
Research“Man-Made Climate Change Economic Aspects and Policy Options” – .............. 93

March 13 - Nature .................................................................... 94
US seeks greenhouse gas cuts from the Third World .......................................... 94

April 2 - Guardian ................................................................... 95
A global gas meter ......................................................................................... 95

June - Rio+5 NY ........................................................................ 96
Linking Equity and Survival .............................................................................. 96

July - Outreach Rio+5 ............................................................... 98
Contraction & Convergence ............................................................................ 98

November 20 - Nature ............................................................. 99
Equity is the key criterion for developing nations ............................................... 99

December - Corner House ...................................................... 102
Briefing No.3 - Climate and Equity ................................................................ 102

December 12 - Independent .................................................. 104
Now the test for Kyoto resolution ................................................................... 104

1998 ............................................................. 106
April - Earthwatch ................................................................... 106
Energy-backed Currency Units....................................................................... 106

May - Independent ................................................................. 108
Maverick musician could put a stop to global warming ................................... 108

June - Parliamentary Monitor ................................................ 109
Parliamentary
An Opportunity to Correct the World’s Climate Damage ................................. 109

June 19 - Guardian................................................................. 111
Guardian.................................................................
7

Emissions that count ..................................................................................... 111

November - Environment ....................................................... 112
The Politics of Buenos Aires ........................................................................... 112

August 1998 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ........................................... 112
PUBLICATION“Climate, Justice, Development – A Policy Briefing to the Non Aligned Movement
on Climate Change; the case for Global Equity” – ............................................. 112

November 5 - Buenos Aires .................................................... 115
Global Equity is at the Heart of the Solution ................................................... 115

November 12 - Buenos Aires Herald ..................................... 118
Will Mandela end ‘global apartheid’? ............................................................ 118

1999 ............................................................. 120
March - Ecologist ..................................................................... 120
Contraction & Convergence .......................................................................... 120

June - Atmospheric Environment ........................................... 122
New Directions: Rebuilding the Climate Change Negotiations ......................... 122

September 21 - Independent ................................................. 124
Paying for pollution ...................................................................................... 124

September 8 - The Guardian ................................................. 125
Spinning out of control ................................................................................. 125
Sustainable Development Agenda 1999 ........................................................ 127

2000 ............................................................. 129
Economist (The world in 2000) ................................................ 129
As things hot up ........................................................................................... 129

January 2000 - GCI PUBLICA
TION .......................................... 130
PUBLICATION“Guesswork Framework” –............................................................................ 130

May 19 - Church Times ........................................................... 131
Preparing to fund the world ........................................................................... 131

May - Environmental Finance ................................................. 132
Climate Change, Risk & Global Emissions Trading .......................................... 132

June 28 - BBC online ............................................................... 137
The human price of Mozambique’s disaster .................................................... 137

August - P
arliamentary Monitor ............................................. 138
Parliamentary“Contraction and Convergence” and the changing climate ............................. 138

June - Independent ................................................................ 141
Little man’s big idea could save the world ...................................................... 141

June - ENDS R
eport 305 .......................................................... 142
ReportRCEP’s energy futures under a CO2 ceiling ................................................... 142.................................................................................................................. 142

Summer - Corporate W
atch .................................................... 143
Watch
Keeping the climate in the common treasury................................................... 143

December 8 - Guardian .......................................................... 145
Going to war against climate change ............................................................ 145

2001 - Chartered Insurance Institute ..................................... 147
Climate change and insurance ...................................................................... 147

8

2001 ............................................................. 152
2001 – A BRE / LPC Publication ............................................. 152
The Implication of Climate Change for the Insurance Industry – an update andoutlook to 2020 ............................................................................................... 152

Schumacher Newsletter .......................................................... 153
Global Solution to Climate Change ............................................................... 153

March - New Scientist ............................................................. 154
Give us a plan ............................................................................................. 154.................................................................................................................. 154

April - New Scientist .............................................................. 155
Bad move, Mr Bush ...................................................................................... 155
April - Parliamentary Monitor ........................................................................ 156
Policing Pollution .......................................................................................... 156

May - Ecologist ........................................................................ 159
Contraction and Convergence the global solution to climate change ............... 159

May - Prospect ........................................................................ 160
Fresh Air ...................................................................................................... 160
May - Resurgence ........................................................................................ 163
A Thousand Loopholes ................................................................................. 163

June 2001 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ............................................... 165
PUBLICATION“Contraction and Convergence” –................................................................. 165.................................................................................................................. 165

June - Resurgence ................................................................... 166
Resurgence
Climate Negotiations ................................................................................... 166

June - The Guardian ............................................................... 168
Emissions that count ..................................................................................... 168

July 7 - New Scientist .............................................................. 169
Calling the tune ........................................................................................... 169

July - The Guardian ................................................................ 172
Blueprint to avert global disaster ................................................................... 172

February 28 - BBC online ........................................................ 175
Climate panel urged to ‘get real’ ................................................................... 175

July 17 - Guardian .................................................................. 177
How to rule the world ................................................................................... 177

July 23 - E-Finacne News ........................................................ 180
E-Finacne
Universities Superannuation Scheme .............................................................. 180

July 26 - Guardian .................................................................. 180
Letters ......................................................................................................... 180

August 2 - Commonwealth Human Ecology Council Journal .. 181
Why Contraction & Convergence is ............................................................... 181
The Framework to Solve Global Climate Change ........................................... 181

August 23 - AlAhram ............................................................. 184
Al-Ahram
The Heat is on ............................................................................................. 184

August 23 - AlAhram ............................................................. 188
Al-Ahram
Who’s talking about what? ........................................................................... 188

August - The UN Observer...................................................... 190
Observer......................................................
Risk Management of Climate Change ............................................................ 190

November 30 - Finacial Times ................................................ 191
9

September 2001 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ..................................... 191
PUBLICATION“Contraction and Convergence” –................................................................. 191

November - Libdem News ...................................................... 192
Green Justice in a Climate of Terror ............................................................... 192

2002 ............................................................. 193
January - New Internationalist .............................................. 193
A Parliament for the Planet ............................................................................ 193

January - New Internationalist .............................................. 193
Going Down in History ................................................................................. 193

January 15 - Euromoney.com ................................................. 193
Euromoney.com
Emissions .................................................................................................... 193

February 25 - American Prospect ........................................... 194
Beyond Kyoto Lite ......................................................................................... 194

March/April - Green Futures .................................................. 197
Energy......Environment ................................................................................. 197

May 23 - Presented at the International W
orkshop on Oil De
Workshop
De-pletion ........................................................................................ 200
Building Limited Fossil Energy Supplies into the World Monetary System ............ 200

June 6 - Climate Change Knowledge Network ...................... 200
Business Perspectives - A Quickly Changing Tune ............................................ 200

June 13 - Le Monde Diplomtique ........................................... 201“Contraction & Convergence” The Global Framework for Solutions to Climate
Change ........................................................................................................... 201

July 19 - W
orld R
eview of Books ............................................. 202
World
Review“Contraction & Convergence – the Global Solution to Climate Change” .......... 202

2002 - GCI PUBLICA
TION ........................................................ 205
PUBLICATION“Wilton Park Slide Show” – ........................................................................... 205

August 2 - Frontline Magazine - The Hindu ........................... 206
For climate justice ........................................................................................ 206

August 23 - Church Times ....................................................... 209
Anglicans urge greater concern for the earrth ................................................. 209

August - Open Democracy ...................................................... 211
Meyer corrects Müller on C&C ...................................................................... 211

September 3 - The Times ........................................................ 212
Capitalism is best way to save the planet ........................................................ 212

10

11

1989
April 17 - W
orld Rainforest Movement
World

Penang Manifesto
Call to Action for Forests & their P
eoplesPeoples1.
Forests, both temperate
and tropical, are an integral
part of the life-support systems of the planet performing
numerous ecological andsocial functions that are
essential for the continuationof life, as we know it on earth.
Those functions include; - regulatingclimate at both regionaland global level providing a habitat forthe majority of species
on earth - providing ahomeland and spiritualbasis for millions offorest peoples - maintaining and conserving
soils -regulating hydrological cycles andensuring water supplies.
2.
The continuingloss of the world's
forests now constitutes
a global emergency.

Such consequences include: a loss of biological diversity on

include; - plantations both forindustrial forestry and forexport crops - ranching
schemes - dam projects commercial logging - mining
and industry - the dispossession of peasants and indigenous peoples - colonization
schemes - roads pollution - tourism.

“To restructure the present
unequal world economic system
which is dominated by institutions
and policies that favour the developed countries at the expense of
the poor of the Third World. This
global system at present enables
the developed countries to control
and use an overwhelming anddisproportionately high share of
the world's natural resources. A
fairer and more equitable economic system is fundamental toany strategy for saving and regenerating the world's forests. “In temperate areas, thebulk of primary forests has
been destroyed. What remains is being lost to logging
and acid rain and other pollutants. - In tropical areas,
forests are disappearing at a
rate of 100 acres a minute or
more. Moreover, the rates ofdestruction are increasing,
and, on current trends, little
will be left by the year 2040.
3.
The immediate andlong-term consequences ofglobal deforestation threaten
the very survival of life onearth, as we know it. Indeed
the scale of deforestation andits impact now represent oneof the gravest emergencies
ever to face the human race.

an unprecedented scale - thedestruction of forest-basedsocieties -increasing floods,
droughts, soil-erosion anddesertification - the disruptionof climatic equilibrium and theacceleration of global warming- an increase of impoverishment and famine among rural
populations.
4.
Deforestation is theinevitable result of the current
social and economic policies
being carried out in the nameof development.
Such policies and practices

12

5.
Official solutions
to the problem of deforestation have ignored or
played down the fundamental causes of deforestation, and haveinstead adopted policies
that blame the victimsof deforestation for theirplight, while simultaneously pursuing 'solutions' that can only
result in the further
degradation of forestsand croplands throughthe promotion of industrialized forestry.

Specifically such policies
include; - The Tropical Forestry Action Plan (T-FAP), as
promoted by the World Bank,
the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), the UN
Development Programme(UNDP) and others - sustainable yield commercial logging,as promoted by the International Timber Trade Agreement (ITTA) - policies to zone
the forests - the commercialisation and privatisation of
biological diversity, as promoted through the International Biodiversity Programme- pollution control programmes that are directed
towards managing specificpollutants rather than reducing the source of pollution.
6.
Throughout the world,
the victims of these policies
are taking action to arrest
deforestation and reverse theprocess of destruction. In
Sarawak, Amazonia, theHimalayas, Thailand, thePhilippines and elsewhere,
people are standing up toprotect the forests and theirsocieties. Such people have
proved that they are able touse the forests in the only
way that is compatible with
their preservation. It is they,
not corporations, aid agencies
or banks, which should be entrusted with designing andimplementing the protection
and regeneration of the forest
wealth of the planet.
7. The victims of thedevelopment process, alongwith those concerned with
their fate and the fate of theearth, therefore call upon the
United Nations and national
governments:
To declare the preservation of
the remaining tropical forestsof the earth to be a global
imperative and to subordinate
political and economic considerations to achieving theoverriding goal of their preservation - to restore ecologicaljustice and integrity to humanity by returning to themillions of people who bothlive in the forests and who
depend on it, their right to asustainable livelihood - torestore ecological justice andintegrity to life on earth
through ceasing further forest
destruction and regenerating
damaged forest lands throughthe guidance of indigenous

peoples, peasants and local
communities, planting only
the choice of trees and plants,
with the aim of restoring
ecological diversity and thesurvival of indigenous societies - to restrain the overconsumption and wastage ofresources by the world's
privileged groups throughmaking the necessarychanges in life-style andconsumption patterns consistent with the development ofsustainable livelihoods
throughout the globe, in orderto satisfy the ecological,
spiritual, social and aesthetic
needs of people everywhere.
8.
Specifically, we call on
the United Nations and national governments:
To empower forest peoples
and those who depend upon
the forests for their livelihood
with the responsibility forsafeguarding the forests andensuring their regenerationby; - (a) achieving land security both through revisingland-tenure legislation
through land reform, as
recommended in theBrundtland Report, (b) ensuring forest people have theright to a decisive voice informulating policies for theirareas, (c) correcting socialand economic policies basedon the assumed cultural
superiority of non-forest
peoples;
To halt all those practices andprojects which would contribute either directly or indirectly
to further forest loss. Suchprojects would include plantation schemes, dams, mining,ranching schemes and industrial projects, commercial
logging, Tropical Forestry
Action Plan (T-FAP), UN
Biodiversity Programme etc.

13

To revise radically the policiesof those agencies that currently finance the projects andpractices causing deforestation. Funding for such projects
should be ceased and instead
directed towards projects that
promote the protection andregeneration of forests. The
agencies involved include themulti-lateral aid agencies andbanks such as the World
Bank, the Inter American
Development Bank, the AsianDevelopment Bank, the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN Development Programme, the overseas aid agencies of thedeveloped countries andmajor international cooperation;
To implement a programme
for regenerating degraded
forest lands and reinvigorating
local cultures through theagency and under the direction of forest peoples;
To take immediate steps tocurb wastage, misuse andover-consumption of timber
products;
To take immediate steps tocut down the consumption ofbeef imported from tropicalforest areas;
To take immediate steps toreduce atmospheric pollution
and to eliminate those pollutants responsible for forest dieback at source, both throughimproved technologies andthrough changes in current
patterns of consumption andalso production;
To restructure the present
unequal world economic
system which is dominated byinstitutions and policies thatfavour the developed countries at the expense of thepoor of the Third World. This
global system at presentenables the developed countries to control and use an
overwhelming and disproportionately high share of theworld's natural resources. A
fairer and more equitableeconomic system is fundamental to any strategy forsaving and regenerating theworld's forests.
To initiate a global shift towards developing sustainable
livelihoods. The basic goals ofsuch a shift would be developing systems of production thatare ecologically and sociallysustainable. This will require;- reducing the scale at which
production is carried out andadopting practices which
minimize the impact of production on the environment; maximizing local self-sufficiency; - assuring that economic activities are subordi-

nated to social and ecologicalends.
This is the text of ‘The New
York Declaration’ (delivered
19/9/1989 to the UN). It iseffectively the ‘Penang Manifesto’ or the first step in the
preparation of ‘’A Forest
Peoples’ Charter’
Supporting Organizations –ABEN REDES (Nicaragua),
Americans for Indian
Opportunity (USA), Bank
Information Centre (USA),
Cultural Survival (USA),
Development GAP (USA),
Earth Island Institute(USA), ECOROPA, The
Ecologist (UK), Environmental Defence Fund,
Forest Peoples Support
Group (UK) Friends Committee for Nat-ional Legislation (USA), Friends ofthe Earth (Brazil), Haribon

Foundation (The Philippines), The Indonesian
NGO’s Network for Forest
Conservation— SKEPHI(Indonesia), Japan Tropical Forest Action Network(Japan), Monitor Consortium (USA), National
Wildlife Fed. (USA), Probe
International (Canada),
Project for Ecological
Recovery (Thailand),Rainforest Action Network(USA), Rainforest Information Centre (Australia),
Reforest the Earth (UK),
Research Foundation for
Science and Ecology (India), Sahabat Alam (Malaysia), Survival International (UK), Third World(Uruguay), Uniao das
Nacoes Indigenas (Brazil).

November 3 - Guardian

Last chance to save the rainforests
We delivered the following
letter to Mrs. Margaret
Thatcher yesterday.
On September 19th a petition entitled “An Emergency
Call to Action for the Forests
and their Peoples” was presented to UN Secretary General Mr Perez de Cuellar. This
campaign was initiated two
years ago by ECOROPA andthe UK’s Ecologist magazine.
Three million three hundred
thousand supporting signatures collected in he UK,
Europe and around the world
were delivered to Mr de
Cuellar in three wheelbarrows
by Ecologist editor Edward
Goldsmith and colleagues.
All asked for an emergency

meeting of the General Assembly of the UN to draw up
an emergency action plan tohalt and indeed reverse thecontinued destruction of theworld’s tropical rain forests,
one of the gravest threats
ever to face humankind.
When you spoke to your party
conference at Blackpool on
October 13th you spoke ofglobal warming and climatechange and presented theview that “Britain has taken
the lead and will continue todo so.”The Ecologist/ECOROPA
campaign (not to mention thework of the Green/Ecology
movement over the last 20
years), are examples of how

14

Britain may justifiably claim to
be making a contribution to
the great imperatives ofcultural reappraisal now upon
us all.
When you address the UN on
November 8th on behalf of all
the people of this country, we
believe you ought to make it
your opportunity to endorse
the campaign and join Britain
with those countries whichhave already done so.
Whilst you promote the viewthat environmental problems
are solved through “prosperity-created-technology” dismissing “a return to somevillage-life” - this is nonetheless an opportunity for you toendorse the rights, as we alldo, of those people aroundthe world to maintain theirindigenous way of life without
the threat of ruin from intrusive opportunistic development and exploitation. This
would clearly go some to
making credible your claimthat you really are responsive(to use your own words): - “tosomething deeper in us, aninnate sense of belonging andsharing life in a world that wehave not fully understood.”
Aubrey Meyer, Sara Parkin(Int. Liaison Secr. Green
Party UK), David Bellamy,
Jean Lambert (Speaker
Green Party: UK), Edward
Goldsmith Agnes Bertrand(ECOROPA Europe),
Nicholas Hilldyard (Ecologist Magazine), Jonathan
Porritt (Director, Friendsof the Earth), Paul Ekins,

James O’Connell (Department of Peace Studies,
University of Bradford), Dr
Mick Kelly, Prof Tim
O’Riordan (University of
East Anglia), Prof G. A.
Cohen (Chichele Professorof Social and Political
Theory, All Souls’ College,
Oxford), Brian Barry (Professor of Political Science,
LSE, Latin American Bureau), Stephen Corry(Director General Survival
International), Dr Caroline
Lucas, Jo Steranka, Nick
Anderson (Co-Chairs, The
Green Party), Fern Morgan
Grenville (ECOROPA UK),
Diana Schumacher(Schumacher Society), Liz
Hosken (Trustee, Gaia
Foundation), Peter de la
Cour (Green College),
Alexander Goldsmith, Dr
Alan Carter (University of

London), John Gribben(Writer), Reinhard
Buttikofer (MP, West
German Green Party),
Ralph Burk (West German
Green Party).

November 09 - Kilburn Times

Green Campaigners deliver letter to P M
Well-known Green campaigners delivered an open letter tothe Prime Minister last week
urging her to help save theworld’s rain forests.
The letter was the brainchildof Brent Green Party member
Aubrey Meyer. It called on her
to use her address to theUnited Nations next Wednesday to join the worldwide
demand for an emergency
debate on the fate of the rain
forest.
Mr. Meyer explained:“I wrote the letter to Mrs.
Thatcher because we all
share great anxieties about
the destruction of therainforests and their peo-

ples and global warming.”“I was just plain livid at
Margaret Thatcher’s claimthat Britain leads the world
on environmental matters.
It is only due to the slogging of the Greens over thelast 20 years that Green
issues are on the agendaat.”
He toured Brent collecting
signatures for the letter andthen persuaded famousenvironmental campaigners
like TV naturalist David
Bellamy and Friends of the
Earth director Jonathan Porritt
to add their names. Several ofthem joined Mr Meyer to handover the letter last Thursday
and the event was filmed for

15part of a Channel Four documentary about the rainforest
campaign.

November 23 – Kilburn Times

Annihilation
You reported our petition to
Downing Street on the world’s
rainforests (November 9thedition).
Speaking to the UN General
Assembly on November 8th
Mrs. Thatcher rejected worldwide calls for an emergency
UN debate, announcing instead UK funding for theWorld Bank’s ineffective
Tropical Forestry Action Plan.
While admitting the urgencyof the problem of deforestation and global warming thePrime Minister ignored theplight of the forest peoples.
She argued in favour of a“business-as-usual” approachthat has annihilated anddisplaced millions of forest
people, devastated Third
World environments, done
nothing for developing countries’ economies and lined thepockets of big business. Anyplan that seeks to conserve
the rainforests and theirpeoples must prohibit industrial logging from untouchedforest land.
The import of luxury tropical
hardwood by rich countries isimmoral. We don’t need thewood and we should leave it
where it is needed to sustain
the living environment andhelp save the planet from thegreenhouse effect. Why has
the UK government refused tosupport the freeze on greenhouse gas emissions agreed
this month in die Netherlands
by more than 60 nations anddone nothing to restrict therape of Third World environments by Western industry?

of forest peoples and global
warming must involve: - A halt to commercial exploitation of the rainforests;- Recognition of the landownership and residence rights offorests dwellers;- Worldwide awareness thatthe main agents of forest
destruction are the multinationals and Third World governments and the WorldBank;- Following the example ofWest Germany and the Netherlands the rich countries
should stop importing tropicaltimber;- Strong government action
should be taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions byindustry and motor vehicles.
We hope that concerned
people will write to their MPs.
the Prime Minister and theForeign and Environment
Secretaries to express theirdissatisfaction with current UK
government policy.
Aubrey Meyer
Miles Litvinoff
Brent Green Party

We believe that a solution to
deforestation, the destruction

16

1990
January - BBC W
ildlife
Wildlife

How to tell the green from thecamouflage
Guest Editorial By Aubrey
Meyer
On 8 November, in the courseof her famous environmental
address to the UN General
Assembly, Mrs. Thatcher
pledged £100 million to the
Tropical-Forestry Action Plan
(T-FAP). In the next day’s
headlines this was characterised as ‘£100 million to save
rainforests’, but in fact it wasa grand snub to the 3.3
million people who petitioned
the United Nations last September for an emergency
debate on the deforestation
crisis.
T-FAP, an $8 billion programme conceived and promoted by the World Bank andassociated UN aid agencies, isostensibly concerned withecosystems and the needs ofindigenous peoples, and its
stated aims are the promotionof agro-forestry, increasing
firewood supply, reforesting
upland watersheds, conserving forests and increasing thebureaucracy needed for
implementation.
But only 8% of the original
1985 budget was allocated forconserving ecosystems. The
rest was for industrial use,
agro-forestry, bureaucracy,‘land use’ and so on. By 1988,
42 of the countries which had
drawn up national T-PAPs had
refused to make any commitment at all to eco-systempreservation, and the use ofnatural forests by indigenous
peoples was virtually ignored.
(In Oct. 89, it was reported
from Thailand that, becauseof T-FAP and other factors, up
to six million forest-dwellers
would have to be ‘relocated’.)
The text that states T-FAP’s
aims is ripe with the concern
so often expressed in recent
centuries by missionaries andcommercial interests - “toimprove the lives of local
peoples,” who, as usual,
weren’t consulted about
whether their lives needed

improving. In setting up theaction plan, bankers, economic strategists and top
government officials met insecret and devised theirclassic ‘top-down’ forest
management strategy.
The familiar bias obtained.
The victims were, in fact, theculprits, who were burning
their forests down: deforestation had nothing to do with17

massive dams, mining, oil
extraction, ranching or planting—the local peoples had
just taken it into their heads
to create Armageddon.
But the forests and theirpeoples have lived together inharmony since, most probably, Adam left Eden - andcertainly well before Jesus
threw the money-lenders outof the temple. A lot of the
Indians have never heard ofmoney. Now they are blamed
and made the victims ofsustainable forest development’, where agro-forestry,
cash-cropping and price-isright logging are being promoted to co-ordinate humanneeds’, not to mention enabling Third World countries toservice their debt repayments.
But now we’ve started torecognise that everything
really is connected to everything else, that the forests
and their peoples are inti-

mately connected with thetween 60 million and 300
misuse and over-consumption
balance of the world’s
million refugees from environ- of timber products generally.
weather systems and themental disaster zones could
These and many other sugamelioration of global warmbe on the move.
gestions were all designed toing. Before she went to adsubordinate economic interThe petition, which was
dress the General Assembly,
ests to social and ecologicallaunched in The Ecologist in
Mrs. Thatcher received an
ones.
July 1987 and was organised
open letter to this effect. It
by the pan-European environThe campaign goes on. A
was signed by many promimental group ECOROPA, wascharter for the forest peoples
nent environmentalists andintended as a way of highis being prepared, and petiacademics, and it was delivlighting the extreme danger of tion signatures are still coming
ered to her by a delegation
the continued destruction of
in. In two years we present
comprising Edward Goldsmith
the rainforests and the tragic
the plea again. Although itof The Ecologist magaseems to be happening inzine, David Bellamy,
slow motion, this ecologiJean Lambert, Koy
cal crisis has inducements
For 15 years, Aubrey
Thompson of Friends ofsuch as a T-FAP pushing
Meyer was viola player inthe Earth, Robinit forward to disaster.
Hanbury Tenison ofvarious orchestras around theThis planet needs intenSurvival International
world, ending up as freelance
sive care. To help, please
and Dr David Clark,
extra in the London Philharcontact ECOROPA-UK,
Labour spokesman onmonic Orchestra. His score
Crickhowell Powys, Wales
food, agriculture andfor the Standard Award-winning
18 ITA. We need millions
rural affairs.
ballet Choros has been perof signatures and the
The letter, which wasformed in the UK and the US.
attention of the world
also published in full in
Other interests are writing
media - all focused on the
the Guardian, requested
poetry, building furniture and
UN in 1992.
that Britain be included
green politics. Occasionally,among the countries
when really provoked he instiwhich, along with 3.3
gates projects such as themillion (now 3.5 million)
open letter to Downing
petitioners, are callingfor an emergency UN
debate on deforestation.
Instead, she ignored thatplight of the indigenous
opportunity, reaffirmed herpeoples. At first, a million
belief in let-it-be (the future’s
signal were being sought, but
not ours to see) economics,
they snow-balled unpredictand actually attacked green
ably to 3.3 million by the time
philosophy.
the petition was delivered toPerez de Cuellar, the UN
Since then, Sir lan Lloyd, aSecretary-general, last Sepsenior Conservative andtember. It calls for land secuchairman of the all-party
rity for forest peoples, a voice
Commons energy committee,
for them in policy making,has said that the Prime Minispreservation of their rural
ter’s faith in science to pointvalues, a halt to all projects
the way is misplaced. He has
contribute to loss of forest
indicated the need to prepare(including dams, plantations,public opinion for worst-caseranches, mining, logging,environmental scenarios now.
industrial projects and T-FAP),
Earlier in the year, Sir Crispinfunding for forest regeneraTickell, UK ambassador to thetion, a ban on natural forest
UN, suggested that, within thetimber imports and a curb on
lifetime of our children, be-18

February - Geographical Magazine

The Campaign Continues
By Aubrey Meyer
The present Government has
been lauded for pledging £100
million to ‘save the rainforests’. In reality however, theTropical Forestry Action Plan
to which the money has been
donated has a classic topdown resource management
strategy which ignores thereal need for land rights for
dispossessed and threatened
forest dwellers. It chooses toconcentrate on the industrialisation of the forests.
This campaign, Save theForests and their Peoples, wasbegun in 1987 by the Ecologist magazine and the PanEuropean Ecological grouping
ECOROPA. Launched in theJuly 1987 edition of the Ecologist and drawing attention
vigorously to the causes andthe extent of the deforestation
crisis, the call was for An
Emergency Meeting of theGeneral Assembly of theUnited Nations (see Geographical, January 1990). It
was sent out worldwide andaccompanied by proposals forappropriate action. The hope
was to present a million
signatures of support for
presentation at the UN.
Two years later, on 19 September 1989, during whichtime another 100,000 square
kilometres of primary tropicalrainforest were destroyed, analmost ‘miraculous’ 3.3 million
signatures were delivered
personally to the UN General
Secretary Perez de Cuellar infront of the eyes of the worldpress; the ‘Emergency Call to
Action for the Forests andtheir Peoples’ had arrived. It
was supported by a compre-

hensive Briefing Document
which pointed out that ‘thecontinuing loss of the World’s
Tropical Rainforests now
constitutes a Global Emergency’.
Since that date Austria andGermany have supported thecall and Colombia, with an
initiative of remarkable vision,
has declared an area of its
Amazon rainforest territory(larger than the UK - at thecurrent rate approximately ayear’s worth of destruction) tobe protected in perpetuity,
granting full land-rights to theindigenous forest-dwellers
recognizing them as the true
and natural Guardians of theForests.
Before Mrs Thatcher went
to give her ‘Green’ speech at
the UN on 8 November 1989,
she received an open letterco-signed by more than 30
prominent environmentalists
and academics. It requested
that she join Britain withthose countries and the 3.3
million petitioners who havecalled for the emergency
debate. With cross-party
representation, it was delivered to her by a delegation of
Edward Goldsmith (Editor of
the Ecologist magazine),
David Bellamy, Jean Lambertof the Green party, Koy
Thompson (forest campaigner
for Friends of the Earth),
Robin Hanbury Tenison (Director General of ‘Survival International’) and Dr David Clark(Labour Shadow Spokesman
on Food, Agriculture and Rural
Affairs). It was also publishedin the Guardian with the fulllist of co-signatories.

19

Mrs Thatcher did not reply
to the letter, but in the courseof her speech a few days later,
she made plain her understanding of the deforestation
crisis by donating UK £100
million to the World Bank’s
Tropical Forestry Action Plan
(T-FAP).
However, the T-FAP has
been extensively criticized byenvironmentalists around theworld since its publication in
1987. Although the problemsof and surrounding deforestation are intricate, emotive andcomplex, the reason for thiscriticism in essence is very
simple: the primary orientation of the plan is the industrialization and commercialization of the forests. Whilst
recognizing the problems ofdeforestation as the loss of a
resource base, both material
and ecological, the architectsof T-FAP failed to address thereal causes of deforestation,
the full extent of the devastation and the global
destabilization of the biosphere as a whole. As the
Ecologist/ECOROPA briefing
document stated somewhat
starkly, ‘forests, both temperate and tropical are an integral part of the life-support
systems of the planet, performing numerous ecologicaland social functions that are
essential to the continuationof life as we know it on earth’.
Emphasis was given to theregulation of both local andglobal climate and the integralrole that the forests play inhydrological cycles.
The t-FAP by contrast, ignored
this dimension altogether andtrivialized the pre-eminent anddestructive role played by themassive development projects
such as dams, highways,
mining operations and plantations, often funded by various
development banks including
the World Bank itself. They
tended rather to shift theblame for the destruction onto
the landless farmers, expediently making the victims the
culprits. Whilst these victims,
often farmers, are indeed
amongst the major agents ofdeforestation, many havebeen forcibly displaced off
their own lands to make way
for development.
Under these circumstances
they have no choice otherthan to start again somewhere else, and this is one of
the contributing causes toslash and bum. There areother causes directly proceeding from ranching and various
forms of cash cropping, not tomention certain ‘sustainable
logging’ activities. The International Tropical Timber
Organization’s own report on‘Natural Forest Management
for Sustained Timber Production’ concluded that there had
been a success rate of .00125
percent. The Queensland
Forestry department finally
had to abandon all logging inan open recognition of theunsustainability’ of logging
practices. However there
remains the root-cause of the‘landlessness’ of displaced
peoples. This is what characterizes the Ecologist/
ECOROPA proposals andmakes the Colombian initiative
a mould-breaking precedent.
The commercial orientation of
T-FAP was perhaps inevitable.
Convened by the World Bank,The Food and Agricultural
Organization of the UN (FAO),
the United Nations Develop-

ment Programme (UNDP) andthe World Resources Institute(WRI), a meeting was held inprivate in Bellagio, Italy, in
1987 between top officials ofthese bodies to agree andpublish the results of a twoyear deliberation aimed atsaving the forests. The taskforce that prepared the planconsisted of the Head of thelargest paper company in thePhilippines, a former chief
scientist of Britain’s Agriculture Ministry, the President of
Canada’s Council of Forest
Industries, The World Bank’s
Forestry Advisor, a seniorforestry official from the US
government and advisors on
environment and forestry to
the governments of Brazil,
Malaysia, India and Nepal. TFAP’s stated ‘key ingredient ofactive participation by the
millions of small farmers andlandless
The T-FAP trivialized thedestructive role played bymassive development projects
shifting the blame onto thelandless farmers. They madethe victims the culprits, peoples who daily use the forests
and trees to meet their needs’
seemed poorly sup-ported by
the composition of the taskforce -an elite of ‘top-down’planners inclined to dismiss
grass-roots opposition as‘emotional’. They were certainly vehemently criticized byenvironmentalists and thegrass-roots affected aroundthe world for having devised a
strategy which ignored thereal need for land rights forthe dispossessed and threatened forest dwellers, concentrating instead on the ‘industrialization’ of the forests
themselves. With a contemplated $8 billion to spend,their own figures for budget-20

allocation are something of a‘self-indictment’: 25 percent
for ‘industrial use’; 30 percent
for agro-forestry; 20 percent
for ‘bureaucracy’ with ten
percent for ecosystem preservation (1.5 percent in Latin
America). They have subsequently talked about promoting the ‘conservation andmanagement of samples of
eco-systems as reservoirs ofspecies diversity’.
It is not only the extent towhich T-FAP planners failed torecognize primary causationand the consequent guaranteeof continuity in the forestdestruction process; it is not
only their short-term commercial strategizing and theperpetuation of myths such as‘benign’ development; it is noteven their bias against theopinions, needs and rights ofthe virtually defenceless,indigenous forest peoples, but
especially this supremely
arrogant ‘specimen-mentality’which almost envisages andmay now even tragicallypresage, the obliteration of
the forests and their peoples
as a preliminary to the collapse of the life-maintaining
systems of global ecology. It
is to this plan that Mrs
Thatcher has just committed£100 million.
Of course this is alarming. In
the more general area of the‘greenhouse-effect’ to which
the destruction of the rainforests is a major positive contributor - Sir lan Lloyd (Chairof the all-party Commonsenergy committee) has indicated the pressing need to‘prepare public opinion for
worst-case environmental
scenarios’. He suggested thePrime Minister’s faith in theincontrovertible evidence of
science to point the way ismisplaced.
The Ecologist/ECOROPA
campaign goes on. The callfor an Emergency Debate willcontinue asking for ‘open’
discussion of these problems
where the views of the grassroots and the NGOs concerned will be heard. The
campaign aims to present inexcess of 30 million signatures
worldwide supporting the callfor both natural balance andecological justice to be reestablished in the rain-forests,
the lives of the peoples wholive there, the plans of thedevelopment agencies and thehopes of all of us who ultimately depend as much on

the survival of the rainforest
as do forest dwellers themselves.
The Overseas Development
Administration (ODA) replied
to the letter on Mrs. Thatcher’s behalf, admitting that the
T-FAP is flawed and has
encouraged forest destruction.
Nevertheless, the government’s stated aim remains‘the recapitalization of theworld’s forests’ and the promotion of T-FAP However, at a
recent quarterly meeting of
the Euro Greens in Brussels,
26 national green parties(including, for the first time,those from Eastern Europe)
took a unanimous decision not

only to endorse but also to be
active in the campaign.
Petition forms are contained inthis issue of Geographical.
Please respond.
The full text of the Briefing Document which accompanied the petition to
the UN is also available
from the Ecologist (phone
0258 73476) price £5.00.
The Rainforest Survival
poster, is available from
Ecotrade at 12, Elbow
Cottages, Haughton,
Newark on Trent, NG24
3RW.

June 15 - Guardian‘The leagues of cruel numbers’
Who should be blamed forthe greenhouse effect?
John Vidal on the growing
battle of statistics
THE independent World
Resources Institute based in
Washington has published areport for the United Nations
which sets out what amounts
to the first full league table ofgreenhouse gas emitting
nations. It is a significant
contribution to the debate
about global warming because
it is the first time that combined figures for all the threemain greenhouse gases havenbeen compared country bycountry.

by the first and third worlds.
Adding carbon dioxide, methane and chloro-fluoro-carbon(CFC) emissions, it lists countries by their volume of emissions based on 1987 figures.
Here the US and the USSR
come in first and -second
place. Brazil, China and India
follow ahead of Japan, West

Sponsored by the UN Environment and the UN Development programmes, the report’s figures (see chart firstcolumn) show that greenhouse warming gases are
emitted in almost equal parts

21

Germany, the United Kingdom
and other developed nations.
Another table, however, hasbeen extrapolated from thesefigures by environmentalists
who argue that the UN figures
are biased in favour of thefirst world because they
universalise the blame forgreenhouse warming.

Aubrey Meyer, who is lobbying
the UN’ for an emergency
debate on deforestation, hasdivided the figures bypopulations to arrive at a percapita league table. (Seetable, right). This finds China
and India for example, dropping into 24th and 25th place
and the United States infourth place behind Canada,
Ivory Coast and Brazil. The
general affect, he says, movefirst world countries up theleague table.
The battle of statistics ispolitically important because
potential solutions to the
problem is to will be argued
on the different figures.
Poorer countries say that thewest has exported pollution
with its technology, and it is
up to the rich to pay to clean
up the mess made by each ofits citizens. Mrs. Thatcher andPresident Bush, however, havealready stated that the arguments should not be based on
who is responsible or who
should pay, which, in turn has
been interpreted as meaningthat the West favours
schemes whereby countries
pick up the burden, according
to their emissions - whatever
their ability to pay.
Meyer says:“When per capita emissions
are compared it shows aFirst World energy consumer generates on average three tonnes of theseemissions per annum
compared with a Third
World consumer who generates 0.7 tonnes perannum.
The UN version is a scurrilous number crunching way
of dissociating the issue of
culpability. The three tonnes
per person in the west
compared to 0.7 tonnes inthe third world is absolutely
fundamental because thebottom line in this crisis ispersonal responsibility. If
per capita GNP for thecountries listed is compared(see chart, extreme right)
the issue of who should pay
for arresting global warming
begs the question who isable to afford to cut backon emissions? Clearly thebiggest polluters have thebiggest GNPs, and lower
league countries by comparison have little or nomoney. If, as the US andothers implied recently,
reducing greenhouse emissions is too expensive forthem to pay for, clearlyaddressing the assumptions
in favour of the continuous
economic growth which
created this problem in thefirst place is an urgently
necessary exercise.”A spokesman at the Department of the Environment
yesterday said, “At thisstage league tables do not
help. There are real anomalies if you look at simple
figures. What we are urging
people to do is prepare
national studies.”

June 18 - Guardian

Climate change; urgent message to theworld
SAVE the Forests Save thePlanet has drafted this statement to the climate change
negotiators whose talks startin Geneva tomorrow: - We
acknowledge with concernthat climate change throughhuman enhanced global
warming is a real and growing
threat and is caused by theemissions of long-lived greenhouse gases from humanactivities.
The Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change advisesthat to stabilise atmosphericconcentrations requires a
reduction to less that 40
percent of current levels. On
average each person to theworld contributes 1.65 metrictonnes of carbon and equivalents (MTCE) each year. 40
per cent of this figure - 0.86
MTCE represents each individual’s output threshold for
forcing future climate change.

or below this threshold figure,and their emissions contributeonly 90 per cent of the nonforcing total. They therefore
provide the equivalent of a 10
percent credit, which is taken
up by the rest of the world.
This inequity is particularly
unacceptable at a time whenthe majority of people arestruggling to meet basis
human needs.

At least 63 per cent of thepeople in the world produce
greenhouse gas emissions at

It is also unacceptable as theforcing emissions total isderived largely from unsus-

22

Telkaemper, Vice-President European Parliament; Dafydd Wigley, Dr
Dafydd Ellis Thomas,(Plaid Cymru). GUI Shepherd, Social Forestry
Network (ODI); Ann
Clwyd, Shadow Minister,
We believe that all people
ODA; Penny Kemp;
present and future should
Malcom Harper, UNA;
have rights to life and sustainStephen Bristow, SOS
able livelihoods which are free
Sahel Int.; Ann Taylor,from the threat and the
Shadow Minister, Environreality of human induced
ment Protection; Jim
climate disruption.
Berreen, Green Party;
We stress that the responsiDanyal Sattar, New Ecobility for taking corrective
nomics Foundation; Ben
action and reducing bad
Jackson, World Developpractice lies with those who
ment Movement; Sir Richcreated and who
ard Body (Con); Tony
continue to exacerBenn (Lab); Richardbate this global crisis.
Holt (Con); Brent
Drafted by Jim Berreen
Blackwelder, Friends
We demand that theirand Aubrey Meyer, this wasof the Earth USA;
response should be
republished
at
the
Earth
SummitTeddy Goldsmith,
immediate and withThe Ecologist; Janetin June 1992 with many moreout prevarication, andAlty (UKGP); Roland
should take special
signatures.
Morgan, Planet
action over this issue
News; Mike Ferrigan,[See - http://www.gci.org.uk/signon/of social inequity.
PO, Green Party;
OrigStatement2.pdf].
Anyone wishing toJane Taylor (GPIn the IPCC and at the UNFCCC,
sign this statement
Cllr.); Niki
should contact: it became the basis for GCI to: Kortvelyessey, Tony
Cooper (GP); Joe
Aubrey Meyer.
- quantify the Ecological Debt
Farman; Paddy
Save the Forests(1991/93)
Ashdown (Lib Dem)
Save the Planet,
Simon Hughes, Lib.
42 Windsor Road,- rebut the Climate Cost/Benefit
Dem. Environment
London NW25DS
Analysts * (1993/95)
spokesman;Margaret Ewing,- establish “Contraction & ConMarcus Colchester,(SNP); lan Flindall
World R’forest
vergence” (1995/2002)(UKGP); Lord
Movement; Chad
Stoddart of Swindon;
Dobson, Bank Info
Baroness Ewert
Ctr. (Washington);
Biggs, Opp. SpokesGeorge Marshall, London
manforOverseas DevelSimon
Hughes,Lib.
Dem.
R’forest Action Group;
opment; John Valentine,
Environment spokesman;Paul Elkins; DrGUI ShepDavid FitzPatrick (GP);Margaret Ewing, (SNP);
herd, Social Forestry
Wilfried Telkaemper, Vicelan
Flindall(UKGP);
Lord
Network (ODI); Ann
President European ParStoddart of Swindon;
Clwyd, Shadow Minister,liament; Dafydd Wigley,
Baroness Ewert Biggs,
ODA; Penny Kemp;
Dr Dafydd Ellis Thomas,
Opp.
Spokesmanfor
OverMalcom Harper, UNA;
(Plaid Cymru).
seas Development; John
Stephen Bristow, SOS
Valentine, David
Sahel Int.; Ann Taylor,
Shadow Minister, Environ- FitzPatrick (GP); Wilfriedtainable, luxury-based activities in countries one of whose
governments has still refusedeven the principle of setting
targets for CO2 emissions
stabilisation, let alone reduction.

ment Protection; Jim
Berreen, Green Party;
Danyal Sattar, New Economics Foundation; Ben
Jackson, World Development Movement; Sir Richard Body (Con); TonyBenn (Lab); Richard Holt
(Con); Brent Blackwelder,
Friends of the Earth USA;
Teddy Goldsmith, The
Ecologist; Janet Alty
(UKGP); Roland Morgan,
Planet News; Mike
Ferrigan, PO, Green Party;
Jane Taylor (GP Cllr.); Niki
Kortvelyessey, Tony
Cooper (GP); Joe Farman;
Paddy Ashdown (Lib Dem)

23

1991
GCI at INC-2 1991

THE NORTH MUST ACKNOWLEDGE
AND SETTLE ITS ACCUMULATEDCARBON DEBT

Cutting fossil fuel emissions is an ecologicaland political imperative - not just an option'.
Catastrophic climate change can only beaverted by emissions restraint.
It is impossible - morally, politically, technicallyand physically - to make developing countries
pay the bill for the continuation ofunsustainable over-development in theindustrialised countries of the North.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development OECD) now openly advocate
a climate policy which violates both the equal
rights and the equal survival rights of the huge
majority of the world's people who live indeveloping countries and are not causing theworld's climate to change. This is not justdangerously immoral, it is deluded.
The prime example is the United States, whichplans to increase its C02 emissions by 15%
over the next decade. This is committing thewhole world to increased risk of ecologicalhavoc, and to increased tension between
nations.
Developing countries have the historical role ofinsisting that the North puts its own house inorder on its own territory. This is the precondition of an ecologically sustainable future.
Development cannot be called sustainable
unless C02 emissions are restricted to what
the civilised biosphere can tolerate.

Consider these well documented facts: Historically, 95 of industrial C02 emissions have come from the North.
C02 from human activities was responsible for 72 of the global warming set in train during the 1980's.
Approximately 80 of current C02 emissions comes from the industrial burning of fossil fuel. This takes
place overwhelmingly in the North.
When national industrial emissions are analysed on a per capita basis, it can be seen that only the nationsof the North are causing global warming, with the South actually subsidising this behaviour.
Analysing historically on a per capita basis, the North has already used up all its own emissions "rights"
and can only stay in business by appropriating the rights of others.
By refusing restraint the USA is destroying the fundamental rights of others to survive.
The IPCC has recently reaffirmed that immediate 60 - 80 cuts in C02 emissions are necessary to stabilise
atmospheric C02 concentrations at 1990 levels.
To compensate for 60 of current industrial C02 emissions through reforestation would require the use ofan area two thirds the size of China for a rolling programme of continuous tree-planting. Even thisassumes that all converted carbon would remain permanently sequestered.
Reforestation is no kind of a solution to global warming, as was recognised as long ago as January 1990 in the
Sao Paulo Declaration on Climate and Forests made by the IPCC/AFOS working group. The declaration clearlystates: - "Although forests can assist in mitigating the effects of atmospheric carbon build-up, the problem isessentially a fossil fuel one and must be addressed as such. No agreements on global climate change will bereached without commitments by developing countries on greenhouse gas emissions." The bar chart overleaf
confirms this judgement. To produce it the Global Commons Institute has calculated on a per capita adjusted
basis, each nation's fossil fuel emissions of C02 and methane expressed as national percentages of global output.
This excludes emissions from changes of land-use. The centre line of the graph represents the existing global per
capita average of industrial C02 and methane emissions only. Bars to the right show percentages of above
average emissions contributed by each nation - the extent of each nation's carbon debit. Bars to the left showcorresponding shortfalls contributed by "creditor" nations. We must emphasize that the graph says nothing about
ecological sustainability because the positioning of its centre line does not reflect the requirement for a 60 – 80
overall cut in C02 emissions. It merely shows what would be required to rearrange the existing unsustainable
patterns of industrial C02 and methane emissions on an equitable basis. It only represents what could be achieved
if the Climate Change Convention enshrined overall emissions stabilization at current levels. Without consideringhistorical inequities, these comparisons make clear the magnitude of the debt owed by the North to the South.

24March - GCI

Freeloading on Global W
arming Benefits
Warming
How do local people in
Karnataka feel about a FirstWorld 'carbon-fix' in the Western Ghats?

unrelated to 'no-regrets', ODA
asserts that its funds to
Karnataka for the Western
Ghats conservation project,
will be a 'donation' (not a loan,
UK Gov. White Paper on the(4) - Consistent with the policy
not tied) and that the investEnvironment 1990.
proposals developed throughment justification for thethe Intergovernmental panel
The SWCC 'Joint Ministerial
project is complete on a reon Climate Change, the Joint
Statement' November 1990.
gion-al/local cost/benefit
Ministerial Statement (signed
analysis onlyStatement from the SAP
by 127 countries) from the
PAULO workshop during 1PCC Second World Climate Confer- (6) - They maintain further
Working Group 3 (Responseence in Geneva (Nov 1990),
that there are "no tools to
Strategies) deliberations included an extensive policy
assess global warming benefits
January 1990
proposal on the role of 'enand that for this reason global
warming benefits(1) - Climateare not considered adestabilizing,justification for theanthropogenically
“The
part
that
forestrycanplayproject."
aggravated global
warming due toenhanced CO' emissions primarily fromthe developed countries, is now accepted as fact.

(2) - The so-called'no-regrets' philosophy is out-of-date. It
was based on theorientation thatenvironmental policies that addressed
the threat of global
warming but which
also made goodenvironmental sense
locally or regionally,should be pursued
with the latter justification only. 'Noregrets if global
warming fears prove
unfounded'

Response' to global warming
as articulated by the UK government in its White Paper on
the Environment (see box).

in keeping levels of CO2in the atmosphere down is one of the reasons for Britain’s contribution to theinternational efforts to conserve andregenerate the tropical rainforests.
In keeping with its domestic environmental policies, the Government
wishes to see a more open andinformed discussion of the T-FAP.
(Note the Karnataka Western Ghats
Forest Conservation project will be
subsumed within India’s Tropical
Forestry Action Plan when she joins
the process. This is al-ready intrain). “The plan needs to involve
local people as well as the highest
levels of government in developing
countries, and to place increased
emphasis on conservation.”(7) - They also
concede that there
are "methodologicalproblems" in addressing this dimension of environmental auditing.

(8) - Nonethelessthe global warming
benefits (with orwithout the audit)
are there. It would
be disingenuous tosuggest otherwise
and disingenuous todeny that we in theUK, as comparatively high per
capita developed
world polluters, arebeneficiaries ofthese global warming mitigating
UK Gov. White Paper on the Environenvironmental
ment 1990.
services. We are in(3) - The Karnataka
the UK ten times Western Ghats
per capita - moreconservation project
responsible
for the emissions
hanced forestry' in 'carbonhas global warming benefits.
ofgreenhousegases thanfixation' in the context of
Its ethos is wholly consistentIndians.
'sources and sinks' (see box).
with carbon-fixing forestry
facet of the 'Global Strategic(5) - With reasoning not

25(9) - Considering the contro-versy over forest-zoning, andlived greenhouse gas emisconsider-able degree of (unacthat zone two of the project is sions, being met with a reknowledged) self-interest.
currently anticipated to coversponse from inter alia the UK(Loosely speaking it seems toabout half of the forest total(which they repeated! charac- qualify as an example of 'tiedarea 'by decree', and that zone terized as "demanding") of
aid', tied that is, to the glob
two will be 'basically a no-go"stabilization at current emiswarming benefits.
area' for local people whosion levels within fifteen(13) - It has for UK domestic
have often, if illegally, pursued years", the problems of the UK
consumption, the possibly
subsistence needs in this area, appearing to freeload on
disingenuous status of being
UK promotion of forest conser- 'global warming benefits'
included in the UK portfolio ofvation in Karnataka (withbecome more entrenched.
global warming response
global benefits), might comeactivities. The White
to be viewed with
Paper's response to
mixed feelings by
global warming
the 'community'“Taking into account that theleads easily to thiswhose 'participation'
developed world is responsible forinference.
in the project has
about 3/4 of all emissions of green(14) - It has been
been declared ahouse gases (incl. CO2) . . . we noteconjectured by ansine-qua-non.
ODA official thatthat
theconservationoftheworld’s(10) - These probKarnataka Forestry
forests in their role as reservoirs oflems will be exacerDepartment mightcarbon ... is of considerable imporbated in the wake
have used the issueof the climate
tance for global climatic stability . . .
to bargain more aid
conference where
We recognize the need to reduce themoney from theIndia particularly
rate of deforestation in consonance
ODA (in spite of thedrew attention to
official disclaimer
with the objective of sustained yield"extravagant per
regarding the global
development and to enhance thecapita emissions inwarming benefits).
potential of the world’s forests
certain parts of the
If this were true,
world, and where it
through improved management of
there is a greater
also became generexisting forests and through vigorous
likelihood that theally evident that inmonies so raised
programmesofreforestationandspite of the rhetoric
would have inafforestation and to support finanin the Joint Ministecreased the departcially the developing countries in thisrial Statement,
ment's benefits"every time we saw
regard through enhanced and well coahead of local
the mention of thecoordinated international co-operation
people's benefits.
main greenhouseincluding strengthening the T-FAP and(15) - In spite ofgas CO2 the result
theITTO.”
the "lack of tool toof fossil fuel conassess global warmsumption, there was
The SWCC ‘Joint Ministerial Stateing benefits", theno spirit of comproment’ November 1990.
benefits are unargumise during theably there. In spite
negotiation processof the "methodowith regard to evenlogicalproblems"
in developing
the mention of the term." This (12) - It is probable that theenvironmental economics to
was the on record view of the UK government will attract
Head of the delegation from St criticism from "local people as the point where this kind ofaudit can be plausibly carried
Lucia, Naresh Singh, in respect well as the highest levels ofof setting targets for CO'
government" in the "develop- out, there are pressing reasons - within establishment
emissions abatement.
ing country" concerned for
placing "an increased empha- rationale - to develop these(11) - In the face of the IPCC's
sis on conservation" of forests skills rapidly and apply them,call for immediate minimum 60
in a manner which has such a and to acknowledge thiscuts in anthropogenic long'shortcoming' in the interim26

facilitated by some additional
form of compensatory response. This will at leastameliorate a situation inwhich the image of 'freeloading' is likely to consolidate.
(16) - No less important is theapplication of the AFOS
rationale as expressed in the
Sao Paulo Declaration that,"the forest crisis is rooted in
the agricultural sector and in
the people's need for employment and income. Deforestation will be stopped only
when the natural forest is
economically more valuable
than alternative uses for thesame land." The real point isthat the forests are obviously
pre-eminently valuable "intheir role as reservoirs ofcarbon", never mind the othermultifarious values theyembody for environmental
services and renewableproduce and their uniquely
important value as home tomillions of forest-dwelling
peoples.
(17) - This 'infinite' value is'real' even if it defies conventional audit ing. In the absence of being ascribe a finite
value, infinite value should beassumed because it is generally suspected that their total
destruction would instigate
climate chaos.
(18) - Concurrently if the ODA
wish to operate as-is under
the global warming disclaimer,
then our strategy for ameliorating climate change has tocome rely more immediately
and much more decisively onan emissions abatement
programme domestically and
one which is specifically notdependent on the 'multilateral only' approach currently advocated by thegovernment. Afterall, theClimate Convention seeking
process may fail. Are we thento go down with chimneys
belching or is that the moment we start claiming thehitherto unacknowledged
global warming benefits offorest conservation in
Karnataka afterall. The wordsof the Sao Paulo Declaration(see box) seem to have ademanding relevance to theseissues.

"Consideration of forestry issues, and of tropical forestry issues in particular,
must not distract attention from the central issue of global climate change and theemission of greenhouse gases attributable to the burning of fossil fuels by developed countries. No agreements on forests and global climate change will bereached, without commitments by developed countries on greenhouse gas emissions. The groups recognized that the conservation of tropical forests is of crucial
importance for global climatic stability." "Although forests can assist in mitigating
the effects of atmospheric carbon build-up the problem is essentially a fossil fuelone and must be addressed as such. In this way, and as a general principle, thefinal report of the present 1PCC workshop on Tropical Forests, while putting tropical forests in the overall context of global warming, should make it clear that theburden of response options is not to be placed on developing countries and thus
should state clearly that all countries should make a contribution to the solution of
the global warming problem. The temperate forest die-back (caused by acid-rain)
as analogous to tropical deforestation (caused by tropical people's attempts tosatisfy basic human needs) could be specifically mentioned in such a context."
Statement from the SAP PAULO workshop during 1PCC Working Group 3 (Response Strategies) deliberations - January 1990

27

April - GCI

Carbon Fixing First W
orld CO2 in 3rd
World
World Forests, ‘Sinks without T
race’
Trace’
Promoting the conservation oftropical forests has increased
relevance now that dangerous
human increase of global
warming has been accepted
as fact. Our carbon dioxide
emissions are increasing andforests 'fix' carbon.
The 137 countries present at
the Second World Climate
Conference in Geneva are
now engaged in the awesometask of "strategically responding" to this ultimate pollution
issue in the hope of creating a'Climate Convention' by 1992.
Equity and restraint havealready been recognized as
crucial to this 'global response'; equity between
countries of the developed
and the developing worlds,
and restraint of greenhousegas emissions, primarily in thedeveloped world, where 3/4
of all such emissions originate.
Inter alia, 'compensatory'(source-sink) measures for
global warming abatement
have also been noted in the
Joint Ministerial Statementfrom Geneva. "The conservation of the world's forests intheir role as reservoirs ofcarbon, is of considerable
importance for global climaticstability." To this end, there isa need "to reduce the rate of
deforestation and to enhance
the potential of the world's
forests through improved
management of existing
forests and vigorous programmes of reforestation andafforestation." This, in thewords of the UK White Paperon the Environment is, "oneof the reasons for Britain's

contribution to the international efforts to conserve andregenerate the tropical rainforests. "Forests are ' carbonsinks'.
Addressing 'equity', India
noted "extravagantly high per
capita emissions in certain
parts of the globe" in response to the Japanese
assertion that "increased
population growth" is thebiggest threat to climate
stability." And indeed, possibly
following the EC admittanceof the same, 'per capita'
reckoning is now accepted asa method of greenhouse gas
emissions auditing in the Joint
Ministerial Declaration. The
trend revealed in this (seechart) is stark. With very few
anomalies, the developed,
countries have very highlevels in comparison with thedeveloping countries, ranging
say from an average US/
Canada level at 4,06 tonnes
per person per annum, to a
Solomon Islander at 0.08
tonnes per person per annum, or an Asian average at
0.46 tonnes per person perannual.
The average global figure is
1.28 tonnes per person perannum, which puts 2/3 ofcountries below the world
average. Further, even if wereduce this figure by 60 to
0.512 tonnes per person perannum, (consistent with the
IPCC requirements forstabilization of greenhousegas levels in the atmosphereat present levels), it emergesthat still l/3 of countries areleft with a margin in which toincrease emissions. British

28

individuals currently emitting
2.64 tonnes need to reduceby 4/5 to conform: Indians
could nearly double theircurrent per capita emissions
and not exceed even the IPCC
required revised averagelevel. Comparing Indian/UK
per capita emissions is appropriate considering the 'sourcesink' strategy. Britain is poised
to foster tropical forest conservation in the Western
Gnats of Karnataka state inIndia starting in 1991. £29
million over 5/6 years will
help preserve "a set of environmental resources of world
importance. "However, ODA has said,"because there are no economic tools for assessing
global-warming benefits(carbon-fixing) and there aremethodological problems indeveloping these, G-V benefits are not considered ajustification for the project. "What a handy short-coming;
we are clearly beneficiaries'
nonetheless, especially being
per capita ten times more
responsible for greenhousegas emissions than individualIndians. If you can't cost it, it
doesn't count; sinks without
trace. QED.
This threatens the likelihoodof success in the conventionseeking process on climatechange. As the IPCC reportstates; "Consideration offorestry-issues, and tropicalforestry issues in particular,
must not distract from thecentral issue of global climatechange and the emission ofgreenhouse gases attributableto the burning of fossil fuelsby developed countries. No
agreements on forests andglobal climate change will bereached, without commitments by developed countries
on greenhouse gas emissions." As we know Britain's"demanding" commitment to"stabilize at 1990 levels by2005" is "to do nothing within
fifteen years."
It also threatens the kind ofgood will from the Karnatakan
grass roots that projectformulation consultants have
now recognized to be thesine-qua-non of successful
forest conservation. ODA
have been at some pains todevelop the innovatory themeof 'community participation' inthis project. Concurrently
local peoples' fears are riding
high because of the likelihoodthat the funding will
strengthen the management
hand of their historicallysomewhat 'sociologicallyinsensitive forest department.
Earlier in the year the local
federation of voluntary or-

ganizations actually petitioned
Mrs. Thatcher direct to withhold funding for the project.
They particularly object to thearbitrary zonation of theforests.
Recently the Development
Commissioner - a state government official of considerable influence -intervened,
insisting that all project
documents had to be shared
amongst all affected parties
saying that the project implemented "would only be one
based on mutually agreeable
solutions."
So participants on both sides
square up; on the one handto "the project's environmental objectives (which) cannot
be achieved except with thewhole-hearted participation of
those people whose livelihood
derives in whole or in partfrom the forests," and on theother to, "the short to medium term (where) the environmental and sociologicalcomponents of the project
may be in conflict, (and)there is a considerable danger

that measures taken to conserve and protect the forest
will be, or will be perceived tobe, at the expense at forestdwellers and forest-users."
As currently defined, theestablishment of a ' nonpopulated' zone two is expected to cover over half thetotal forest area. This will bebalanced (planners feel) by'Joint Forest Planning andManagement' for 'Community
Needs' at the forest margins
between the Forest Department and the grass- roots.
Fact is that a bit of money for"measures to conserve andprotect the forests and theplanet as sinks for our pollution - are and will be perceived to be, at the expenseof local forest-dwellers andforest-users," especially in theabsence of C02 restraint here
at the source of problem. This
isn't exactly measure formeasure, and this potentially
useful project is in danger ofbeing a "free-lunch carbonfix".

June 9th - Guardian

Cold War of Global W
armingWar
WarmingYour front page story(Guardian June 2nd) “UN
presses of Nuclear Power” isalarming. It is already veryclear that the pro-nuclear
powers are preparing to load
the IPCC Climate Conferencewith arguments that favour aswitch to nuclear power as
the ‘solution’ to thegreenhouse effect crisis. The
prominence you afford this isappropriate.

While we are all experiencing
an accelerating loss ofenvironmental status quo,
those favouring the politicalstatus quo are proposing
technology that is intractable,
uneconomic, unsafe, and also
a highly centralising form of
power generation in synchwith their own political bias
behind a façade of ‘suprapolitical’ environmental
concern.

29

In her UN speech lastNovember (having justdoubled Britain’s contribution
to the UNEP) Mrs. Thatcher
reasserted that nuclear power
was the answer to runaway
manmade climate change
saying it was – despite theattitude of the so-called
Greens – the mostenvironmentally safe form ofenergy.

This is the perception she
assimilates from that selfconfessed science-junkie
champion of nuclear power
and author of the Gaia
Hypothesis, Jim Lovelock,
who is on record as saying
that, “in a funny way I value
life more than I value humanbeings.” This might be all very
well if (Mrs. Thatcher) had
the sense to conclude from allof this that valuing life (withor without human beings) isin no way dependent on
resuming programmes ofenvironmental roulette with
nuclear power.
What about wave power that
almost sank without trace
after the costings weredoctored in Whitehall andWestminster? What about theBrundtland Report conclusionthat “generation of nuclear
power is only justifiable if
there are solid solutions to
the presently unsolved
problems to which it gives
rise?”We should all be very wary ofthis dangerous alliance
between power hungry
politicians and the cult of
science and the technological
fix as the solution to all
human problems. This isgazing at Medusa not Gaia.
I am surprised that Paul
Brown did not include in hispiece the IPCC observationthat those greenhouse gas
emissions scenarios to theyear 2100 were modelled in
the context of “an assumed
decrease in economic growth
for all countries beyond theyear 2000” and also in thecontext of “population figures
assumed to approach 10.5
billion by the second half ofnext century.”Lets be very clear about this –they could only model overall
reductions based on switchingto nuclear power because of
the energy-intensive
assumptions that all these
theoreticians and planners aretransfixed into projecting
because of their being captive
to the world view of industry,
big business and the corrupt
anti-people politics wichshields them.
This was all too apparent at
the ozone conference. I spokeat length to India’s
Environment Minister, Maneka
Ghandi about these concerns
after her recent attendance atthe this ozone conference.
She told me the Third World
had walked behind the West
into nuclear power and sheneeded no reminding about
the duress she was going to
be under given the way the
IPCC’s report was handlingthe greenhouse effectprognosis. She said that “vastamounts of the report are
tailored because they say weare only going up twodegrees in heat when in
Bangalore for instance we are
already up three to four
degrees and the Maldives areshouting about sinking.”
She accepted that not justnuclear but also thermal andhydropower were uneconomic
and obsolete from themoment they were set up andsaid that, “we have to workon alternatives, nobody has
seriously worked on them.
Now solar is developing into a
decentralised alternative anduntil you decentralise power
you can’t possibly achieve
anything else.” She specificallyconfirmed to me that she
meant power in both senses
saying that, “one will lead to30

the other.” The bottom-line inthis environmental crisis issimple. This is a party-politicalstruggle no matter how muchthe establishment attempt todepoliticise it. In the end they,neither the right nor the left,
want seriously to address thedecentralisation of power inboth sense precisely because
it would be ideological defeat
for them and a painful
meeting with ecological reality
not to mention the loss of ajob.
Aubrey Meyer

July 23 - Guardian

Ecological debt to the Third W
orld
World
THE “Trinidad Initiative” ishardly an arrangement in needof praise. Even if implemented(as Mrs. Chalker knows), it will
reduce overall Third World
indebtedness - $1.4 trillion - by
no more than one per cent.
Further it takes no account of
the ecological debt polluting
industrial economies, such as
the G7, are running up at theexpense of the very survival
prospects of literally millions ofpeople worldwide, most ofwhom live in these “indebted”
countries. Mrs. Chalker (Letters
July 22) says G7 committing
themselves to the principle ofgreater debt-relief for thepoorest countries is “verywelcome”; She does not acknowledge G7’s commitment toincrease pollution, the vulnerability of the poor and our
ecological indebted-ness tothem, or the extent to which
we continue to evade this debt.
A month ago and on this page,a statement on climate change
was published co-signed by,numerous people, which list,
now includes representatives ofInstitutions, eminent scientists
and leaders and ‘‘front bench”
speakers’ on environment anddevelopment from all politicalparties in Britain.
While the signatories admit the
problem of our inequitable andunsustainably high greenhousegas emissions levels and theurgent need to act, Mrs.
Chalker has declined to sign.
This statement acknowledges
that in respect of humanaccess to the global commonsas sinks for the greenhousegas emissions of us all, people
living to the emissions-intensive industrial countries of theNorth are literally subsidised by
the majority of people world-

wide whose emissions are soslight as to be within theguidelines to stability advised
last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).
Disappointingly Mrs. Chalker ina separate reply to me declined
this point and focused insteadon developing countries limiting their emissions.
Equal rights, (surely part of the“good governance” which Mrs.
Chalker advocates?), includes
equal rights of access to andbenefit from natural global
environmental services, suchas atmospheric carbon reabsorption by trees and seas(the so-called ‘sink function’)
not to mention rights to a nondestabilised climate and somekind of a sustainable future.
We are literally ecologically indebt to people whose lowlevels of emissions do not
over-capacitate “sinks” provoking climate change and who
provide this shortfall-subsidy tous. While the subsidy makes us
unsustainable by definition, it
constitutes a form of global
welfare payment from the poor
to the rich, indeed to those
whose governance of emissions is least good and whose
living standards increase isleast needed.
Moreover, as the beneficiariesof this welfare subsidy, we in
G7 have (incredibly) justcommitted ourselves collectively to a “net increase” toC02 emissions to spite of therhetorical, commitment “tolimit net emissions and achieve
an effective framework convention on climate change”. Simultaneously, whilst Mrs.
Chalker’s ministry says that ourconserving Third World forests
is to “help them in their efforts31

to control their emissions ofgreenhouse gases”, the UK
Department of the Environment publish estimates statingthat to offset CO2 emissions
with trees, tropicallyreafforesting an area 1.5 times
the size of the UK would benecessary and that arresting
deforestation has the “considerable advantage” (For whom?
I ask).
Whilst we do not cut emissions, we do not allow others
to cut their trees. Not a goodprospect for the sustainable
development Utopia so muchpart of the ODA/DOE G7
apologia for growth.
Our ecological debt is implicitin this and increases everyday
we fail over emissions restraint.
Delay also hastens the onset of
ecological trauma and the“inevitable climate disasters” ofwhich again the National
Academy of Sciences warned
recently. It increases theextent to which we live at theexpense of the already vulnerable, not only depriving theirright to thrive, but more andmore of their chance to survive. Extending the period of“debt-repayment” is an inverted concept and looks to afuture which for many may notexist at all.
Aubrey Meyer
Save the Forests Save thePlanetLondon NW25DS.

September 9 - The Independent‘Britain’s role in climate targets’‘Britain’sSir: Your article “No carbon
copies as Brussels seeksenergy tax” (5 Sept.) is welcome. It is sobering to read
that, “the EC believes because industrialised nations
are the greatest culprits, they
have a duty to lead the way”.
Recognising the serious
nature of the climate threat,
ministers from 137 countries
at the Second World Climate
Conference in Geneva lastyear committed the industrialised nations to just this.
One year on, most industrialised countries are now committed to targets for C02
emissions restraint. However,the United States (supported
only by the UK) is still on
track for an at least 15 percent increase in its C02 emissions over the next 15 years.
It promulgates the “comprehensive approach”. This relies
on tree planting to fix atmospheric C02, rather than restraint at source.
Considering the US, with 4
per cent of the world’s population, provides 25 per cent of
global C02 emissions and thatits projected tree planting will
“re-fix” less than 2 per cent of
its projected CO2 emissions,
UK support for US policy is
misguided. Doubtless the EC
continues to make this clear
to the UK Government, since
it is well understood, at leastin Europe, that tree-planting
and the North’s fascination
with Third World forest con-servation can never be a
substitute for the restraint of
002 emissions at source.
Ultimately carbon taxes will
have to be resolved internationally commensurate withthe degree of international
inequity and the requirementsof climate stability. For now
the EC has at least made astart. Let’s hope their debate
generates more light thanheat for the planet.
Yours faithfully,
AUBREY MEYER
Coordinator Save theForests Save the Planet,
London, NW2.

September - GuardianDrunk
en drivers on the road to global
Drunkenwarming
YOUR leading article (September, 26) about the greenscorecard contained a small
but significant error. Catalytic
converters on cars actually
increase carbon dioxide emissions (petrol litre burned formile travelled), because they
make car engines less fuelefficient. ‘Cats’ for C02 restraint is ‘score-card-sharping’.
Worse the Government’s
response to the whole reason
for C02 restraint — global
climate change — contains atleast four major errors. The
first is their inadequate assessment of the enormity ofthe ecological threat both to
Britain and globally. The
second is their failure, tounderstand the need for a fairand equitable international
response to this threat. The
third is their attitude of noncompliance towards theecological realism which
drives the EC’s current energy
tax proposals. The fourth isthe extent to which they haveunderestimated the growinginternational outrage over theviolation of the global commons -the atmosphere - andthe precipitation of climatechange by Northern industrial,
transport and energy emis-

32

sions, both current and historical. At the latest round ofclimate change negotiations
just wound up in Nairobi, themessage from the overwhelming majority of nations to thereal culprits in the North was
loud and clear — get yourown houses in order before
you preach “environmentalism”, make the global homeuninhabitable and stop trying
to pass the buck. The US/UK
attempt to shift the blame
onto “future emissions” fromdeveloping countries is exposed. Northern accumulating
emissions alone may bebringing us to the threshold of

serious irreversible change as
the latest marine evidence ofcoral bleaching now shows. At
the preparatory meeting
during August for the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development inJune next year, the Head of
the Indian delegation
summed up our predicament
and the imperative we face ina blunt and simple way. For
the North there have to belifestyle changes: reduced
consumption and introducing

effective public transport for
example, obviating the selfish
and destructive car-dependency which asphyxiates ourcities and dams the planet
and its children’s future. We
are seen as drunken driverson the road to global warming, over the limit and under
the influence of bad habits ofan unsustainable level ofconsumption. The government’s claim to lead the’ worldin environmental, protection isgrotesque and blurred. Rather

like an alcoholic joy-rider whosays “pass me the bottle”,
oblivious of who gets hurt.
There are those who feel that
all this is the beginning of thebiggest human rights violationin history. They have themoral high ground and are amajority with key cards toplay. The government’s greenscore-card is nothing morethan a Joker.
Aubrey Meyer.
London NW2.

September - Guardian

The climate of change
PAUL BROWN’S article (£165
billion bill put on cleaner
world, September 6) is interesting. He quoted Mr. Derek
Osborne, the UK’s chief negotiator in the UNCED’s ‘92(United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development) preparations in Geneva
as saying: “We were a little
daunted by the vastness ofthe subject and the problems
to be overcome... will thetalks of the enormous billfrighten everyone off?”
He could have said, “We aredaunted by the scale of the
global problem, both humanand environmental, and arefrightened about the future.
However being frightened off
with nowhere to go sooner orlater makes paying this bill
inevitable”.
Well, the EC has started andis taking carbon taxation to
suppress greenhouse gas
emissions seriously. As they
have recently said: “Theindustrialised nations are thegreatest culprits. They have aduty to lead the way. Targets
for restraint have been set.”In the Liberals’ document‘Costing the Earth’, theystated, “environmental subsidies are the converse ofenvironmental taxes. Whilethe latter are designed toensure that the user of the
product bears the cost ofenvironmental damage
caused, environmental subsidies are designed to ensure
users benefit from environmental damage avoided. In
relation to greenhouse gas
emissions and climate change,
this has real fund raisingpotential. Prominent Liberals,
academic and many highprofile politicians of all parties,
have signed a “climate statement’ published on this pagein mid June. ‘This acknowledges the majority of people
on the planet, with their very
low per capita emissions,quantifiably subsidise theminority who threaten climate
stability. Thus accepting theEC stand for carbon taxation,
we begin to see how the £165
billion can be raised annuallyand the global temperature
lowered. In effect, climate“culprits” are taxed and those33

who provide climate subsidy
are compensated in an assessment based on internationally agreed standards.
If, for example, £16.50 wereequitably levied for every
metric tonne of carbon
equivalent (MTCE) for CO, andmethane emitted in excess ofthe stabilisation threshold, UN
stabilisation fund could collect£165 billion per year fromglobal carbon taxes alone.
Thus the US would pay 25 percent of Mr. Osborne’s “big bill”
at a stroke (the UK a mere
two percent). Perhaps theUK’s lonely support for the US“comprehensive approach” toclimate change is based on
this hidden agenda and encouraging the US in its futile
programme of compensatory
tree planting is shrewder thanI thought.
United Nation’s climatechange negotiators are justresuming work in Nairobi. Ifthey are serious about wanting the UNCED to go with abang let’s see if the bucks
start here.
Aubrey Meyer.

October 4 - Guardian

The global debt that Britain must pay
THE story “Britain trails EC
partners and G7 on overseas
aid” (Guardian, October 1),
notes the Overseas Development Administration’s desire
to see any “debt-write-off” weextend to developing countries registered as an aid
programme credit. This, it
was suggested, would give a
fairer account of Britain’s“miserly” aid programme. And
yesterday we read of how“Bonn gets tough on Third
World” through its aid programme. Self-interest, conditions and cutbacks is what
this is really all about.
Our tinkering with the quantity and quality of northern
aid is a blind to reality. It is
we in Britain and in the industrialised north generally, who
are in debt to the less developed countries elsewhere.
Aside from the scandal of
there being (in spite of aid) a
net transfer of revenue andresources from the south to
the north, there is a deeper
scandal of how northernlifestyles are appropriatingfrom the most vulnerable
their fundamental rights to lifeand sustainable livelihoods
which is destabilising the
global commons as we use
their emissions rights andwarm the world. Nothing
reveals this rights-appropriation more clearly than an
audit of C02 and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
The starkest assessment yet
has come from the California
based research group IPSEP(Institute for Sustainable
Energy Paths) which noted
that“If the remaining global
fossil carbon budget wereshared according to a strict
person-year equity including
historic emissions, industrialised countries would haveno emissions rights left atall.”(This would include the “right”
to breathe.) Put more simply;
it is only because around 3
billion people somewhere overthe horizon don’t emit C02 at
the average rate of UK or US
citizens, that we ourselves
don’t already experience
outright climate force majeure.
As all those climate-statement
signatories acknowledged on
this page (Letters, June 18),
and there are now over 100
eminent signatories from allover the world, we are literally subsidised by the lessdeveloped countries in our
over-access to the global
commons, as we over-capacitate the natural “sinks” forgreenhouse gases and precipitate global climate changewith our massive emissions.
The ODA however, has again
refused to recognise andaddress this and pursues
instead a “sweet-green”
pseudo-alternative to emissions restraint at source in
Britain.
While the Government keeps
its foot firmly on the GNP
accelerator, trying to rev theengines of growth, the ODA
tries to keep our exhaust pipe
pointed firmly at dwindlingsouthern forests with a conservation programme which isin truth, unashamedly for ourbenefit. It is this cock-eyed
polluters’ piggy-back arrange-

34

ment which causes countries
like Malaysia to walk out of
the current UN negotiations
for UNCED (our so-called last
best chance to save theearth).
Trying to save our lifestyles bysaving others’ sovereign
forests is the “cheap date”
that won’t wash. It is insulting
and postpones the imperativeof equitable emissions restraint at source. This is thenational and global imperative
the Government refuses
realistically to tackle. Earlier
this year the House of Commons Select Environment
Committee made an express
recommendation that theindustrialised countries should
be seen to be playing a fullpart in curbing emissions ofgreenhouse gases,“and do not give the appearance that they are
anxious to preserve therainforests merely in orderto lessen the impact of theirown carbon dioxide emissions. The White Paper
expresses hopes for the
successful negotiation of aConvention on the controlof emissions... such a
Convention is crucial if thegreenhouse effect is to bemoderated.”
The Government, avoiding theadvice completely, replied:“The Convention must
attract the support of as
many and as wide a spreadof countries as possible,
and the Government believes that this will best be
accomplished by ensuring
the Convention contains thecommitment by all coun-tries to devise national
strategies to limit greenhouse gas emissions andprotect and enhance sinks,
particularly forests. The
Government has stated
that, if other countries takesimilar action, the UK is
prepared to return its
emissions of C02 to 1990
levels by2005.”
Well QED for the global upstairs/downstairs. In the viewof many, it is we who used up
our and others’ rights runningup this global environmental
debt as we developed ourindustries. Now is the time forrecompense; real responsetime is running out. Where
committees recommend, let
us demand that the Government desists from procrastination.
Lynda Chalker has said the“good governance” require-ments of our aid programme
are “not conditionality but
common sense”. But where is
the good governance of ouremissions? Moreover, “if othercountries take similar action”
is conditionality. Characterising our aid programme as
miserly misses the point. It is
the overseas aid that we
receive that is generous to thepoint of insanity.
The ODA was right about one
thing, “we need a change inthe calculations”. Let’s cut thegas, recognise the debt andsettle for global fairness alongwith “commons sense”. If only
for all our children’s sake, we
don’t have the right to dootherwise.
Aubrey Meyer.
42 Windsor Road,
London NW2.

October 21 - Guardian

The liberty agenda and the right tosurvive
THE Commonwealth Conference in Harare is a fine forum
for addressing human rights.
John Major’s rush to champion
this cause in that forum(Guardian, October 16) scatters fearful angels, leavingsome devilish double standards and awkward “linkages”.
Some, as yet indigestible to
the UK government, go way
beyond “aid and good governance”.
Global warming and climatechange, the result of dangerously extended and unsustainable energy policies in theindustrialised countries of the’North, are (sadly) the onset ofthe biggest human rights
violation in history. Many of
the countries in the frontlineof adverse impacts of climatechange are in the Commonwealth. Bangladesh for example will be further devastatedby floods, storms and futuresea-level rise, not to mention
Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Kiribati, St
Lucia and many other small
island states. Desertificationand general eco-system stressin Africa can only accelerate.
Many of our Commonwealthpartners are there. It is deplorable that our government
has, in the middle of the “tidal
wave of human rights sweep-35

ing the world”, remained
indifferent to linking equal
human rights to climatechange.
The sense of “rights” usuallyarises after rights have been
violated or taken away (Ididn’t know I had a right to astable climate until I discovered that someone wasdestabilising the climate andtaking that right away).
The trick is, if you don’t let
people know you’re compromising their rights until it’s toolate, the odds are the victim
has to adapt.
It is therefore in no sensefoolish of Mr Major to raise
the issue of equal humanrights. In fact it is laudable.
The foolish bit is the preemptive substitution of theirrights to climate at the behestof providence with imposed
climate-change at the behestof unaccountable, industrial
technocracy. It’s a little gallingwhen the apostles of this elite,(offering aid linked to humanrights, democracy and good
governance), are the ones
responsible for this rights
appropriation. As Mr Major
knows, we have the intractable problem of our own massive and still unrestrained
green-house gas emissions
and serious augury of a faltering future.

The Western lifestyle, withhigh resource-use and energyimpact, is not the standard towhich all people globally
aspire. No amount of development exuberance and technology-chauvinism overrides thefundamental rights of literallybillions of people (in fact all of
us if we but knew it) to lives
free of the threat and thereality of human-induced
climate disruption. There is aclear majority of people on theplanet whose lives and lifestyles do not inflictdestabilising impacts on thegeneral health and common
wealth of the planetary ecosystem and the equilibrium of
the global commons. They do
not precipitate force majeure.

Do we not all have fundamental rights to the common
wealth of the non-destabilised
global commons — the rightto survive — ahead of any
other right? Did not the Institute for Public Policy Researchstate (Letters, September 20),

Blackened pots from northern Aubrey Meyer.
pulpits who do, will doubtless 42 Windsor Road,
London NW2.
bring southern kettles to theboil if we try to negotiate
another round of double
standards (a little linkage here,
a little less linkage there) andto run a two-tier world. Mr
Major is right to make equal
human rights the big issue.. It
would be a class (and sensible) act for a classless global
community, where the rich did“rights cannot be absolute
where the enjoyment of aright infringes anotherperson’s fundamental
right?”

36

not commit suicide by robbing
the poor. It would repudiate
the global apartheid implicit in
the American go-it-alone
nonsense. Mr Major is fortunate to have this opportunity.
He is in the company of
Nelson Mandela in Harare.
May he be inspired by the
recent words of the latter:“the ANC sees the preservation and the rehabilitation of
the environment as part ofour liberation struggle. That is
why what are called third
generation rights — or more
popularly Green rights — areincluded in our proposed Billof Rights. Like all other humanrights, they are inalienable.”
There’s your liberty agenda.

1992
February 10 - Guardian

Emissions impossible
IT is easy to agree with theindignation in Tom Drinkwater’s letter (February 6)
about the “greed” of G7 andthe lack of realism in theireconomic policies. But on the
crucial issue — Northernenergy emissions in relation
to Southern forests — heinadvertently reinforces themost dangerous stereotype.
Tropical forests cannot now or

ever, “soak up the C02 which
the G7 countries spew out.” If
current Northern energy
emissions were to be offset in
the manner suggested, itwould require permanent
wall-to-wall reforesting of anarea twice the size of greater
Europe.
The prime concern of us all
should be one simple thing,
how to face the inevitableneed to cut these energy
emissions to non-threatening
levels at source without delay.
As the continuing ozone story
makes clear, there are unpleasant surprises ahead.
Aubrey Meyer.
Global Commons
Institute.

March 2 - GuardianKamik
aze growth economy
Kamikaze
YOU REPORT transnational
corporations (TNCs) as opposing carbon taxation, oneof the EC’s intended global
warming management measures (Environment Guardian,
March 20). The Conservative
manifesto announces its
intention to merge the UK
Department of Energy into
the Department of Trade andIndustry. This is adroit. It
diminishes UK Government
strategy for emissions restraint and pushes responsibility towards those who (bydefinition) are most antirestraint and most progrowth, the TNCs. TNCs
threaten to decamp to theThird World according to “thepolluter finds some othersucker to pay” principle.
The EC admits that the measures to arrest greenhouseemissions so far contemplated
are inadequate. The chairmanof the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has
recently affirmed to UN
climate change negotiations,that the OECD measures for
reducing the increase in therate of emissions are inadequate. GCI calculates if weburn more that 20 per cent ofknown fossil fuel reserves,
we’re beyond thresholds ofglobal ecological safety. Now
we have DTI to the rescue!
To our disgrace, this generalelection has not been notablefor its concern with this issue.
But as we pass the planetarysell-by date, let’s spare athought for those who will
really pay the bill for our
kamikaze “growth” economics— the planet’s presently
voteless children. As the poet
Louis MacNiece wrote years
ago, “I am not yet born — ohhear me.”37

Aubrey Meyer.
Global Commons
Institute,
42 Windsor Road,
London NW2.

March 9 - Guardian

Obscure view of the global crisis from ourpolitical penthouse
POPULATION growth is not
the primary threat to ourglobal environment (Letters,
March 2). It is pollution. If thepresent world population
were all to take up residence
in the United States, the US
would experience a population density similar to theNetherlands.
If however we all started
emitting greenhouse gases atthe current per capita rate of
US citizens, the global outputof the gases would occur atseven times the current rate.

The entropic consequences ofsuch an impact would amountto the end of life on thisplanet as we know it.
Conversely, if everyone alive
emitted no more greenhousegas than the average Chinese
individual, we would (according to Inter-governmental
Panel on Climate Change
criteria) actually reduce atmospheric concentrations
below current levels. Northerngovernments and institutions
such as NASA and the Royal
Society fudge this issue. The
WHO completely ignores it.

When are we (in our politicalpenthouse) going to admit the
primary threat of our unsustainable levels of consumption
and pollution, instead of
blaming our economic victims
for the pollution of theirpoverty?
Aubrey Meyer.
Executive Director,
Global Commons
Institute.

March 20 - The Times

Letter to the editor
Sir, The Department of Tradeand Industry may now become the new home of the
Department of Energy. Energy
efficiency will go to the Department of the Environment.
This is a Conservative election
pledge. The restraint ofgreenhouse gas emissions in
the UK will therefore largely
become the DTI’s concern andwhen EC energy ministers andenvironment ministers meetto discuss EC strategy foremissions restraint, the UK
will presumably be sending a
trade and industry minister
instead of an energy minister.
At the last such meeting in
December, ministers concededthat the EC’s contemplated

measures (including the
proposed energy tax) were
inadequate. The Conservatives’ scheme will hardly help.
DTI might legitimately becalled the ‘Department of
Economic Growth,’ with a brief
directly in conflict with emissions restraint. It is this conflict of interests which is at
the heart of the global warming crisis. Global climatechange is merely a symptomof economic growth via energy conversion and theconsequent carbon dioxide
emissions, and to give theenergy brief to the DTI is tocompound the problem, not tocure it. Do we believe thatindustry “self-regulation”,

38

aided by a possible energytax, will produce effective
emissions restraint?
In February, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) advised
deadlocked UN climatechange negotiators that “morefar-reaching efforts are required than are currently
contemplated (within theOECD) in order to achieve amajor reduction of the rate ofcarbon dioxide increase in theatmosphere”, European multinational companies were
threatening to decamp to theThird World to escape theEC’s energy tax. It is widely
recognised world wide thatthe onus of creating strategy

for emissions restraint —essentially a global strategy
for equity and survival — now
lies with the OECD. If thisgovernment is sincere in its
commitment to the IPCC
findings they could do worse
than move the Department ofEnergy en bloc to the Department of Environment, while
the DTI should be subject tothe requirements of a DoE
committed to those findings.
This should be an election
issue.

Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons InstituteC02 emissions must increase.
This sort of recovery therefore, is based on changing
global climate in a way which
decreases the survival prospects of us all. “Famine”
victims in the Horn of Africa
are just one of the appalling
early signals of this.

be about increasing “choice”.

April 9 - Guardian

Green card
SO the IMF forecasts a “comfortable” 3.2 per cent growthin the industrialised economies next year. This inevitablymeans a rise in the emissionsof carbon to the atmosphere.
There is a close correspondence between economic
growth and emissions growth
for the three decades past.
Any politician in this election
who says that “recovery” isbased on boosting economic
growth is really saying thatThat this issue has not been
discussed at this time, isevidence of the insanity of
those who would lead us.
This election is supposed to

However, all our prospects arediminishing every moment wecontinue to evade this issue.
Aubrey Meyer, Dr. John
Gribben, Dr. Wilfried Bach,
Jim Berreen, Dr. Hari
Sharan, Danyal Sattar, Dr.
Julian E Salt, Sara Parkin,
Gustav Grob.

April 21 - Guardian

Royal hoot on the oily road to Rio
TODAY the Brundtland Commission — or the World Commission on Environment andDevelopment — starts a four
day session in London- PrinceCharles has been invited tomake the opening keynote
address. The “population
explosion” is his theme.
Considering the commission
hopes to remove obstacles tosuccess at the UN Conference
on Environment and Development (UNCED), this keynote
contribution is likely to prove
explosive too. Industrial
destabilisation of the biosphere is the environment/
development issue. Mutuallyequal survival rights is theglobal political issue. The
commission might as well gohome if these are not central
to their concerns.
It is all very well to say thatno country can prosper while
its population growth outstrips
its economic expansion. Thisis the kind of knob-twiddlinginsight characteristic of ourdiscredited Overseas Development Agency. Last year (in“Children by Choice and notby Chance”) they publishedthe following. “Countries
whose governments establish
a climate within which couples
can exercise reproductive

39

choice should eventuallyattain population growth rates
that are in balance with theireconomic and natural resources.” It is we who standcondemned with these arguments far more than the Third
World. With our insatiableboutique culture, we consume
finite resources at rates hundreds of times in excess ofpeople in developing countries. This inevitably diminishes the access of others.
“More is best (but less for therest)” is the reality we ideologize with open-ended economic growth. And now this“wealth-creation” hasspawned the smug
samaritanship of “poverty
alleviation” (for those “lessfortunate than our-selves”)
and environmental salvation
to boot. When is the penny
going to drop? The boot is on
the other foot. “First World
feast equals Third World
famine” is the reality already.
What for example do we thinkis causing the unprecedented
drought and famine in subSaharan Africa?
Contributors to theBrundtland Commission
should address one issue
ahead of all others: the global
climate-altering pollutionconsequences of fossil fueldriven economic growth. Thisoccurs principally in the Northand at the expense of billions
of present and future people,
principally in developing
countries. This is the mostdrastically threatening part ofour future scenario. This is
our legacy to the unborn aswell as those who struggle tostay alive already.
Global domestic product andindustrial C02 output go up
and down together like
Antony and Cleopatra. To
achieve positive economic
growth and negative emissions growth — ie. todecouple the economy fromthe energy sector whichsustains it — is alchemy.
However much we approach
the thermodynamic limit ofproduction efficiency — aworthwhile effort as far as itgoes — the inexorable conclusion is that still we have to
use resources less and thosewhich we do use renewably.
Then, moreover, there is theequal challenge of how weare going to have to do thisfairly. This is at the heart of
the UNCED agenda. Global
rights and equity are theportals to sustainability andsurvival. People in the South
don’t want lectures from us
about population growth.
They don’t want chicken egg
conditionality from Northernknow-alls either (“we’ll do x
dependent on others playing
their part”— Mr Major’s line).
The horse is reduced consumption in the North: thecart of salvation awaits this toroll. For the moment the oilyroad to Rio runs throughRiyadh, rolling us all to ruin.
By raising population growthat this moment, Charles
merely hoots from his car as
the same old bandwagon
passes the same old buck.
Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons Institute

April 24 - Guardian

Scapegoats of the Third W
orld
World
REPORTING of Prince Charles’
speech shows how promptly
our establishment climb onto
the scapegoat bandwagon.
This is the imperious closingof ranks in advance of the UN
Conference in June. If we cansufficiently pull rank on the
Third World and denigratethem and their population
over the next five weeks, thenow almost inevitable fiasco
at UNCED will be much easier
to explain here in terms ofThird World “unreasonableness”.
Prince Charles did raise theissue, but most of his speech
was devoted to other things.
He and Mrs. Brundtland drewattention to profligate North-ern resource consumption. He
specifically confirmed his
agreement with the GCI
proposition that excessive
energy consumption andemissions growth in the Northis the overriding issue on the
UNCED agenda.
Population growth in thedeveloping countries is afunction of industrial growthin the developed countries. As
we in the North vacuum up
resources from all over theworld, we simultaneously
destroy the integrity of theirlocal social structures. The
consequence of this is the
distortion of the balance ofpeople to resources. Having
more children becomes a40

rational response to overcoming the energy deficit consequent on local resource depletion. Comparatively, within the
North, there is only the illusion of sustainability. Our highresource-to-people ratio is
only possible based on our
massive absorption of resources from abroad. Present
accounting does not acknowledge diminution of ecologicalspace and stability globallyconsequent on this depletionand pollution feed-back. When
Prince Charles re-uttered theSouth’s cry for justice, he was
acknowledging this. The socalled “poor” are not asking
for charity, they are claiming
mutually equal survival rights.

If in the North ‘we want tosurvive too, we have no
choice but to heed this calland cut back on consumption.
Strangely, ranks of males
crowed their populationgrowth expertise in subsequent TV interviews. “Givethese women jobs and condoms,” they said. Says a lot,
really. They seemed not torealise that we haven’t earned

the right to criticise developing countries or their women.
Especially not when we are socompliantly captive to theritual ignorance (not-tomention the unwanted emissions) of White House
America.
Anandi Sharan and Aubrey
Meyer
Global Commons InstituteLondon NW2.

May 11 - GuardianArms cuts to defend the planet
THE UK’s environment minister has just “negotiated” aform of environmental opt-out
for the US government withrespect to the restraint ofgreenhouse gas emissions.
Michael Howard’s new text (ifratified at Rio) will allow the
US to fulfil its intention toincrease its greenhouse gas
emissions. It means the US
has neither the means nor theintention to pay its environmental debt.
While the Organisation of
Economic Co-operation andDevelopment states that “themarket itself cannot internalise environmental costs”, ourgovernment has said, “onlybusiness and industry candeliver environmental improvements”. Unsurprisingly,
we find business and industryin Europe united against theEC’s proposals for restraining
carbon emissions correctly
claiming that it puts them atcomparative disadvantage
with the US. Further, we findthat the insurance market will
not cover against damage
through global climatechange.

Consequently the environmental costs incurred by theindustrialised North and preeminently the US, are being
substantially externalised on
to frequently innocent third
parties in the Third World as
they (indeed we all) incur theopportunity costs of adverse
climate changes.
The US delegate to the current climate negotiations
declares that his government
won’t make any adjustment
which compromises the US
position as a major economic
power. Where they had previously stated that they regarded any external attempt
to modify their energy policy
as an infringement of theirnational sovereignty, we findthis has now been weirdly
redeployed as the principle of“consumer sovereignty,”
where “we don’t tell people
what they can and can’t buy.”
What this really means is“can’t pay, won’t pay”. Moreprecisely, it is theft. Mr
Howard’s text makes the UK
party to this theft- Southerngovernments will not take thislightly.

41

In the new era of global
environmental security, theglobal family squabble at theirperil. All victories will bepyrrhic. You cannot externalise the interests of 80 per centof the world’s population with
impunity. For the US to givethis kind of geriatric leadership at this time is direct
evidence of moral and financial bankruptcy. More importantly, it is evidence of thefatal ideological contamination
called “me first or me only”.
As Rio will show, this puts ourworld in peril from both political and ecological disequilibrium. We really are faced with“all or nothing”.
Europe-wide anti-global
warming activities are taking
place on May 15 (ring 081806 1561 for details).
Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons
Institute.
Nick Hildyard.
The Ecologist.

June 1992 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Pay Now – Live Later – the Road to Rio and the
UNCED” –An Early Compilation of Materials Relating to Contraction and Convergence
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

June - The Centre For Our Common Future and the IFC

AP
ack
age Marked, ‘R
eturn to Sender’.
PackackageMarked,‘Return
Sender’.
Some Problems with the
Climate Convention
ED. This month Northern
experts review the Conventions signed at UNCED.
June was the month when theworld was due to be set
straight at the United Nations
Conference on Environmentand Development (UNCED) in
Rio de Janeiro. Against all theodds, UNCED’s Canadian
Secretary-General, Maurice
Strong, had cajoled andpersuaded the world that thetime for a change was now
and that they should sign up
for global conventions and an
agenda that would allow
civilization to survive into thefirst half of next century. The
brightest jewel in the Summit’s crown was to be aconvention on climate which
recognises the problem of
human-induced climatechange and seeks to reducethe causes and mitigate theconsequences of the climatechange which is now inevitable. So, after years of debate,
the most up-to-date scientificand technical advice, andthousands of hours of negotiation on the words to be
used, how did the world’s
diplomats, international lawyers and politicians make out?
Having listened and contributed to much of the debate,
and reading the text of theconvention, the Global Commons Institute (GCI) finds
them sadly wanting. The
convention represents somesound ideas, but no action.
The immense pressure fromthe developed countries to42

continue this uncontrolled andpossibly uncontrollable experiment with the atmosphereand the climate has doomed
the most vulnerable states like
Tuvalu and Kiribati to disasterand ensured that much ofdrought-stricken Africa will
suffer on a permanent andunethical basis.
As a showpiece, the convention is tawdry and as an
exercise in global responsibility, the negotiation has been anear disaster. The convention
acknowledges that the excess
production of greenhousegases is likely to cause deleterious changes in climate.
Moreover it recognises thatthe developed countries,
bearing the major ecologicalresponsibility for climatechange (see chart on thispage), have to take immedi-ate action. It also recognises
in passing the needs of themost vulnerable states. Having affirmed that climate
protection is its aim, theconvention then defines a
precise objective of limiting
greenhouse gas emissions tolevels which do not imperil
the climate and which willallow natural recovery inthose systems already affected. But then comes thereal rub. All the above issubject to the convention’s

demand for sustained economic growth and development. By the very nature of
the physical’ world we live in,these will require that moreenergy be produced, that
more products be made and,ultimately, that more greenhouse gases be released.
The relationship between CO2
and GDP for the past thirty
years and the C02 emissions
trend which unfettered economic growth will provoke).
The convention also insiststhat no measures for climate
protection should be allowed
to impinge “unjustifiably” onfree and open international
trade —hardly a word to put
international lawyers and

GATT negotiators out ofbusiness.
The core proposals do not
involve anything but anunspecified statement that
excess greenhouse gas emissions are a bad thing. It also
notes that something may bedone about these emissions
as long as the oil habits of theUS, the UK and other producers (notwithstanding their
now wilful destabilisation of
the world’s climate) are notdisturbed. In odd moments ofpoignant good intent, theconvention acknowledges theneeds of the most vulnerable
states, but its response to thissituation is totally inadequate
given the real circumstancesof those states. The financial
assistance and technologicaltransfer that is referred to isunspecified. The mechanisms
for financial management arevaguely left to “established”
institutions, such as the GEF,
operating under the aegis of
the “Conference of the Parties” which, will seek to effectthe convention and its aspirations. The original ideas fromthe G-77 group of developing
countries and the Association

43

of Small Island States(AOSIS) for some kind of deal
on insurance and reparationfor ecological andinfrastructural damage resulting from anthropogenic
climate change have been
eliminated from the discussion.
All that is mentioned is theneeds of the most vulnerable
to adapt to changing climaticconditions. How is it that theworld’s senior intergovern-

mental negotiators have failed
to comprehend that small
island states such as Tuvalu,
Kiribati and many of theworld’s low-lying islands will
have become uninhabitable
long before the rising tides
and storm surges resulting
from climate change andglobal warming will physicallywash them out of existence?
Is it simply that the real costof reparation for the damage
set in train is more thandecision-makers in the OECD
can afford to admit, now or
ever? With early evidence ofclimate change becoming
manifest around the world asincreasing storm frequency
and severity, advancing

coastal erosion, changing
wind and weather patterns
and widespread continental
drought, perhaps the developed countries have decided
just to brazen it out while“recognising the, needs of themost vulnerable”. Genocide by
yet another act of awareness.
So what is needed? Professor
Bert Bolin of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was in little

doubt when he presented his
report to the 5th negotiating
session for the climate convention (INC5): Much more
emissions reduction is needed
within the terms of the convention. This was not a political demand, it was a rational
response to an ultimatumfrom the laws of nature.
According to the IPCC, weneed at least a 60% reduction
in carbon emissions just to
hold the 1990 elevated levelsof C02 concentrations in theatmosphere (see chart thispage).
It is clear that the OECD
countries and the petrochemical interests that drive theirpolicies have no intention of
reducing, let alone stopping,
the damage they cause to theworld’s climate, regardless of

its potentially devastating
impact on civilization. Apparently, the board rooms havedecided that the most vulnerable states have no long-term
future. Unfortunately, bravewords of recognition of another’s plight and the complete
loss of sovereign interests areof no value in an open market.
The first and vital pragmatic
step in addressing theseissues of global equity andsurvival must be to institute a
reduced dependence on fossil
fuels. But, with the connivance of the UK, the US and its
Saudi clients, this seems
completely blocked. Instead,driven by the new and deluded realpolitik of “polluter
sovereignty”, climate change
negotiators created a package
defending vested interests. It
is faintly addressed to gathering uncertainties and it has aslight wrapping of compassion. Nevertheless, common
sense, if not our changing
climate, will one day bring it
home —marked: “return tosender”.
Jim Berreen
Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons Institute(GCI).

44

GCI is an independent thinktank that researches thecauses of global ecologicalproblems and assesses theirpolitical implications. It campaigns for rational change
accepting the link between
equity and survival.
Contact: Global Commons
Institute (GCI), 42 Windsor Road, London NW2
5DS, UK - Tel/Fax, (44 81)
451 0778

45

June 8 - Guardian

Opposing polluter sovereignty
TO THE heads of government
in the G7 countries:
As you depart for Rio, please
will you consider this. Rio is
not the “start of a process”, itis the culmination of a long
and arduous effort by countless concerned people over at
least 20 years. These people
have sought to bring governments, business and industry
to their senses and face up to
the reality of the global survival crisis we all collectively
face.
There is no point in any of us
continuing to duck the maincause of this crisis — thewasteful consumption anddestruction of natural resources by the so-calledindustrial development process and its economic mirror
image in “growth”. It does
seem scarcely believable thatthrough this process, humans
have actually affected themetabolism of the biosphereand started to change global
climate, but the evidence forthis is growing relentlessly.
It will be an act of folly anddeceit if in Rio you declare
yourselves in favour of a
global ecological recovery
programme while you commit
us to intensifying the causesof global ecological degradation and the political imbalances which are caught up in
this. Nothing makes thisprospect clearer than the
climate convention text
crafted by UK environment
minister Michael Howard
which he intends co-signingwith White House US.
Signing this text is merely
institutionalising “polluter

sovereignty” for the US as it
has said it has no intention of
reducing emissions. On thecontrary it is going to increase
emissions as will all signatories, as the text commits
them to maintain strong andsustainable economic growth.
You should note carefully thatfor G7 as well as globally, theC02/GDP growth-link remains
consistently unbroken overthe last 30 years.
A year ago on this page astatement demanding US
emission restraint was published with about 20 cosignatories. One year on over 300
people have co-signed as aconsequence. Over 50 ofthese are European MPs (andUK MPs of all parties, including three party leaders) alongwith eminent scientists andenvironment development
specialists from all over theworld. They said, “we believethat all people present andfuture, should have rights tolife and sustainable livelihoods
which are free from the threat
and the reality of humaninduced climate disruption.”
They also said “We stress that
responsibility for taking corrective action and reducing
bad practice lies with those
who created and who continue to exacerbate this global
crisis. We demand that their
response should be immediate and without prevarication.” Polluter sovereignty is
not a satisfactory-response.
In the context of global
climate change, more thanhalf the world’s population
emit greenhouse gases atinsignificantly low levels,46

while a minority — reflecting
runaway consumption patterns — emit greenhousegases at excessive levels,
provoking potentially runaway
climate changes and obliterating any remaining potential
for globally equal survival
rights. The cosignatories
pointed out that this inequity
is particularly unacceptable
when the majority of theworld’s people are alreadystruggling to meet basic
human needs. Last but notleast, we also caution you
against pursuing arguments
about population growthwhich imply (or may be taken
as implying) that the onus ison people in developing
countries to breed less so as
the present profligate consumption-pollution patterns
can be maintained bypopulations in the industrialised countries of the North.
The anger of people somehave described as “less fortunate than ourselves’’ (mostbut not all of whom are in theso-called developing countries) will in no way be mitigated by these smoke-screen
arguments. On the contrary,
the adverse political consequences of this anger will
steadily combine with theadverse ecological consequences of polluter sovereignty and overwhelm any
remaining possibilities of arational political response tothis primarily consumptionpollution driven global crisis.
The leadership required (andwhich we urge you to give)can only be based on honestly admitting the extent of
our responsibility in the Northand unconditionally committing ourselves to an equitable
recovery.
This recovery cannot be basedon the economics of increasing competition-led growth ofdemand for the precious finite
resources of life. Recovery can
only be based on sharing
these fairly at sustainablerates of use. Advocacy of thisbasic principle and rejecting
polluter sovereignty is common sense. It is the prerequisite of future survival pros-

pects for us all.
Aubrey Meyer, Dave
Bradney, Global Commons
Institute; Tom Barker, Alt.
Tech. Assoc: Dilwyn
Jenkins, Ctr Alt Tech;
Anandi Sharan, World
Clean Energy Coalition; Ed
Mayo, New Economics
Fdn: Kate Young, Womankind; Nicholas Hildyard,
The Ecologist: Susan
George, Assoc Dir TNI:
Jason Wilson, University
College London: Jakob von

Uexkull, Right Livelihood
Award: Tony Cooper,
Green Party global warming working group: Jim
Berreen, Green Party
environment speaker;
Sara Parkin, UK Green
Party Executive: George
Monbiot, author Amazon
Watershed: Kate
Cameron-Daum, North
Atlantic Network:
Hemansu Roy Trivedi,
Indian Tribal Women’s
Trust; Titus Alexander,
End Global Apartheid.

June 12How British aid measures up in the ThirdWorld
JOHN MAJOR defends the UK
record on aid saying quality
not quantity is the issue. He
says aid as a percentage of
GDP is an irrelevant indicator.
This de-linkage is interesting.
This suggests that GDP as
currently measured is about
quality and not about quantity
which of course is nonsense.
In fact with global biophysicallimits exceeded through theincreased intensity of GDP
measured human activities,
GDP is revealed as having an
emerging anti-quality component where notions of valueadded are being overtaken byconditions and quantity ofvalue-destroyed (e.g. ozonehole). Is Mr. Major starting toargue for de-linking ourwellbeing from GDP too? That- from the proponents of“growth” - would be the day.
When British GDP reflects thequality and the efficiency
which Mr. Major imputes to
British ODA, the odds are we’ll
have successfully been subjected to the kind of reverse

North/South scrutiny that thepolitics of Rio initiates in
global terms; i.e. accountability and redress over theinequitable and unsustainable
use of global commons resources - or as John Vidal
reported from Rio on Agenda
21, the extent to which theNorth’s overconsumption of
resources is the cause of
Third World poverty. Wealthysamaritans describing how
grateful Southern paupers
must spend their pocket
money may be John Major’s
big news in Rio, but it isyesterday’s news in terms ofmaking the global process
sustainable.
What is needed is a GDP
based on making the, Global
Domestic Process sustainable.
This takes all costs and benefits - environmental andsocial - into account in a
globally democratised process. Doing this will give themajority rights to a greater
say over our development,
spending and acquisitions

47

than we are presuming tohave over theirs.
Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons Institute
Simon Hughes MP
Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesperson
Jim Berreen
Environment Speaker
Green Party
Dale Campbell-Savours
MP Labour Spokesman
Overseas Aid
Penny Kemp
Green Alternative forEuropeJuly - Euro Chemical News - Environment R
eview
Review

Green Rights for all; the earth view
Can the opposing demands ofNorth and South ever bereconciled with the future
health of the planet? ECN
asked Aubrey Meyer to givehis view of the discussions at
UNCED.
THE UNITED NATIONS Conference on Environment andDevelopment (UNCED), or theso-called ‘Earth Summit’,recently brought into focus
the efforts of the international
community to protect the
global environment by curtailing unsustainable development.
Sadly though, these efforts
were undermined throughout,principally by the ‘me-first’
intransigence of the US ‘administration and by thosefrom industry who successfully lobbied it against any
measures for compensation or
restraint.
In the noisy debate about
whether we have exceeded
the limits of biospheric tolerances which has put ‘survival’so decisively on the agenda, it
is becoming increasingly
apparent that equity is theglobal political price of reestablishing equilibrium in theecosystem. If nothing else,the UNCED has assisted ingetting recognition for thisnew reality.
Can we reconcile the varied
and invariably conflicting
interests of the powerful, theprosperous, the plebeian, theimperilled and the povertystruck? There is no simple
answer, but we must recognise that what was once a
moral dilemma has now

become a practical imperative- either we share fairly thefinite resources of life at no
more than sustainable rates ofuse, or the biosphere will bedamaged beyond its capacity
to sustain many species - ourown included.
To make matters moredifficult the UNCED preparations clearly established therelevance of the uneasy
questions long haunting theinternational debate; namelythat much Southern poverty
and consequent local environmental degradation can be
explained by the global economic system, inequitably
operated by the industrialised
countries of the North fortheir own benefit.
As recent reports from theWorld Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and others show, thepoor in developing countries
now actually measurablysubsidise the rich countries
through structural adjustment
and regimes of export-led
growth, inequitable barriers totrade, low commodity prices
and the now seemingly endless regime of debt repayments. All this adds up to aconsiderable net resources
transfer from South to North.
By incapacitating developing
countries in this way wecompound the global climatechanges that we have precipitated, for example by hastening their liquidation of tropicalrainforests for debt repayment. Our actually helping to
add this damage to our existing industrial damage is sheer
folly.

48

All this explains the ‘getlost’ attitude of countries like
Malaysia. It certainly had no
inclination to accord recognition to the forests as part of
the global common heritage.
It insisted that ‘its’ forests
were ‘sovereign’ to be exploited in whatever way itchooses, and that if theforests were so important to
the global ecosystem theirmaintenance should be paidfor. The money offered by theNorth has been insignificant,and the US pursuit of this‘least-cost’ forest conservation
option for global warming
management (plus bio-technology support) is proving to
be costly and dangerous, both
politically and ecologically.
In the face of these complex challenges and the intractable politics they generate, we find politicians more
and more promoting the ideathat business and industry(rather than governments) are
the solution to environmental
problems.
This is true to some extent,
but also somewhat ironic.
Business and industry havetraditionally been a major
immediate cause of environmental degradation, andpoliticians promoting thebusiness and industry solution
are really acknowledging theirown dwindling influence overboth supply and demand side
behaviour.
This is ever more so in theintensely consumerist democracies of the developed North,where society’s well-being is
now as good as indexed to anincrease in consumerism - in aword, growth. Consumers

only elect politicians who offer
good news. The good news
that electors still want to hearis that increased consumption
is assured; politicians can only
propose this growth based on
the increased production
made possible by the expansion of the activities of abusiness and industry sector
ever eager for new profits.
Side-stepping institutional
responsibility (and apparently
forgetting the extensive US
consumer protection legislation), the US administration
defensively coined the term
‘consumer sovereignty’, explaining that, ‘we don’t tellpeople what they can andcan’t buy’.
The problem with all of this,even allowing for industry’s
increased efficiency, is thatany environmental gains arelost in the ‘economic’ growthof production and consumption. This relentlessly yields a
net escalation of pollution andenvironmental decline. The US
EPA currently estimates a 7.5
growth rate of hazardous
waste in the US for example,
in spite of abatement.
In the context of UNCED,
this scenario of consumer-led
environmental decline has not
impressed delegations fromdeveloping countries where
the per capita consumption
levels are a fraction of thosemaintained in the North andoften below the threshold of
daily survival. When the US as
the world’s major greenhousegas polluter refuses emissions
restraint,‘consumer sovereignty’ translates as ‘the United States lifestyle is non-negotiable’.
This really means ‘polluter
sovereignty’.

Moreover President Bush’s
cry of, ‘jobs before the environment’ was not entirely
honest and was hardly anappropriate preface to his
subsequent claim that,‘America is the leading environmental nation in thisworld’. Further, US non-compliance over the bio-diversity
treaty made it clear that‘profits before the environment’ was really his intention.
It is this US intransigenceand irresponsibility overemissions restraint and biodiversity, more than any otherfactor, which soured theefforts for global co-operation
on climate, species, habitatand especially forest preservation.
However, consumer sovereignty does not necessarily
exclude protection of theenvironment by increasing theprice of consumption. Greeneconomists are now arguingfor the introduction of a
product pricing system which‘internalises’ full costs of theenvironmental and social
damage caused by production. This alternative to environmental regulation is promoted as the most efficientmeans of environmental
protection through the market.
Apparently to this end, the
UNCED was vigorously lobbied
by some of the market’s mostactive protagonists, the recently formed Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). This group ofaround 50 senior executives
from multinational corporations including key chemicalindustry chiefs was constituted at the suggestion of
UNCED convenor Maurice
Strong.

49

In BCSD’s recent manifestolike publication Changing
Course, sustainable development is based almost entirelyon this idea of full-cost pricing. It is aimed at changing
supply and demand behaviour.
In theory, in an economy offully-costed social and environmental transactions, fullcost pricing will signal ‘least
cost equals least damage’ andtrigger the appropriate behavioural changes.
Taken to the point whereenvironmental protection isachieved commensurate withthe scale of the environmental
damage we have caused, thisis something of a revolutionary goal, as the reverse isalmost entirely true of current
pricing practice.
Recognising this, BCSD
argues for an evolutionary
approach, saying that full-cost
pricing ‘must proceed using
imperfect existing knowledge
and imperfect available
tools... [but]... the lack of
accuracy in determining theactual and future costs ofpollution should not allow us
to conclude that no price canbe established at all.’ This
gradualist approach presumably also creates the breathing space for the BCSD toachieve its concurrent stated
aim of achieving sustainable
development whilst still maintaining profits to industry.
This reveals a telling ambivalence in corporate motivation, and may still amount tohaving someone else’s cakeand eating it, because theindustrial world’s environmental debts are enormous, goback a long way, and still gomostly unaccounted for.
However, if politicians see
an enhanced role for multina-

tionals in the pursuit of sustainable development, BCSD
feels that this is clearly reciprocal. ‘As individuals set prices
for privately-owned goods,
society must establish throughpolitical processes prices forthe use of goods held incommon - water, atmosphereand so on. This work must be
based on the best available
scientific evidence and on
people’s preferences andchoices.’ The implications of
this are immense. Nothing
less than the recognition ofequal rights of benefit fromthe resources of the global
commons is required. BCSD’s
challenge is as much to politicians as to business andindustry itself.
But since they, like most
UNCED participants, declareclimate change to be thepotentially most serious of all
the environmental threats,both politically and ecologically, it would have been
appropriate for them to acknowledge the extent towhich past (vast) profits toindustrialists have been generated at the expense of thegreenhouse gas source/ sinkequilibrium for example. Since
politicians from the industrialised countries have been
unable to face this difficulty,
there is a clear role here forleadership within industry.

ver, his Darwin Initiative ‘forthe survival of the species’,
whilst responsibly helping to
put survival on the agenda,
has unfortunate overtones of‘survival of the fittest’. In
current market terms this
implies the survival of thewealthiest.

It would still be prudent for
us all - politicians, industrialists and others - to recognise
this long-term environmental
debt and the loss of equal
individual rights of access to a
global commons resource(climate stability) engenderedby this disequilibrium. China’s
politics in the climate treaty
negotiations made clear theextent to which it still articulates its future energy expectations in terms of ‘me-too’
exploitation of fossil fuels.

Still, taken with or without
environmental costs internalised, ecologically speaking
such ideas are fantasy. Without internalisation we arehelplessly on the road tooverexploitation and with it, infully costed global commons
resource terms, the fittest - bethey individual or corporate are largely the most environmentally indebted; perhaps
indeed the least fit, the least
wealthy.

UK Prime Minister John
Major’s rather languid judgement that past ‘damage was
inflicted not out of greed or
malice, but out of ignorance’
is only partly true and underestimates the immense practical need for redress. Moreo-

Without a real commitment
on the part of the wealthy toliquidate their environmental
debt, they remain as much indanger as everybody else.
Inevitably some form of
resource and technology redistribution is a part of any
survival strategy. Like it ornot, we are even more
hostage to China’s - notto mention India’s future fossil fuel intentions, that they andothers were (or are) toour past (fossil fuelderived) economic
dominance. In the faceof this, US confrontational tactics have beendisgraceful but also
naive. Ecological realities
are generating newpolitical realities in the
global system.
Now, driven by such
survival/equity considerations, some from themultinationals are reincarnating as visionaries

50and starting to argue forenvironmental and social
equity across the whole
spectrum of the global community. They have begun tobroaden their assessment of
who their stakeholders are:not only employees andshareholders but also suppliers, customers, neighbours,
citizens’ groups and others.

participate in life at all, letalone the market. If themarket and our collective
industrial impacts continue todegrade the biosphere, African droughts anddesertification, and cyclones
devastating low-lying islands
and states actually terminate
these peoples’ interests andbecome our memento mori.

to its survival.’
Recognition and defence ofthe basic rights to the commons - ‘green rights’ - ofthese ‘others’ is the greatest
challenge for those businessvisionaries who would change
course. Perhaps they may join
their voices to the others who
have endorsed the statementin the panel. It was widely“We acknowledge with concern that climate change through humanenhanced global warming is a real and growing threat and is caused by theemissions of long-lived greenhouse gases from human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change advises that to stabilise atmosphericconcentrations requires a reduction to less that 40 percent of current levels.
On average each person to the world contributes 1.65 metric tonnes ofcarbon and equivalents (MTCE) each year. 40 per cent of this figure - 0.86
MTCE represents each individual’s output threshold for forcing future climate change. At least 63 per cent of the people in the world produce
greenhouse gas emissions at or below this threshold figure, and their emissions contribute only 90 per cent of me non-forcing total. They therefore
provide the equivalent of a 10 percent credit, which is taken up by the restof the world. This inequity is particularly unacceptable at a time when the
majority of people are struggling to meet basis human needs. It is also
unacceptable as the forcing emissions total is derived largely from unsustainable, luxury-based activities in countries one of whose governments has
still refused even the principle of setting targets for CO2 emissions stabilisation, let alone reduction.
We believe that all people present and future should have rights to life andsustainable livelihoods which are free from the threat and the reality ofhuman induced climate disruption. We stress that the responsibility fortaking corrective action and reducing bad practice lies with those who created and who continue to exacerbate this global crisis. We demand that
their response should be immediate and without prevarication, and shouldtake special action over this issue of social inequity.”

BCSD further acknowledges
that ‘large numbers of people
do not participate in themarkets’. In fact we know
many of these are actually
amongstthe market’s collateral costs.
Huge numbers can barely

While circumstantial evidence
for these linkages is growing,‘the tragedy is that poverty
and hunger exist in a world
never better able to eliminate
them,’ said Maurice Strong.
‘This is surely a denial of themoral and ethical basis of ourcivilization, as well as a threat

51

circulated in the UNCED
preparations.
This Global Commons
Institute statement issued ayear ago has since beensigned by hundreds of people
from all over the world including many senior European

politicians, environment/
climatologists and environment/development experts.
US-led polluter sovereignty at
the UNCED was not a satisfactory response. The truth isthat if the North in generaland the US in particular, hadbeen more honest about theon-record inequitable as wellas unsustainable use of the
global commons (particularlythe ‘over-filling of sinks’), theSouth might have been moreamenable to forest conservation and the proposed convention. All three conventions
have forests as a major component, and while they areglobal commons assets, they
are in conventional economic
terms quite obviously primarily the national economic
assets of the countries inwhich they stand. One angry
South East Asian delegate,
defensive about deforestation, asked if a further
convention for the pre-ventionof fossil fuel destruction wasgoing to be put on the agenda
as well.

It is no accident that Fidel
Castro received the longest
applause of any leader in Rio
for the following words:‘The main responsibility forthe atrocious destruction of
the environment lies withthe consumer societies.
They are the offspring of
the old colonialist andimperialist policy thatengendered the poverty
and backwardness that are
today the scourge of the
majority of mankind. We
need less luxury and waste
in a few countries so there
can be less poverty andhunger in the greatest partof the world.”
Even George Bush was seen
to applaud this speech. Given
all this, it cannot be a surprise
to anyone that the developing
countries looked for - andfound - a way to fight back. In
the post-UNCED new worldorder, mutually assured destruction (MAD) has been
replaced by mutual ecologicalblackmail (MEB) between the
North and the South, and the52

industrialised countries have
only got themselves andGeorge Bush to blame.
To overcome the new anddeluded ‘me-first-or-me-only’
narcissism of the powerful,
the articulation and defence ofgreen rights globally has to beat the core of our strategy for
ecological recovery from now
on. Across the board, fairness
is the sine qua non of survival.
If politicians cannot understand this and provide leadership, perhaps the corporate
visionaries can?
Aubrey Meyer
Director Global Commons
Institute
42 Windsor Road
London NW2 5DS UK.

August 14 - The Guardian

Stop sniping
sniping,, save the planet
JONATHON PORRITT’S castigation of the green movement’s supposed politicalsuperficiality and lack ofadaptability has predictably
won the approval of environmental campaigners within
the Labour Party (Letters,
August 10). But no amount of
excitement about “postMarxist eco-socialism” will
substitute for key debate on
the deadly nature of economic growth itself.
The basic trends that greens
have been pointing to for 30
years – environmental devastation, resource depletion andpopulation growth – are still
moving smoothly on, making
it ludicrous to suggest thatgreen politics and strategy
should be radically recast
because of recent but unspecified “momentous
changes”.
It is not denial in the green
movement that is hinderinggreen politics. It is denial
amongst the public, aided andabetted by the contradictoryidea from some environmentalists and industrialists thatfurther economic growth cansomehow be harnessed tosolve the eco-crisis thatgrowth itself has created.
Spouting about sustainable
development” and the absence of any clear alternatives
to this improbable concept,
send a clear message to the
public that present catastrophic trends can only
persist. Governments (despite
all they now know) are intent
on “business as usual” behind
their new fig-leaves of “sustainability”. While the public
continues to be offered noth-ing positive and realistic tosupport, who can blame it forresorting to fatalism anddenial?
Nothing less than a viable
political agenda for the equitable rationing of the planet’s
finite resources is now
needed. Politics to achieve
this must acknowledge thephysical limits which thebiosphere imposes on us andthe political limits which
global inequities place on ourabilities to find globally acceptable solutions.
Is it too much to hope that
future articles in this Environment Guardian series will be
shorter on petulance andlonger on radical analysis?
Aubrey Meyer, Dave
Bradney,
Jim Berreen, Tony Cooper,
Anandi Sharan.
Global Commons Institute,
42 Windsor Road,
London NW2

53

August 17 - Guardian

Mind big mothermother,, not little brother
TOBY YOUNG’S piece about
little brother (Guardian Review, August 14) quotes aBlue Peter sceptic, Michael
Mortimore. The ODI’s Mr.
Mortimore disputes the Third
World debt/environmentdegradation linkage. He also
notes the risk of overloading
factual information with amoral burden and asks for arational and scientific approach rather than an ideological one.
A rational approach to theseissues should (we feel) be
founded in a recognition that“debt” is a far more pervasive
phenomenon than the “disputed (monetary) linkage”
allows. Politicians and economists now grappling with theso called “externality” costs ofdevelopment, do this “rationally” because of newly extending self-interest assessments
and a desire to make economic sense of the humansurvival predicament.
The widespread scientificacceptance of climate change,
its causes and the prospect offorce majeure (not to mention
the laws of thermodynamics)
are now primary and makethis debt/degradation linkage
dispute entirely secondary.
With the advent of global
climate change we do know
the following: (a) the overwhelming cause of this has
been and remains CO2. emissions from the industrialised
countries (Blue Peter wascorrect to make the link tofossil fuel use) (b) in theinternational monetary system, while industrialised
countries are the biggest“creditors” in monetary terms,
they are also the biggest“debtors” in terms of global
environmental impact.
The money “loaned” to theThird World has been almost
entirely the product of a fossil
fuel economy with rampant
unpaid environmental costs atsource.
It is irrational — not to say
perversely ideological — ofindustrialised countries tocontinue promoting the global
monetary system, at theexpense of the global ecosystem by failing to “internalise”
these damaging development
costs or more importantly, torestrain these damaging
developments.
While we may reschedule
Third World debt in the hopeof avoiding default, attempting to reschedule ecologicaldebt — i.e. postponing emissions restraint in the hope of
impunity — is about as rational as hoping to change thelaws of physics.
The debt/degradation linkage
argument (regardless of its
outcome) has been superseded. The degradation is thedebt, and failing to own up to
this is even more dangerous
than the debt itself.
In the face of this, a little
evangelism from young people does not require ourpermission. Nor will any moral
burden be removed by Mr.
Young’s unsubtly emotive
counter-evangelism.
Industrially abusing Big
Mother is our problem, (notthe aftershocks from Little
Brother).

54

Aubrey Meyer, Jim
Berreen,Global Commons Institute;
Miles Litvinoff, author of
Earthscan Action Handbook.

December 16 - The Guardian

Fighting for the air we breathe
Mr. TOLBA’S article (Guardian,December 13) was timely. It
correctly drew attention to
the limitations of sovereignty
and the “free” market, whenit comes to solving global
problems such as climatechange.
Here in Geneva at the negotiations for an international
convention to arrest climate,change, these limitations are
all too evident. There is adangerous struggle overequal access to a common
but finite resource, namely
the atmosphere, the primary
medium of global climate
equilibrium. It is a dimensionof the global commons whichtranscends ownership andmarketability.
There are essentially two
aspects to this struggle - how
do we all make an agreement
which is both fair and safe?
To members of the Global
Commons Institute (GCI), thisunavoidably involves linking
survival and equity. The task
is complex and considerable
considering the hugely differentiated impacts and disparate circumstances of wealthand poverty amongst thenegotiating parties.

At the one end there arecountries like India and China
and at the other the US. All
refuse for themselves the
restraint of their emissions ofC02, the most damaging
anthropogenic greenhousegas. On the face of it they areplaying a dangerous game ofmutual ecological blackmail.
But to accept this indiscrimi-

nately is to accept a fallacy. It
is unsafe but it also unfair.
Even excluding historic emissions, their greenhouse gas
impacts could not be moredifferent if we apportion thesefairly.
As a first step, CGI proposesthat each person alive today
receive an equal share ofemissions but subject to thestabilisation criteria publishedby the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) in 1990. This would berecognised as a right. National impacts would then beassessed as percents (ofglobal excess emissions)credit or debit according towhether national balances
exceed or fall short of thestabilisation threshold.
As the accompanying chartshows, it is then immediately

55

clear why India, China andothers are for the time being,
justified in refusing restraint
and why the US is not. In fact
the US (with only 4 per centof global population) accounts
for. at least 27 per cent of theclimate forcing due to carbon
emissions. Their intransigenceover carbon restraint amounts
to criminal and even malicious
irresponsibility. It makes amockery of the good faith
upon which these negotiations
are supposed to be based. It
makes the world a moredangerous place (both ecologically and politically) in
which, to defend the mostfundamental right of all, theright to survive.
The Global Commons Institutecalls on all MPs of good faithand common sense to support
the Early Day Motion to theHouse of Commons (No 319)
condemning the US andcalling on the Government toensure that the Climate Convention signed at the Earth
Summit reflects the link
between equity and survival.
Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons InstituteLondon NW2.

October 1992 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Climate Change, Population and the Paradoxof Growth” Aubrey Meyer and Anandi Sharan
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

December 1992 – GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“GDP:CO2 = B-A-U:I-O-U” –Some comments on the primary forcing and the background to carbon
budgeting presented at INC – 6
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

56

October 21 - Guardian

Survival & ‘innocence’in the postmodern environment
DO post-modernists merely
use knowingly ironic quotation marks to avoid “false
innocence” in an age of
innocence lost?
Was Maurice Strong innocently ironic at the Rio “Earth
Summit” when he remarked:“Past damage to the planet
was inflicted largely inadvertently. We now knowwhat we are doing. We
have lost our innocence.”
Professional academics andpost-modernist sociologists
now play an important role in
the post-Rio “sustainable
development” debate (aided
by 20 million pounds of UK
Government funding). The“Business Council for Sustainable Development” do too.
This grouping of transnational
corporation executives are the“growth optimist” visionaries
of global capitalism, withmany hopeful governments in
tow. If post-modernists
envision a “new values
millenium” where “batteries
have been recharged” with
the BCSD agenda, it seems toinvite us to accept that “innocence lost to sustainable
development” may result inperennial growth.
So far the use of the word“sustainable” has only served
to put quotation marks
around the words “development” and “growth”. All major
political statements on sustainable development postRio, from G7 outwards, havebeen “growth-optimist” trying to economically accelerate us out of ecologicaltrouble. In fact ecologicalrecovery is now made contingent on economic growth.
Rio’s Climate Change Convention commits us to promoting“strong and sustainable economic growth” with the competing aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This
contradiction owes much to
the efforts of the industrial
lobby from which the BCSD
have sprung.
BCSD have indicated to us awillingness to publicly debate
the growth/limits controversy.
This is at the very fulcrum of
the global equity and survival
equation in which the unknown balance of our world
beyond postmodernism floats.
Will post-modernists (andcritically the newly funded
professionals) acknowledge
the ecologically fatal cost ofmodernists’ misplaced growthoptimism? Or will they too
subscribe to the idea that “thelast gasp of the past” merely
precedes a new values
millenium, one which we canideologically inflate to answer
a universe of question marks
with an infinity of quotation
marks?
Global capitalism has come ata price. Who will pay forcapitalism as Cosmos?
Aubrey Meyer,
Anandi Sharan,
Jeremy Seabrook.
London NW2

57

1993
1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Global Climate Change and the Noose of
Equity and Survival” –Aubrey Meyer and Anandi Sharan.
Equity and survival are now inextricably linked. This is the basic contentionof the Global Commons Institute
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

March 20 - Guardian International

Power subsidy from the poor
THE industrialised countries
receive an energy subsidy
from the South worth $3.4
trillion annually at current
value. This is the politicalissue at the UN climate negotiations under way again in
New York. This figure reflects
the fact that 93% of global
Gross Domestic Product isgenerated with fossil fuels at
levels above that required topreserve climate stability.
This is done by 36% of theworlds population. The other
64% generate 7% of global
fossil GDP at or below thesustainable level. The extent
of their unused fossil GDP
entitlement was $3.4 trillion
for 1990. The current conditional offer through the WorldBank from the subsidised
North is at best 0.00006 of
this amount.
This is a confidence-bustingmeasure at a time of deepening crisis.

58

Aubrey Meyer
Anandi Sharan
The Global Commons
Instituteat the UN

March 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Climate Change and the Precautionary
Principle”An Analysis of Climate Creditors and Debitors to the UN Negotiations INC-7
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

March 22 - Inter Press Services - UN

LDCs footing $3.4 trillion bill forNorth’s energy practices
North’sDeveloping countries are
subsidising unsustainableenergy practices in the Northto the time of $3.4 trillion ayear, an environment researchbody said here.
A document by the Londonbased Global Commons Institute (GCI) calculates just how
much industrial countries, or“energy debitors”, owe developing countries, or “energy
creditors”.
The document has beenpresented to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee
for a Framework Convention
on Climate Change (INC/FCC),
which is meeting at UN Headquarters this week to discuss
funding for the convention.

Anandi Sharan of GCI explained the links between
gross domestic product (GDP)and carbon dioxide emissions,noting that the two go up anddown together,” so that “thehigher the GDP, the greater
the carbon dioxide output.”

She said that currently total
global GDP amounted to some
20 trillion dollars per year, butthat based on the IPCC recommended cut in greenhousegas emissions, only seventrillion dollars worth per year
is sustainable.

An Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC) has
said a minimum of 60 cuts incarbon dioxide emissions wereneeded to slow further warming and curb adverse changes
in the climate system.

And of the global 20 trillion
dollar GDP, industrialised
countries account for $19.2
trillion. But on the basis of
their population, industrialised
countries are only allocated$2.7 trill. worth of global GDP,“so they’re actually appropriating, or in debt to the tune of$16.5 trillion annually basedon 1990 figures,” she said.

“At present there are countries which are massively overtheir allocated quota limit andcountries which are well underthat limit,” Sharan said.

59

Based on IPCC the assumption of a 60% cut in green-house gas emissions, the GCI
calculates that environmentally non-damaging carbon
dioxide output per person
annually would amount tosome 0.46 metric tonnes ofcarbon. But it says that today,
the United States alone emits
between seven and eight
metric tonnes of carbon
dioxide per person annually.

“When you look at the percapita consumption figures,
we find that India and China
can triple and quadruple theiremissions without getting
anywhere near the present
levels of developed countries’
emissions,” Sharan said.
Commenting on the INC talks
so far Sharan said, “thebiggest scandal is that the
only accountability that seems
to be being discussed here is
the accountability of developing countries through the
Global Environmental Facility.”
The GEF is the interim financial mechanism mandated toprovide the resources on a
grant or concessional basis todeveloping countries to help
them implement the commitments of the Climate Convention.
The convention, signed by
160 countries at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro lastJune, invites countries toreturn to their 1990 levels ofgreenhouse gas emissions assoon as possible.

“There is no formal accountability, as yet at all, by theemitter countries - there’s an‘intention’ to cut emissions,but the stated commitment is
to ‘strong and sustainableeconomic growth’,” Sharansaid.
She noted that through theenergy subsidy the Southpays the North, the industrialised nations can run a system, “which allows them todump their unsustainable
technologies and energy
systems on the world atprices that drive out sustainable technologies like renewables and reproductive holistic
systems.”“It is of paramount importance that we stop talking
about developing countries at
all in the context of climatechange, and that we concentrate whole-heartedly on
getting eco-restructuring in
the North,” she said.
And Jeremy Leggett, ScientificDirector of Green-peaceInternational’s Climate Campaign warned Wednesday
that, “time is everything inthis game.” He said, “as every
month goes by, we learn
depressing news out there in
the natural world — it looks
less and less likely that thisseries of record-breaking
storms around the world, is
not at least, in part, getting
its excess energy from the
known heat-trapping ability ofgreenhouse gases.” Hewarned that insurance companies in the industrialised
countries, on whose healthsuccessful economies depend,
could soon be ruined by theavalanche of recent windstorms. According to Greenpeace, between 1966 and1987, there was no windstorm anywhere in the world
which cost more than billion
dollars in insured losses. But
it says that during the period
1987-1992, there have beenat least ten such catastrophes.
by Jaya Dayal
New York, Mar 22 (IPS)

60

May 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Who Provides Global Benefit; who causes
Global Disbenefit” –A Policy Briefing to the IPCC 2nd Assessment
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

June 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Making Way for Decision-Taking Under
Uncertainty”A Policy Briefing to the OECD/IPCC Conference on Climate Change Economics
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

61August 1993 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Joint Implementation – in a Globally
Sustainable System Equity and Efficiency
Converge” –An Analysis of Climate Creditors and Debitors to the UN Negotiations; INC
8
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

62

1994
June 1994 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“The Unequal Use of the Global Commons” –GCI’s submission to the IPCC Second Assessment of Climate Change,
Working Group Three”
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

July - Guardian

Commons and goings
Richard Douthwaiteof planetary resources.

NOT many groups invited toattend a key UN conference
are unsure whether they will
be able to raise the air fare.
Fewer still have to book into
the YMCA. And the numberthat can claim to have playeda more influential role thanmost government delegations
are rare indeed.

Its finest hour came last year
when it sent a small team to
the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change andhelped deny the Canadian
Secretariat the outcome it
had envisaged.

Despite its rather posh name,
The Global Commons Instituteis a small group co-ordinatedfrom a private house in North
London. Set up after the UN’s
second World Climate Conference in 1990, GCI works topressure the current global
climatic system and to ensureeach country has a fair share

The IPCC was set up by the
UN Environmental Programme
and the World MeteorologicalOrganisation to find out
whether man’s activities
might be disturbing theworld’s climate and, if sowhat could be done. In 1990
it confirmed there was a riskof a catastrophic climatechange unless greenhousegas levels were stabilised.
This, the IPCC said, would

63

need humans to reduce theirgreenhouse gas emissions by
60-80 per cent.
Such a sharp cut would havea profound effect on theworld economy and theMontreal meeting was toprepare a brief for economists
to advise on how best it
might be done. At least, thatwas what the GCI party
thought.
The group consisted of Aubrey Meyer, a composer andformer viola player with theLondon Philharmonic Orchestra, Anandi Sharan, a housewife and self-taught expert on
renewable energy, and GCI’s
strategist, Jim Berrean, aformer senior lecturer inenvironmental studies at
Birmingham University. I went
along, too, ostensibly to give
economic advice, but really tomarvel at how they operated.
We were surprised by what
we found. The secretariat’s
draft instructions for the
economists made it clear that
preserving conditions for
economic growth was far
more important than preserving the environment. As aresult, the economists werebeing asked not how greenhouse gas levels could bestabilised most efficiently but
what was the slowest rate ofincrease the world could
afford.
In response, the GCI distributed a statement on brightyellow paper to draw delegates’ attention to what wasgoing on. Then, after Professor David Pearce of University
College, London, claimed that“every action we take entails
a cost” and that restricting
fossil fuel use would therefore

cut human welfare, I was
pushed to the microphone.
Pearce admitted that his
statement was incorrect; that
incomes in the future might
not have to fall if fuel use wasrestricted, because the world
economy was not operating at
maximum efficiency. Action tohalt warming would notnecessarily deteriorate theworld’s economic performance, he agreed.
By Day 4 it looked as though
GCI’s efforts had been in vain.
But, at the last minute, the US
insisted that the economists
be asked to study the issue ofstabilising greenhouse gaslevels in the atmosphere.
Other nations quickly agreed.
The US might have taken thisline anyway, but by raising theissue so prominently, GCI
ensured the question wasaddressed. “GCI should bevery pleased with the influence they had,” said Dr Peter
Sturm, head of the OECD’s
resource allocation division.

Today, GCI has the widespread support of non-OECD
nations and the grudging
respect of the IPCC itself.
Indeed, the IPCC has now
invited GCI to make a presentation at the climate change
conference in Nairobi later thismonth on the unequal use of
the global commons (theparts of the earth we all
share).
But GCI may be forced to stayat home. “We cannot afford togo,” Aubrey Meyer says.
“Teams from industrialised
countries are meant to besponsored by their governments, but the British government has refused us any
help.” So have other northern
global bodies. Is anybody
there?
GCI can be contacted on
081 451 0778.
Richard Douthwaite wrote
The Growth Illusion.

July 01 - Guardian

Why some lives come cheaper than others
PROTECTING the world environment requires that development be sustainable. Sometime ago mainstream economists set out to capture the“sustainable development”
agenda for the economics
profession. In this pursuit they
invented “global cost/benefit
analysis” (G-CBA). Global
warming and the cost andbenefits of climate change are
now being assessed by themin these cash terms. And thisassessment is being pushed
by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Part of this exercise entails
giving cash values to human
lives. They accept there aregoing to be hundreds ofthousands of deaths worldwide as a result of global
climate changes.

This means, as an economist,
you help to capture the sustainable development agenda
for your profession by discarding a real Chinese life 10
times more easily than a reallife in the EU or the US.

A recent research paper fromthe UK government-funded
Centre for Social and Economic Research of the Global
Environment states that the
cash value of a “statistical life”
in the EU or the US is$1,500,000 per head, but in
China it is only $150.000.

Ironically, these lives are not
at risk as a result of damage
to the global environment for
which citizens in the EU andthe US have been and are atleast 10 times more responsible per head than citizens in
China.

64

There is, of course, a heavy

foreign policy cost associatedwith this since the populationof the EU and the US is outnumbered 10-1 by everyoneelse. The need to value
human rights as equal, isprudent as well as perennial.
Aubrey Meyer, Global
Commons Institute, andrepresentatives of 50
organisations including
the following: Atmospheric Sc. Univ. at Albany

NY; Centre for Human
Ecology, Edinburgh University; Christian Aid UK;
Climate Net-work Africa;
Ecologica Ltd, Lancaster;
Friends of the Earth International; Global Commons
Trust UK; Global Environmental Research Centre;
Green Party, Oxford,
Australia, California,
Germany, Ontario, Northern Ireland, Norway,

Sweden, UK, US; Live Wire
BBS, Bombay; New Economics Foundation;
Oikonerei Survival Project,
Tanzania; Scientists for
Global Responsibility;
Stock-holm Environment
Institute.

July 4

Now we know
MY letter (July 1) included thefollowing: “Ironically, these
lives are not at risk as a resultof damage to the global
environment ...”

This should have read: “Ironically, these lives are now at
risk...”
Aubrey Meyer. Global
Commons Institute.

July 20 - The Standard

Industrialised nations blamed
Climatic changes to hurt
world economies
By Hussein Mohammed
INDUSTRIALISED countries
have been blamed for thecatastrophic changes in theworld climate.
A researcher attending aninter-national conference in
Nairobi said that 99 per centof the rise in greenhouse gas
concentration, which is worrying everyone across the globe,
has been caused by theindustrialised countries.
The researcher, Mr Aubrey
Meyer, of the Global Commons
Institute in London said thesecountries (industrialised) must

therefore take responsibility to
put “matters right”. The
meeting held at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, was calledby the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Several
participants representing
countries worldwide are also
attending the week-long meetthat opened on Monday to
discuss the social and equity
issues that could arise fromattempts to prevent global
warming. Researchers at themeeting strongly criticised
methods proposed by theindustrialised countries toprevent a catastrophic change
in the world’s climate. ‘The
rich nations want to use

65

financial power they have built
up by consuming unsustainable, climate-threatening
quantities of fossil fuels suchas oil, gas and coal to buy theright to consume even more,“explained Mr Meyer. Four
years ago, about 170 scientists working for IPCC said if
global warming was to be
stopped, it was necessary forindustrialised countries tomake cuts of between 60-80
percent in the rate of gasses
causing earth’s climate towarm rapidly. It was observedthat most of the ‘greenhousegasses’ were produced by theburning of fossil fuels inindustrialised countries.
The IPCC is now employing

large numbers of economists,
mainly from ndustrialised
countries, to give advice on
reduction in fossil fuels used.
One method being proposed
includes a scheme for joint
implementation whereby awealthy country is required to
pay a poorer nation to cut its
greenhouse gas emissions in
preference to cutting its own.
Mr Meyer argued that both ofthese ideas might makematters worse unless they
were implemented as part ofa programme under which
industrialised countries steadily cut their fossil energy use
until there was no more. “Atpresent, the World Bank andother institutions believe thatthe amount of money acountry has should determine
the amount of fossil fuel it isable to use. If their right-byincome approach is adopted,

it will reward those countries
which have caused thepresent crisis to profit fromthe damage they have done,”
Mr Meyer commented.

Juy 29 - Guardian

Commons people given green light
THANK YOU — the Guardian
made it possible. On themorning of July 1, there
seemed to be no chance thata few days later anyone from
Global Commons Institute(GCI) would be able to fly to
an international conference in
Nairobi to deliver a paper
documenting the extent towhich the industrialised countries are really responsible forthe world climate crisis. We
had received an invitationfrom the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) to do this. The UK
government refused to fundour attendance in spite of
their obligations within the
IPCC.
However by evening, everything had changed. Richard
Douthwaite’s article in Environment Guardian about GCI’s
plight produced several offersof small sums from pensioners
and others who could ill-affordthem (Why is it that the poor
are always the most generous?) before Edward Goldsmith, the founder of the
Ecologist magazine, rang
offering to pay a return airfare

for one of us as well. And so I
became one of the 150 people
from around the world who
took part in the IPCC’s conference on the “equity and social
considerations” of global
climate change. GCI thanks all
those who made our attendance possible.. We took thefacts to many people from theSouth. They are mostly deprived of impartially analysed
information about this matter.
But not one of the industrial
countries’ economists waspresent. It is they who arecarrying out the “global cost/benefit analysis”, valuing lives
in the North 10 times higher
than lives in the South andwriting up the resultant“policy options” in the new
IPCC report. Criticism of theirdeft and inequitable approach
is mounting steadily.
For example, they shouldhave heard from the people
most at risk, like those fromthe low-lying and small-islandstates. Ruby Saha, who works
for the Mauritius government
made the meeting’s saddest
but most telling presentation.
She told how her island, along

66

with many others, was alreadyaffected by the climate crisis.
Higher windspeeds, taller
waves, fiercer storms andheavier rainfall had alreadydone severe damage to property and cost thousands of
lives.
She was “truly aghast” at theOECD economists’ valuing lifein the EC ten times higher
than in the “poor” countries.
But those responsible aren’teven listening. For the moment things will only getworse.
Aubrey Meyer.
Global Commons Institute1995
Planetary Connections

NEVER GIVE UP!
Triumph for Global Commons
as climate economists told to“Try Again”

countries than the richer
ones, as a result of global
warming.

Economists, who have spent
the past two years attempting
to estimate what level ofresources the world’s governments should put into trying
to halt or slow the rate ofglobal warming, have been
told by a UN Agency to go
back and do their work again.

But, extraordinarily, theycalculated the value of ahuman life at what a person
is prepared to pay to avoid
the risk of dying!

The economists aroused
international outrage earlier
this year, when it became
known that they were valuing
the life of a citizen of a developing country at only one
fifteenth of the life of an
American or European citizen.
What was to have been their
final report was rejected at a
recent meeting in Geneva of
the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC). “Iftheir estimates of damage
had been accepted, the worldcommunity would have beenadvised that little need bedone to slow the warming
process because it wascheaper not to do anything,”
said Aubrey Meyer, founder
director of the London-based,
Global Commons Institute.
The decision is a triumph for
the Institute and its founders,and all those who have beenworking to oppose what has
become known as the ‘unequal life valuation’.
When doing their sums, theeconomists accepted thepremise that, many more lives
would be lost in the poorer

Obviously, the inhabitants ofpoor countries could afford to
pay much less them people inrich countries - one fifteenth

was the figure used by the
economists.
Hence their conclusion that alife in a developed Westerncountry is worth 15 times
more than a life in the socalled Third World!
The figures they came up
with reflected these findings:
value of an American or West
European $1.5 million; valueof an African or Indian$100,000.
On this basis the reportconcluded that the value of67

damage done as a result of
lives being lost was verymuch greater in the developed countries than in all therest of the world put together.
This, despite the fact that
only the 20% of the world’s
people live in these countries
and occupy less than 20% of
the world’s land area!
GCI circulated these andother corrections before themeeting and by the time it
began, there was an immediate and insistent rejection of
the unequal life-evaluation
used in the economists’ work.
But the economists’ report
was handed to a closed subgroup of “government only”
negotiators who spent threedays considering what should
be done. And an attempt waseven made by some governments to prevent non-governmental agencies like the
Global Commons Institutespeaking during the negotiations.
At the end of the last plenary
session of the last day a“final” text was presented todelegates for adoption. The
chairman, Mr. Jim Bruce ofCanada, insisted that thewhole section was passed as
it stood and, despite thecontroversy, brought down his
gavel and closed the meeting.
All the OECD country delegations, many of whom were
professional economists sat incomplete silence and allowed
this decision to go throughunchallenged.

However, at the eleventh hour,
the Cubans saved the day.
They had been in the queue
to speak before the gavel
came down and the chairman
was obliged to reopen themeeting. Rejecting the text
outright, the Cubans pointed
out that several arguments
had not been answered andthat the errors in the assessment had not been corrected.
Key developing countries
didn’t trust the technicalvalidity or competence of thereport, in particular the way
the distribution of the dam-ages had been worked out.
Brazil also then rejected thereport saying that “they wereformally protesting on behalfof their government”. “Thiswas a quite remark-able
outcome” Mr. Meyer said.
“But for the final words of the
Cubans and others, the game
would have ended with the
IPCC “knowingly publishingwrong data.” So now theeconomists, most of whom
are from rich countries, have
two months to reconsider
their conclusions for a spe-cially-convened meeting inMontreal in October.
“When Jim Bruce brought the
gavel down, I thought all thework GCI had done had been
wasted,” Mr. Meyer said.
“Funny how even a defeat canbe defeated, if you hang-in
until the end.” GCI has
achieved an enormous
amount working on a tiny
budget. It needs funding tocontinue its important work.

1995 - Tom W
akeford and Martin W
alters ISBN 0-471-95283-4
TomWak
akefordWalters“Science for the Earth”
Earth”“Here at the Global Commons Insititute we areconcentrating on the democratization of the climatechange negotiations, steering them away from peopleless money and empowering money-less people”

Earth Island Journal

The T
rue Cost of Climate Change
True
UNITED KINGDOM - The
International Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) was criticizedin Montreal last October forunderestimating the financial
costs of climate change. With
atmospheric carbon dioxide
predicted to double by theyear 2050, the IPCC had
estimated that 113,000 human deaths, as well as cropand property loses fromincreased drought, flooding
and storm damage could
claim 1.5 - 2% of the Gross
World Product (GWP -the total

value of everything producedin the world in a year).

This prediction may seem
frightening, but, according to
GCI, the IPCC’s report actually
minimized the true costs ofclimate change by valuing the
lives of Third World residents
at only $100,000 apiece - “afifteenth of those in the FirstWorld” - and assessing ahectare of land in the Southas worth one-tenth as muchas a similar amount of land in
the North.

68

While 80 percent of theworld’s people live in the nonindustrialized South (an area
covering approximately 80
percent of the Earth’s surface), the IPCC calculated thatthe cash value of climate
damage would be twice ashigh in the North.
GCI, however, pointed outthat 78 per-cent of added
deaths, 75 percent of drinking
water losses and 85 percent
of all low-lying lands lost to
rising seas would occur indeveloping countries. GCI’s

calculations, by contrast,
predicted annual losses by
2050 that “could amount tobetween 4.5 percent and 47
percent of GWP. At the higher
end of this range,” GCI concluded, “life as we know it
would collapse.”
Noting that six of the seven
writers of the IPCC reportwere from the North, GCI
pointed out that the authors
relied on an economic costbenefit analysis known as theWillingness-to-Pay (WTP)
method -a formula inherently

biased against people whohave less money to spend.
GCI proposed using a Willingness-to-Accept (WTA) method
to determine how muchmoney Third World citizens
would need “to happily accept
higher risks of death from
disease, storms, the drying of
their rivers and flooding of
their land.”would make them happy,” itwould destroy the premise of
cost-benefit analysis andtransform the problem froman economic exercise into a
moral issue. - GS

GCI speculated that the IPCC
ignored the WTA approach
because “if people say that
there is ‘no amount’ of monetary compensation that

July 23 - Independent

One W
estern life is worth 15 in the Third
Western
World, says UN report
Lives in poor countries should
be valued as worth 15 times
less than those in the West,according to UN economists
calculating the possible cost to
the world of global warming.
Their calculations are in
unpublished official documents, seen by the Independent on Sunday, which are
expected to be endorsed by
the world’s governments thisweek. The documents aredesigned to guidepolicymakers in deciding how
to respond to potentiallydisastrous climate change.
The calculations – which the
documents admit are “controversial” and “reflect discrimination against the less welloff” – are bound to create aninternal row just as evidence
is mounting that global warming is taking hold. Research inboth Britain and the UnitedStates shows that 1995 could
be the hottest – ever year
worldwide.

Experts say that the huge
disparity between the value
placed on life in rich and poor
countries minimises assessments of the damage that will
be done by global warming
and so will give governments
an excuse to avoid taking
action to combat it.
Sir Crispin Tickell, the Prime
Minister’s chief advisor on theenvironment, describes thecalculations as “ludicrous” andsays they could discredit
international attempts toevaluate the extent andconsequences of the threatened climatic change. He has
already written to protest toleaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPPC), the official
body set up by world governments to assess the dangers
of global warming.
The documents have been
prepared by economists in an
IPPC working group and are

69

expected to be approved by
the plenary meeting of IPPCin Geneva on Tuesday. Theysay that, by the best estimates, a doubling of theamount of carbon dioxide, themain cause of global warming, in the atmosphere, could
cause damage equivalent of
only 1.5 to 2 per cent of theworld economy. As someestimates suggest that thecost of cutting emissions of
the gas would be greater, thismay be taken as justification
for inacation. But these calculations are partly based on
valuing lives in developing
countries – where most of thedeaths, mainly from strokes
and heart attacks brought onby the extra heat, would occur– at £62,500 each, comparedto £940,000 each in Europe
an North America.
Lives in the former Soviet
Union are valued at £180,00
each, one fifth of the figure inthe West.
Calculations which value all
lives equally, and include
other factors missing from theofficial assessment, produce
estimates that global warming
could cut the world’s wealthby up to a quarter each yearwhich would call for dramatic
preventative action.
Michael Grubb, head of theEnergy And Environment
Programme at the RoyalInstitute for International
Affairs, who has made a
special study of the costs ofglobal warming, describes the
1.5 to 2 per cent figure as“ridiculously definite” andalmost certainly a large underestimate.
He says that it is so far impossible to make an accurate
assessment, but the cost
could range from virtuallynothing up to 25 per cent ofworld GDP.
Aubrey Meyer, director of the
Global Commons Institutewhich has produced similar
figures, says: “The calculations the governments arebeing asked to endorse areprofoundly unreliable andcould provide an excuse forthem to do nothing. By placing such a low value on the
lives of most of the world’s
people they seem to endorse
the economics of genocide”.
So far this year worldwide
temperatures have equalled
those in the first part of 1990,
the hottest year on record,suggesting that global warming is resuming after a brieflull.

pines in the summer of 1991,
which flung 20 million tons ofsulphur high into the atmosphere, filtering out sunlight.
Until the eruption took place1991 was set to be evenhotter than 1990 after six
record breaking years in the
1989s.
The sulphur has now dropped
out of the atmosphere andthe hot years are returning.
1994 was the fourth warmest
year ever and would havebeen the hottest if it had notbeen for an exceptionally cold
January and February worldwide. Now 1995 is bidding forthe record

The lull was caused by thehuge volcanic eruption of
Mount Pinatubo in the Philip-

August 3 - Nature

Developing countries dispute use of
figures on climate change impacts
London. An intergovernmental
meeting held to finalize a draft
document on the social costsof climate change ended instalemate last week. Representatives from developing
countries attending the meeting refused to endorse asuggestion that global warming would cause twice asmuch economic damage tothe industrialized nations as it
would to the rest of the world.
Working Group III of theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) has
been preparing a draft summary for policy-makers of thedamage likely to result from arise in global temperatures
after a doubling of carbon
dioxide concentrations.
But the drafting ran into
controversy when developing
nations, led by India, andChina, challenged the use ofdifferent criteria for measuring
damage in countries of theNorth and of the South.
The value put on a death in adeveloped country, for example, was calculated to be 15
times higher than in a lessindustrialized nation. Suchdisparities result partly fromthe conversion of all estimatesof loss from national curren-

70

cies into US dollars. “$1 in,say, Cambodia is not the sameas $1 in the United States,”
one delegate remarked.
Also at issue is the value to beplaced on the ‘abatement
costs’ of global warming. The
IPCC committee had calculated that slowing down global
warming could be more
expensive than merely paying
for the damage caused by adoubling in carbon dioxide
concentrations (1.5 - 2 percent of GWP).
But critics such as Aubrey
Meyer of the environmentalgroup Global Commons Insti-

tute, based in London, disagree.
Meyer argues that costbenefit analysis should not be
used to assess the damage
likely to be caused by global
warming. “The difficulties ofallowing for risk, or assessing
the value of a plant or animal
species that becomes extinct,
are well known,” he says.
Narasimhan Sundaraman,secretary to the IPCC, acknowledges disagreements
over putting a value on loss oflife. But he adds that industrialized nations’ representatives
are willing to consider alternative methods of modelling.

attempt to finalize the policymakers’ summary of its reportat its next meeting in Montreal, Canada, in October.
Ehsan Masood

At the same time, he points
out that developing nations
have so far failed to propose asingle workable alternative.
The IPCC working group will

August 3 - New Scientist

Global row over value of human life
Fred Pearce
ENVIRONMENTAL economists
are refusing to revise a controversial report on the social
cost of global warming, which
values the lives of people inrich nations up to fifteentimes higher than those inpoor countries. Critics claimthat the report suggests that
action to halt global warming
may not be cost-effective.
At a meeting of a working
group of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) in Geneva latelast month, delegates from
India, China, Brazil, Cuba andothers vetoed a summary of
the work. The meeting ended
in deadlock amid calls for thereport to be reworked. But
one of the authors, David
Pearce of University College,
London, told New Scientist
this week: “ We won’t berevising it, and we have nointention of apologising for
our work. This is a matter ofscientific correctness versus
political correctness.”
The study forms a chapter in
the IPCC’s forthcoming Sec-ond Assessment Report, its‘first full report on the scienceof climate change for five
years. The dispute threatens
to hold up publication of thereport early next year. One
solution to the impasse,suggests Pearce, is for the
IPCC to remove the chapter
from its report entirely.
At issue are some of thetechniques developed byenvironmental economists foranalysing the costs and benefits of preventing global
warming. As part of thisexercise, Pearce and hiscolleagues have placed values
on human lives that range
from $1.5 million for people
from the richest countries
down to $100 000 for those inpoorer developing nations.
The valuations are based on
assessments of a community’s
willingness and ability to pay
to avoid risks of death.
The chapter is complete andcannot be changed, says
Pearce. But in Geneva, government delegations rejected
as immoral and inaccurate thetext of a summary of thechapter for policy makers

71

because it implicitly endorsed
this approach. They called for
a common valuation of humanlife—preferably at the higher
level.
Pearce replies that, while acommon valuation of life
might be a legitimate approach, it was not what his
team was asked to do by the
IPCC. In any case, he says, iflife values were averaged out,
the overall conclusions of thestudy would not changemuch. There is, he says, noscientific basis for valuing all
lives at the higher level. The
result is deadlock. Under IPCC
rules, the summary mustreflect the scientists’ text.
But the politicians have refused to accept it, and thescientists will not alter it.
Indian delegates first formallycomplained about the IPCC’s
social cost analysis before the
Climate Conference in Berlinin April, when environment
minister Kamal Nath wrote toministerial colleagues roundthe world claiming the calculations were “absurd and discriminatory”, and called forthem to be “purged from theprocess”.
A key fomenter of dissent
among Third-World delegations is Aubrey Meyer of the
London-based pressuregroup, the Global Commons
Institute. After the Geneva
meeting, he claimed that
Pearce’s work shows that adoubling of carbon dioxidelevels in the atmosphere by
the middle of the next century would cause damage
from climate change valued at
between 1-5 and 2 per centof “gross world product”.
But reducing emissions ofgreenhouse gases to prevent
such a rise would cost morethan 2 per cent of GWP.

“If these estimates had been
accepted, it would havemeant that the world community had been advised thatlittle need be done to slow
the warming process, because it was cheaper not to,”he says. Pearce, however,denies that his work is a
blueprint for inaction. “Thereis plenty in our chapter tojustify action,” he says. “We
are specifically debarred frommaking policy recommendations, but I am on record
many times personally callingfor action to address global
warming.”risks of death assumed that
incomes in poor countries willremain low.
But other IPCC work—on
trends in emissions of greenhouse gases, for instance—
assumes poor nations willgrow richer. “If they get richer,they will be willing to pay
more to save lives. The
economists’ valuation of
future lives should reflect
that,” he says.

Meyer says the cost-benefit
analysis contains other faults.
For instance, estimates of“willingness to pay” to avoid

October 1995 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“A Recalculation of the Social Costs of Climate
Change” –Aubrey Meyer and Tony Cooper
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

72

October - ASEED Newpaper

Is one American worth fifteen
Bangladeshis?
Aubrey Meyer, a South Africanborn musician has provedthat one person can make adifference when he took on
the world's leading environmental economist, Professor
David Pearce - and won.
Professor Pearce, whencalculating the costs of climate change, had assumed
that the life of aperson in the Third
World was worth
one fifteenth of thevalue of a Westerner. His report to
the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change(IPCC), had a key
chapter rejected
because a numberof Third World
countries including
India, complained
after being alerted
by Aubrey Meyer.
Pearce's group had
calculated that if
nothing was done
to stop Climate
Change, global warming
would cost 1.5 - 2 of Gross
World Product annually by thesecond half of the next century. They had calculated that
action to limit global warming
would cost 2 of Gross World
Product annually. Meyer
argued that these calculations
were based on flawed andimmoral, assumptions. The
economists' calculations werebased on 2.5°C warming -theaverage of the IPCC prediction of 1.5 - 3.5°C. Meyer
showed that the assessmentsof damage costs were basedon unreliable calculations. The

cost of deaths due to global
warming made up a large
partof the total damage costs,
and was largely based on asingle study into the effects ofa temperature rise on people
in fifteen US cities. The
economists, had only considered deaths due to heatstress and storms, not due todisease or malnutrition.
Meyer's biggest challenge tothe economists was over theircalculation of different valuesof life and property between
rich and poor countries.
Based on how much people
would pay to avoid the risk ofdeath from global warming,
the IPCC economists hadvalued the cost of a lost life in
the West at $ 1.5 million andat only $ 100,000 in the restof the world. Aubrey
Meyer called this "the economics of genocide".

73

David Pearce said that his
critics did not understand themethodology. "The report
simply says that people value
risks differently. That valuation is affected by the level of
their incomes."
Two other IPCC economists,
Samuel Fankhauser andRichard Tol also responded to
Meyer, claimingthat the issue ofdifferent life values
was a red herring.
They said no problems with a global
average value oflife for assessing
world damages.
However it would
be an averagevalue, not theWestern value,
which would notchange the overall
results of theirwork. They said
that Meyer's proposal of valuing alllife at Westernlevels was flawed because thepoint of analysing damage
costs in different parts of theworld was to assess differences in vulnerability.
The summary for Policy
Makers that the IPCC published did not use the economists figures because of
Meyer’s lobbying. However, itemphasized that while theestimates for the damages tothe industrialised countries
were only one to two percent
of GDP , estimates of damages to agricultural Developing Countries were several
times higher. The irony is thatthe most of the responsibility
for global warming lies with
the industrialised countries,
which have been responsible
for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions.
Not everyone in the environmental community is happy
about what Meyer did. The

Climate Action Network said
that the single issue of
Pearce's chapter should nothave been allowed to distractfrom the greater goal of
limiting climate change. BillHare, a Greenpeace consultant, complained that politicalpressure like Meyer's "would
destroy the IPCC's integrity as

an impartial body and open
the way for vested interests tointerfere."

September 30 - New Scientist

Costing Calamity
The fundamental problem
with the calculations of thevalue of human life by David
Pearce and his colleagues(This Week, 19 August) isthat they were carried out ona willingness-to-pay (WTP)basis rather than a willingness-to-accept (WTA) one.
The team’s choice of WTP had
the advantage of making it
the exclusive arbiter of thevalue of the damage likely to
be done by global warming,
enabled it to operate without
reference to what the victims
of warming, such as small
island states faced with oblivion from a rise in the sea
level, might be willing toaccept as compensation.
If it had adopted WTA instead, the compensation
demanded could have beenso huge that the high levels of
fossil-energy use on which theWestern economic system isbased could not continue.
But WTP has serious drawbacks too. In particular, thevalues it uses are based on
how much money people
have and, as a result, it
distributes the damage likely
to be caused by global warming in an absurd way, with themost costly aspects of thedeath and destruction seeming to occur in the wealthy
countries.
If WTP calculations are done
correctly, the maldistribution
they produce is so extremethat almost everyone wouldfind their use ridiculous andinvalid. The figures show theOECD countries suffering fivetimes as much damage as therest of the world, despite
having only a fifth of its
population.
But Pearce and his teamnever reached this conclusion
because a mistake crept into
their work, which survived
peer review and was only
pointed out by a non-economist attached to the Global
Commons Institute (GCI).
Their error was to take damage estimates expressed interms of each country’s domestic price levels and divide
them by its gross domestic
product expressed in terms ofthe current exchange rate, inorder to arrive at the proportion of its GDP that was likely
to be lost as a result of warming. In other words, by using
domestic purchasing poweron the one hand and international purchasing power on74

the other, they divided apples
by oranges.
This increased the damage
figures for the poorer parts of
the world so significantly thatalarm bells did not ring andthe team was not alerted to
the fact that it was using the
WTP approach in a confusedand inappropriate way.
In his letter to New Scientist
last week, Samuel Fankhauser
said that the costs of thedamage done by global
warming and the costs ofabating that damage should
not be compared.
We at GCI agree that theyshould not be compared,
because, they are paid bydifferent sets of people. The
damage done by warming will
hurt everyone and its costs
are therefore truly global. The
assessment of this should bebased on WTA. The costs ofabatement, however, should
fall exclusively on that minority of humankind which is
causing the pollution andwhich is benefiting from doing
so. The curtailment of thisshould be based on the axiom
that “the polluter pays”.
What this means in this caseis that those who causeclimate change through using
fossil fuel should pay adequate compensation to
those who suffer the consequences. And what is adequate compensation? The
best approximation has to bewhatever sum is produced by
WTA calculations.
In short, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working

Group III reconvenes todiscuss this issue in Montreal
next month, Pearce and hiscolleagues should be told torevise their chapter to properly reflect the global scaleand distribution of the damages. If they won’t do this,they should withdraw theirchapter so another team may
be assembled to prepare a
replacement using the WTA
approach.

Aubrey Meyer
Global Commons InstituteLondonNovember 1 - Guardian

Who says that life is cheap?
When an impoverishedviola player dared to takeon a world-renowned
economist over whether acash value can be put on
human life, the outcome
looked inevitable. As
global warming experts
meet this week, Richard
Douthwaite reports on how
an individual can helpchange world thinking
CAN one put a cash figure on
the value of the human lives
which will be lost as a resultof global warming? Is there amonetary figure for the worthof the species which will
become extinct and thecoastal plains and islands
which will be submerged byrising seas? Most ordinary
people would probably say
not. But environmental economists are not ordinary people.
In May 1993, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change - the world body ofscientists charged by theUnited Nations to investigate
every possible aspect ofclimate change and who only
last week confirmed that thephenomenon is with us andhas been partly induced by
mankind - commissioned
some 100 of the most eminent among them to investigate the socio-economics
effects of climate change.
The economic tool with which
they hoped to make climatechange a decision-making
objective was “cost-benefit
analysis” (CBA). This involves
estimating the cash value ofall the damage likely to bedone by global warming andcomparing it with the cost ofacting to slow warming down
or to stop it completely. The“efficient” solution, the economists were to argue, was only
to pay as much to stop warming as the benefits fromstopping it were worth.
It was left to two extraordinary ordinary people to pointout that these economic
emperors had no clothes.
One was a north London
housewife and mother, Anandi
Sharan; the other, a selfconfessed obsessive aboutclimate and equity, was aformer viola player with the75

London Philharmonic Orchestra and ballet score composer,
Aubrey Meyer.
With tickets paid for at thelast minute by a widow in
Leamington Spa following apiece in these pages, theyflew out to Montreal in 1993
under the banner of theminute, underfunded Global
Commons Institute. They
checked into the YMCA andwalked over to the IPCC
meeting at which the reportwas being planned. Jim
Berreen, a former ecology
lecturer and co-founder of the
GCI and I went along as
observers.
We sat at the back of theconference hall, behind thenational delegations andalongside blue chip environmental organisations such asGreenpeace and anti-environmental ones representing US
coal and oil companies. We
had a button to alert thechairman when we wanted to
speak, two microphones and a
red light to tell us when wewere “on”. Whenever hespoke, the hall’s sound systemmade Aubrey’s faint South
African accent so pronounced
he sounded positively menacing.
It quickly became clear thatthe question the IPCC thought
the report ought to answer
was: “How much global
warming can be stopped
without seriously slowing therate of world economic
growth?’’ The idea of asking
the economists to advise on
the best way of stopping
warming entirely did
not it seemed, arise.

In the world economy, hepointed out, one man’s cost is
another man’s pay packet.
Consequently, the redistribution of income that would
result from a strategy of low
fossil fuel use could well leadto higher levels of output ofcertain goods, such as education, basic foods and clean
drinking water, and leavebillions of people better off.
And that would be on top of
securing the undisputed

Professor David
Pearce of University
College London, aworld authority on
cost-benefit analysis,
shared the IPCC view
and argued in a paperthat slowing down
warming would inevitably involve costs. By
this he meant thatworld output would
inevitably be lower if
restrictions wereplaced on the use offossil fuel.
Aubrey went on theattack, arguing thatthe world economy
was not operating atanything like maximum efficiency at present, given themassive unemployment andwaste of resources worldwide.
As a result he said, no economist could prove that using
less fossil fuel, more humanlabour and radically different
technologies would inevitably
leave the world’s humanpopulation worse off. And ifworld output was not lower
there would be no world cost
although there might be acost for the OECD nations,whose rate of consumption
might have to fall.

benefits of stopping global
warming. Prof Pearce agreed,
but argued that this did notchange anything and themeeting took its planned
course. A working group,
WGIII was set up to write thereport. Pearce was appointed
to the writing team for the
cost-benefit chapter. The
Social Costs of Climate
Change; Greenhouse Damage
and the Benefits of Control.
Aubrey and the GCI were
horrified when the first draftof this chapter was circulated
a year ago. He called it76“the economics of genocide”
because it costed the lives
that would be lost as a resultof warming in poor countries
at $100,000 just a fifteenth ofthe value of lives in wealthierones. Other Third Worlddamage was marked down
too.
The draft’s overall finding wasthat the industrialised countries - those causing climatechange - would suffer
twice as much damage as
all the rest of the world,
although they have only
20 per cent of the world
population and occupy
less than 20 per cent of
the world’s land area. Thiswas despite the fact thatthe draft itself showedthat 85 per cent of all the
low-lying land that is
estimated will be lost
because of rising sea
levels would be in developing countries, as would
three-quarters of the
reductions in fresh watersupplies and 78 per centof the extra deaths.
The draft also purported
to show that the cost of
reducing greenhouse gas
emissions would probably begreater than 2 per cent ofGross World Product (GWP).
while the losses if greenhousegas emissions were notcurbed would amount to only
1.5 to 2 per cent of GWP. The
implication, Aubrey argued,
was that if these figures wereallowed to stand it would
mean that the world community would do very little toslow the warming because it
would believe it was cheaper
not to. Pearce and his team
had arrived at these figuresby estimating how muchpeople would be willing to pay
to avoid a higher death rate or
having their land flooded. As
people in poor countries can’t
offer to pay very much, their
deaths and the damages they
will suffer were valued atmuch less than in wealthiercountries, skewing the international distribution of thecost.
Although this technique, the“willingness-to-pay” method,is widely used in CBA, othereconomists argue it should beapplied only when a development produces a benefit, andnot to value things as theyare. But Pearce’s team chose
not to use the “willingness to
pay method”. This would haveasked people whose island
homelands will disappear how
much compensation theywould require from fossil fuelusers to accept their fate withequanimity. This approach
would obviously have led toentirety different results.
Aubrey, working full-time andalone from his tiny bedroom inWillesden, north-west London,
went on the attack.. He began
circulating a letter to eminent
people all over the world,
protesting at the unequal life
valuation and seeking theirsupport. He collected 500
signatures, some from authors
working on other sections of
the IPCC report. It generated
international press coverage.
(Pearce later described it as a“silly campaign of misinformation and abuse”).
Aubrey went further. To show
how unreliable the draft
chapter’s figures were andhow much they depended on
the assumptions on which
they were based, he and Tony
Cooper, a statistician, recalculated them. using the samedamage figures throughout
the world. They also madeallowances for possible positive feedbacks the official
writers had ignored.
Their results were dynamite
and were published in a
special peer-reviewed paperby the Ecologist magazine.
They showed the level of
uncertainty surrounding theeffects of warming to be sogreat that by the year 2050,
the annual losses could
amount to anywhere between
12% and 130% of GWP -that
is, the total value of everything produced in the world ina year. At the higher end of
this range, life as we know it
would collapse.
For the OECD countries, thedamage could be anywhere
between 0.6% and 17% ofannual output, and for the
rest of the world, between
25% and 250%. In otherwords, life in the Third World
could become impossible andthe number of people dying
there annually from storms,
disease and starvation could
be very much higher than the
113,000 that Pearce and hiscolleagues estimated.
The IPCC tried to get nationaldelegations to approve theirdraft report at a meeting in
Geneva in June this year. It
very nearly succeeded, but,largely as a result of thesignatures campaign, there
was widespread unease about
the Pearce section, and thechairman. James Bruce. ofCanada. sent it to a private,
governments-only committee
for consideration. The committee’s recommended wording came back to the fullmeeting just 10 minutes
before it was due to end. withthe disputed estimates still
included. A vote was taken to77

approve the wording as a
package. It was passed. The
meeting was declared closed.
Aubrey thought all was lost,
but the Cubans had been in
the queue to speak just before
the gavel came down. When
this was pointed out, Bruce
was obliged to re-open themeeting. The Cubans thenrejected the amended wording
outright because GCI’s arguments had not been answered. When Brazil backed
the Cubans with a formal
protest, Bruce had no option
but to call a meeting speciallyto settle the issue. It took
place in Montreal three weeks
ago. In the three months
between the Geneva andMontreal meetings, several
unsuccessful attempts weremade to get the Pearce team
to modify their draft. “We
won’t be revising it.” Pearce
told Fred Pearce, of New
Scientist. “This is a matter ofscientific correctness versus
political correctness.”
In Montreal, pressure was puton the Pearce team to incorporate the GCI range of damage estimates. They refused,leaving the IPCC with the
choice of dumping their chapter entirely or leaving its
figures out of the
Policymakers’ Summary—the
only part of the report overwhich the UN body had directcontrol. In the event, thechapter was not dropped, but
the summary effectively
disowns it. stating that “thevalue of life has meaning
beyond monetary value”.
It was a triumph for Aubrey.
But why has everyone been
happy to leave him and his
handful of friends to fightwhat is patently absurd.
What was the British govern-ment thinking of when it
generously grant aided Professor Pearce’s IPCC work.
Why was his team so determined to produce figures thatshow that little need be done
about warming that theyrefused to accept even thepossibility of much worse
damage happening? Was itthat they couldn’t see that atleast as much growth could be
generated building a new typeof economy as it can bytinkering with the old?

November 09 - Nature

UN climate change report turns up theheat
London. A report to theUnited Nations on the economic dimensions of climatechange may be published witha key chapter missing unless a
dispute can be settled between the chapter’s authorsand delegates from developing countries.
The chapter, which forms partof an over-all study on theeconomic and social implications of climate change fromworking group three of theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC),
suggests that the costs required to slow down greenhouse gas emissions may
exceed estimates of damage
from climate change.
But the summary of thereport, written explicitly forpolicy-makers and agreed by
the working group in Montreal
last month, effectively cancels
this conclusion. Its writers
argue that damage estimateswould be higher if the chapter’s authors had used thesame criteria to assess losses
in rich and poor countries,
rather than, for example,
estimating loss of life of anindividual in a poor country at

US$100,000, one-fifteenth ofthe value in a rich country.
As a result, the authors of thechapter have decided towithhold their work unlessthey are allowed to respond tocriticisms of their calculations
made in the summary, whichis written by experts fromgovernments, particularly
Cuba, India, Colombia and theAlliance of Small Island
States. “I would prefer topublish the chapter with anaddendum making clear why
we [the authors] disagreewith the summary for policymakers,” says David Pearce,
director of the Centre forSocial and Economic Researchof the Global Environment atUniversity College London andthe lead author for chapter
six.
A senior IPCC official has said
that any changes to thereport’s content should havebeen made during two earlier
rounds of peer review among
governments and independent
experts. “At this stage, theauthors can make a few
editorial changes for clarity ofreading, but not changes tothe meaning or substance of78

the report,’’ says James Bruce,
co-chair of working group
three.
Under IPCC rules, authors ofchapters are responsible foroverall editorial content. A
chapter cannot be publishedby the panel unless all authorstransfer their copyright to theclimate body. One of theauthors of chapter six, William
R. Cline, a senior research
fellow at the Institute forInter-national Economics inWashington DC, agrees hewould rather have the chapter
erased from the IPCC’s final
report than see it included inits present form. But although
Bruce concedes that theomission of the contentious
chapter “could cause problems” for the IPCC, news of
the chapter’s probable withdrawal is likely to be welcomed in many developing
countries, as well as in the
London offices of the Global
Commons Institute (GCI), a
group of environmentalists
behind the campaign to“rewrite or withdraw” thechapter.
GCI has successfully lobbied
developing countries to callfor a recalculation of thedamage that would result
from a doubling of carbon
dioxide concentrations by theyear 2050 in a way thatwould require richer countries
to shoulder more responsibility for the effects of climatechange.
The chapter’s authors hadvalued the damage fromclimate change at 1.5-2 percent of gross world product(GWP), the market value ofall goods and services soldthroughout the world. But
GCI argues in a paper written
for The Ecologist that damage
estimates would be higher between 12% 130% GWP - ifbased on a formula that
asked countries how muchcompensation they would be
willing to accept for the losses
from climate change.
When the authors refused toalter their calculations, GCI
persuaded those responsible
for the summary for policymakers to erase references todamage estimates, andinclude phrases such as “theliterature on the subject inthis section is controversial”,
and “the value of life” and“the loss of unique cultures”
cannot be quantified.
But Pearce argues that the
GCI formula “is not supported
by published data”, and would

not necessarily have increased the estimates forclimate change damage in thedeveloping world. One of the
few known research papers to
use the ‘willingness to accept’
method - from the Indira
Gandhi Institute of Science in
Bombay - resulted in an
estimated $10.000 value forloss of life.
Pearce claims that GCI hastried to turn an essentiallyscientific process into a political one. He says it should nothave interfered with theprocess of independentscientific inquiry. “The IPCC is
not a policymaking body. It isa body of scientific experts.
We had strict instructions
from the IPCC only to review
the existing literature and not
create any new literature.”
But Aubrey Meyer, the director of GCI, disagrees and says
Pearce and his team “are in
no position” to label otherswith the charge of compromising scientific objectivity.
Four out of the seven authorsof the chapter, says Meyer,
are the most frequently
recurring names in the chapter’s list of references. The
same four names, he adds
form the majority of references linked to parts of thechapter dealing with damage
estimates.” How can this be79

an objective process when
the authors spent much of
the time reviewing eachother’s work?” he asks.
Meyer says that the rule that
authors cannot create literature should be lifted. He adds
that the composition of authors should also betterreflect the world’s demography; only two of the chapter’sseven authors were from thedeveloping world.
But Pearce claims that Meyerand his colleagues have
behaved “irresponsibly” inseeking to have quantitativereferences to damage estimates removed from thesummary, as “99 per cent of
all policy-makers will read thissection, not the whole report”.
The report is due to be approved at the IPCC’s next
plenary session in Rome next
month.
Ehsan Masood & Ayala
OchertNovember 24 - Times Educational Supplement

Green economist faces picketpicketA British economist is at thecentre of a row over his
controversial contribution to
an international report on
global warming.
Campaigners, who claim thatDavid Pearce’s methods rate
third world lives at one 15thof the value of first world
lives, are stepping up theiractions, which will include
picketing his offices on
Wednesday.
David Pearce, an environmental economist at University
College London, was leading
author for a chapter in thereport, for approval next
month, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s working group
three. Group three assesses
the social and economic
consequences of global
warming.
He and his co-authors produced a result that suggests it

would cost more to alleviate
the damage caused by global
warming than the damage
itself will cost.

profession in general”. Some
UK environmental scientists
have privately agreed withhim.

The chapter successfully
passed both governmental
and scientific peer review but
then upset the writers of itssummary, which is read bypolicymakers around theworld. The summary now saysthat the authors would havedrawn the opposite conclusion
if they had valued all lives
equally.

Critics also say that monetary
value cannot be attached tolives.

Aubrey Meyer, of the Global
Commons Institute, which has
sparked much of the protest,
said publishing the chapter“will taint the IPCC irreparably
and permanently”. He said
that the first working group’sreport, assessing climatechange, “is clearly a scientificeffort. To suggest that thethird group’s report is equallyscientific is aggrandising theirwork and the economics

Professor Pearce, who isdirector of the Centre forSocial and Economic Researchof the Global Environment,
said that critics did not understand the methodology of thechapter. “The report simply
says that people value risks
differently. That valuation isaffected by the level of theirincomes.”He said that the alternative —to assess everyone equally —would increase the amountspent on disaster aversion andforeign aid: “We would end up
allocating all our national
income to life-saving.”

November 30 - Nature

Economics of climate change
SIR — Further to your news
report on the economics ofclimate change (Nature 378,
119; 1995), I write on behalfof myself and the undersigned*. We note that theInter-governmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) is now
due to approve for publication
its full Second Assessment
Report (SAR) at its plenary
meeting in Rome on 11-15
December.
The assessment by Working
Group Three (WG3) of the“Social Costs” of climatechange (or “damages”) will be
included in the SAR. This
contains the now notorious
15:1 mortality costing between rich and poor people indeveloped and developing
countries. This largely explains why the overall damage
figures cited in the chapter(1.5-2 per cent of gross world
product) are so low.
Both the global and the regional damage figures arewidely regarded as unsafe, so

80much so that the Summaryfor Policy-Makers (SPM) of the“Social Costs” written by thegovernmental representatives
at the last WG3 meeting omitsreference to these quantitative damage results altogether.
In fact, rather than being a‘summary’ of the chapter, theSPM largely concentrates its
comments on how muchhigher the damage results
would have been had nondiscriminatory methods of valua-tion been used. This has
produced a marked inconsistency between the chapter
and its summary, which theauthors of the chapter themselves have confirmed.
If IPCC puts its imprimatur on
this material by publishing it,
this unsafe and discriminatory
data will become official
advice to the UN negotiatingprocess for at least the next
five years.
This would give a disastrously
wrong signal at a time when
it is becoming increasingly
clear that serious policy
measures to arrest climatechange are now required andwhen the political tensions
over the “differentiated responsibilities” in this task areincreasing as well.
Moreover, if the IPCC goesahead and publishes in thesecircumstances, it will violate
its own procedures. These
clearly state that approval of
the SPM signifies that it is“consistent with the factual
material contained in the fullscientific and technical assessment,” and this is clearly
not the case.
In these circumstances,
IPCC’s reputation for procedural correctness and consensus-building around scientificaccuracy will be permanently
compromised. Consequently
we urge the rejection of the“Social Costs” chapter in thereport.
Aubrey Meyer Global
Commons Institute (GCI),
42 Windsor Road,
London NW2 5DS. UK
Fax +44 (0)181 830 2366e-mailsaveforests@gn.apc.org
Tom Wakeford (Biology,York); Nigei Woodcock(Earth Sciences, Cambridge): Gerald Leach(Stockholm Environment
Institute and IPCC leadauthor): John Whitelegg(Ecologica UK); Ben
Matthews (East Anglia):
Maneka Gandhi (ex-Environment Minister, India):
Vandana Shiva (Centre for
Science and Ecology);
Bittu Sehgal (Sanctuary
Magazine): Medhar
Paktar: Claude Alvarez(Third World Network.
India); Peter Newell (Environmental Politics.
Keele); David Smernoff(Bay Area Action, California); Ernst von
Weizsaecker (Wuppertal
Institute); Christine vonWeizsaecker; Hans Peter
Duerr (Max Planck Institute for Physics): Freda
Meissner-Blau(ECOROPA); Charles
Levenstein (Massachusetts and New Solutions);
Brian Moss (Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Liverpool); George
Marshall (Earth Action
Resource Centre): John
Barkham (Environmental
Sciences. East Anglia);
Nicholas Hildyard (The
Ecologist], Rudolf Lippe(World Decade for Cultural Understanding,
UNESCO); Hartwig Spitzer(Center for Science andInternational Security,
Hamburg): Hans Jurgen
Fischbeck (International
Network of Engineers andScientists for Global Responsibility); Heinrich
Volkert (ProtestantChurch of Germany);
Simon Naylor (Geography,
Keele); Martin Rees
(Kings College Cambridge); Philip Webber(Scientists for Global

81

Responsibility); Michael
Benfield (Town and Country Planning, University of
Newcastle upon Tyne);
Wolfgang Sachs(Wuppertal Institute);
Angelika Zahrnt (BUND/
Friends of the Earth, Germany); Greg Samways(Environmental Sciences.
East Anglia): Susan
George (Transnational
Institute. Amster-dam);
Andrew McLellan (Institut
fur Umweltwissenschaften. Zurich);
Philip Smith (International Network of Engineers and Scientists for
Global Responsibility);
Christian Azar (Chalmers
University of Technology,
Goteborg): Karl-Erik
Eriksson (Theoretical
Physics. Goteborg): P. R.
Shukia (Indian Instituteof Management,
Ahmedabad and IPCC
WG3 lead author); Tim
Lenton (Environmental
Sciences, East Anglia andPlymouth Marine Laboratory).

November 30 - Nature

Temperature rises
in dispute over costing climate change
London. Sir Crispin Tickell,
one of the British government’s leading advisers on
environmental policy, has
stepped into a fierce controversy about a United Nations(UN) report on the social andeconomic dimensions ofclimate change by suggestingthat the use of cost-benefit
analysis in a key chapter ofthe report is inappropriate.
Tickell, formerly Britain’s
ambassador to the UN, is now
warden of Green College,
Oxford. The author of a bookon climate change, he madethe comments in an exchangeof letters with David Pearce,
director of the Centre forSocial and Economic Researchon the Global Environment atUniversity College, London,and one author of the forthcoming Second Assessment
Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).
Tickell says cost-benefit
analysis “should not be thebasis — still less the sole basis— for making policy”. But
Pearce says Tickell’s remarks
are “wholly out of step” withgovernment policy. “Beingalone does not make you
wrong,” writes Pearce, a leadauthor of Chapter 6 of thesection of the report preparedby IPCC’s working group III.
“But it ought to make you
wonder if you have the basis
for making such a judgement.”
Tickell appears to disagreewith the decision of the authors of Chapter 6 to use atechnique for placing a value
on loss of life whose implica-

tions are to assign a value ina developing country of onefifteenth the value in thedeveloped world, as it isbased on a country’s capability to pay for reduced risk. He
describes the results of thismethod of calculation,
known as ‘value of statisticallife’, as “economists’ artefactsof doubtful value and subjective character, with almost
unlimited capacity to mislead”.
But Pearce, questioning
Tickell’s understanding of thetechniques of cost-benefit
analysis, says developing
countries cannot pay thesame as the higher-income
developed world. “The resources have to come fromsomewhere,” he writes. “If,for example, they come fromreduced foreign aid, we may
kill more people than wesave.”
Pearce cites the lack of published literature exploring theimpact of equal value statistical lives — an alternative
method for placing a value onlife — as another reason for
not using Tickell’s ideas as thebasis for calculations in Chapter 6. “Our remit was todescribe what the literaturesays, not to rewrite it, nor do
original research.”
The exchange is likely to add
fuel to the debate alreadyraging about the methodology
used by the authors of Chapter 6 to estimate damage
from climate change. The
debate has pitted the authors
against government delegatesto the IPCC, and divided theenvironmentalist movement

82

over calls from one group, theGlobal Commons Institute in
London, that the chapter
should be withdrawn (seeNature 378,119; 1995).
One author has suggested
that this should be done on
the grounds that a summary
designed for policy-makers
and written by a team ofexperts from different governments appeared to contradict
the chapter. The summary
does not contain quantitative
damage estimates, on the
grounds that such values are
subjective. This author now
appears to have withdrawn his
objections. And the IPCC says
the chapter will be included in
the Second Assessment Report due to be approved in
Rome next week.
However, a letter in this issueof Nature (see page 433),
signed by 38 scientists including Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s
Astronomer Royal, and Hans
Peter Duerr, director of the
Max Planck Institute of Physics, says the chapter must go,
on the grounds that a summary contradicting the chapter’s contents violates IPCC
procedures.
But not all environmentalist
groups agree with this stance.
The Climate Action Network,
an alliance of green groups
working in the field of climate
policy, says this single issue
should not be allowed toobstruct the greater goal of
limiting the harmful effects ofclimate change. The chapter
contains “a lot of information
relevant to policy-makers”,
says Bill Hare, a climate policy

adviser with GreenpeaceInternational.
Hare also says the Second
Assessment Report will not be
the last word. The report will
be discussed at a meeting of
the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Cooperation before it isput to the Conference ofParties. Omitting Chapter 6
before it is even published,“would destroy the IPCC’s

integrity as an impartial bodyand open the way for vested
interests to interfere”, adds
Hare.
P. R. Shukia, professor ofmanagement sciences at the
Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad and alead author for Chapters 8, 9
and 10 of the report, agrees.
“We must not throw the baby
out with the bath water,” hesays. But Shukia, whose

chapters calculate the costs ofslowing down greenhouse gas
emissions, says the IPCC
should arrange an interim
review — “perhaps a supplement to the second assessment report” — that takes
notice of more recent literature from the developingworld.
Ehsan Masood

December - Appropriate T
echnology
Technology

Second victory on climate economics
The economists who calculated the social costs of climate change in terms ofpeople’s willingness to pay to
avoid damage, have effectively had their work rejected
for the second time at the
October meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A Global Commons Institute(GCI) paper, criticized theeconomists for discriminatory
and arbitrary valuations, andfor a failure to allow for thehigher range of temperature
forecasts made by IPCC
scientists.

accept’ damages in the firstplace.
GCI is calling for the discredited chapter on the economics
of climate change to be removed before the IPCC publishes its findings.
Contact: Global Commons
Institute, 42 Windsor
Road, London NV/2 SOS,
UK. E-mail:saveforests@gn.apc.org.
The 20-page GCI paper isavailable at £5 (NGOs),£15 (institutions), plus
postage.

Government representatives
at the IPCC meeting in Montreal agreed with GCI, reproaching the economists that‘the value of life has meaning
beyond monetary value’, butwere not prepared to endorse
the suggestions of somecountries that research on
action to prevent global
warming should be based noton ‘willingness to pay’ theeconomic value of damages,
but on ‘unwillingness to83

May - Climax

1996

Tough… but true
What really needs to bedone according to the
Global Commons Institute.
Talk is Cheap, but Climate Change is expensive
The negotiations on climatechange seem to go on andon. What’s really on theagenda for COP-2?
Over recent years, global
climate change has emerged
as one of the most serious
international issues whichfaces our planet.
In the 1990 report from theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change or IPCC (thebody set up in 1988 by the
UN to advise world leaders on
extent of the problem) it wasmade clear that to continue
emitting greenhouse gases atthe current rate was likely tolead to catastrophe. By thattime however, it was clearthat the gap between thescientists and the politicianson what must be done washuge. The scientific working
group of the IPCC stated thatin order for atmosphericlevels of carbon dioxide to bestabilised at current (1990)
levels, annual emissions fromhumans would have to be
reduced by 60-80%.
Under intense pressure fromindustrialised countries, the‘Response Strategies’ working
group of the IPCC (the group
set up to work out what thepolicies to halt climate change
should be) gave “no support
to the idea of a stabilisationof greenhouse gas emissions.
Unlikemany other environmental issues, the Climate
Convention is driven byscience, rather than broad
grassroots concerns. Therefore politicians feel no publicpressure to act.
But despite the weaknessesof the 1990 IPCC report insuggesting policy measures,the scientific message galvanised governments to startnegotiations, which werecompleted at the Earth Summit in Rio with the signing of
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC),
Although at the time many
NGOs said that the Convention was far too weak, certain
sections of it have begun tohave an impact. International
negotiations are incredibly
tedious and slow moving, but
it is now possible see changes
that weren’t expected in
1992. Article 2 of the convention - the objective - is especially important and statesthat “the ultimate objective of
this convention is to prevent
dangerous anthropogenic
interference in the climate
system” - in non-UN speak tostop humans influencing theclimate in catastrophic ways.
Given that the Convention
was to be reviewed in thelight of ‘the best available
scientific evidence’, this has
proved to be a surprisingly
firm commitment.
The commitments nations
make to combat climatechange need to be constantly

84

measured against the objective. If the commitments
aren’t strong enough - not inline with the objective, morecommitments are needed.
However, this objective is notin itself a legally binding
commitment. The main outcome of the first conferenceof the parties (COP-1) to theConvention in Berlin was tostart negotiations on how tomeet the objective. The
current state of the debate isextremely complex. Countries
are all trying to get the outcome that most suits theirnational interest.
Some countries like Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait have eventhreatened to pull out of theconvention if they don’t get
their own way. A great deal isdepends on whether Clinton
wins the US presidential
elections - since he is more
likely to agree on a real
reduction in emissions. However the gap between theincreasingly firm scientificevidence of Climate Change
and the indecisiveness of thedebate is striking. The 60%
reduction in emissions of the1990 IPCC is a million miles
from the current discussions.
Even the stabilisation ofemissions from industrialised
countries at 1990 levels by2000 agreed in Rio will not bereached by most countries. It
will be impossible to persuade
developing countries like,
Brazil and Indonesia not toincrease their carbon dioxide
emissions to Western levels
unless they feel that theWestern countries are making

a real effort to reduce theiremissions. That’s why
sustainability goes hand inhand with global equity.
Politicians lack a sense ofurgency. They think people
neither know nor care aboutclimate change. We need tomake it clear that people
across the world recognise thedander. They also refuse torecognise that it is not theemissions that are the problem, it’s the system thatcauses the emissions. Ourcurrent economic and politicalsystem is based consumptionof finite resources and pollution. Only a change in economic organisation and consumption patterns can stop
environmental destruction.
This is clear from the scientificevidence - let’s make it clear
to the politicians.

Sustainability is equity
Aubrey Meyer from the GCI
tells us what the real issues
should be at the climate
negotiations.
The Global Commons Instituteexists to explore and explain
the linkage between Equity
and Survival. This linkage islikely to become increasingly
clear with the onset of human-induced global climatechanges. If the human causesof climate change - principally
fossil fuel consumption continue unchecked, more
and more people in thepresent and future generations will suffer increasing
hardship. If the consumptionof fossil fuel is to be seriously
cut back to avoid this andreduce the risks of a catastrophe, a global plan must
emerge which achieves twothings:‘Contraction and Convergence’.
This is the message that GCI
will take to Geneva in July to
the 2nd Conference of theParties to the Climate Change
Convention.
By contraction we mean a fallin total carbon dioxide emissions. Drawing on the work of
the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC),GCI believes that carbon
dioxide emissions caused byfossil fuel must fall by at least
60% against 1990 levels by
the year 2040.
This would allow atmosphericlevels of C02 concentration to
return to their 1990 levels of
350 parts per million by
volume (ppmv). Failure to do
this will not only trigger
enormous social and environmental damage, it will also
trigger massive politicalresentment towards thenations who are primarily
responsible for the overconsumption, which is causing
this crisis.
By ‘convergence’ we mean
per capita resource use meeting the same level in eachcountry.
Over-consumers must reduce
their consumption levels by
more than the global averagerate to make room for those
who consume very little toincrease their resource consumption to a point where
consumption levels are equal
between people. However thislevels must be one which
does not destabilise the global
climate system. This agendaof ‘contraction and convergence’ is not going to be
initially easy. The cuts inresource use and emissions
for industrialised countries aresevere. However, these reduc-85

tions are possible. And the
60% cut can be achieved
within 45 years from now, if
we recognise that we have noother realistic options. The
more time we delay starting
to reduce emissions thesteeper the curves will haveto be.
We must therefore deal
immediately with the principal
obstacle to this programme.
And that problem is political.
It is the forced and increasing
inequity of the global statusquo. In a nutshell, a minority of people increasingly
consume too much at theexpense of the majority ofpeople who consume very
little. This is true both within
and between nations. Correcting these inequities is not
an act of charity. It is common sense. One might evencall it the economics of survival. After all, like everyone
else, people who consume toomuch are also at risk of thedamaging consequences ofover-consumption. These
people cannot realistically
expect the rest of the world
to reduce their current consumption or their expectations of increased consumption, unless the task
is shared fairly between all
people and all nations. This isespecially true because if the
global common property
resources like the atmospherebelong to anybody, theysurely belong to all of us
equally. At the moment damage to global common property is clearly proportional toincome, but ownership ofthese resources is assuredly
not.

What is the GCI?

GCI is an independent groupof people, mostly based in the
UK. GCI’s aim is the protection of the Global Commons.
The group works on theecological, economic andpolitical aspects of global
climate change. The GCI wasfounded in 1990 after theSecond World Climate Conference. GCI lobbied the Intergovernmental Negotiating
Committee for a Framework
Convention on Climate
Change where we helped toestablish the language ofequity in the Convention in
the run up to Rio. Since then,
GCI has been part of the
Economics Group of theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) where
we successfully overturned
the mainstream economic
ideas which asserted that thevalue of climate-changerelated damages to developing countries and their peoples was less per unit than in
the developed countries.
GCI does not have charitablestatus nor does it receive
regular funding from any
source. We urgently needfinancial support to carry ouragenda to the COP-2. A
substantial record of GCI’s
arguments and activities isavailable to anyone who may
wish to offer us this support.
GCI,
42 Windsor Road,
London NW2 5DS, UK
Tel: +44 (0)181 451 0778
Fax: +44 (0)181 830 2366
Email:
saveforests@gn.apc.org
101376.737@compuserve.com

The graph means?
GCI believes that countries
should aim to reduce theircarbon dioxide emissions to
0.25 tonnes per person peryear by 2040. At the moment,
emissions are roughly distributed according to a country’s
GNP - the richer you are themore you emit. In the chart
the existing 1990 distributionof C02 production is shown showing the large shares forcountries such as Germany
and Japan. In the chart weestimate the effects of overall
emissions contracting on afeasible curve to the year
2040. By this time a 60% cut
in emissions from around 5.5gigatonnes of carbon dioxide
to just over 2.5 gigatonnes
will have been achieved.
However in 2040 the distribution of emissions will beaccording to population - soshares for countries such as
India and China will be amuch larger proportion of
total emissions. The table atthe bottom shows what thesecurves would mean for various countries. It is vital thatthe current income-based
distribution of resource use isreplaced by equality between
all humans in the global
community. In the graphannual per capita value forfossil fuel consumption has
been reduced by 2040 to 0.25
tonnes of carbon. While this isa move in the right direction,
this alone will not solve theproblem of the historicalresponsibility of the industrialised countries who caused the
problem in the first place.
However it is a plan within
which everyone can agree toworn towards reducing emissions. Activities to reduce
emissions which may bejointly implemented between

86

countries with high emissions
and low emissions could
easily be financed in a way
which would lead away fromdependence on fossil fuels,
towards renewable sources.
Some now say we need a new
global ethic. As Buddhists
recognise, no one is saved
until everyone is saved. GCI
says that we will only besaved from global climatechange if a new ethic ofequity and survival takes root.

87

July 29 - The Big Issue

Global mission impossible
Aubrey Meyer is on a
mission to save the worldfrom economists’ solutions to global warming.
By Camilla Berens
How would you react if you
were told that a group of
economists had calculated
that the value of someone
living in the Third World is justa 15th of an American orEuropean?
This is not some madcap
theory but the formula being
put forward to world leaders
as a yardstick to work out
the costs of controlling
global warming.
In 1990, the influential
Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC)- a select group of scientists set up by the United
Nations to look into all
aspects of global warming- advised the UN that theworld would have to cut its
greenhouse gas emissions by
60-80 per cent in order toavoid catastrophic climatechanges.
As a result, the IPCC commissioned a team of leadinginternational economists toinvestigate how such a sharp
reduction of emissions would
affect the world economy andto advise on the best way tocarry out such reductions.
But when Aubrey Meyer, agreen campaigner with apassionate interest in global
warming, read the economists’ briefing in 1993, he washorrified. Rather than working
out the best way of stallingthe effects of global warming
the-economists were going towork out the cheapest.

“It was clear it had nothing
to do with calculating themost efficient way of dealing with the problem. Theirtask was to work out theslowest rate of increase inemissions that the world
could afford. It was putting
economics before lives,”
says the 49-year-old environmentalist.
The economists’ findings were
to be published in a weighty
IPCC report. When a draft oftheir chapter was circulated in

1994, Meyer’s worst fears
were confirmed. The economists’ figures were based on
how much people were willingto pay to insure themselves
against the potentially disastrous effects of climatechange, for example in theevent of flooding, famine or
drought.

“Their conclusion was that an
average person in the Third
World would only be able to
pay $100,000, just a 15th of
those in wealthier countries,”says Meyer. “Basically, they’resaying that your right to beon this planet is proportional
to your income.”
Meyer believes these calculations were not just racist but
could lead to horrific consequences. The IPCC’s final

88

report is to play a key role inadvising world governments
on how to devise a strategy
for tackling global warming.
Meyer immediately started acampaign to have the controversial chapter removed. He
argued that by putting a lower
value on the lives of people inpoorer countries, governments could conclude that it
would be cheaper to allow
some countries to disappear
under the sea than to halt
global warming.
When you consider thatan estimated 85 per centof all low-lying land andthree-quarters of lost
water supplies will be indeveloping countries,
doing nothing because it’s
too expensive “is insanity”
he says.
A violinist and composer,
Meyer gave up his careerin the late Eighties to focus on
the global warming debate
full time. Working from histiny London flat, he and threefriends - an environmental
lecturer, a computer software
engineer and the former
editor of the Green Party’s
newspaper - set up the Global
Commons Institute. Their aim
was to act as an independent
voice in the global debate on
the greenhouse effect.
Meyer’s fears have evenworried members of thescientific establishment.
Among those expressing
concern has been Sir Crispin
Tickell, one of the British ‘Government’s leading advisors on environmental policy.
In a letter to Professor David
Pearce, the lead author of thechapter, Tickell asserted that )IPCC’s economic formula
should not be the basis - stillless the sole basis - for making policy, and that it had“almost unlimited capacity tomislead”. Professor Pearce
responded to the controversy
by saying it was a storm in a
teacup and would make no
difference to the results of thechapter.
Despite a growing number ofobjectors, the chapter was
eventually published lastmonth, although the opening
summary acknowledged
Meyer’s concerns.
Richard Douthwaite, a writerand former economist who
has been following the debate

closely, says the IPCC document is now in a mess:“Meyer has successfully
challenged the idea that
economics is the best methodof finding solutions to global
warming but there is nothing
to go in its place.”

escape the consequences ofglobal warming. Governments
must act before it’s too late.”

Meyer and his colleagues
want governments to agree toa gradual reduction in theamount of carbon emissions
based on the principle thatthe worst polluters be cut themost. “Time is running out,”
he says. “At best we have 50
years. After that, politicalconflict caused by environmental refugees, disease,famine and water shortages
will make our current lifestyles impossible. Nobody will

November 17 - Scotland on Sunday

Sharing fuel is the only way to save theplanetEveryone knows that global
warming is a catastrophe
waiting to happen. So why isso little being done to prevent
it? Aubrey Meyer blames
buck-passing and economic
expediency
THE world is running the riskof catastrophic climate change
as a result of global warming;
but no one has yet taken
determined action to avert it.
The reason is that the problems involved in doing so areenormous since there is analmost perfect correlation
between the rate at whichcountries emit the gases
which cause warming andtheir national incomes. In anutshell, those making themoney are those making themess and they are in no hurry
to change if that means taking
lower salaries.
Only a minority of humanity is
causing the problem. In 1990
for example, one third of theworld’s population used 80 of
all fossil energy and enjoyed
94 of total world income. The
other 2/3 had to scrape by on
the remaining 6.
To make the energy-intensive
countries’ inertia seem morereasonable, their economists
have come along with ‘efficiency’ arguments to theeffect that since it is not ‘costeffective’ to reduce emissions
beyond a certain point, somerise in world temperatures isinevitable.
But cost-effective for whom?

89

Certainly not for the Bangladeshis and the populations ofsmall islands and low-lying
coastal plains who will lose
their homes and land as thesea level rises. Perhaps noteven for ourselves and therest of Western Europe if the
Gulf Stream falters and our
year-round temperatures fallto those of Labrador.
Since what is efficient forsome is not efficient for all,the economists’ approachmust. be abandoned. Instead,a declining but iincreasingly
equitable distribution of theright to use fossil energy
among everyone living on thisplanet is the only way that weare likely to forge an international agreement to avert thelooming crisis.

Mrs Thatcher’s ‘Green’ speech
to the UN in 1989 tried to blurthese tensions, about who
was vulnerable, who and what
was to blame and what should
be done. She suggested,
ludicrously, that the rise ofgreenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere waslargely due to slash-and-burn
agriculturalists in the Third
World. Also, and in spite ofChernobyl, she claimed that
increased reliance on nuclear
power was the only way tomitigate the primary cause of
the warming, namely the
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use.
Things have moved on sincethen, but mostly in favour of
new and dafter forms ofpassing the buck.
In early 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’ (IPCC) published its
first assessment of the issue
of global warming. In this, the“world community of climate
scientists agreed that global
mean temperature had risen
by around 0.5°C since thebeginning of industrialisationand that greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere had risen during thisperiod by 25% to an
unprecedentedly high level. It
was also revealed that there
was a significant correlation
between these emissions,
their accumulation in theatmosphere and the consequent temperature rise because of the heat-trapping
character of the gases. Major
adverse impacts were predicted such as sea-level rise,increased food insecurity,
droughts, floods, storms,
disease-migrations, rising
human mortality with - inextremis - possibly runaway
effects because of major
equilibrium shifts in the sys-

tem as a whole.
Based on the perspective
obtained from their computermodels of global climate, the
IPCC scientists also made a“confident” judgment which
has become a notorious issue
for policy-makers: to restrain
greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere justto 1990 levels would require
immediate 60-80% cuts intheir emission rates.
This simple statement was
and remains a bomb-shell.
Although we know what has
to be done, we continue to do

the opposite and emissions
continue to rise. Fossil fuelburning accounts for 80% of
human CO2 emissions; theexponentially expanding
formal global economy is 95%
dependent on fossil fuel use;
and there is a nearly 100%
year-on-year correlation
between fossil fuel use on the
one hand and income or Gross
World Product (GWP) on theother. The two oil shocks
during the 1970s, for example, showed a loss of GWP
which almost perfectly mirrored the contracted use offossil fuel. The predicted trend
is that fossil fuel use rises at
2% per annum globally, and
GWP at around 3%.
Received wisdom says that
economic growth is the sinequa non of human welfare. So

90

if this is true, how do weachieve this 3% annual
growth in the global economy
without precipitating a climate
catastrophe? Or put the otherway around, how do weachieve at least 60% cuts in
C02 emissions to stabilise therising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, without major contraction of the economy? A 60%
advance in the use of nuclear
energy would turn an alreadyunstable world into a larger
unexploded bomb than it issane even to dream of. Selectively getting rid of slash-andBurn farming would not significantly affect the composition of the atmosphere sincemost of what is burned grows
again with the carbon dioxide
released being ‘recaptured’ inthe regrowth.
Sadly, the ideology behind theThatcher UN speech hasconstantly avoided the real
problem which is that equality
precedes efficiency in thesustainability stakes. So
vested political and economic
interests maintain their ostrich-like ‘growth-at-theexpense-of-climate’ priorities,
even if some things at least
come out more clearly into theopen. Initially the problem
was denied. But as evidenceof adverse trends and humancause mounted, the drumbeat of ‘cost-effectiveness’and ‘efficiency gains’ wasbanged out to a cartoon oftechnical fixes that would
embarrass Walt Disney.
Take ‘cost-effectiveness’ inthis context. Economists
moved into the IPCC in 1993
saying, ‘cost-benefit analysis’
was the solution to this problem - the cost of the damage
should be compared to thecost of prevention to estab-lished cost-effective policy.
Making everything proportional to income, the economist subsequently ‘proved’that prevention was the vastly
more expensive option. But
the costs of cutting pollution
were exaggerated because ineffect the polluters wereauditing their own inconvenience costs. And the costs ofthe damages were depreciated because they were
mostly expected to occur inparts of the world where
people had little or no money
and were basically regarded
as expendable.
The value of mortality, forexample, between poor andrich countries was comparedon the basis of 15 deadBangladeshis equal one deadEnglishman. One economist
quite typically declared that
Bangladesh was too poor to
be worth saving from sealevel rise. Understandably,
this approach was dubbed“the economics of genocide”
in the Third World press. It
was then denounced by the
Indian government at the
1995 round of the UN climate
negotiations and the IPCC’s
economists were subsequently rebuked for theirprejudicial methods and daftresults.
Then again, take the dubious

and relative exercise of ‘efficiency gains’ in the context of
economic growth. Frankly,
there is no point in spending
any more of the world’s
income on the diminishingreturns of efficiency gains inattempts to develop anddeploy sci-fi technical fixes(such as mirrors in the sky
and deep-sea de-position offrozen C02), unless it is set in
the prior and absolute context
of restraint. The risks are just
too high. Fossil fuel consumption, regardless of all otherconsiderations, has to becontracted and contracted
equitably from now on, if weare to avoid the worst of theclimate changes to come.
Recently we were offered thelatest scam of the polluters
and their economists: moredollars now for less pollution
later, ‘the economics of delayed action’. This has been
one of the most alarming
features of the policy content
of the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report published earlier
this year. Predictably, industry
has leaped on to this ‘ bandwagon of delayed-action
where the argument is that
before we can do the rightthing we must first becomerich and then richer.
Economists now tell us thatthings must get worse before

91

they can get better even if
the world’s poor - must be
liquidated. Surely reality tells
us this is deluded nonsense.
There is an international
solution, which we at the
Global Commons Institute(GCI) have called ‘Contraction
and Convergence’.
It proposes contraction offossil fuel use with international consumption converging from the present distribution, where consumption is
proportional to income, toequitable and sustainablelevels on a per capita basis
globally, in other words proportional to population.
International equity becomesthe price of survival. Without
this, we conjoin with a trend
towards the rich finally committing suicide by continuing
to rob the poor.
Aubrey Meyer, director of
the Global Commons
Institute (GCI), will deliver a lecture on global
warming on Tuesday at
6pm in the Quaker Meeting House, Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh

1997
February - Countryside Magazine

Now the big one
The RSPB deserves credit also
for highlighting another major
environmental problem,
global warming. It joined with
the World Wide Fund for
Nature to announce thatclimate change and resulting
sea level rise threaten the
future of the UK’s great
estuaries and the wildlife they
support. The society calculated that 99 per cent of
wintering grey plover, 88 percent of avocet, 75 per cent ofdark bellied brent geese, 64
per cent of knot, 61 per centof black-tailed god-wit and 54
per cent of shelduck usedareas at risk of sea level rise.
Barbara Young, the society’s
chief executive, said: “Global
climate change particularly
threatens long distancemigrants. These birds dependon the use of UK estuaries as‘stepping stones’ to maketheir incredible journeys.
Unless urgent action is taken
to reduce global emissions ofgreenhouse gases, thesejourneys and the birds thatmake them will not survive.”
More than 2,500,000 wildfowl
stay in the UK for the winter,most of them on estuaries.
Millions more use the estuaries as fuelling points on their
way to Northern breeding
grounds in Spring, or on their
way south to wintering areas
on the African coast.
A WWF spokesman said aconsensus of scientists now
agreed that human activity
was a major cause of climatechange.

“Although the rate of thischange in world temperatures - and where they will
occur -is still unpredictable,
we do know that the impacts are potentially devastating affecting food, water,
health and very survival of
humankind,” he said.

It took John Gummer, theUK’s environment secretary,
and Tim Wirth, head of the
US delegation, to bring thenegotiations back on
course.

Among many very serious
consequences might bemigration, homelessness,pressure on land and the
spread of tropical diseases
like malaria and dengue fever.

difficult to put a price on
factors that cause budget
deficits, such as homelessness, disaster relief anddisease eradication.”“At the last international
climate change meeting
both governments and nongovernmental organisations
watched in frustration whilea small but highly organised group of industrialised
countries, led by the oil andfossil fuels lobby, tried tohold the negotiations to
ransom with blocking
tactics and obfuscation,”says the WWF. “

92“It is difficult to put a pricetag on stabilising emissions- but it is even more

“It is time we took alonger-term view and put
into action some short-term
solutions.”
What can we do?
Energy conservation is the
key to reducing carbon emissions. Reduction in car journeys and the use of highconsumption cars would be a
step as would home insulation, and widespread use of
bicycles!

Also one might support the
Global Commons Institute of
42 Windsor Road London
NW2 5DS whose director is
Aubrey Meyer.

March 1997 - ZEW Centre for European Economic R
esearchResearch“Man-Made Climate Change Economic Aspects
and Policy Options” –Chapter 15:
The Kyoto Protocol and the Emergence of “Contraction and Convergence”
as a framework for an international Political solution to greenhouse gas
emissions abatement
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

93March 13 - Nature

US seeks greenhouse gas cuts from theThird W
orld
World
[LONDON] US delegates tothe United Nations (UN)climate convention clashedwith those from developing
countries, the European Union(EU) and environmentalist
groups last week over US
proposals to include commitments from the developingworld in a proposed protocol
for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.

China, which leads the blockof 77 developing countries
known as the G77, has threatened to pull out of the talks
unless the US proposal iswithdrawn. Privately, however,some G77 delegates areunderstood to be attracted tothe idea of differentiation
between responsibilities as apossible basis for calculating
commitments after Kyoto.

At present, only developed
countries are required toreduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, according to anagreement on the terms of afuture protocol reached two
years ago. The protocol itself
has to be agreed at the next
annual conference of the UN
climate convention, which isdue to be held in December in
Kyoto, Japan.

The EU, the Alliance of Small
Island States (AoSIS) andenvironmentalist groups, suchas the Climate Action Network, have also criticized theplans. They prefer the simpler, but politically morechallenging, goal of a standard reduction in emissions for
all developed countries only.
They also want to avoid
complicating talks further by
ensuring that commitmentsfrom developing countries are
not discussed until after
Kyoto.

But at a meeting of signatories to the convention in Bonnlast week, at which countries
presented their initial negotiating positions, the US delegation — apparently with one
eye on potential difficulties inCongress — suggested thatthe original terms of the
proposed protocol may needrewriting.
US officials have tabled suggestions that some developing
countries should be encouraged to begin reducing theiremissions voluntarily, with allcountries taking some steps
by 2005 — possibly according
to a formula in which
wealthier countries would
make proportionately higher
reductions, termed differentiation.

AoSIS and environmentalist
groups favour the toughest
measure: a 20 per cent cut ingreenhouse emissions by
2005. EU environment ministers announced a target of
reducing emissions by 15 percent of 1990 levels by 2010.
A 10 per cent reduction would
be achieved through measures in individual countries(see figure, above right), witha further 5 per cent reduction
through other policies andmeasures.
Australia, a large coal producer, and the oil-exporting
countries are calling forcompensation for any rev-

94

enues lost as a result of the
protocol, which may force
their customers to switch to‘greener’ forms of energy.
One environmentalist group,
the London-based Global
Commons Institute, has
emerged as a surprise supporter of the US plans which,it believes, “have the potential” for providing a more
equitable basis of emissions
reductions.
The institute’s director, Aubrey
Meyer, points out that theEuropean position is also
based on a form of differentiation, as poorer countries, suchas Greece and Portugal, havebeen allowed to increase theiremissions. He believes the US
plan could “go far with one or
two big G77 names” on its
side.
But the prospect of reopening
the terms of the protocol
upsets campaigners such as
Merylyn McKenzie Hedger ofthe World Wide Fund for
Nature. “[This idea] risks
stalling everything,” she says.
“Let’s concentrate on what’s
achievable.” Nevertheless she
believes that a split in G77
ranks could increase support
for a flat-rate reduction.
But one developed country
delegate says the UnitedStates is unlikely to risk derailing the protocol. Rather, hebelieves the US plans arelikely to help shape the termsof a future protocol that
includes developing countries,
but which will be settled after
the Kyoto talks.

The US plan also supports thecreation of a market in greenhouse emissions. Countries
needing to make small reductions to meet a national target
could agree to an extra reduc-tion in exchange for cash orenviron-mental technologies.
A country purchasing this‘entitlement’ could credit it
towards its own emissions
target. Another idea is to‘borrow’ emissions from afuture period to assist current
compliance.
Ehsan Masood

April 2 - Guardian

A global gas meter
Aubrey Meyer wants every
country to be given a fuelburning limit
THE United Nations’ efforts toa devise a framework so thatthe countries of the world can
reduce their carbon dioxide
emissions seem, at last, to bemoving in the right direction.
We now accept that warming
is a serious problem; we know
there are limits to theamounts of fossil fuels we canconsume. We must work out
now who gets to burn what
and how much. There is also
consensus that the market
cannot be the sole arbiter of
how much fossil energy eachcountry can consume, as thiswould entrench the economic
power of those wealthy industrialised nations which createdthe problem.
The equity and survival approach that my organisation,
the Global Commons Institute,has been urging since 1990, is
gaining ground. Under this,each person on the planet has
an equal right to emit whatever limited amount of gas
proves to be sustainable andgovernments would be issued
with permits to match their
populations.
The proposals tabled by the
US at the climate change
negotiations in Bonn thismonth reflect these shifts ofattitude. Since it would be
unacceptable for the US todictate what level of emissions
will be permitted in future,
their proposals steer clear of
doing this. But they provide a
potential framework for limits
and could lead to an international management for handling the problem.
Another hopeful sign is that
the European Parliament has
just approved a modified
version of a Global Commons
proposal, based on each
person’s equal right to emit. If
adopted internationally, thiswould lead to a reduction in
the world greenhouse gas
emissions.
The reduction in emissions
could stabilise the atmospheric concentration of themain greenhouse gas, carbon
dioxide, at around 450 parts
per million. This compareswith the current level of
360ppm, so, even if it isadopted, further warming isinevitable. Our model could be
adjusted to a lesser impact,
but this would require evengreater political will.
The European Parliament’s
version has a small contingency budget on top of thebasic scheme, so countries
can buy additional entitle-

95

ments if they pay into a riskcompensation fund. The levelof risk would be under continual review and countries
would have to re-absorb theiremissions if the risks were toohigh. Countries which bust thelimit would face penalties andwould not be allowed toincrease their international
competitiveness by using too
much fossil fuel.
This idea may appeal to theAmericans, who regard theEU’s current proposals for
substantial industrialisedcountries only cuts as totally
unrealistic. Developing countries could well accept the
proposals too, since they will
be able to sell any unused
emission rights to over-consuming industrialised nations.
Because they can increase
their emissions in the shortterm, they can make capital
investments to allow theirproduction systems to staywithin limits in future whilestill improving living standards.

June - Rio+5 NY

Linking Equity and Survival
The enclosed colour all country “Contraction and Convergence” regime shows a cut of
60% in annual C02 emissions
levels by 2100 as compared
to 1990. However, atmospheric concentrations of C02
continue to rise to 450 ppmv
over the next century (to over
70% above pre-industrial
levels) in spite of this contraction of human C02 emissions.
It is this persistent atmospheric retention of C02 emissions which is at the heart ofthe emerging crisis of humaninduced climate change.
Damages from raised atmospheric C02 concentrations,and the resultant temperature
increases, will intensify inspite of the vigorous abatement which is specified in the“Contraction and Convergence” chart shown for avoiding the worst of the damages.
The elongated graphic alongside this text attempts toportray this dilemma. The
proportion of what is retainedin the atmosphere from 1990
forwards will be at leastslightly more than half of thetotal emitted. This is the tallline curve rising from 1990 toaround 350 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of carbon by
2100. Visually this dwarfs the“Contraction and Convergence” programme of annual
C02 emissions. To make thisconnection, refer to the colour
graphic and then recognise it
as the black and white blip
shrunk to near invisibility atthe bottom of the graphic
alongside this text. The otherline which rises upwards from1860 to more than 450
gigatonnes by 2100, repre-

sents the total of human C02
emissions retained in theatmosphere since that year.
The international politicalquarrel over the annual C02
emissions totals so far has
profoundly avoided this ratioof emissions to concentrations
and therefore the central
point of the United Nations
Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). The total
annual emissions output in1990 was around 6
gigatonnes. What we absolutely have to focus on is thedangerously accumulating
C02 stock total in the atmosphere from the past and into
the future. We must recognisethat this upward curve of
atmospheric concentrations isgoing to take many decadesof vigorous action to merely
stabilise, let alone reduce.
This represents the profoundglobal double-jeopardy ofrising ecological and politicalstress where we do the “rightthing” but things continue to
get worse. The inserted
colour-print sheet: - shows
global fossil fuel consumption
for all countries since 1860
through to the present. It alsosuggests how future international entitlements to consume fossil fuel might be
structured consistent withboth the objective and “basisof equity” in the United Nations Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). In otherwords, it suggests what could
be considered consistent withthe common sense requirement for international fairness
and structural reconciliation
between all actors and parties
to the UNFCCC.

96

As we commence this awesome task of trying to saveourselves from a potential
runaway climate disaster, wehave little alternative. The
left-hand vertical axis shows
gigatonnes of carbon from
C02 from fossil fuel burning.
In this graphic (which issimply one of any number ofpossible scenarios of futureinternational consumption/
entitlements patterns running
the GCI CCOptions software),the programme of “Contraction and Convergence” from1990 through to 2100 is
entirely a mathematicalinvention. It absolutely is nota “trend-prediction”. It is aprescriptive planning model.
It is not an attempt to guess
how the global community
might behave on the issue ofenergy consumption if left toits own inclinations for liberalisation, marginal taxes andefficiency gains.
The graphic delineates a
programme of “Contraction
and Convergence” where“Contraction” is the global
process of cutting global C02
emissions by a certain percentage by a certain target
date. The absolute purpose of“Contraction” is meeting (oneinterpretation of) the objective of the United Nations
Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) namely: “to achieve ... stabilization ofgreenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at alevel that would prevent
dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate
system.”The “convergence” dynamic

within the “contraction”
programme is based on a
judgment that a unitary even constitutional - focus isrequired for resolving thedeteriorating international
disagreement about globally“common but differentiatedresponsibilities” under the
UNFCCC.

Particularly during the “convergence period”, the economies of the high-end per
capita consumers the industrial countries, who contract
soonest and to a greater
extent than the 60% mean
global contraction, could buy
permits from the economiesof the low-end per capita
consumers whose entitlements rise during the “convergence” period.

In GCI’s view, this focus is theimperative of accepting aformal allocative process of“convergence” to equal andsustainable levels of C02
entitlements on a per capita
basis globally. In this graphic
the “convergence” date wasset for the UN Centenary in
2045. In other words, by thatyear equal per capita carbon
entitlements will have beenreached globally. The intercountry representation of thisshows that countries’ entitlements under the global cap
are exactly proportional totheir populations from the“convergence” year forward.
The “convergence” datewould be negotiated reconciling the past carbon debt of
the industrial countries with abearable future balance ofinternational emissions trading, under the overall discipline of continuing global
restraint.

Whilst the greater purchasing
power of the high-end consumers makes this purchasepossible, the trade would
have the potential effect ofgenerating major revenue forthe low-end consumers topurchase and deploy postcarbon energy technologies
and substantially avoid futurecarbon emissions thereby.
If such an international programme was proactively
engaged and soon, theavoided emissions - particularly in developing countries would substantially retard therate at which accumulating
atmospheric C02 concentrations lock-in rising global
disbenefit under the statusquo, whilst not compromising- in fact quite possibly enhancing -developing country
energy and general development paths.

If that seems prescriptive and it is - it is preferable tothe status quo where we areprescribing ourselves to
oblivion because of a nearlychaotic failure of the politicalprocess to engage with theseverity of this global crisis.

Those who make the argument that “global problems
require global solutions”
where the problem is global
warming are quite right. But
the political price for this isglobal “convergence” andrecognising that “global
solutions” - and therefore“contraction” - will beunachievable without it.
Equity and survival are thus
functionally linked; QED.

Some flexibility can beachieved through the international trading of these C02
entitlements, and trade isassumed in this regime. Infact it could be a way ofachieving two crucial things.

by Aubrey Meyer

97

July - Outreach Rio+5

Contraction & Convergencea global solution to the global
climate crisis

return to 1990 levels of 350
ppmv by 2100.

Global Climate Change links
Survival to Equity. If thehuman causes of climatechange -principally risingfossil-fuel consumption continue unchecked, very
many people of present andfuture generations will suffer
increasing adversity and huge
numbers will not even survive. So if this consumption is
to be seriously cut back, aglobal plan must emerge
which formally links survivaland equity in a dynamic
global policy framework.

Already rising levels of damages attributable to global
climate changes indicate the50 year path may well be
more prudent. Low-lying
countries like Bangladesh andthe small-island states alreadyfavour such a path because of
the forecast sea-level rises
which threaten them withoblivion. A constant process
of monitoring damages resulting from climate changes
linked to public opinion andscientific review, could help
the United Nations Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
shape this global budget ineverybody’s survival interest.
However the future allocationof international emissions
entitlements under thisbudget cannot be determinedby science.

The contraction of overall
greenhouse gas emissions forsurvival must be politicallyenabled through the equity ofa planned convergence ofinternational per capita consumption patterns to equaland sustainable levels. Without at least the acceptance inprinciple of such a framework,
we face a continued politicalstand-off in the United Nations negotiations on Climate
Changewhich will persist
beyond Kyoto.
Drawing on the work of theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC),
Global Commons Institute(GCI) advocates that global
fossil fuel consumption must
contract by at least 60%
against 1990 levels within 100
years. According to the climate models, this would
cause atmospheric levels of
C02 concentration to stabilise
at 450 parts per million by
volume (ppmv) by 2100. If
the same was done in 50
years, the models indicate a

Nor can the allocation be
determined by existing purchasing power disparities in
the international markets, anargument which until recently
the industrial countries werereluctant to forgo. In thename of efficiency, such an
approach would simply continue to inflict social andenvironmental costs on thevulnerable and innocent third
parties which the markets
consistently deem to be
expendable. This would
become an unstoppablevicious cycle in a world wheremoney and people are alreadyincreasingly polarised. Common sense must prevail.
A political process must now
emerge with a constitutional
focus on equal human rights

98

globally - the logical “basis ofequity” in the UNFCCC. Only
such an approach has thepossibility of securing andstabilising the long-term
international co-operation andrestraint required to achieve
the dauntingly serious objective of the UNFCCC. All oursurvival increasingly depends
on this.
Convergence therefore is toequal fossil fuel consumption
levels on a per capita basis
globally over an agreed timeframe. In this, above average
consumers will progressively
contract their consumption
levels by more than the global
average rate of contraction.
This will make room for those
whose per capita consumption levels are below average
to increase their consumption
until the agreed date bywhich consumption levels areequal between all people
globally, whilst collectively
being at levels which do notdestabilise the global climate
system. The earlier the negotiated convergence date, thegreater share to the developing countries, and they are
powerfully placed to force a
hard bargain at this time.
From the convergence dateonwards, the contraction
process would continue on a
pro rata basis globally.
by Aubrey Meyer

November 20 - Nature

Equity is the key criterion for developing
key
nations
If the Kyoto meeting fails toreach a satisfac-tory outcome
many leaders of developing
countries are aware that they
may be asked to share responsibility for the failure.
The question occupying theminds of top civil ser-vants
from Brasilia to Beijing, already under pressure to
reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions sooner than theywant, is simple: how should
they respond?
So far, the Group of 77 developing countries, which includes India, African states,
the Middle East, Southeast
Asia and the whole of Latin
America apart from Argentina, has been united in its
opposition to the US proposals (see above) for developing
country commitments.
Unsurprisingly, the poorer
countries argue that the richmust take the lion’s share of
responsibility for combating
global warming, on the
grounds that they are theprime cause of current problems. Until this happens, theG77 countries say they will
also refuse on principle todiscuss the issue of emissions
trading or joint implementation.
But the G77 is an uneasy
coalition. At one end of its
spectrum of opinion are theoil states, including Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela,
which would prefer a weakagreement that does notharm sales of oil. At the otherare the small island states
and low-lying countries, suchas Bangladesh, for which aweak agreement may spell
environ-mental catastrophe.
In the middle lie India, China
and the other large industrializing countries of the Far Eastand Latin America, who will
resist any agreement thatwould harm their industrial
growth.
How developing countries
choose to respond to the US
proposals remains the key
question up to, and evenafter, Kyoto. There are threepossible scenarios. Under the
first, the US conditions will be
unanimously opposed, even if
this means no agreement at
Kyoto. Under the second
scenario, developing countries
will split between those who
agree to support the UnitedStates, and those who refuse.
The third scenario would see
developing countries as agroup striking a deal with theUnited States in which theyagree to reduce their emissions at some point in the
future, but with the UnitedStates providing them withsomething in return.
Despite their public opposition
to the idea of immediate
commitments from developing countries, many officials
from the G77 and China(which is not a member of thegroup) seem reconciled in
private to the idea of a ‘nonbinding’ side agreement — a‘Kyoto mandate’ — attachedto the main treaty. Under this,developing countries would
make a non-binding promise
to reduce emissions by acertain amount from a specified date. In return, the99

United States is likely to be
asked not to block agreement
on targets that would enable
developing coun-tries toreduce emissions to a percapita limit — instead of a flat
percentage reduction.
The countries that support
this stance believe it to be amore equitable way of distributing emissions reductions.
A per capita-based solution
would set an emissions limit,or ‘cap’, to a specified number of tonnes of carbon perperson a year. Countries
emitting more than this would
agree to reduce their emissions to the required cap byan agreed date. Countries
that emit below the cap
would be allowed to increase
their emissions up to the limit(see graph right).
Per capita solution?
Those who have been promoting the idea that theworld’s emissions could
converge on a single, percapita figure include the London-based environmentalist
lobby group, Global Commons
Institute. Aubrey Meyer, GCI’s
director, says that, if a percapita strategy were to befollowed, global concentrations of carbon dioxide could
stabilize by 2030 at a level of
450 parts per million by
volume of the atmosphere.
(This is still well above thepre-industrial level of 280
parts per million; atmosphericcarbon dioxide concentrationsat present are 360 parts per
million.)Partly at Meyers suggestion,
this idea has already beenformally adopted by theAfrican group of countries, led
by Zimbabwe. A variation ofthis strategy also lies behindthe decision by EuropeanUnion member states to backan average 15 per cent reduction; countries such as Portugal and Greece would beallowed to raise emissions,while others, such as theUnited Kingdom and Germany, would reduce theirs bymore than 15 per cent.
But some European countries— the United Kingdom inparticular — remain nervous
about the idea of differentiated responsibilities based on
per capita emissions being
applied elsewhere. According
to a senior British official, thisis primarily because of the
difficulty in deciding the levelat which the cap is set.
A per capita solution is also
opposed on strategic grounds
by most environmentalist
groups, in particular the
Climate Action Network, anumbrella group of most of theworld’s climate-related nongovernmental organizations.
Indeed, CAN is lobbying
developing countries not evento respond to the UnitedStates’ proposals.(450 parts
per million by volume) by
2030.
Jennifer Morgan of CAN in the
United States says the organization sees the main problem
as the timing—not the principle— of a proposal on percapita emissions. CAN will
oppose anything that reopens
the original terms of theclimate convention in whichdeveloping countries are
exempt from reducing theiremissions.

Morgan describes the introduction of the developing
country issue at Kyoto as aflawed strategy which could
imperil the prospect of alegally binding treaty. She
fears that the United Statesmight use the developing
countries as an excuse to

Globe is engaged in its own
lobbying campaign. When
governments and environmentalist groups were protesting against the Byrd
resolution in the US Senate,
Globe took what some saw as
the extraordinary step of

Per capita solution?
Those who have been promoting the idea thatthe world’s emissions could converge on a single, per-capita figure include the Lon-don-based
environmentalist lobby group, Global Commons
Institute. Aubrey Meyer, GCI’s director, says
that, if a per capita strategy were to be followed, global concentrations of carbon dioxide
could stabilize by 2030 at a level of 450 parts
per million by volume of the atmosphere. (Thisis still well above the pre-industrial level of 280
parts per million; atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations at present are 360 parts per
million.)Partly at Meyers suggestion, this idea has already been formally adopted by the Africangroup of countries, led by Zimbabwe. A variation of this strategy also lies behind the decision
by European-Union member states to back anaverage 15 per cent reduction; countries suchas Portugal and Greece would be allowed toraise emissions, while others, such as the United
Kingdom and Germany, would reduce theirs bymore than 15 per cent.

veto the protocol if its terms
are not to its liking.
Heavyweight support?
But a per capita based solution has found enthusiastic
supporters in the European
Parliament, as well as in the
Globe network, an organization comprising parliamentarians with an interest in environmental issues.

100

lobbying senators to support
it, arguing that the resolution
is a route to procuring agreement at Kyoto by getting theUnited States to agree to percapita emissions in exchange
for developing country reductions.
If it is to go further, however,the per-capita idea needs the
support of heavyweights such

as China and India. China is
known to be sympathetic, andsaid so at a recent conferencein Beijing. India is believed tohold a similar view, but continues to maintain an unsettling silence.
China’s position reflects a
debate between traditional
Communists, who strongly
oppose the US line partly on
ideological grounds, and amore pragmatic breed ofpolitician ready to engage
with the United States if along-term benefit for China
can be found. On climatechange at least, the lattergroup seems to be winning
the argument.
In a speech last month in
Beijing, Song Jian, presidentof China’s Council for International Cooperation andDevelopment, said: “China
bears no responsibility for
reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.” But he added:“When we ask the opinion ofpeople from all circles, many,in particular scientists, thinkthat the emission control
standard should be formulated on a per capita basis.”
Sir Crispin Tickell, warden ofGreen College, Oxford, amember of this council, waspresent at Song’s speech. He
says this is the clear-est
indication likely to be given of
China’s preferred route toemissions reductions.
India, on the other hand, has
maintained an uncharacteristic
silence about greenhousegases since the change ofgovernment last year which
saw the departure of theactivist environment minister,Kamal Nath. This could be
because India is unwilling toengage with the United States
until Kyoto. Anil Agarwal,

director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New
Delhi, has a simpler explanation: India’s climate policy, hesays, is in total disarray.
But Kilaparti Ramakrishna,
director of the science andpublic affairs programme at
the Woods Hole ResearchCentre in Massachusetts, saysthat India may yet emerge asa major player. “Responsibility
for climate policy has been
given a higher political priority,” he says.
“It used to fall under the remitof the Department of Environment and Forests. But recently it has been taken overby the more powerful Foreign
Office, which thinks more interms of north-south [ global ]equity. That is a significant
development,” he says.
The United States, meanwhile,
has neither ruled in or out thequestion of per capita greenhouse cuts. But most US
administra-tion officials remain unconvinced about theidea. There is the obvious
concern that, under thisstrategy, the United States
would have to make thelargest reductions. There isalso the view in some quarters that it seems to reward
countries — such as China —with large populations andrelatively low energy consumption.
Finally, the idea of an equitybased distribution of responsibility to reduce global warming strikes some as being
ideologically tainted. In thewords of one US official, “Tome this is global Communism.
I thought we’d won the ColdWar.”
But the idea still has its strong
supporters. Indeed, many
now feel that an international

101

commitment to per capita
based targets, rather thanabsolute goals, is most likely
to produce a solution at Kyoto
that both rich and poor countries will be prepared toswallow.
Ehsan Masood

December - Corner House

Briefing No.3 - Climate and Equity“....The aim would be for per
capita emissions globally toconverge, allowing developing
countries to increase their per
capita emissions upwards,
while those of developed
countries would contract tomeet them. This jointlyagreed pattern of carbon use
would take place under anagreed carbon ceiling.
Contraction and Convergence
Accepting per capita emissions as the cornerstone ofany future framework forcontrolling emissions may
open the way for negotiating
a long-term agreement thattakes account of the differing
circumstances and means of
all countries; meets the developing countries’ demands forfairness; accepts the need foreventual limits by developing
countries; and meets theprerequisite for an effective
long-term international agreement to avoid dangerous
climatic change.
One proposal, originally put
forward by the London-based
Global Commons Institute(GCI) and subsequently taken
up by the Africa Group of
Nations,18 suggests a threefold process for building sucha framework:· First, countries would
set an internationallyagreed global ceiling on
CO2 concentrations in theatmosphere for the next
century. This ceiling would
be negotiated internationally and the agreement
would include a scientificreview process every five

years to allow the target tobe revised up or down in
the light of new knowledge.
· Second, countries would
agree a global “carbon
emissions budget” for eachyear of the next century inorder to reduce global CO2
concentrations progressively
to within the agreed ceiling.
The rate at which the“emissions budget” declined
year by year would be amatter for negotiation.
· Third, countries would
agree to allocate the annual
CO2 budget among eachother on a per capita basis
and with a view to percapita emissions converging
by an agreed date. Sharing
the right to use the world’s
atmosphere on an equalbasis is the fairest and mostdurable way of dividing theCO2 budget. As with all theother “targets” in the proposal, the year for convergence would be a matter ofnegotiation.
In effect, the proposal would
tie parties into a negotiated,but flexible, programme for
reducing emissions which
would also ensure that, withina fixed period, no one enjoyed
the right to emit more thantheir fair share of greenhousegases, as agreed by theinternational community.
The resulting process of“contraction and convergence”
would thus see those in the
North cutting emissions,whilst those in many countriesof the South would be able toincrease their emissions for aperiod determined by the102

agreed ceiling, the resulting
global carbon budget and theagreed convergence datewithin it.
It is clearly easier andcheaper to avoid future emissions in developing countries
where, for example, fossil
fuel-fired power stations havenot been built on any scale,than it is in fully industrialised
countries where it will take ageneration to reverse existing
dependence on fossil fuels.
However, the South’s ability toleapfrog fossil-fuel dependency may depend on theiraccess to clean, energy-saving
technologies currently being
developed in North as well asSouth. Given sufficient political pressure, Northern industrial interests may be persuaded to “gift” such technologies. In the short-term,
however, initially rising allocations of emissions entitlements in developing countries
could be traded with industrialised countries whose allocations are contracting from theoutset.
Such “emissions trading”,
however, would need to bestrictly regulated if it is not to
be exploited by companies
seeking to dump outdated,
polluting technologies on theSouth or to use the threat ofdoing this via “relocation” as ameans of driving down the
pay and conditions of workers. Care must also be taken
lest emissions trading becomea means of postponing action
to curb emissions as companies buy up the South’s future
development options.
It is thus critical to placeemissions trading firmly within
the framework set by contraction and convergence. As GCI
puts it, “Contraction only
makes sense if one accepts
the science of climate change.
Convergence only makes
sense if one accepts the needfor contraction and the needfor equity. Trading emissions
only have a place if they are
set in the discipline of contraction and convergence andif used as a tool for achieving
flexibility within the overall
constraints that contraction
and convergence defines.
Otherwise they would simply
make matters worse.”
Negotiate, Negotiate
As GCI is at pains to point
out, the concept of linking
contraction to convergence
does not in itself dictate
future emissions targets —but the negotiated applicationof the concept does. In effect,“contraction and convergence”
provides a framework throughwhich targets might be set on
an equitable basis and thenapplied internationally.
GCI’s own view is that thetargets would need to beconsiderably more stringent
than those put on the table atthe December 1997 meetingof parties to the Climate
Convention in Kyoto. One
problem is that althoughscientists now recognise thathumanity is dangerously close
to the cliff’s edge, they do notknow exactly how close. The
current scientific consensus isthat anything more than adoubling of atmospheric CO2
concentrations over preindustrial levels — 280 parts
per million by volume (ppmv)— which on current trends will
happen by the year 2040, is“likely to cause dangerous

climate change”.19 To keep
global CO2 concentrations in
the atmosphere below thatlevel would require global CO2
emissions to be reduced
progressively by 60-80 per
cent of 1990 emissions.
As GCI points out, significant
climatic damage is alreadybeing caused at current
atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which stand at just 30
per cent above pre-industrial
levels. GCI therefore suggeststhat a future carbon budget
resulting in an atmospheric
CO2 concentration of no morethan 450 ppmv (60 per centabove the pre-industrial level)by the year 2100 should be
agreed as the maximum
upper limit. This could then be
negotiated downwards asevidence of climatic damage
and human causation became
more apparent.
Under this carbon budget,with a convergence date of,say, the year 2030, the percapita emissions entitlement
globally at convergence would
be about one tonne of carbon
per person per year. To reachthat figure, Britain would needto reduce its emissions by 50
per cent and the US by 77 percent. Meanwhile, China would
be permitted to increase its
emissions by no more than 41
per cent and Bangladesh by
no more than 2354 per cent.
Thereafter, all would progressively reduce their emissions
pro rata to a final per capita
entitlement of 0.2 tonne ofcarbon per year by the year
2100.
Support for the principle ofsetting emission limits on a
per capita basis has alreadybeen expressed by leading
negotiators from China20 andIndia, in addition to the Africa

103Group. The US, meanwhile,
has neither ruled in nor ruledout the notion of per capita
emissions. The space fornegotiation is thus open.
Indeed, as the prestigious
science journal, Nature ,remarks:“Many now feel that an international commitment to percapita based targets, rather
than absolute goals, is most
likely to produce a solution at
Kyoto that both rich and poor
countries will be prepared toswallow.”21

This page is: http://
www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/
briefing/03climate.html

December 12 - Independent

Now the test for K
yoto resolution
Kyoto
Seen in the harsh light ofdawn, what did more thana week of round-the-clock
negotiation in Kyoto
achieve? Nicholas Schoon,
Environment Correspondent, examines the brave
new world created by the
new anti-global warming
treaty.

Overall, it means a 5.2 percent cut in annual emissionsof climate-changing greenhouse gases from the developed world by 2012, compared with a 1990 base-line.
The European Union has
agreed to an 8 per cent cut,the US to 7 per cent andJapan to 6 per cent. Although
EU nations felt strongly that
the US and Japan should cut

gas emissions associated withthese fuels considering its
huge productivity and wealth.
Under the final agreement,
Russia has to stabilise its
emissions. Australia, Iceland,and Norway are allowed toincrease their global-warming
pollution by 2012: they all
pleaded successfully that they
were special cases.

Things will never be the sameagain... perhaps. In
Environmentalists are,Kyoto the nations
discreetly, ratherof the world agreed
pleased by the final
The most rational way ofon a decisive step
agreement. Givento begin tackling
how far the major
dealing with the problem seems to
the threat of manindustrialised nations
be the “contraction and convermade climate
were apart at thegence” approach advocated by thechange. But it will
start of the conferLondon-based Global Commons
take about six
ence, the depth of
Institute.
Under
its
scenario,
every
years before you
cuts agreed is slightly
can judge whether
more than they were
inhabitant of the planet would benearly 30 develguessing at its start.
allocated the same quantity of
oped nations greenhouse gases to emit, divided
It was the Americans
which agreed to cut
who caved in most ofout of a total which kept climate
their annual output
all, but there is a riskchange within tolerable limits.
of six key globalthe Republicanwarming gases dominated Congressare serious about
will refuse to ratify
the new Kyoto
the treaty. Jeremy
protocol.
Leggett, a former campaigner
emissions with the same flat
First, they will have to signwith Greenpeace who now
rate, the fact that they took
and ratify the treaty to makepromotes solar power, said:
the issue most seriously andit legally binding- and there“I’m quite encouraged. Now
called for a deeper cut thanare major doubts about
we’ll see whether this treaty
any other group of countries
whether the biggest polluter,starts to transform the energy
has ended up with them
the US, with its anti-Kyoto
industry.” He said it sent abeing allocated the largest
majority of politicians inclear signal to big oil compareduction.
Congress, will.
nies that their sales of pollutAs for Japan, its negotiators
ing fossil fuels would be
Secondly, their governments
argued remorselessly andcapped in the developed
will have to make a prompt
successfully in Kyoto that theworld, and encouraged themstart on implementing thenation hosting the treaty
to move into renewablepolicies needed to stop emisconference was a special
energy sources. In the longsions of these gases rising.
case. Japan uses fossil fuels
run the developing countries
They have a few years towith high efficiency because it
will have to be brought intochange the upward trend into has virtually none of its own the treaty if it is to be effeca decline in order to comply
they all have to be imported.
tive in slowing the rate ofwith the provisions of the
As a result, it produces relanew United Nations treaty.
tively few of the greenhouse104

climate change caused bypollution.
The most rational way of
dealing with the problem
seems to be the “contraction
and convergence” approachadvocated by the Londonbased Global Commons
Institute. Under its scenario,
every inhabitant of the planet
would be allocated the same
quantity of greenhouse gases
to emit, divided out of a total
which kept climate change
within tolerable limits.

This would give every country,
whatever its wealth, a certain
quota of pollution. Developed
countries have more thantheir fair share of this quota,
while many developing nations still have less. The
institute says all countries
should be able to trade their
quotas through a free market.

105

1998
April - Earthwatch

Energy-back
ed Currency Units
Energy-back-backedA new means to phase out
fossil fuel consumption
REMEMBER KYOTO, LAST
year’s international conference on limiting global warming which had rather limited
results?
Well, the United Nations has
called an equally high-powered conference on the same
subject for Buenos Aires(November 2nd - 13th) and,this time, the prospects are
more promising. There’s an
excellent chance that theworld will move-beyond mere
voluntary undertakings andthat a workable, enforceable
plan for cutting greenhousegas emissions will emerge.
If it does, one man can claim
a lot of the credit. He’s Aubrey Meyer, who once played
the viola professionally in the
BBC’s Ulster orchestra andcomposed two successful
ballet scores. In 1990, Aubrey
decided that tackling climatechange was more urgent thanmaking music and, with a few
friends, set up the Global
Commons Institute which heruns from his cramped flat inNorth London. His influenceon the course of the international debate on the issue has
been immense.
For example, he singlehandedly derailed an attemptby an international group of
economists to work out how
much warming it was economically sound to stop. He
did this by showing that thegroup’s cost-benefit calculations had valued the human
lives expected to be lost in
Asia as a result of climatechange at only a fifteenth ofthe value they put on North
American and European lives
lost from the same cause.
This invalidating their entire
approach, especially in theeyes of international organisations.
CONTRACTION & CONVERGENCE
Now he’s come up with ‘Contraction and Convergence’, aplan for reducing greenhousegas emissions. Under theplan, an overall limit on theworld’s total greenhouse gas
emissions is fixed by international agreement for every
year in the next century sothat the eventual level ofthese gases in the atmosphere does not exceed twice
their pre-industrial level. You
won’t be surprised to hearthat in order to meet thisultimate target, the use offossil energy has to steadily
contract.
Once these annual limits havebeen set, the right to burnwhatever amount of fuel as
fixed for any year is shared
out among the nations of theworld on the basis of theircurrent population. In theearly stages at least, somenations will find themselves
consuming less than their
allocation while others will be
consuming more, so it is106

proposed that under-consumers should have the right tosell their surplus to the energy junkies. This key featureof the scheme will generate ahealthy income for some ofthe poorest countries in theworld and give them every
incentive to follow a lowenergy development path.
For the past two years, Aubrey has been attending
meeting after meeting explaining the plan, with theresult that it was adopted bya ten-to-one majority by theEuropean Parliament in September. Developing countries
have welcomed it too and the
113 countries in the NonAligned Movement made it
their policy at a recent meeting in South Africa.
The only opposition to theplan is coming from people
who are ideologically opposed
to any form of emissions
trading. Anyway, C&C, whichis, when you think about it,
the only conceivable basis fora united world response to
the climate problem, hasbeen taken on board by thesystem and is effectively outof Aubrey’s hands.
NEW GLOBAL CURRENCY
So now he’s moved on toanother problem: ‘What
currency are over-consuming
nations going to use to buy
extra energy consumption
permits from the poorer
ones?’ This question would
not occur to most people but

if the wealthy nations can use
their own currencies to pay,they will get the right to usepart of their additional energy
for free.
Why’s this? Well, the countries he’s concerned about
operate reserve currencies
such as the dollar, sterling
and the D-mark which othernations keep in their gold andforeign currency reserves togive credibility to their own
currencies. Dollars amount to
57 of these reserves - somany of the dollars the US
pays out for its imports neverreturn to the US in payment
for American goods but stayin central banks around theworld. This is one of thereasons why the US has beenable to run a balance of
payments deficit year afteryear, taking more from therest of the world than it givesback
As Aubrey doesn’t wantindustrialised countries to beable to continue to use excessive amounts of fossil energy
because they run reserve
currencies, he worked with afriend to devise an international currency which wouldstop them. Here’s how thesystem they devised would
work: Each month, the IMF(International Monetary Fund)would assign Special Emission
Rights (SERs, the right toemit a specified amount ofgreen-house gases and hence
to burn fossil fuel) to national
governments according to theContraction and Convergenceagreement. It would also
issue energy-backed currency
units (ebcus) to the governments on the same basis as
the SERs, and hold itself
ready to supply additional
SERs to whoever presented itwith a specific amount of

ebcus.
This fixes the value of the
ebcu in relation to a certain
amount of greenhouse emission and through that to acertain amount of energy. The
ebcu issue would be a onceoff to get the system started.
If a government actually used
ebcus to buy additional SERs
from the IMF, the number of
ebcus in circulation internationally would not be increased to make up for theloss -the ebcus paid over tothe IMF would simply becancelled and the world
would have to manage withless of them in circulation.
In other words, the IMF’s
obligation to supply additional
SERs is strictly limited by theamount of ebcus it puts into
circulation - there is no openended commitment.
Governments receiving SERs
would be free to buy and sellthem internationally, and theprice set by these sales would
establish the exchange rate of
their national currencies interms of ebcus, and thus interms of energy and eachother. Countries would keep
ebcus in their foreign exchange reserves and relate
the amount of national currency in circulation to thevalue of the ebcus and anyother external currency they
held. If a country allowed too
much of its own currency to
get into circulation so that its
economy expanded fasterthan it became more energyefficient, its demand for fossil
energy would rise. This would
either alter the country’s
exchange rate in relation to
the ebcu, making energy
more expensive and thus
discouraging its use, or run
down its foreign exchange

107

reserves, thus cutting theamount of money in circulation, which would also havethe effect of cutting energy
consumption back. So thesystem is nicely self-balancing. National economies could
only grow by becoming more
fossil-energy efficient, which
is just what we want.
I explained in my last
Earthwatch article that thecurrent crisis in the Worldeconomy is due to excess
production in relation topeople’s ability to buy. However, it is being made muchworse because the world’s
currencies are not backed byanything apart from confidence, a quality which is in
short supply these days.
That’s why the dollar and the
yen are moving so erraticallyup and down. Aubrey’s energy-backed currency would
be much more stable thanany of the present reserve
currencies. It would represent
something real. Will his new
idea get anywhere? Whoknows? But if you werelooking for someone to persuade the world community
about anything, Aubrey’s yourman.
Richard Douthwaite is an
economist and writer
based in Mayo. You’ll findout more about his ideas
in his books The Growth
Illusion and Short Circuit.

May - Independent

Maverick musician could put a stop to
global warming
Geoffrey Lean on how Aubrey Meyer is winning alonely battle
SENIOR politicians and negotiators from around the world
are meeting in the House ofCommons this week to promote a “world-saving” idea dreamed up by a middle-aged
musician in the prosaic north
London suburb of Willesden.
They believe he may havefound how to cut the Gordianknot of international efforts tocombat global warming; andthey aim to catch the attention of the leaders of theworld’s eight most powerfulnations at this week’s Birmingham summit.
The meeting - to be chairedby former environment secretary John Gummer, and addressed by the present Environment minister, Michael
Meacher, is being put on by
GLOBE International, anassociation of parliamentarians from 100 countries. It
marks an extraordinary coming in from the cold for 51year-old Aubrey Meyer, who
has spent years battlingindustry, governments andenvironmental pressuregroups. Now his plan - forfairly sharing rights to emit
carbon dioxide, the maincause of global warming-has
become the policy of India,
China and the whole African
continent. The Clinton administration invited him to Washington to brief its senior
officials.
The story is a remarkable
triumph of stubbornness,

obstreperousness and sheer
bloody-mindedness - allorchestrated from a tiny
backroom in a cramped
ground-floor flat. No 43
Windsor Road, Willesden, is a
undistinguished house in a
Victorian terrace. There islittle to mark it out from its
neighbours except a brightwidowbox of geraniums, an“Adopt a Whale” sticker on apane, and - when I turned up
last week- the -strains of Mr
Meyer playing the challenging
Sibelius violin concerto.
Inside are three small rooms,
each with a bed built overhead - with no space to sit up
in it -just beneath the ceiling,for Mr Meyer, his wife andeight-year-old daughter. He
himself sleeps above a pokystudy filled with files, laptops,
two fax machines, a highquality colour printer -and notenough space to swing acatalytic converter.
Born and brought up in South
Africa, he came to London in1968 on a scholarship to theRoyal College of Music, specialising in the viola. He
played for the London Philharmonic, was principal violinist
for the Gulbenkian Orchestra
in Lisbon, and wrote the score
for the Royal Ballet’s Choros,
which won an Evening Standard award.
He was looking for a subject
for a musical when he firstbecame interested in theenvironment. He read a
newspaper interview with
Chico Mendez, the Brazilian
rubber-tappers leader later108

assassinated for his work toprotect the rainforest, andbegan researching the issue.
The musical never got written,
as Meyer went green. He
joined the Green Party, but
was quickly disillusioned. So
he decided to set up his own
organisation, focusing on
global warming. He sold his
viola “like amputating a limb”
to buy a computer, and -withtypical cheek - grandly called
his shoestring project the
Global Commons Institute.
He quickly developed a simple
proposal: that everyone onearth should have the right toemit the same amount ofcarbon dioxide. Taking thebest estimate of scientists that emissions will have to be
reduced by 60% per cent by
the end of the next century he worked out (with the helpof a mathematician friend.
Tony Cooper) what eachnation would be allowed on
this basis, and produced
graphics to illustrate it.
Industrialised countries (thathave emitted four-fifths of thepollution so far) would beallocated much less in future.
Developing countries would
be allowed more than atpresent but would have tomoderate their growth. But
they could sell their emission
rights to the rich, earningmoney to develop less polluting technologies and making iteasier for the bigger pollutersto adapt.
The idea ran into as muchopposition from environments
groups as from governments

and industry, and he endured“lonely dog years”, financing
his operation with the occasional small grant from welloff sympathisers. He has little
time for the establishedgroups, but admits that his
personality didn’t help create
good relations: “Everything
they say about me is true. I’m
bloody rude, disruptive andconfrontational.” Obsessive?
“Maturely so, I hope.”
But eventually the persistence
paid off, and events have now
put him centre-stage. Last
December’s Kyoto agreement
sanctioned trading the rights
to emit carbon dioxide.
He says, with some justice,that his is the only existing
proposal on how this could be

done. The United States is
insisting it will not ratify theagreement unless developing
countries also agree to limit
emissions; Mr Meyer says he
has worked out how this
could be done, in probably,
the only way the Third World
would accept.
Meanwhile the US, Canada
and Japan are exploiting aloop-hole in the Kyoto agreement by negotiating to buy
up vast amounts of spare
Russian capacity to pollute,
infuriating both Europe andthe Third World and endangering the whole treaty. This
week’s meeting will present
Mr Meyer’s plans to thesummit as a convincing
alternative.

Persuading the biggest polluters such as the US will bedifficult. Michael Grubb,
director of energy and environment at the Royal Institutefor International Affairs, says:“No one has come up with amore logical way of solving
the problem fairly, but in thereal world it is likely to be anightmare to get agreementon it.”
But Mr Gummer says that Mr
Meyer’s concept is “crucial”.
He adds: “I don’t see how we
can get a global answer toclimate change unless there isa degree of global justice.”

June - Parliamentary Monitor
Parliamentary

An Opportunity to Correct the W
orld’sWorld’s
Climate Damage
Labour MP, Alan Simpson,argues that the time hascome to correct the damage that has been done to
the global environment
JOHN PRESCOTT leaves
London for China in July to try
and breathe fresh life backinto the negotiations to broker
an international deal on
curbing greenhouse gas
emissions. He would do wellto place equity at the centreof discussions. Unless equity
is firmly on the negotiatingtable, the prospects of any
deal at all on climate change
are absolutely zero.
Few scientists now doubt thatthe earth’s climate is changing
and that, if corrective meas-ures are not taken soon,
humanity will slide into aperiod of intensified climatic
disequilibrium. Yet international action to curb emissions
has been virtually non-existent.
At the 1992 Earth Summit,
held in Rio de Janeiro, mostcountries agreed to return
their emissions of greenhousegases to 1990 levels by theyear 2000.
Few are doing so. Indeed,emissions in the US haverisen.
The international conference
on climate change in Kyoto
last December was supposed
to break this deadlock. Little,
however, was achieved. The

109

pollution cuts in the Protocol
agreed at Kyoto and now
awaiting ratification are theresult of chaotic horse-trading
amongst a few countries andare ridden with caveats; even
if they are delivered, theywould have negligible effects
on the dangerously-risinglevels of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
Prescott knows this. He knows
too that the chances of effective international action depend critically on the willingness of all governments tosettle their differences andagree a collaborative
framework for addressing
climate change.
For China and other Southerncountries, equity has always
been the starting point forany deal. Their position isclear: no individual should bedenied the possibility ofsurviving climatic change
because of their poverty, race,class, gender, religion or
geographical location. Likewise, any “solution” that
denies people in the Souththe resources and technologies that they may seek tobuild (or rebuild) sustainable
livelihoods in a rapidly warming world - whilst permitting
the use of those resources
and technologies in
the North - would
be profoundly
hypocritical.
If equity is to form
the basis for allocating future emissions of greenhouse gases, then
Northern countries
should shoulder theprime responsibility
for making cuts ingreenhouse gas
emissions. The
developing countries are not the ones thathave created the problem ofglobal warming - and expecting them to forego development options in order tocorrect a problem caused
mainly by others is patently
unfair.
Equity presupposes, however,that everyone takes responsibility for keeping their future
emissions within social andecological limits. Many Southern countries argue for emission targets to be set on a percapita basis, rather thanmerely a percentage increaseor reduction over 1990 levels.
The aim would be for per
capita emissions globally toconverge, allowing developing

countries to increase their per
capita emissions upwards,
while those of developed
countries would contract tomeet them. This jointlyagreed pattern of carbon use
would take place under anagreed ceiling.
Accepting per capita emissions as the cornerstone ofany future framework forcontrolling emissions may yet
open the way for negotiating
a long-term agreement thattakes account of the differing
circumstances and means of• First, countries would set aninternationally-agreed global
ceiling on C02 concentrationsin the atmosphere for the next
century;• Second, countries would
agree a global “carbon emissions contraction budget” foreach year of the next century
in order to stabilise global C02
concentrations within theagreed ceiling. The ceiling andbudget are held under review;• Third, countries would agree
to allocate the C02 budget
amongst each other as theresult of international
per capita emissions
paths converging by
an agreed date, and;• Fourth to reduce
global emissions at
the least cost, theallocated emission
entitlements would be
tradable amongst theparties to the above
arrangements.

all countries. It meets thedeveloping countries’ demands for fairness yet foresees the need for eventual
emissions reductions by themas well. It suggests the framework for an effective longterm international agreement
to avoid dangerous climaticchange.
One such proposal, originally
put forward by the Londonbased Global Commons Institute (GCI) and subsequently
taken up by the Africa Groupof Nations and GLOBE International, under the leadershipof Tom Spencer MEP, suggests
a four-fold process for building such a framework:

110

The resulting processof “contraction,
convergence, allocation and trade” would
thus see those in the North
cutting emissions in situ or
paying a social-ecologicalmarket premium for theirover-consumption to those in
the South.
Meanwhile, Southern countries would be able either tosell or to use their emissions
entitlements consistent with
the negotiated programme ofcontraction and convergence.
Contraction and convergenceis, in effect, a means of allocating property rights to thecommons that constitutes theclimate system globally.
However, in the absence ofsuch a framework, theseproperty rights are beingestablished on an ad hoc
basis by the biggest polluters
who are currently appropriating rights to global climate on
the basis of their past andpresent emissions. Trading
emissions entitlements underthese circumstances will not
only mean that the climate issold off over the heads ofaffected local communities
but it will also compound the
problem of negotiating aninternational settlement
consistent with the objectiveof the UN Climate Convention.
Small wonder that countries
like China and India areinsisting that the issue of
property rights be sorted out
before the US or other industrialised countries push ahead
with any deals involving
emission trading. These rights
can be negotiated but theymust not be pirated.
The Labour Party has set its
stall out to address the “bigpicture”. At a global level,

contraction is the big idea
which holds the picture together. Without it, nothing issustainable. There is a growing awareness that sustainability can only be achieved if
it is founded on the primacyof global equity in preference
to free markets and newtechnology. If John Prescott
can broker agreement on thisbasis, it will be the mostethical policy the world hasseen.

June 19 - Guardian

Emissions that count“.....But hovering in thewings is a proposal, known
to be acceptable to almost
everyone in the developingworld and increasingly by
the developed countries. It
would seem to resolve
almost all US objections to
the Kyoto agreement, andhas the advantage of being
demonstrably fair, pragmatic and politically neutral.
“Contraction and Convergence” (C&C), dreamed upby the small Global Commons Institute in London, isbased on two principles:that global emissions ofgreenhouse warming gases
must be progressively
reduced and that global
governance must be basedon justice and fairness.
Rather than look at emissions on a country bycountry basis, C&C proposes reducing emissions
on a per capita basis.
It means agreeing internationally how rapidly greenhouse gas emissions should

contract each year and thenallocating permits to emit
them to all countries on thebasis of their populations.
The permits would betradeable, so that thosecountries which could not
manage within their allocations could buy extra ones
from those with a surplus.
It would strengthen the
global economy and address many of the concernsof the WTO, the IMF and
the World Bank by channelling money to poor countries not as aid but as aright. Its simplicity and its
potential is appealing and it
has powerful supporters,
including Svend Auken, theDanish environment minister, his counterpart Jan
Pronk in Holland, Michael
Meacher in Britain, Jacques
Chirac and Klaus Topfer of
the UN environment department. The British royalcommission on environmental pollution has advised thegovernment to press for an
approach like this, and111

many developing countries,
including China and India
and the Africa group, havevoiced support. Insurers
and MPs from various
countries, even US senators, have publicly shown
enthusiasm. Even Tony Blair
has said that the C&C
approach “merits full consideration....”
Full article at:www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/
globalwarming/story/
0,7369,509220,00.html

August 1998 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Climate, Justice, Development – A Policy
Briefing to the Non Aligned Movement on
Climate Change; the case for Global Equity” –Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

November - Environment

The P
olitics of Buenos Aires
Politics
Success at COP 4 will dependon the unprecedented interaction of many political dimensions and cannot be predictedusing traditional analysis.

tural revolutions of previous
centuries. It is a question notsimply of what countries will
do but how they organize
what must be done.

A particular mindset andconsiderable determination
will be necessary to influence,or at least substantially track,
the politics of the Fourth
Conference of the Parties tothe UN Convention on Climate
Change (COP 4) in Buenos
Aires in early November. On
one level, the political issues
debated in Argentina will bevery simple: Nations will
engage in re-engineering theireconomies for the 21st century in line with the provenneed to substantially reducethe burning of fossil fuels.
Viewed at length, however,this is a paradigm shift on parwith the industrial or agricul-

A shift of this magnitude hasabundant complexities. National efforts to redress pastfollies are expressed in technically complex negotiations,largely conducted using the
ground rules of traditional
diplomacy. The process isboth geographically dispersedand bureaucratically arcane.
The number of people party
to the negotiations is inevitably small and their disagreements are not easily explicable to the general public.
Inevitably but regrettably, thissemipublic process is beingheavily lobbied by interests
vested in the fossil fuel industry who seem to cultivate

112

confusion and promote inaction. Timing becomes thedilemma: Action needs to betaken immediately to mitigate
adverse consequences in thenext century. Parliamentarydemocracies, however, favor
four-year time frames.
The scope of climate disruption is genuinely global andrequires a global response,
but current global institutions
are inefficient, partial, untried,
and in some cases as yet
uninvented. The slow andpainful process of institutional
reform will most likely behindered by current economic
distress unless the crisis
proves so catastrophic that it
provokes a fundamental
reformation of ideas.
Success at COP 4 will dependon the unprecedented interac-tion of many political dimensions and cannot be predictedusing traditional politicalanalysis. Major players in thissystem cannot opt for anything less than success.
Failure is difficult to explain
domestically, especially considering that renowned scientists continue to present thestark national consequencesof international failure.
As the process deepens, it
inevitably involves a greaternumber of countries and awider range of political elites.
The work initiated by scientists and civil servants has
been taken up by diplomats
and environment ministers. It
now also requires parliamentarians to ratify decisions
while finance ministers consider the fiscal and monetaryconsequences. In each political system the climate change
debate highlights the weak
points of a national culture.
The U.S. administration finds
itself blocked by a lobbydriven Congress. The European Commission must negotiate under the constraint of
the national sensitivities of 15
governments. In Japan, theissue is fought out by rival
bureaucracies and reflected in
the fractured party politics of
the Diet. In China, only recently have the ecologicalcosts of the country’s intensive industrialization been
seriously acknowledged.
In India, a new government
seeks to be the regional
superpower while most of her
nearly one billion people
continue a rural struggle forsurvival in an ever morefragile environment.
As a small group of environmentally committed parliamentarians. Global Legislators

Organisation for a Balanced
Environment (GLOBE), basedin Brussels, recognizes thescale of the political task thatfaces participating nations.
However, GLOBE believes that
there are ways to avoid being
overcome by a millennial
pessimism. The group has
sought to find a common
language and an acceptable
time frame in which to conduct these political debates.
GLOBE has adopted andpromoted the “contraction
and convergence analysis”
developed by the Global
Commons Institute, whichaims to determine theamount by which global
carbon emissions must be
reduced and how to distributethe burden equitably. The
analysis, as shown in the
figure on the next page, is anelegant representation of thechallenge that faces humanity
and the solution that lies
within our grasp. It is, however, merely a model to frame
diplomatic and political activity. It is not an answer, amandate, or a magic totem. It
illustrates the shared natureof humanity’s predicamentand points towards a conclusion that maximizes both
efficiency and equity. It
provokes ideas to enable
political elites to escape fromthe four-year time trap. It has
visual impact, and it powerfully communicates the natureof the choices to the world’s
electorates. It seeks to use
instruments such as markets
to correct the malfunctions
that we unknowingly stumbled into in the adolescenceof our industrial age, allwithin an achievable politicaltime scale.
It has neither winners nor
losers. It points to those113

habits that will destroy us, aswell as to those survival..
instincts that can save us.
As the technical battles rageover sinks and senates, clean
development mechanisms anddirty politics, we all muststruggle to keep our heads
above the wealth of demands.
Our constant concern must be
to keep our bearings and ask
ourselves whether any particular decision takes us closer
to the rendezvous with reality.
Never before has humanity
been so starkly faced with the
choice of “hanging together,
lest we hang separately.”
Tom Spencer
GLOBE International
Brussels and Chairman,
European ParliamentForeign Affairs Committee
NOTE: The figure shows
information on four axes:
The lower horizontal axis
is a time series in years
from 1860 to 2100: theupper horizontal axis
shows concentrations of
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide rising from
280 parts per million by
volume (ppmv) to 450
ppmv over the same time
period; the left-handvertical axis shows tons ofcarbon measured as‘gigatons’ (billions of
metric tons) from carbon
dioxide emissions fromfossil fuel burning from all
countries globally. The
countries are organized
into three groups: thecountries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) at the bottom
with the countries of theFormer Soviet Union
immediately above theOECD Together these twogroups comprise theIndustrial Country groupor the so-called Annex Iof the FCCC. All the remaining countries of theworld are above the Annex I group. In eachgroup the countries areordered upwards fromlargest to smallest emitter
based on 1990 carbon
dioxide output values; theright-hand vertical axis
shows temperature as
points of a degree Celsius.
The two overall time periods
are the past andthe future. The
past is reported
from observed
data. The future
is not a prediction- it is a projectionof Global Commons Institute’s(GCIs) “Contraction and Convergence” model.
Note that concentrations rosefrom 280 ppmv to360 ppmv by
2000, a rise of 30
percent above pre-industrial(observed data continues until
1997); global mean temperature rose by 0.6 of a degree
Celsius (observed data continues until 1997): data forcarbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuel burning is thatreported by the Carbon
Dioxide Analysis and Information Center (reported data foremissions continue until 1996
followed by estimates reported by the developed
countries for themselves until
2000). The developing countries between 1997 and 2000
were assumed to continue
growing at the growth rate
averaged in the first part ofthe decade.

The future (from 2000 to2100) is an example of “Contraction and Convergence.”
This is a projection and canbe revised during the budget
period. It is just one example
among an array of possibilities of how the model mightultimately be used to getinternational agreement
The rates of “Contraction andConvergence” are assumed
to be 100 percent flexible
within the constraints of thealgorithms. Consequently theallocations that result from anagreement based on “Contraction and Convergence”
need to be internationallytradable with 100 percent
flexibility as well.
“Contraction” is shown here
so that greenhouse gas
emissions are steadily reduced globally by 2100 to anannual output value of 40
percent of 1990 output values. The integral (accumulated total) of this particular
contraction budget (2000 to2100) is 640 gigatons carbon.
Taking the average of the
IPCC climate models, thisgives a stabilization value by
2100 for atmospheric concen-

114

tration of carbon dioxide of
450 ppmv as a suggested
value for meeting the objective of the FCCC. The purpose of this aspect of the
figure is to demonstrate thatstabilization of atmosphericgreenhouse gas concentrations requires by definition acontraction budget. Albeit withdifferent integrals and timeframes this is true no matter
which outcome greenhousegas concentration value ischosen.
“Convergence” inthe model is the
specific and progressive method oforganizing thefuture international
shares of theagreed contraction
budget in a mannerthat is globally
inclusive, globally
equitable, and also
globally tradable.
Convergence starts
from whatever the
initial given distribution is andprogresses incrementally to achosen date in the next
century (in this example it is2030) after which international shares of the global
contraction budget stay equal
on a per capita basis globally.
The model also enables the
population numbers (United
Nations medium fertility
predictions to 2050) to befrozen in the accounts at any
date (in this example it is2030).
The whole exercise taken
together should be regarded
as “Contraction, Convergence, Allocation and Trade.”
SOURCE:
Global Commons Institute.

November 5 - Buenos Aires

Global Equity is at the Heart of the
Solution
By Aubrey Meyer, Directorof GCI, based in London.
Correcting global inequity
is at the heart of thesolution to global climatechange. Without this,
there is no role for developing countries.
Without this and without
all of us, there is no solution to climate change.
The impact of expanding
human greenhouse gas (ghg)emissions on the climate
system is causing global
temperature to rise, putting
everyone at risk. The patternsof global consumption behind
this impact are deeply divergent. Globally and historically,
it is a minority of people thathas caused these impacts.
Emissions of ghgs have been
accumulating in the atmosphere since the beginning ofindustrialization. 80% of thisaccumulated impact has comefrom the less than 20 of
global population living in theindustrial north. Since themoney supply and ghg emissions are closely correlated,
those making the money havebeen making the mess. At
present, one third of the
global population has 94% of
the global purchasing power,
the other two thirds theremaining 6. Most, but not allof that upper third live in theindustrialised countries benefiting from the institutions of
their accumulated wealth. A
fatalistic maxim says the richget richer while the poor getpoorer. This now misses thepoint. All of us - rich and poor
- have a dwindling future

because of these impacts.
While there may historicallybe no justice between thedivergent rich and poor,
global climate changes now
threaten all of us with chaos.
The global environmental
justice of climate change will
be either correcting inequity
and preventing climatechange, or living in conditions
that become unbearable forall. How do we achieve theformer path?
The objective of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC) is to stabilise risingconcentration of greenhousegas (ghg) in the atmosphere.
By definition this requires a
global contraction of ghg
emissions from humansources to 60 to 80% lessthan at present. The sooner
this is achieved, the lower theultimate concentration -andtherefore temperature anddamage - level will be. The
Kyoto Protocol created in
December 1997 was a firstflawed and inadequate attempt to introduce legallybinding commitments tobegin this contraction. Industrial countries are supposed
to take this lead. But the
wrangling continues as the US
has refused to ratify theProtocol saying that unless all
countries are involved theeffort will be futile because it
is one-sided. They say to beeffective we must have“globality” or “meaningful
participation by developing
countries.” They also specify“maximum flexibility” or the115“international tradability ofthese commitments,” so they
are achieved “efficiently” or atlowest cost. These are rational arguments. Effectiveness and efficiency are indeed
two of the three pre-conditions of success. However thethird is global equity, thefounding principle of the
Climate Convention. Without
this point, the inevitable
moral basis of any global
rationale - we face continuing
political division and deepening ecological adversity.
Global equity here simply
means how is the global ghg
contraction budget sharedinternationally? Taken together, how do we effectively
calculate and equitably share
this budget? And then how
also do we efficiently manage
these shares, so that thewhole operation succeeds atleast damage cost and abatement cost globally? The
answer is “Contraction, Convergence Allocation andTrade”.
COP agrees to a safe global
atmospheric ghg concentration target. This, by definition
creates a long-term global
ghg emissions contraction
budget. Inside it shares arelegitimate and outside it they
are “hot-air.” When necessary
it can be revised, but it is anunavoidably necessary step.
COP also agrees that theinternational shares of thisbudget are negotiated using
the principle of convergenceto equal per capita shares
globally by an agreed date,with pro rata reduction there-after. Again revision over time
may be required. The combination of these operations
result in an internationallycomplete and equitable set of
ghg allocations that arelegally binding limitations of
reductions and also fullyinternationally tradable
shares. The international
distribution of shares is mostsensitive to the rates of“Contraction and Convergence” as the graphic examples show. The faster theconvergence the greater theshare to the low per capita
consumers. Noting the “historic responsibility of theIndustrial Countries” andusing the “maximum flexibility” -and acting positively inunison as a majority -thedeveloping countries cannegotiate an ‘accelerated
convergence’ and acquire themajority shares in a futurecarbon budget that is also
globally safe. They can thenalso sell their surplus sharesto the industrial countries inwhat will be a very lucrative
market to determine their
future sustainable development. This is equity andsurvival in a nutshell. Clearly
the opportunity to do this isbetter than ever. The Heads
of State at the September
Summit of the 113 countriesof the Non-Aligned Movement(NAM) in Durban, South
Africa signalled for the firsttime as a majority bloc ofcountries their positive engagement with regard to
globality, efficiency and equity.

commitments can only commence after issues relating to
the principles, modalities, etc.
of such trading, including theinitial allocations of emissions
entitlements on an equitablebasis to all countries, hasbeen agreed upon by theParties to the Framework
Convention on Climate
Change.”“Contraction, Convergence
Allocation and Trade” isalready a widely known wayof negotiating this. The European Parliament recently
voted for this approach with amajority of ninety percent infavour. The Africa Group of
Nations had already adopted
this position before COP3.
Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) is directly a result of
the Chinese and Indian delegations rightly demanding
equitable allocations at theend of COPS, and the NAM
statement now consolidates
that.
Before during and since
Kyoto, GLOBE International
has campaigned for this witha growing number of parliamentarians and with growing
success in over one hundred
countries, including the US.
The NAM grouping adopting
this rationale can now begin
the end of global apartheid inwhat becomes everyone’s
rational campaign for equity
and survival.

The final NAM resolutions
state terms for an equitableglobal partnership to solve
climate change. “Emission
trading for implementation of(reduction or limitation)

116

117

November 12 - Buenos Aires Herald

Will Mandela end ‘‘global
global apartheid’?
By Genevieve Cooper
Among the international
government figures andadvocates of every stripe
present at the UN climatechange conference here,
Aubrey Meyer stands out.
A passionate and intense
advocate of a unique idea tohead off an environmental
disaster and create global
equity, Meyer has attracted
more attention than ministers
and environmentalists. The
conference’s official newsletter described him serenadingcleaning staff and security
guards with the violin pastmidnight on Friday. A columnist in the newsletter of anenvironmental group depicted
him as “a tall, pony-tailed
type,” “on the brink of a
psychotic episode.”
Meyer, 51, is the director of
the London-based Global
Commons Institute (GCI). GCI
is an organization dedicatedto global environmental issues
with a small budget derived
from philanthropist donations.
He also is an independent
policy consultant for Globe
International, an organizationof some 500 legislators fromaround the world who cooperate on global environmental
issues.
Meyer’s personality andbackground, including theway he got involved in environmental issues, are unusual. What led to his founding
GCI was his wish to write awrite a musical, he said in aninterview with the Herald.
Born in the United Kingdom,
Meyer was raised in South

Africa where he studied
music. He then left South
Africa to continue his musicstudies in London and over
the years performed as anorchestra violinist in England,
Ireland and Portugal.
In the early 80s Meyer wrote
an orchestral score for theRoyal Ballet in London which
was successful in England andabroad.

In 1988 while he was thinking
about writing a musical,
Meyer came across the storyof murdered Brazilian ecologist Chico Mendez. At first
thinking Mendez would be agood subject for a musical, hefound himself drawn to abudding green movement.
Having avoided activism
against apartheid in his native
country, he decided it wastime to get involved in theenvironment issue, he said.
GCI was born in 1989.
Since then, GCI has devised
an organizing principle withwhich to approach the climatechange problem, and Meyer
came to the conference topersuade others that his plan
would both control global
warming and also end what
Meyer refers to as “global

118

apartheid” — the disparity
between developed anddeveloping countries.
Delegates at the conference
are wrangling to determine
how developed and developing countries will share theburden of stabilizing risinggreenhouse gas emissions
believed to be responsible for
global warming. Under the
1997 Kyoto Protocol, developed countries adopted what,
if ratified, will become legallybinding targets to reduce
emissions. Developing countries have not yet committed
to emissions reductions andthere are differences amongdeveloping countries overwhether and how they will
participate.
In Meyer’s view, the Kyoto
Protocol “creates a very
inequitable and unsustainableprecedent.” Developing countries’ participation is essential,
he says, but adds, “how the
problem is going to be shared
has got to be equitable or
there’s not going to be asolution.” Meyer’s plan is tocap global emissions worldwide. Of that amount, eachcountry — industrialized anddeveloping - would have apermit to emit a certain
share. In time, a country’s
permits to emit C02 would
become proportional to its
population, meaning that theindustrialized nations which
now have approximately 20
percent of the population but
produce 80 percent of thegreenhouse emissions would
have to reduce their emissions to match their
populations or buy permits

from developing countries.
“If they (the US) can’t deliver
cuts at that rate, they don’t
have to. They can buy backfrom the credit available inother people’s surplus,” Meyer
explained.
The tradability of emissions
rights is controversial. Meyer
says when emission rights are
assigned and traded they
become property rights.
Environmentalists say it is aright to pollute and therefore
not a property right. He andenvironmentalists also disagree on the timing of phasingout fossil fuels. Some environmentalists want fossil fuelseliminated immediately.
Meyer’s plan allows time tophase them out.
The US has not been enthusiastic about “Contraction andConvergence, Allocation andTrade,” as Meyer’s idea isknown. However, the scheme
grew partially out of US
demands for emissions trading and “meaningful participation” of developing countries
in emissions reductions.
Meyer has been lobbying withmore success in other regions.
China, India, the Africa Groupof Nations, the European
Parliament and the NonAligned Movement have eachmade statements or resolutions in support of per-capita
emission rights distribution,
he said.

promoting Contraction andConvergence with seemingly
everyone he meets, distributing colourful graphs anddevoting hours to explaining
the complicated plan. He also
has been trying to get
Mandela and US Vice-President Al Gore to come to theconference and shake hands.
A handshake between
Mandela and Gore could push
the Convention toward fullparticipation and an equitableapproach to mitigating climatechange, Meyer believes.
Although Mandela and Gore
have so far not heeded his
plea, Meyer is a very persuasive man and has shaken up
NGOs with the rapid spread of
his idea and his certainty that
his idea is the way the world
should go - so much so that acolumnist in the newsletter ofan environmental groupcoalition called him a “dangerous madman” who, “seems tobelieve he is the only person
who knows THE Truth about
the climate.”
Meyer thought the critique
was amusing and gave thenewsletter to the Herald.
Globe International will hold aforum to discuss Contraction
and Conversion today atnoon.

South African President Nelson Mandela is the current
president of NAM and is awareof the Contraction and Convergence argument. Mandela
is in a position, according to
Meyer, “to open the politicalspace necessary to end global
apartheid.”
At the conference, Meyer is

119

1999
March - Ecologist

Contraction & Convergence
BY JOHN BROAD -countries emissions are up to
30 times less than those ofindustrialised states; and that
their priority is development,
for which they want to use
fossil fuels as the North has
done; and that the Northshould use its accumulatedof reduction which are much
lower than that which climaThe adoption of a global
tologists have suggested isprogramme of ‘Contraction
necessary. Nothing is said
and Convergence’ offers theabout the cuts which must be
potential to break the staleachieved globally, or about amate in the internationaltarget date for achieving them.
negotiations on climate
Even if the industrialisedchange and to set incountries all ratified
place afar more
and implemented theeffective and inclusive
The fundamental advantage oftreaty, global emispolitical mechanism tosions are likely tothis approach is that its per capita basis
curb the consumption
grow. Who is to say
providesanorganisingprinciple
fortheof fossil fuels in allwhether this would
negotiations which all the parties recogcountries.
result from industrialnise as fair and equitable.
The climate change
ised countries not
Essentially, humanity is facing a global
negotiations being
cutting their emissions
held under the aussecurity crisis and needs to drasticallysufficiently or from thepices of the United
ration what is currently a vital resource,
developing countries
Nations are stuck in
letting their emissions
the absorptive capacity of the atmosan apparently intracrise too much?
phere. As Europeans discovered in two
table impasse. The
World Wars, a rationing system works
If the current logjam
US Congress refuses
best when it is perceived to be fair.
is to be unblocked theto ‘ allow ratification
diplomatic processof the Kyoto protocol
As the Global Commons Institute puts
must find a means ofuntil major developing
it, this is equity for survival.
answering this quescountries commit
tion. The only one sothemselves to curbing
far proposed is called
their own greenhouse“Contraction and Convergas emissions. Congress
wealth to solve the problem.
gence”. This is a programmeargues that if energy demandPartly as a result of this imdevised by the Global Comcontinues to rise on current
passe, the Kyoto Protocol,mons Institute and advocatedtrends, developing countries
which is the culmination of
by GLOBE International (thewill be responsible for more
eight years of negotiations,Global Legislators Organisation
than half of global emissions
and which in some respects is for a Balanced Environment).
by 2020. Hence they have thea historic achievement, is
An increasing number ofpotential to undermine any
totally inadequate by compari- governments in Europe andcuts, however dramatic, unson with the kind of comprethe south are signalling thatdertaken by the industrialised
hensive long-term global
they too see it as the basis ofcountries.
agreement that is necessary if a long term solution.
Developing countries, meanhumankind is to solve the
How would ‘“Contraction andwhile, argue that historically,
problem of climate change.
Convergence” work? “Contracemissions from industrialised
Target reductions in greention” refers to the need tocountries are the main causehouse gas emissions are set
reduce global emissions ofof global warming; that, on a
only for the industrialised
greenhouse gases to a level
per capita basis, developing
countries, and at implied rates
that would result in establish-

120

ing what science regards as aprobably tolerable atmosphericconcentration. Effectively thiswould create a global “budget”
of greenhouse gas emissions.
This budget necessarily declines over lime until a stable
point is reached (and as thescience improves, our perception of what that point is maychange, so any treaty must
contain provisions for changing the global budgets).

tem works best when it isperceived to be fair. As the
Global Commons Institute puts
it, this is equity for survival.

Implementation of this mechanism could help overcome thecurrent international stalemate
by addressing a number of the
key concerns of the major
players. Acceptance by Northern governments that the
global emissions budget
should converge to equity“Convergence” allocateswould be a major step andshares in that budget to thewould encourage Southernemitting nations on the basis
governments to accept a capof equity. This has three
on their own emissions. This incomponents. First, the budget turn would fulfil the demands
is global; every country hasof the US for an international
shares in the atmosphere and process which committed all
any treaty that allocates its
countries to reduce or limit
absorptive capacity only to atheir greenhouse gas emisselection of countries effecsions, as stipulated by thetively deprives the others.
Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed
Second, the current situation
unanimously by the US Senwhereby allocations are gener- ate.
ally proportional to wealth
There are practical implications
would cease. Third, allocationsof reaching a long-term global
should converge over time to aagreement on an equitable
position where entitlements
basis which quickly become
are proportional to population.
apparent. Developing counAfter convergence, all countries would have a directtries would contract their
incentive to conserve energy
greenhouse gas emissions
and transfer quickly to renewequally until the necessaryable, non-fossil-fuel-based
contraction limit is reached. No
energy paths. For under the
inflation of national budgets in“Contraction and Converresponse to rising population
gence” mechanism, they will
would be permitted after anacquire surplus emissionagreed set date.
entitlements which they can
The fundamental advantage of sell on the open market tothis approach is that its per
finance the creation of renewcapita basis provides an orable energy infrastructures.
ganising principle for the
These in turn will increasenegotiations which all thetheir surplus entitlements.
parties recognise as fair andIndustrial countries, with theirequitable. Essentially, humanmuch higher per capita energy
ity is facing a global security
use and thus greenhouse gas
crisis and needs to drastically
production, may choose to buy
ration what is currently a vitalemission permits to gain aresource, the absorptive
little time. But they will needcapacity of the atmosphere. As
to make major cuts and their
Europeans discovered in two
main efforts would need to go
World Wars, a rationing sysinto conservation and renew-

121

able technologies. With appropriate monitoring, verificationand enforcement, this tradingmechanism, administered by ademocratically accountableinternational body, could help
achieve overall contraction
more rapidly and cheaply, andcertainly it should not sufferfrom the “leakage” expected
to result from the sub-global
mechanisms set up under the
Kyoto protocol. But the result
might be much more positive.
The world might discover, forthe first time, that it is possible
to cooperate at a global level
and work towards a common
goal; it might prove to bemuch easier than expected tode-link the historic connection
between the burning of fossil
fuels and the creation ofhuman wealth.

“Contraction and Convergence” thus has the potential to be the most rational,
effective and rapid means to
end the consumption offossil fuels globally. In thewords of Aubrey Meyer,
Director of GCI, “The integrated implementation ofthis ‘Contraction and Convergence Allocation andTrade’ programme can turna presently dangerous
global vicious circle ofpolitical stalemate andecological dissipation into
virtuous cycles of recovery
and renewal. The consensus
for survival needs thisstructure. Political andecological anarchy is analternative that guarantees
nothing but increasing
tragedy.”
John Broad
ChairmanGlobal Commons Trust,
Charitable Foundation

June - Atmospheric Environment

New Directions: R
ebuilding the Climate
Rebuilding
Change Negotiations
Philippe Pernstich
The Buenos Aires round ofclimate change negotiations
have demonstrated that the
Kyoto Protocol is a landmark
on the road to nowhere. The
continuing divisions over thedetails of the so-called Kyoto
Mechanisms are an indicationthat the Protocol is not only
inadequate in addressing thescientific facts of climatechange, but it is also politically unworkable.
The debate over voluntarytargets, emissions trading and
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have distracted
attention away from the 2nd
review of the adequacy ofcommitments under theConvention.
Consequently, the only conclusion to emerge from Buenos
Aires on this point was an
acceptance that the Kyoto
Protocol was not sufficient toprevent harmful climaticchange. Any talks about moremeaningful measures, however, have been postponed.
The present impasse in thenegotiations is the result of a
failure to address the fundamental problem of distributionof a limited resource that is
far outstripped by demand. Bytaking an historic perspectiveon the matter and trying toagree on cuts of emissions
from present and past levels,
we are bound to miss boththe scientific goal of concentration stabilisation and thepolitical requirement for
equity.
Instead, we should be looking

at the resources safely available to us in the future andsolve the question of distribution from that angle.
Equity has so far been thegreatest stumbling block ofnegotiations since the very
beginning of the process in1990. The resulting division
into Annex I and non-Annex 1
countries along the North
South divide seemed theobvious answer from thehistoric perspective. Taking
this division into the future,
however, will preserve theimbalance without slowing
down the climatic change.
There is no question thatdeveloping countries will not
be able to increase emissions
indefinitely, so any delay inthe shift towards more sustainable development paths
ultimately represents a loss ofopportunity for these countries. No one can deny the
Untied Slates’ claim thatclimate change is a global
problem and the conclusionthat it therefore requires a
global solution should be
obvious.
The problem of distributing ascarce resource on a global
scale can only be solved on an
equitable basis. This is not forany ethical considerations, hutsimply because it is the only
chance of reaching an agreement that all major parties
can accept. There are fivecriteria which will determine
the success of any distribution
model:The basis of allocation must
be known to each party and122

known to be known by otherparties (Barret. 1992 in:Combating Global Warming,
Study on a global system oftradeable carbon emission
entitlements. United Nations,
New York).
Moral arbitrariness should be
avoided (Kverndokk, Environmental Ethics, 4 (2) 1995, pp.
129-148).
The system should follow a
simple allocation rule
(Kverndokk, 1995 and Barret1992). It should be consistent
with other international policy
goals, e.g. poverty alleviationin developing countries (Rose.
1992 in: Combating Global
Warming).
Any reallocation of emission
permits should cause minimal
disruption in the short term.
The targets set in the Kyoto
Protocol clearly fail the first
three of these criteria. The
complete lack of any underlying structure to the Protocolmeans that it can only lead toa dead-end. The focus ofnegotiations needs to shift
towards establishing a framework upon which to build along-term, efficient and effective solution to global warming.
One proposal for such aframework that arises out of
the consideration of the fivecriteria listed above is known
as ‘Contraction and Convergence’. Unlike the present
approach, this takes theultimate objective of emission
stabilisation as its starting
point to determine a global
emissions curve over a fixedperiod of 50-100 yr. or more.
This global budget is thenallocated to countries according to a convergence path toequal per capita entitlements
by an agreed date. The entitlements are allocated inbudget periods of up to five
years and start out in the first
period with the current distribution of per capita emissions, in each subsequent
period the allocation is adjusted to narrow the present
inequity in emissions until all
countries receive equal per
capita entitlements.
‘Contraction and Convergence’is a political framework thatcan only work if all parties
accept the need to compromise in order to achieve theConvention’s ultimate objective. If this is achieved, then‘Contraction and Convergence’is the structure that can form
the basis of negotiations
regarding global budgets andtarget dates. Without it, theacceptance of compromise will
never he turned into commitments if each of the 160
countries apply their own
criteria.
In practical terms, for a stabilisation scenario off CO2 at
450 ppmv, for example, thiswould mean that most developing countries would beallocated an increasing budget

up to 2030 (see Fig. 1).

best.

In the case of the least developed countries, entitlements
would grow well beyond any
reasonably realistic growth ofactual consumption, resulting
in a surplus of entitlements.
At the same-time industrialised countries would facequite rapid cuts in their entitlements reflecting thepresent gross over-consumption. Under a regime of convergence of emission entitlements, trading of emissions is
not only efficient but necessary. Reductions are achievedat least cost, a transfer ofresources to developing
countries occurs and eventhose countries without any
real constraints on emissions
in the near future have a real
incentive to minimise theiremissions.

If the climate change negotiations are not to fail or become
meaningless in the next few
years, it will be necessary totake a big step back before
progressing on a more principled basis. Politically, thechallenge will be to achieve
this without a seeming loss offace on any side. For thisreason, the new approach
would have to be initiated inparallel with the conclusion of
the Kyoto Protocol.

Trading under these circumstance would he very different
from the present proposals,
where a weak trading regime
including ‘hot air’ amongst
industrialised countries only isfurther undermined by hypothetical savings achieved
through the CDM and Joint
Implementation. If credits
from these mechanisms canhe used to offset domestic
action, the Kyoto commitmentof a 5.2 reduction may wellturn out to he stabilisation at

123

Fig. 1. Stabilisation scenario of
CO2 at 450 ppmv under “Contraction and Convergence”
including the Kyoto commitments. Convergence is completed by 2030 with a 70%
reduction in CO2 over 1990
levels. (AOSIS = Associationof Small Island States;
JUSCANZ - Japan. USA.
Canada. Australia. New Zealand.)September 21 - Independent

Paying for pollution
Sir: For the last 200 years,
wealth creation in the industrialised countries has beenrunning up an environmental
debt on the global account (“‘Too late to stop global warming’ “,16 September). The
scale of this debt dwarfs thefinancial debt owed by developing countries to their polluting creditors. Because of this,such “external” debts should
be cancelled forthwith.
This global debt arises withthe accumulation of pollution
from fossil fuel consumption
in the “commons” of the
global atmosphere. This
pollution mirrors the wealthand shows that those making
the money have been making
the mess.
The scale and rate of thisbuild up of “greenhousegases” are completely without
precedent. To an alarming
degree, we are all alreadylocked into long-term global
trends of increasing andpotentially unqualifiable socialand environmental damages.
This is the real debt crisis.
Continuing with this increasing chaos may well trigger theultimate threat to humansociety-a “runaway greenhouse effect” beyond therelevance of human “policy”
to avert or adjust to it. In thiscontext of rising risk, it issimply absurd to continue touphold the legitimacy of theunrepayable external debts ofvery poor countries.
The debts were odious without climate change. These
countries that are repeatedly“restructured” to repay them
are now additionally exposedto the increasing risks andtraumas of climate changes
caused by accumulating
pollution from their “creditors”.
Developing countries - in theirown as well as everyone’s
interest- will have to become
part of the arrangements forthe restraint of global green-124

house gas pollution. However,as a precondition of developing countries negotiating
future commitments to restrain their pollution, the“external” debts should becancelled outright and immediately.
AUBREY MEYER

September 8 - The Guardian

Spinning out of control
World economy expanding, greenhouse gases
reducing. Good news?
Don’t you believe it, warn
Aubrey Meyer and Richard
Douthwaite
When BP-Amoco announced
at the end of last month thatthe 6.5bn tons of fossil fuelthe world burnt last year was
half a per cent less than theyear before, the Worldwatch
Institute in Washington
greeted the statement as
uniquely good news.
For the first time in history,
the institute said, greenhousegas emissions had fallen in aperiod in which the world
economy, which grew 2.5% in
1998, had continued to expand. This suggested that
economic expansion was
being “de-linked” from carbon
emissions, undercuttingarguments that reducing
emissions would damage theeconomy.
In the past two years,
Worldwatch explained, theglobal economy had grown by
6.8%, while carbon emissions
had held steady. This had led
to “an impressive 6.4% decrease in the amount ofcarbon emissions required to
produce $1,000 of income”.
The improvement in energy
efficiency had come about asa result of higher standards
and the removal of energy
subsidies.
The British media gave theWorldwatch press releasegenerous and uncritical cover-age. The BBC even produced
a graph, which is now on its
website, showing that almost
250 tons of carbon had had to
be burnt in 1950 to produce$1m-worth of “wealth”, butthat it now took only 150 tons
to do the same thing.
The only thing which can be
welcomed wholeheartedly is
the fact that CO2 emissions in1998 were less than theprevious year. All the rest is
spin applied by Worldwatch toconvince US politicians thatthe consequences of ratifying
the Kyoto Protocol - an international agreement which
would legally bind the US to
cutting its greenhouse gas
emissions - might not be too
bitter a pill to swallow.
What the statement overlooks, however, is that emissions of greenhouse gases
from fossil fuel burning, which
are principally CO2, accumulate in the atmosphere. It is
this increasing concentrationof gases which is causing theworld’s temperature to rise
and the climate to becomeless stable. To stabilise theserising concentrations, emissions have to fall not by half a
per cent or even 10%. They
must be cut by 60-80% assoon as possible. The longer
the delay, the hotter theplanet will become. At the
Global Commons Institute we
decided to calculate what
would happen to levels of CO2
in the atmosphere if the rateof improvement in energy
efficiency detected byWorldwatch continued for the125

next 200 years while at thesame time the world economy
continued to grow at 3%, thesort of rate that the WorldBank and other authorities
would be pleased to see.
The results are staggering.
Global income would be 369
times above the present levelin 2200 and the efficiency
with which fossil fuel was
being used would have increased sixtyfold. Unfortunately, the level of carbon
dioxide in the atmospherewould be rising beyond 3,000

ppmv (parts per million by
volume) - 10 times the preindustrial concentration - withincalculable effects on theworld’s climate. Indeed, 45bn
tons of carbon would beemitted annually, comparedwith 7bn tons at present. In
other words, the rate ofefficiency improvement hailed
by Worldwatch is nothing likefast enough. So we did another calculation to determine
what the rate of efficiency
gain had to be to keep atmospheric concentrations of CO2
below 450ppmv if growthcontinued at 3%. The 450
ppmv figure is a current
international target for CO2
levels, despite the fact that it

is 70% above the pre-industrial level and takes theworld’s climate into totally
unknown territory since itwould be the highest CO2
concentration for 220,000
years.
Our results showed that worldenergy efficiency has to be
improved by between 4-5% a
year every year for 100 years
until the 450 ppm level isreached, and then by 3% a
year to maintain that level for
as long as the 3% rate of
economic growth continues.
In total, we would have toincrease our efficiency ofcarbon energy use by
173,000%, which is clearly
absurd. The question to be
asked, therefore, is whether
growth can continue. Certainly, it would be much easierto reduce our CO2 emissions
by the required amount if
growth stopped. According toProf Malcolm Slesser, of the
Resource Use Institute in
Edinburgh, around 55% of all
the fossil energy we use isrequired to make the growth
process happen. It is used tobuild the new factories, roads,
shopping centres and all theother things that economic
expansion entails.
Moreover, it doesn’t makesense to continue trying togrow economically if, by doing
so, we cause more damage to
our planet than the growth weachieve brings in benefits.
This could be happening
already because, while thefossil fuel we burn produces
just this year’s income, thegases that get released fromthat fuel stay in the atmosphere and will cause damage
every year for, perhaps, 100
years.

Worldwatch pointed out that
protecting ourselves against
rising sea levels and the otherconsequences of climatechange would take moreresources than the burning of
the fossil fuels had created in
the first place.
And what is the quality of thegrowth that is currently being
generated? Is it doing us, oranyone else, much good? It’s
certainly not curing global
poverty. Year after year, theUnited Nations Development
Project produces figures toshow that the gap between
rich and poor is widening,both within countries andbetween them. Growth as weknow it is making the world’s
divisions more extreme.
Thanks to its spin, theWorldwatch statement gave
the impression that a real
turning point had beenreached on the road to solving
the climate crisis and that
hard decisions need not betaken.
In other words, it suggested
that radical change could be
avoided and that economic
growth could go on. Whateverits political motives, it could
not have been more wrong.
• Aubrey Meyer is afounder of the Global
Commons Institutewww.gci.org.uk. An expanded edition of Richard
Douthwaite’s book, The
Growth Illusion, will be
published in October.

It is more than 10 years since126

Sustainable Development Agenda 1999

The correction of global
inequity is at the heart of thecrisis of global climatechange. Like it or not, thetime for sorting this out isnow, at the Fourth Conferenceof the Parties (COP4) inBuenos Aires in November
I998
The impact of expanding
human greenhouse gas (GHC)
emissions on the climate
system is causing global
temperatures to rise, putting
everyone at risk. The patternsof global consumption behind
this impact are deeply divergent, Globally, it is a minorityof people who have caused
these impacts. Emissions of
GHGs have been accumulatingin the atmosphere since thebeginning of industrialisation,and 80% of this accumulated
impact has come from lessthan 20% of the global population - those living in theindustrial north. Since money
supply and GHG emissions areclosely correlated, thosemaking the money have been
making the mess. As things
stand, the high-impact onethird of global population have
94% of global purchasing
power, the other two-thirds atvery low impact have theremaining 6%, and things are
getting worse, The fatalistic
maxim says the rich get richer
while the poor get poorer.
Maybe, but this now misses
the point. While there may
historically be no justicebetween them, rich and poor
alike are now threatened withthe worsening impacts ofglobal climate changes. Conditions will become unbearable
for all unless we now deliberately correct this ever moreunsustainable and inequitable
mess together, The United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created in 1992 forthis purpose. Its objective is
to stabilise the rising concentration of GHG at a level thatis not dangerous to ecosystems and humanity. Such isthe behaviour of the climate
system that this objective
requires a contraction of CHG
emissions from humansources to 60~80 less than atpresent. The Kyoto Protocol
created in December 1997
was the first attempt to introduce legally binding commitments to begin this contraction.
The industrial countries aresupposed to be “taking thelead”, but the wrangling
continues. The USA has
refused to ratify the protocol,
saying that, unless all countries are involved, the effort
will be futile because it is onesided. To be effective they say
we must have “globality” or‘’meaningful participation by
developing Countries’, as well
as “flexibility’’, or the “international tradability of the commitments”’, so that they areachieved ‘’efficiently’’ or atlowest cost.
Effectiveness and efficiency
are indeed two of the three
preconditions of success.
However, the third is global

127

equity, the founding principleof the Climate Convention.
With this we can share andthen trade a GHG contraction
budget internationally, enabling the operation to meetthe objective of the convention - at least damage costand abatement cost” globally.
To do this, Globe, the international network of parliamentarians, proposes “contraction,
convergence allocation andtrade”, the model created by
the Global Commons Institute(GCI). Based on. The best
available science and theconvention’s precautionary
principle, the COP could agree
a safe global atmospheric
GHG concentration target,
This, by definition would
create a global GHG emissions
contraction budget. Theinternational shares of this
could then be negotiatedusing the equity principle ofconvergence to equal percapita shares globally by anagreed date, with pro rata
reduction there-after.
Once these global principles
had been agreed and applied,
the resultant equitable international GHG shares could be
tradable.
The sale of surplus sharesfrom developing to developed
countries could generate
revenue for the former to“leap-frog” fossil fuel dependency to clean technology; withan interim “price buffer” forthe latter against prematurely
retired assets, while the whole
exercise accelerates theavoidance of future global
damage to everybody’s benefit. In short, the effectiveness of combining equity andefficiency is the “third way”,
because for the first time third
parties also win.
Some people have responded
saying “contraction and convergence’’ is intellectuallyperfect but politically impossible.
But is what is currently
deemed politically possible
under the UNFCCC and the
Kyoto Protocol also ecologically sustainable. And theanswer is no. The USA will
inevitably continue to oppose
sub-global arrangements; thedeveloping countries will
obviously continue to oppose
the disunity of global inequity;and the absurd quarrel will goon.

and survival as well. The
heads of state, at the September summit of the 113 countries of the NAM in Durban,
South Africa, signalled for the
first time, as a majority blockof countries, their positive
engagement with regard to
globality, equity and efficiency.
The final NAM resolutions
state terms for an equitableglobal partnership for emissions trading.
This means that the USA canhave the effectiveness ofglobality and the efficiency ofemissions trading, but only in
exchange for equitable allocations of emissions entitlements for all countries agreed
by all ‘countries.
Global equity is the key to thisfair exchange, and the opportunity to mandate it exists at
COP4 in Buenos Aires.

COP4 Buenos Aires is now an
opportunity to put things
right. “Contraction, convergence allocation and trade” isa widely known rationale fornegotiating a global package
for avoiding the dangerouschanges. The Africa group ofnations adopted this position
before Kyoto. The Chineseand Indian governments
declared for this position at
the end of Kyoto. Before,
during and since Kyoto, Globe
International has campaigned
for it with a growing numberof parliamentarians andgrowing success in over 100
countries worldwide, in conjunction with organisations
such as the Environmental
Justice Network Porum. The
European Parliament has just
voted for it with a majority of
10:1. And now the majority
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
group has, in effect, adopted
this rationale for global equity

128

2000
Economist (The world in 2000)

As things hot up
Global warming will preoccupy the next generation,
predicts Sir John Houghton of
the intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change.
One hundred years ago
Claude Monet painted scenesof London through its smoggy
atmosphere. That was local
pollution. What is relatively
new and more worrying is
global pollution—that ispollution emitted by people
locally that has global effects.
The first example to emerge
was damage to the earth’s
ozone layer. International
action was promptly taken
through the Montreal Protocol
to phase out the use of thechemicals responsible. Although full recovery of theozone layer will now happen.
It will take at least a century.
Another example is pollutionthat leads to global warming
and climate change. Carbon
dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases such as methane are released into theatmosphere through theburning of fossil fuels (coal,oil and gas) and also throughdeforestation. These gases
absorb “heat” radiation emitted by the earth’s surface thatwould otherwise be lost to
space, so maintaining thesurface and the lower atmosphere at a warmer level thannormal.
The amount of carbon dioxidein the atmosphere has already increased by over 30
since 1750 and. If no action istaken to stem the increase, itwill reach double its preindustrial value during thesecond half of the 21st century. As a result, the averagerate of warming of the climate
is expected to be greater thanat any time during the past
10.000 years. This is not of
itself necessarily bad; somecommunities will experience a
net benefit. But many ecosystems as well as humans willfind it difficult, if not impossible, to accept.
Although there is a lot of
uncertainty concerning thedetail, the basic science
underlying global warming
and climate change is wellunderstood. It is not in question. Hundreds of scientists
from over 50 countries havecontributed as authors orreviewers to the assessmentsof the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). Because of the uncertainties it is easy either toexaggerate the possible
impacts to calamitous proportions or to suggest that too
little is known to justify any
action. What the IPCC hasdone is explain clearly what is
known together with the
major uncertainties. Then
taking account of all relevantscientific data, best estimateshave been provided of climatechange and its impact overthe next century. Here are a
few of the IPCC’S main findings and an outline of theagenda for the years ahead.
First, largely because of the129

thermal expansion of ocean
water and the accelerated
melting of glaciers, sea levels
are likely to rise by approximately half a metre by 2100.
Therefore, sea defences inmany coastal regions willneed to be improved, albeit atconsiderable cost. However,adaptation is just not possible
for countries with large riverdeltas such as Bangladesh,many island states in the
Pacific.
A second major result of
global warming will, be on
average a more intensehydrological cycle leading to
impacts on water distribution
and availability. In many areas
heavy rainfall will tend to
become heavier while somesemi-arid areas will receive
less rainfall. There will be
more frequent and more
intense floods or droughts,
especially in sub-tropicalareas. Since, in many places,
water is rapidly becoming a
critical resource and since
floods and droughts are thenatural disasters that alreadycause most deaths, miseryand economic damage, these
could represent the mostdamaging impacts of global
warming. When combinedwith the rise in sea levels, a
recent study has estimatedthat this could lead to 150m
environmental refugees by
2050.
Three widely accepted principles will govern the international agreements needed tomeet this threat. The first isthe “Precautionary Principle”,
1997 is a first step. Necessary necessary action may costalready clearly imbedded in
post-Kyoto action, however
around 1% of the total world
the UN Framework Convenwill be more demanding. The
product, much less than thetion on Climate Change
rate of increase of global
likely cost of damage andagreed at the Earthadaptation if there is
Summit in Rio in
no action. If human1992. This states that
communities are to
However, a proposal of thethe existence ofbe fulfilled andGlobal Commons Institute that is
uncertainty should
creative, they not
being
widelydiscussed
appliesthenot preclude theonly need goals
taking of appropriate
related to theirsecond and third principles by alaction. The reason foreconomic performlowing eventually for the allocationsuch action is simply
ance but also moralof carbon emissions to nations onstated as the stabiliand spiritual goals.
an equal per capita basis while alsosation of the concenCare for the overall
allowing for emissions trading.
trations of greenhealth of the planet),
house gases (such as
is such a goal. It
carbon dioxide) in the
demands action byatmosphere in ways
scientists to providethat allow also for necessary
emissions must first be subbetter information about likely
economic development. The
stantially slowed: then there
climate change, by governsecond principle is the “Polmust be reductions in thesements to set the necessary
luter Pays Principle”, whichemissions to well below 1990
frameworks for change, by
implies the imposition oflevels before the end of thebusiness and industry to seize
measures such as carbon
next century. Many of thethe opportunities for innovatrading arrangements. The
required technologies to bring tion and the introduction of
third is the “Principle ofabout these reductions are
new technologies, and by all
Equity (both intergovernmenalready available, but theyworld citizens to support thetal and international)” which
require adequate resources
action being taken and conis the most difficult to apply.
for investment and developtribute to it.
ment. Studies show that the
The action agreed at Kyoto in

January 2000 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Guesswork Framework” –GCI’s submission to the IPCC Third Assessment of Climate Change, Working Group Three
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

130May 19 - Church Times

Preparing to fund the world
THE CAUSES of global warming are still uncertain. It is
likely, though, that both
camps in the debate are right:
we are currently near the
peak of one of the earth’s
natural cycles in temperature;and human activity is contributing to climate change.
Governments in the Westhave used the uncertainty tojustify inactivity, but, as Christian Aid points out, too many
people are at risk. Whether
the causes of disasters arenatural or unnatural, theireffects are observable and, insome measure, preventable.

reappraisal is needed of theirmandate, but the commitment
behind their deployment
remains.

It is possible to be optimistic.
Seen over the past few decades, the public in the developed countries has taken
steps towards a position of
global responsibility. Postimperialist attitudes towards
the Third World nations have
improved markedly.

These responses are pitifully
small when measured against
the scale of the disasters thatthreaten large numbers of theworld’s population. 100 million
currently at risk from drought
in northern India: a further 16
million in the horn of Africa.
One projection suggests thatthree billion people will be atrisk if changes to the climate
cannot be halted. Nevertheless, it could be argued that
the West has laid down theroots of a global ethic, of thekind advocated by Professor
Hans Kung. Let us hope thatthe roots are deep enough,for the task ahead is nothing
less than a dismantling of thematerialist vision that theWest has held so long and stillwishes to export to the developing world.

The international media
broadcast news of disasters
wherever in the world theyoccur, and the public response
is compassionate and generous. The failure of UN
peacekeepers in places like
Sierra Leone suggests a

For we are at a halfway
house. The Western public is
not heedless of the sufferingin the most vulnerable partsof the world; but it has yet tostand the test of sacrifice; tosee its standard of living
dropping in order to release131

the sums needed to sustain
distant sections of the world’s
population. For the immediate
future, this is the only way tofund feeding and resettlement
programmes for the large
numbers hit by drought or
flooding. Restrictions onenergy use by the West are
only one part of the answer.
The Western public must be
prepared to be taxed heavily
in order to fund resettlement
programmes, as parts of theworld become uninhabitable.
Satisfying Western consumer
desire must give way tomeeting Third World want.

May - Environmental Finance

Climate Change, Risk & Global Emissions
Trading
The potential costs of climatechange are staggering.
But, argue Aubrey Meyer
and Tony Cooper current
international policy isinadequate. The answer
lies in a truly global andequitable solution
Global weather patterns are
becoming increasingly variable
and violent as a result of thehigher temperatures causedby humankind’s pollution of
the global atmosphere. According to figures released
from German reinsurer Munich Re, economic losses fromnatural disasters have been
doubling every decade, from$53 billion in the 1960s to$480 billion in the 1990s.
80% of these are fromweather-related events. Thereis now great concern about
these damages and the reasons for their increase. Whatcan we do to limit further
increases in these damages?
The objective of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to stabilise therapidly rising concentrationsof greenhouse gases (ghgs) in
the atmosphere at a level thatprevents disaster.
The Kyoto Protocol - yet to be
ratified - will impose collectively slight but legally binding
commitments only on ‘Annex
Parties’ to the UNFCCC, inother words on those from thedeveloped country group only.
They alone will have to reduceor limit their net GHG emissions by an average of 5.2%
below 1990 levels, by theperiod 2008-2012.
As part of the process, theProtocol proposed the international trading of emissions
permits and the so-called‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM).
The questions are will thistrading happen, how will it be
structured and will it help?
If the planet’s climate system
is to be protected from dangerous disruption, a rapid andorderly retreat from fossil fueldependency in favour of clean
and renewable forms ofenergy is needed. Emissions
trading must be primarily
structured and directed to thisend. It will become a vital partof the process preventing theclimate from changing catastrophically if it is. If it is not,it will make matters worse.
We argue that the answer is“Contraction, Convergence,
Allocation and Trade” [C-CAT].
In a nutshell, countries agree
a reviewable global greenhouse gas emissions ‘contraction budget’ to match a precautionary and safe futurestable value for the rising(ghg) concentrations. Theinternationally tradable sharesin this budget are then agreed
on the basis of ‘convergence’from now, where shares areproportional to income, to atarget date in the budget
time-line after which theyremain proportional to anagreed base year of global
population.
Sinxe 1860 the global
economy has grown132

exponentially as a result offossil fuel fired industrialisation. During this period humanity has released an accumulated 250 billion tonnes ofthis carbon from the burningof oil, coal and gas to theglobal atmosphere (chart).
These fossil fuel emissions
have been increasing at an
average rate of 2% a year, toa current annual output ofaround six billion tonnes ofcarbon from CO2.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuelburning represent the principal contribution to humanenhanced global-warming.
Half of these emissions haveremained in the atmosphere,
raising CO2 concentrations
there by 35%, from the preindustrial 280 parts per million
by volume (ppmv) to a current 370 ppmv and with it,
temperature by almost 1ºC.
These trends are set to continue unless a major effort ismade to change them.
Climate scientists agree thatto stabilise these rising concentrations - and hopefully
thereby rising temperature requires cuts of 60%-80% of
these emissions globally assoon as possible. The longer
the delay the higher theconcentrations will be. The
risk of temperature rising at a
rate that dangerously accelerates the rate of global climatechanges increases
exponentially proportional todelay. Because of positive
feedbacks, delay potentiallytakes us beyond our ability toprevent damages at all. In thisworst case scenario, increasingly huge numbers of people
will die in these.
Extrapolation and guesswork
about the future effects ofclimate change misses thepoint. For dangerous changes
in global climate to be
avoided, a precautionary
framework for practical,
commercial-assisted action
has to be devised, agreed andimplemented.
The UNFCCC identified potentially dangerous climatechanges as a global problem.
Its global objective is seen as
dependent on observing theprinciples of precaution andequity along with the need for‘cost-effective’ measures.
In a literal sense the UNFCCC
can already be seen as the“United Nations Framework
Convention for Contraction
and Convergence”, because itembraces the: ¨ precautionary imperative ofcontracting human emissionsof greenhouse gases globallyby 60%-80% as soon as
possible;¨diplomatic imperative of‘convergence’, that is having aframework to share thisinternational task on the basisof global equity; and¨potential efficiency benefitsof using market mechanisms– such as international emissions trading and the CDM –to maximise globally equitableemissions reductions per unitof expenditure.
However, because emissions
reduction under Kyoto are
restricted to the industrialised
world, the US is ambivalent
about ratification, saying that
it is ‘anti-competitive.’ Its
position has been that thisglobal problem requires a

global solution, including
participation – that is, withbinding emissions limits – bydeveloping countries. These
have justifiably argued that as
the industrial countries havegrown rich emitting an accumulated 80% of the emissions
so far, they should take thelead in cutting the emissions
now without seeking to impose limitations on the rest of
the world.
This argument has dogged
negotiations at the UN for thelast ten years. Even if it is
temporarily overcome at the
6th Conference of the Parties
to the UNFCCC in the Hague
in November this year, approval of the US Senate isrequired for US ratification of
the Kyoto Protocol. Without
this the Protocol seems unworkable.
And even if this US veto isovercome, or if some key
developing countries are
persuaded to accept legallybinding emissions restraint
now and the Protocol is ratified, the problem won’t havegone away. It is obviously
global and global participationin global GHG reduction is
obviously needed.
For the moment the international dispute is further complicated by the fact that rules
about tradable emissions
rights – which are presently
sub-global in scope – areunder the UNFCCC’s global
governing principles. Can therules for sub-global emissions
trading envisaged under Kyoto
be viable if they are in conflictwith the global principles ofprecaution and equity alreadyagreed in the UNFCCC? Emissions trading can only occur
between countries that haveaccepted emission reduction

133

or limitation commitments.
This means strictly that the
principles of this new form of‘ownership’ must be predefined, quantified and internationally accepted before it
can be traded.
Developing countries are
sometimes portrayed as
seeking to influence the rules
governing a scheme they haverefused to join. In fact theirposition has evolved over the
past few years. The position
that developed countries musttake the lead has come toseem that just as ‘rights’ and‘responsibilities’ are two sidesof the same coin, that ‘commitments’ are also ‘entitlements’. And in many recent
statements they have said consistent with the sequenced
logic of cap-and-trade - international emissions trading
should be a priori dependenton equitable entitlements toall countries, agreed by all
countries. This was the key
battle in the run-up to Kyoto
that led to Article 17 on tradeand COP-6 remains pointed at
this battle much as before.
If international trading of such
emissions ‘commitment/
entitlements’ is to occur andin a way that lowers theoverall damage costs and of
avoiding the damage, resolving this argument is of fundamental strategic importance.
The parliamentarian’s network
GLOBE International has
realised this and are consequently advocates of C-CAT.
As their president Tom Spencer said at COP-4 in Buenos
Aires in 1998, we must now
move from the half-truth of
sub-global commitments tothe whole truth of global
entitlements.
Despite the fact that global

rights and global responsibilities are obviously inseparable,
key developed countries such as the UK - have remained slow to recognise it.
‘Commitments’ obviously
become ‘entitlements’ as soon
as they become tradable, as
trading what you don’t own istheft.
As if to prove the point, theUK recently announced theiroption to sell an 8% ‘overachievement’ against the UK’semissions reductions commitment agreed in Kyoto (1990levels minus 12% by 2008 2012), to the US for around£100 million.
From a developing country
perspective, this actually
amounts to profiting from‘under-commitment’ rather
than ‘over-achievement’, at atime when increasingly violent
cyclones are causing damages
and death in place like Venezuela, Orissa and Mozambique. In other words the UK
should have held to their
original commitment of minus
20% reductions as the Germans and the Danes havedone as its part of the deal in
Kyoto.
GLOBE and GCI are part of a
growing network of individuals, institutions, parliaments
and governments North andSouth who recognise that CCAT is the straightforward
way to resolve all this. Because all countries must havetargeted and timetabledcommitment/
entitlements to control emissions to achieve the objectiveof the UNFCCC, a global
method of applying its global
principles of precaution andequity is inevitably required.
Contraction means that, forprecautionary reasons, allgovernments collectively
agree to be bound by an
ultimate global target for safe
and stable atmospheric ghg
concentration. It would remain subject to annual scientific and political review. This
makes it possible to calculate
the diminishing amount ofcarbon dioxide and the othergreenhouse gases that theworld can release for eachyear in the coming century
while staying within thistarget.
Convergence means that eachyear’s ration of this global
emissions budget gets shared
out among the nations of theworld so that every country
converges on the same allocation per inhabitant by anagreed date. This rate ofconvergence is negotiable.
This method recognises that
logic requires a pre-distribution of the rights to the ‘global
commons’ of the atmospherebased on globally equal rights
per capita.
Once agreed, countries unable
to manage within their shareswould, within limits, be able
to buy the unused parts of theallocations of other, morefrugal, countries. Sales ofunused allocations would givethe countries of the South theincome to purchase or develop zero-emission ways ofmeeting their needs. The
countries of the North would
benefit from the export markets this restructuring would
create. And the whole world
would benefit from the slowing the rate at which damage
was being done.
Because this is an effective,
equitable, efficient and flexible
framework in which governments can co-operate to avert
climate change, even some134

fossil fuel producers havebegun to demonstrate positive
interest in the concept.
The under-recognised irony isthat this matches the positions taken by the; (1) US Government in June
1997 in the so-called Byrd
Hagel Resolution(2) Africa Group of Nations
during the pre-Kyoto negotiations(3) Non-Aligned Movement attheir Summit in Sept. 1998
(4) European Parliament in ‘99(5) An increasingly numerous
list of organisations andindividuals around the world
who explicitly advocate “CCAT” model.
As an example, if GDP continues to grow at 3% a year forthe next hundred years while
the damages continue to growat 10%, global damages
exceed global GDP by 2065!
The imperative of avoiding
this trend is self-evident.
The ‘traded area’ between
2000 and 2100 in the accompanying C-CAT graphic represents a potential exchange
between the North and theSouth. It is equivalent to100
billion tonnes of carbon or one
sixth of the total carbon
budget - and a significant
fraction of the damages avoided for that period, if it isan exchange of no-emissions
technology and know-how.
The carbon is equal to 500
trillion 1995 global $/tonnes,
but this is merely an averageof 2% GDP a year for the next
century.
The imperative now is to
direct the larger % of this into
this clean energy transition up
front, because the risk is all
front-end loaded. The obvious

Recorded surface temperature hasrisen by 0.9°C between 1860 and 2000.
Future projections follow CO2 emissions andatmospheric ghg concentrations (in ppmv - parts
per million by volume). The red line shows how
temperature will rise with a Business-as-Usual(BAU) 2% annual growth in emissions. The blueline shows the lowest possible climate sensitivity- a tota1rise of 1.5°C - assuming a 60% global
emissions contraction by 2100.

4TE MP ER ATU R E
L ow e s t ou tc o m e w ith C & C b elow

2
1

C e l si u s

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BAU

0
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1 05 0C O 2 C O N C E N T R A T IO N

L ow e s t ou tc o m e t o C & C be lo w

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8 50

BAU

4 50
2 50

$ 10 0D a m a ge s @ 1 0% /y e ar
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1 2%

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8%

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4%

G DP %0%-4 %C O 2 E M IS S IO N S

B AU o r C -C AT
2 0 G tc

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5 G tc
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1 80 01 90 02 00 02 10 0

2 20 0135

The recorded rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration from 1860 until 2000 shows an increase of
34% over pre-industrial levels. This is a riseboth higher and a faster than anywhere in theice-core sampling back 440,000 years before
now. Concentrations are rising as the result of
accumulating emissions. The red line shows theworst case scenario. The best case sees this risestabilised at twice today’s level due to a 60%
global contraction in the underlying emissions by
2100.
Damages here are the global economic losses(Munich Re) for the four decades past for all
natural disasters projected at the observed rateof increase of 10% a year in comparison to
global $GDP at 3%. If the global trends continue
BAU, damages will exceed GDP by 2065. The
risks will soon become uninsurable beyond thecapacity of the insurance industry and governments to absorb and the damages will bebeyond the capacity of societies to cope.
Damages will rise for the century ahead evenwith emissions contraction, but the rate can be
reduced if C-CAT is rapid and orderly.
For the past four decades, the output of CO2 andGDP from global industry have been correlated
nearly 100% (known as the ‘lock-step’). Future
GDP is projected here at 3% a year. Future CO2
goes negative equal to the retreat from fossil
fuel dependency shown below, that limits CO2
concentrations to 70% above pre-industrial
levels, shown above. Breaking the lock-stepneeds up to minus 5% annual emissions globallyto reduce the probability of appalling damages.
The redline shows BAU CO2 emissions. The solid
segments show “Contraction, Convergence,
Allocation and Trade” [C-CAT] to manage
emissions down by at least 60% within a given
time frame with an agreed ‘contraction budget’(here 680 billion tonnes of carbon). Theinternationally tradable shares of this budget
result from convergence to equal per capita by
an agreed date and population base year (here2020). The ‘traded area’ is the difference
between that and convergence by 2100 (here,
100 billion tonnes). Ideally these are avoided
emissions as well due to investment of theproceeds of trade in zero-emissions technologies. Thus lowering risk and damages further.

need for this is disguised onlyby the fact that ‘economics’ isa snap-shot discipline that
also regards the poor (Orissa
Mozambique) as being an‘affordable’ damage cost.
Since there’s no net meaningful GDP 65 years out, thisdiscipline destroys us all in theend.
The central challenge togovernments is establishing
the precautionary global
framework of C-CAT now. The
central challenge to industry,and especially the insurance
sector, is in realising the
global economic value of
becoming supporters andadvocates of such a framework, by realising the global
market opportunity that the
rapid, orderly retreat fromfossil fuel dependency creates.

equity swap”. Using emissions
trading to avoid carbon by
funding no emissions technology and development instead,particularly to start with in thedeveloping world, lowers theglobal bill for damages whilebuying time for the orderly
retreat from fossil fuel dependency in the North. However, with C-CAT up andrunning, this is trade for
equity and in the best sense –global equity, survival andprosperity for everyone.

With the framework agreed,
we have a chance of avoiding
the worst of the immense
damages to come. Without it
we haven’t got a chance.
Moreover, as soon as the fossil
fuel producers and the associated technology producers
know that there is a global
emissions cap secured by aninternational long-term agreement to share on the basis ofconvergence, the real value ofemissions trading is secure.
The greatest incentive in tradeunder these conditions will not– as at present – be to filibuster and cheat. It will be toconserve both the value ofcarbon permits and the possibility of prosperity everywhereby switching to the capture
and potentially endless use ofrenewable energy.
In the polarised world of
North/South relations, somemembers of GLOBE havecalled C-CAT the “trade for136

June 28 - BBC online

The human price of Mozambique’s
worst from extreme weather
conditions linked to climatechange. Today, 96% of alldeaths from natural disasters
occur in developing countries.
Increasing disasters“By 2025, over half of all
people living in developing
countries will be ‘highly vulnerable’ to floods and storms.”

By environment correspondent Alex Kirby
The world’s largest nongovernmental aid organisation
says the developed countries’
polluting lifestyles represent a
massive debt owed to thepoor.
The charge comes in
the World Disasters
Report 2000, publishedby the International
Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies.
The report says thedeveloped world’s
pollution is heating theplanet, with potentiallydrastic consequences for all
on Earth.

Aubrey Meyer of GCI told
BBC News Online:“This endorsement by the Federation, which is a fairly cautious
group, shows that contraction
and convergence is an idea
whose time has come.”

And it argues that everybody,rich and poor, should have an
equal right to pollute theatmosphere.
The report says: “Reckless
human use of fossil fuels overwhelmingly by industrialised countries - has helped
raise the spectre of climatechange, which darkens everyone’s horizon.
“But poor people in poor
countries suffer first and

The report says this year’s
floods in Mozambique were
just the latest example ofclimate-induced disasters.
Others were the flooding in
Bangladesh and eastern India,

storms in Venezuela, and theeffects of El Nino.
“When Hurricane Mitch hit
Central America, the Honduran president commented:‘We lost in 72 hours what wehave taken more than 50
years to build’.
“According to the re-insurance
giant MunichRe, the numberof great weather-related andflood disasters quadrupledduring the 1990s compared to
the 1960s, while resulting
economic losses increased

137

eight-fold.”
The report acknowledges therecurrence of natural coolingand warming cycles in the
Earth’s history, but says
humanity is now “moving
beyond natural climatic variations”.
It argues that all nations will
have to live within “one global
environmental budget”, which
will mean a drastic change
from the situation today,
when “industrialised countries
generate over 62 times morecarbon dioxide pollution perperson than the least developed countries”.
The report contrasts themonetary debts owed bydeveloping countries totheir wealthy creditorswith the rich world’s
climate debt.
“By using fossil fuels at alevel far above a threshold for sustainable consumption, year after year
the carbon debts of richcountries get bigger.”
It says the poorest states, theheavily indebted poor countries, are owed up to threetimes as much in carbon
credits as they owe in dollars.
But the world’s richest nations
have amassed a climate debt
totalling $13 trillion, thereport says.
Compelling respect
The Federation argues for apolicy to match the structuraladjustment programmesimposed on many developing
countries, which force theireconomies into line with
Western norms.
It says there is a need forsustainability adjustment
programmes, which would
compel rich countries torespect the common environment.
And it endorses the idea ofcontraction and convergence,
which would mean that citizens of every country, rich orpoor, would be entitled to emit
the same amounts of climatechanging pollution, an idea
pioneered by the Londonbased Global Commons Institute.

Aubrey Meyer of GCI told BBC
News Online: “This endorsement by the Federation, which
is a fairly cautious group,
shows that contraction andconvergence is an idea whosetime has come.”
Some researchers still doubtthat human activities are
inducing rapid climate change.
They highlight the inconsistencies between the temperature records taken at the
Earth’s surface, which show
rapid warming over the lastcentury, and the data produced by satellite and balloon
studies.

ing, in the last two decades,of the low to mid-troposphere- the atmospheric layer extending up to about 8km fromthe Earth’s surface.
Climate models generally
predict that temperatures
should increase in the upper
air as well as at the surface if
increased concentrations ofgreenhouse gases are causing
the warming recorded at
ground level.

These show little if any warm-

August - P
arliamentary Monitor
Parliamentary“Contraction and Convergence” and thechanging climate
By David Chaytor MP - Chair
GLOBE UKOn Friday the 16th of June the
UK Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution(RCEP) published its 22nd
report “Energy - the changing
climate”.
They made 87 recommendations to the government. The
third of these says: -“The government shouldpress for a future global
climate agreement basedon the ‘contraction andconvergence’ approach,combined with international
trading in emission permits.
Together, these offer thebest long-term prospect of
securing equity, economy
and international consensus.”

These are meaningful words.
They concur in the UK withthose of Michael Meacher andJohn Gummer, and manyothers including GLOBE UK
and Alan Simpson MP who
made the case for “Contraction and Convergence” in the
Parliamentary Monitor two
years ago.
The Royal Commission’s
advocacy of this assists its
growing international support.
In a nutshell, countries agree
a reviewable global greenhouse gas emissions ‘contraction budget’ to match a precautionary and safe futurestable value for the rising(ghg) concentrations. Theinternationally tradable sharesin this budget are then agreed
on the basis of ‘convergence’from now, where shares are138

proportional to income, to atarget date in the budget
time-line after which theyremain proportional to anagreed base year of global
population.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) gave rise to
the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
Interim negotiations to finish
this have just halted in Bonn.
So far business left unfinishedin Kyoto is still unfinished.
Charged with establishing the‘principles, rules and modalities’ governing the Protocol’s
so-called ‘flexible mechanisms’- such as international emission trading and the ‘clean
development mechanism’ negotiators struggle because
these principles must be
subordinate to the global
objective and principles ofprecaution and equity on
which the Convention isbased.
Remembering this and acting
on the Commission’s ‘global’
advice, the UK Government
could play a unique role insaving the Protocol fromfailure in The Hague. The
stakes are high. If it fails, the‘sub-global’ arguments that
destroy it threaten the Convention itself.
If completed and ratified theProtocol will impose collectively slight but legally binding
commitments only on ‘Annex
One Parties’ to the UNFCCC,
in other words on those fromthe developed country group
only. They alone will have to
reduce or limit their net
greenhouse gas emissions by
an average of 5.2% below
1990 levels, by the period
2008-2012. While quantitatively inadequate, this could
be justified as a ‘first-step’.
Because emissions control
under the Kyoto Protocol isstill restricted to the industrialised world only, the US is
hostile to ratification, sayingthat it will be ineffective. The
Byrd Hagel Resolution of the
US Senate insists that developing countries must also
reduce or limit their emissions
if US ratification of Protocol to
occur. In effect the US advocates “Contraction and Convergence”, as any other wayof addressing this issue would
replicate the very randomness
to which they sensibly object.
Developing countries on theother hand, have correctly
argued that as the industrial
countries have grown richemitting an accumulated 80%of the emissions to date, theyshould ‘take the lead’ incutting the emissions now

without seeking to impose
equal emissions responsibilities on the rest of the world
unless and until the rights
upon which these are based
are recognised as equal aswell. Saying that these mustbe ‘equitable for all countries’,
many explicitly invoke the“Contraction and Convergence” approach. This standoff is resolvable quite simply
in terms of “Contraction andConvergence” as the Royal
Commission has also now
affirmed.
As envisaged at present - by
and for the industrial countrygroup only - rules for emissions trading are ineffective
because they are only subglobal in scope and thusinconsistent with the global
governing principles in theConvention. This reflects theerror of seeing ‘cost-effectiveness’ in terms of ‘sub-global’emissions abatement costonly.
In other words if - as atpresent - the question, “howcheaply can my sub-global
emissions be avoided or offset?” is answered, “by growing low-cost trees in poor
countries and by spinningunder-commitment as overachievement,” this simply
compounds controversy. As if
to prove the point, the UK
recently announced theiroption to sell an 8% ‘overachievement’ against the UK’semissions reductions commitment agreed in Kyoto (1990levels minus 12% by 2008 2012), to the US for around£100 million.
As the Royal Commission
recognises, ‘cost-effectiveness’ is a charade unless anduntil it is understood first as
global damage-cost effective-

139

ness, designed to halt thedamages caused by climatechanges. This necessarily sees
the cost-effectiveness of subglobal emission abatement asimportant but as subordinatedto the global purpose of
avoiding damages. As the UK
example cited above reveals,such sub-global abatementcost effectiveness actually
neutralizes global damagecost effectiveness by attempting to re-legalize the structural conditions that prolong
the inequitable and thus
unsustainable global statusquo. As presently ‘consolidated’ for The Hague, thenegotiating text out of Bonncould not be clearer on thispoint, or that “Contraction andConvergence” is seen by
many as the obvious way toclarify and resolve this for thislong term.
Munich Re-Insurers show
climate change related damages rising at up to 10% a
year over the last 40 years.
The graphic demonstrates thisamongst factors relevant tounderstanding why global
damage-cost-effectivenessneeds “Contraction and Convergence.” We need very soon
to collectively agree to enact
this framework for solutions
based on equity and survival
and faster than we create thewarming problem we aretrying to solve otherwise ourcharades will end in tragedies.
A commitment in the Hague
to proceed this way in futurenegotiations should beenough to rescue the process
now for the larger process of
rescuing the planet and all it’speoples through generations
ahead. Tony Blair should be anatural champion in thiscause.

Recorded surface temperature hasrisen by 0.9°C between 1860 and 2000.
Future projections follow CO2 emissions andatmospheric ghg concentrations (in ppmv - parts
per million by volume). The red line shows how
temperature will rise with a Business-as-Usual(BAU) 2% annual growth in emissions. The blueline shows the lowest possible climate sensitivity- a tota1rise of 1.5°C - assuming a 60% global
emissions contraction by 2100.
The recorded rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration from 1860 until 2000 shows an increase of
34% over pre-industrial levels. This is a riseboth higher and a faster than anywhere in theice-core sampling back 440,000 years before
now. Concentrations are rising as the result of
accumulating emissions. The red line shows theworst case scenario. The best case sees this risestabilised at twice today’s level due to a 60%
global contraction in the underlying emissions by
2100.
Damages here are the global economic losses(Munich Re) for the four decades past for all
natural disasters projected at the observed rateof increase of 10% a year in comparison to
global $GDP at 3%. If the global trends continue
BAU, damages will exceed GDP by 2065. The
risks will soon become uninsurable beyond thecapacity of the insurance industry and governments to absorb and the damages will bebeyond the capacity of societies to cope.
Damages will rise for the century ahead evenwith emissions contraction, but the rate can be
reduced if C-CAT is rapid and orderly.
For the past four decades, the output of CO2 andGDP from global industry have been correlated
nearly 100% (known as the ‘lock-step’). Future
GDP is projected here at 3% a year. Future CO2
goes negative equal to the retreat from fossil
fuel dependency shown below, that limits CO2
concentrations to 70% above pre-industrial
levels, shown above. Breaking the lock-stepneeds up to minus 5% annual emissions globallyto reduce the probability of appalling damages.
The redline shows BAU CO2 emissions. The solid
segments show “Contraction, Convergence,
Allocation and Trade” [C-CAT] to manage
emissions down by at least 60% within a given
time frame with an agreed ‘contraction budget’(here 680 billion tonnes of carbon). Theinternationally tradable shares of this budget
result from convergence to equal per capita by
an agreed date and population base year (here2020). The ‘traded area’ is the difference
between that and convergence by 2100 (here,
100 billion tonnes). Ideally these are avoided
emissions as well due to investment of theproceeds of trade in zero-emissions technologies. Thus lowering risk and damages further.

140

June - Independent

Little man’s big idea could save the world
man’s
A ROYAL Commission reportwill this week confirm that
one ordinary person, working
alone and with little resources, has the power tochange the world.
He is Aubrey Meyer, a musician from London, and his
idea on how to cut emissionsof carbon dioxide world-wide
will be endorsed at length by
the Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution. It isalready the official policy ofIndia, China and many
African countries and isgetting increasing attention
from Western ministers. His
idea was that everyone onearth should have the rightto emit the; same amountof carbon dioxide. He thenworked out what eachnation would be entitled to,on this basis, if emissions
were cut by 60 per centworld-wide.

been responsible for 80 per
cent of the pollution to date would have to make big cuts.
Developing ones would beallowed to emit more, butwould have moderate theirplanned increase. And they
could sell their emission rights
to rich countries to get money
to develop clean technologies.
Mr. Meyer, 53, has devoted
more than a decade, with
virtually no resources, toRich countries - who have141

promoting the concept.
The Commission will also
conclude that new taxes areneeded to wean Britain off oil,gas and coal and help savethe world’s climate, putting it
into conflict with the Government by proposing a “carbon
tax” on fossil fuels to combat
global warming - something
ministers have opposed
The commission’s report, tobe published on Friday, willcall on the Government todraw up plans to cut Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions - the main cause of
global warming, fromburning coal, gas and oil, by
60 per cent over the next
50 years.

June - ENDS R
eport 305
ReportRCEP’s energy futures under a CO2 ceiling
RCEP’sThe Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution(RCEP) has set out a radical
agenda for transforming the
UK's energy supply system
and reducing energy demand.
Massive development of
renewable energy and otheralternative sources will beneeded, it says, to achieve
the 60 reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions which may
be necessary within 50 years
to contribute to a globally
equitable solution to the
problem of climate change.

mendation couched in similarterms.
"Contraction and Convergence"
The report takes the threats
posed by climate change as agiven. The RCEP received
submissions from the rightwing Institute of Economic
Affairs and "a major oil company" that the science was
too uncertain to justify policychanges. It disagrees.

The RCEP must have beenstung by the outcome of its
latest quinquennial review
earlier this year, which concluded that many among its
target audiences were only
"vaguely aware" of its work.

There is, the report says, "avery strong likelihood" thatthe impacts of climate change
will be "seriously damaging".
And there is a possibility that
"abrupt changes in the climate system might be triggered and have even more
dramatic impacts."

Members will be happier withthe publicity their new report
received. And they will also
be pleased that Industry
Minister Patricia Hewitt
quickly promised that theGovernment will aim to respond within a year.

The appropriate reaction, thereport says, must be to improve the UK's energy efficiency drastically and reform
its energy supply and distribution system beyond recognition over the next half-century - starting very soon.

The report is likely to be oneof the Commission's mostimportant, ranking alongside
the 1994 report on transport,
the 1983 report on lead andthe 1976 report on nuclear
power. The latter is still remembered for advisingagainst a large nuclear programme until a method ofcontaining long-lived radioactive waste indefinitely into the
future had been demonstrated. Successive Governments took no notice, and thecon-sequences are all too
alive today - as the RCEP
makes clear with a recom-

The programme envisaged by
the RCEP was shaped by its
acceptance of the "Contraction and Convergence" approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Thiswas developed by a former
musician, Aubrey Meyer,
whose Global Commons
Institute (GCI) has promoted
it over the past decade to thepoint where it is a leading
concept in international
thinking about how emissions
should be controlled beyond
the Kyoto Protocol's "commitment period" of 2008-12.
Under contraction and con-142

vergence, each country would
receive an emission quota at
its current emission level. The
quotas of developed nations
would be gradually reduced,
and those of developing
countries increased, until they
converged at a uniform per
capita global figure. Thereafter, each national quota would
be reduced so that global
emissions contracted andatmospheric concentrations ofgreenhouse gases did notexceed an agreed level.
The RCEP's concern was with
CO2 only. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen
from 270ppm in pre-industrial
times to 370ppm today. The
RCEP chose 550ppm as theceiling which CO2 should not
be allowed to break through though some, like the GCI,
argue that the figure should
apply to all greenhousegases. A limit of 550ppm
could be met along many
paths. The RCEP took 2050 as
the year by which each country's emissions will have
converged to a uniform per
capita figure. On this basis,
the UK's emissions of CO2
would have to fall by almost
60 from the 1997 level by
mid-century.

Summer - Corporate W
atch
Watch

Keeping the climate in the common
treasury
The Global Commons
Institute is calling forequity to be at the core of
the global movement tostop climate change. To
entrench this it advocatesa pattern of ‘Contraction
and Convergence’.
Aubrey Meyer explains.
Changes in global climate
have never until now beencaused by human beings.
Now, human pollution to theatmosphere is accumulating
so fast it is trapping increasingly more of the sun’s heatthan is released back tospace. It is this rise in global
surface temperature that is
implicated in the more andmore variable and violent
weather events and damages
around the world, in places
like Honduras, Orissa andMozambique.
These are as much social asenvironmental disasters, andthe trend of their increase iswell established and getting
faster. Even within corporations’ own criteria for success- the financial bottom line the situation is rapidly becoming untenable. Insurance
industry figures for ‘economic
losses’ from ‘natural disasters’,show damages growing
globally at a staggering 8% a
year since the 1960s. This is
5% faster than the rate at
which we supposedly ‘create
wealth’ measured as GDP(Gross Domestic Product). If

this continues, the grossglobal destruction of wealthfrom climate change will
actually exceed its alleged
creation each year. A failure toact despite this glaringly
obvious impending disasterdemonstrates how fixed are
the blinkers on the energy
industry. The level of change
needed is profound.
The scientific evidence linking
these damage trends tohuman pollution is now accepted by most major scientific, political and commercial
institutions.
And yet they have failed tocome forward with effectiveplans to slow the damages
and to help the victims of
those damages that aren’t
prevented. The dominantpriority of business and governments remains the growthof financial profits in spite ofthis growing negative impact.
A profit to whom, we mightask?
Contraction and Convergencemeans, in a nutshell, that all
the countries that make up
the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) would
agree a revisable global
greenhouse gas emissions‘contraction budget’. This
would secure a precautionary
and safe future stable value
for the rising greenhouse gas
concentrations – say 80%
cuts globally by 2060. If wewere lucky this level of cuts

143

would return atmosphericconcentrations to today’svalue within a hundred years
and limit the worst of thedamage.
The international shares inthis budget would then be‘pre-agreed’ on the basis of‘convergence’ from now,where shares are proportional
to income, to a target date in
the budget time-line - say
2030 - after which they remain proportional to anagreed base year of global
population. This means that‘over-consumers’ like the US
contract sharply, while ‘underconsumers’ like Bangladesh
can continue to rise for awhile. This is a politicallyfeasible way of instituting aprecautionary and equitableglobal framework, by applying
the principle of ‘equal rights’.
A rapid and orderly retreat
from fossil fuel dependency infavour of clean and renewableforms of energy is obviously
needed. And if there is any
agreement to have international emissions trading, it
must be structured to this end
and secured on the basis ofequity, as Contraction andConvergence, and even the
UN’s own Climate Convention,require. As such, trade may
play a vital part in preventing
catastrophic changes in the
climate by hastening the
avoidance of emissions.

Contraction and Convergenceis just a framework for thenumerous and diverse practical actions and changes thatare necessary to save theplanet from climate change
disaster. It is not a cure-all.
But it may well be politicallynecessary if there is to be aneffective, precautionary agreement at the global level.
Key to Contraction and Convergence is the need for it toalso be empowering at a local
level. With reference to thelarger scheme, people can use
the same argument to organise for equity within theirsocieties and communities intheir own countries. This is aradical approach - one which
re-normalises equity at eachlevel of political discourse.
Locally, nationally and globally, we all need an agreement to secure fragile andfinite resources. Strengthening broad strategies to reachsome agreement will not beeasy. However, continuing ourcurrent behaviour is no morethan an endgame for humanity with the rich finally committing suicide by continuing
to rob the poor.
It is morally but also practically sensible to avoid this.
Contraction and Convergence
thus presents the simple ideaof equity for survival. It puts
the need to protect people
and planet ahead of the needfor profits. In practice we all
do have equal responsibilities
in this but it can only work as
part of an overall agreementthat is sustainable in total
secured on the principle ofequal rights.
The founding statement
for this and the Global
Commons Network is at
http://www.gci.org.uk/

indlet.html
Aubrey Meyer works with
the Global
Commons Institute www.gci.org.uk[Contraction and convergence] means that ‘overconsumers’ like the US contract sharply, while ‘underconsumers’ like Bangladesh
can continue to rise for awhile. This is a politicallyfeasible way of instituting aprecautionary and equitableglobal framework, by applying
the principle of ‘equal rights’C02 concentrations Recordedrise in atmospheric C02 concentration from 1860 until
2000 shows an increase of 34
over pre-industrial levels. Thisis a rise both higher andfaster than anywhere in theice-core sampling back
440,000 years before now.
Concentrations are rising as
the result of accumulating
emissions. In future, theworst case is the upper line asBusiness-As-Usual (BAD).The
best case sees this rise stabilised at twice today’s level due
to a 60 global contraction in
the underlying emissions by
2100.

C02 emissions The upper line
shows Business-As-Usual C02
emissions. The solid segments
show “Contraction, Convergence, Allocation and Trade”[C-CAT] to manage emissions
down by at least 60 within agiven time frame with anagreed ‘contraction budget’(here 680 billion tonnes ofcarbon).The internationallytradable shares of this budget
result from convergence to144equal per capita by an agreed
date and population base year
(here 2020).The ‘traded area’is the difference between thatand convergence by 2100
(here, 100 billion tonnes). If
this is invested in no-emissions technologies, risk anddamages are lowered further
as the budget is then net ofthese emissions as well.

December 8 - Guardian

Going to war against climate change
The post-Hague hiatus may
provide an opportunity toaddress the problems ofclimate change, says Andrew
Simms

house gas emissions, but a 14
per cent increase over theperiod 1990 - 2010. Some
said that the manipulation of
so-called carbon sinks was aform of carbon laundering.

After the Hague summit, ameeting in Bonn, in May 2001
will provide the next opportu-

Indeed, the current hiatus
could turn out to be an opportunity. Firstly, because people
are increasingly aware that

unconventional” fuel sources.
But this fuel didn’t actuallyexist, it was an exercise increative accounting to stop
policy makers from worrying.
Looking ahead for the next
few decades, uncertain comfort is now available from new
projections that fill the supplydemand gap with fossil fuels“There is a model called contraction and convergence rapidly gaining support. Already backed by many developing countries, its principles were endorsedin The Hague by Belgium, France and Sweden and it accords with the US desire
for a truly global solution. Pioneered by the London-based Global Commons Institute it was also recently endorsed by the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution. It works by setting a global cap on greenhouse gas concentrations, with
an emissions budget that is reduced over time. Tradable emissions rights are thenpre-distributed on a per-capita basis, converging globally to equal shares perperson by an agreed date, for example 2030.”

nity for politicians from industrialised countries to agree
how to reduce greenhousegas emissions. The current
target for developed countries
is a 5.2% overall emissions
reduction. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) says that 60 80% is needed, while thehead of the UN Environment
Programme puts the figure at
90%. Fogged by diplomatic
incidents the way forward
becomes harder.
The potential loopholes in the
Kyoto Protocol meant that a
bad agreement in the Hague
could have been worse thannone. The original negotiating
position of the United Statesallowed for a deal that might
have led not to a cut in green-

the consequences of declining
fossil fuel resources andclimate change cannot be
avoided. And secondly, because more coherent solutions
than the Kyoto Protocol arebeing promoted and gathering
support.
In 1965 discoveries of new oilsources peaked. Thirty-fiveyears later the growth in oil
production has also peaked
and begun its long decline. In
1998, adding together total
world energy demand overthe next few decades withknown or anticipated available
fuel sources, the International
Energy Agency noticed there
was a gap between supply
and potential demand.
To fill the gap it used something called “unidentified

145

that have only a 5% chanceof discovery.
Statistically, neither sinks nor
better efficiency can make thenecessary cuts in emissions,or deal with declining oil
supplies. Over a 200 year
period efficiency would needto improve nearly 200 thousand per cent. It seems wemust brace ourselves for theequivalent of an environmental war economy in order toreduce consumption.
Past experience shows thatthe shift to a low-energy
economy needn’t be all bad.
The alternative of businessas-usual also looks far worse.
Projections based on datacollected by the reinsurance
giant Munich Re show that by
about the year 2065 theeconomic costs of climatechange could surpass thevalue of total world economic
output. Already by 2025, halfof all people living in developing countries will be vulnerable to extreme weather
events, floods and storms
according to the UN.
Conventional economic
growth is hard-wired to risinggreenhouse gas emissions andconcentrations - the so-calledlock-step. The question is how
to break that lock-step andmanage our withdrawal fromfossil-fuels in as painless a
way as possible, within anorderly framework?
Transport, trade and agriculture are the parts of oureconomy that are especially
fuel-addicted. But given theright approach and the necessary policy tools there is no
reason why we cannot turnthings around and benefit
from the process. During theSecond World War we
adapted to measures forradical resource conservation.
Even in the United States fuelwas strictly rationed to eliminate unnecessary travel.

At the moment the internal
dynamics of globalisation are
making us more, not less, fueldependent. Air freight, themost polluting transportmode, has gone from virtuallyzero fifty years ago, to theequivalent of flying one ton of
goods over 100 billion kilometres a year. New generationsof planes are being built,
thirsty for fossil fuel, which
will need to fly for decades
still to pay-off construction
costs.
There is a model called contraction and convergence
rapidly gaining support. Already backed by many developing countries, its principles
were endorsed in The Hague
by Belgium, France and Sweden and it accords with the
US desire for a truly global
solution. Pioneered by the
London-based Global Commons Institute it was also
recently endorsed by theRoyal Commission on Environmental Pollution. It works by
setting a global cap on greenhouse gas concentrations,with an emissions budget thatis reduced over time. Tradable
emissions rights are then pre-146

distributed on a per-capita
basis, converging globally toequal shares per person by anagreed date, for example
2030.
While the city of Bonn may nolonger house the German
government, next May it will
be at the centre of the mostimportant international negotiation there is.
• Andrew Simms is headof the global economy
programme at the New
Economics Foundation andco-author of: Collision
Course - Free trade’s freeride on the global climate

2001 - Chartered Insurance InstituteClimate change and insurance
Read full chapter at: - http://www.gci.org.uk/Insurers/Chap10_CII_(C&C).pdf

Chapter 10: General strategies

winds, surrounded by the sea and has considerable
biomass capacity in Scotland. Attempts to speed up thetransition to renewables should be accelerated to match
progress in Europe, especially Denmark and Germany.
However, under normal commercial circumstances, thetransition to renewable energy will not be quick enoughor wide enough to deliver the required emission cuts.
Contraction & convergence
The most realistic way to bring about the required
reduction in ghg emissions (which will have the
combined effect of reducing the damage imposed on theinsurance industry and encouraging the transition to
renewable energy) is that proposed in the concept ofContraction and Convergence (C&C). This concept was
created by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) and isincredibly simple in its detail. Essentially, everyone has
the right to emit an equal amount of pollution (in thiscase CO2) to the Global Commons (atmosphere).
At present society emits six billion tonnes of carbon ayear (6Gtc) to the atmosphere. Coincidentally there are
six billion people alive today—hence everyone should
be entitled an equal right to emit 1 tonne/yr. To achieve
the required global reduction in ghg emissions an agreed
target of say 2Gtc by 2040 could be set and the systemallowed to contract to that global budget by converging
on an agreed per capita allowance. Those states thatneed to emit more than their share will have to buy
emission entitlements from those that have an excess.
This would operate in much the same way as theenvisaged emissions trading scheme to be set up within
the Kyoto Protocol.
Figure 10.9 illustrates this process, showing that by theyear 2100 emissions will have fallen to well below
today’s levels, and will emanate from what are, today,
developing countries. Since economic progress isdependent on energy, the shortfall from ‘Business as
usual’ energy consumption will need to be met from two
directions: efficiency gains, and a rapid growth inrenewable energy sources. It is clear from this thatemissions trading can only be an intermediate stage,
since the total volume of emissions must fall.
The only blockage to this simple system is the absence ofpolitical will to ‘step outside the box’ instead of
conducting a tortuous round of negotiations of the
Kyoto Protocol. One way to unblock this impasse is toamass a large enough consensus of stakeholders behindthe concept of contraction and convergence, persuading
governments to supersede the Kyoto Protocol.
The insurance industry is an obvious place to start sucha campaign as it has so much to lose and so much to
gain. If society continues down the fossil/Kyoto route,future economic losses are likely to become

The red line shows Business as usual CO2 emissions (BAU). The solid segments show ‘Contraction,
Convergence, Allocation and Trade’ tomanage emissions down by at least 60% within a giventime frame and‘contraction budget’. The renewables opportunity is worth trillions of dollars—the biggest market in history.
Annex One is the developed World. Gtc: trillions of tonnes of carbon equivalent.

Figure 10.9. Contraction and convergence

94

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Chapter 10: General strategies

unsustainable: the curr ent rate of increase in damage
from natural hazards is 12% pa and the rate isaccelerating. Given that the global sum of such losses
was $100bn in 1999 (Munich Re, 2000), it would
outstrip global GDP (growing at 3% pa) by 2065, if thetrends persist.If the insurance industry rallies behind
C&C, it not only reduces that risk, but it is well placed
to invest in the future renewables market. In fact one
could argue that as the insurance companies own the oilcompanies (through equity ownership), insurers form
the only industry that has the collateral and the need toadopt the C&C logic. The desired sequence of events isshown in Figure 10.10.
Oil depletion/
price

Climateimpacts

Contraction & convergence

Reduced risk toinsuranceindustry

Investment inrenewableenergyFigure 10.10. Contraction and convergenceand risk
Who pays ?
As Figure 8.1 (page 71) shows, risk to property fromcatastrophic and non-catastrophic events is at present
transferred from the individual property owner (via apolicy at a given price) to the primary insurer. In 1998
the value of revenues flowing through the non-life partof the global insurance market amounted to $891bn(Swiss Re, 1999). The primary insurer retains most of
this risk on an annual basis, but will off-load some ofthat risk (for a secondary premium) to a reinsurer.
However, when climate change impacts on the insurance
industry, it will be the individual who eventually pays
the price of the damage, whether it be through the direct
mechanism of increased premiums or failed insurancecompanies or reduced values of equities on the markets
linked to individual savings and pension plans.

Other opportunities for insurers
As well as the insurance industry’s involvement inmanaging both catastrophic risk and investment,
climate change will present it with a number of otherbusiness opportunities, and ‘early movers’ might be able
to gain an advantage.
Superior risk knowledge
Earlier, this study highlighted potential developments inthe field of forecasting. It is possible that within five
years these may have progressed to the point where they
become the basis for commercial decisions, eg, on
reinsurance programme design (attachment levels,
rating, etc). Such forecasts could be used as input tomore detailed simulation models, already commerciallyavailable, but limited by the absence of information
specific to the period of risk. Because of the cost ofdeveloping such complex techniques, most insurancecompanies will need to buy this information, but they
could still gain an advantage over others through (i)better information on exposure, (ii) use of in-housewisdom to supplement the models and (iii) will-power—
there will often be strong commercial or politicalreasons to ignore the advice.
New insurance markets
Chapter 1 identified a wide range of implications for the
insurance industry arising from climate change, apartfrom the most obvious one of changes in property
damage risk. For instance, political initiatives to deal
with global warming will result in a variety of major
infrastructure projects, under the heading of‘adaptation’—accepting and managing the transition toa warmer world—or ‘mitigation’—altering the trend inclimate. Adaptation could involve flood defence, as wellas water supply, agriculture and construction. Examplesof mitigation projects could be afforestation or solar
energy. Like any enterprise, these new developments will
require financial services, including insurance, and they
will present new technical risks to be underwritten. One
area of risk which UNEP-III considered and rejected was
the insurance of liability for default on Kyoto emission
targets (UNEP-III, 1998b). This rejection was because of
the long exposure period, and the fact that the risk was
fundamentally a political one.
On a more positive note, chapters 8 and 9 noted that theenvironment is becoming an important business issue,
and this change is filtering into the asset management
world. Already there are a variety of ‘green funds’ for
consumers to invest in, and the number can only grow

95

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Chapter 10: General strategies

as public awareness of global warming improves.
Diversification
Besides providing new markets for supplying traditional
services, climate change is likely to bring about anincrease in activity in other industries closely related toinsurance activities, and therefore might open the door
to diversification. Firstly, as exposures escalate, traditionalsources of capacity will be exhausted, and thus
accelerate the move towards alternative risk transfer.

opportunities for expansion in the life and pensions
markets, it is a moot point whether they will remain
more attractive than the property/casualty market,
currently so out of favour.

Beyond technical issues, the insurance industry shouldtake an active part in climate change politics to ensurethat the threat of natural disasters is attended tourgently. This can be done partly by communicatingwith national politicians, but since politicians have toreconcile a wide range of opinions in arriving at aThis transition will be reinforced by the redefinition ofnegotiating stance, it is still imperative for insurers to be‘insurable risk’ as regards weather sensitivity. Chapters
involved in international lobbying through associations
4–7 revealed that customers have an unsatisfied need for like the UNEP Insurance Industry Initiative.
protection which is not being met by traditional
The focus of negotiation is on ‘mitigation’ —limiting
insurance products, with their emphasis on indemnity.
ghg emissions—rather than ‘adaptation’—coping withWe may be on the brink of a renaissance of the productthe inevitable impacts of climate change as the weather
into a holistic risk-coping service, tailored appropriately
andthe sea respond. Funds are to be made available forfor the various corporate and mass markets.
adaptation through the Global Environmental Fund,
Finally, the increasing severity and frequency of natural
but there has been little work in the area of natural
disasters will create a growth in emergency management/ hazard management.
recovery services, which could become a significant
separate business, not one simply dependent on insured As argued in chapter 9, the trend to giant, global
companies brings with it new responsibilities anddamage. The tendency for governments to divest public
services could reinforce this. Another interesting avenue stakeholder expectations.Above all, the industry mustshow some leadership by coming out in support of themight be resource management. As insurers grow inprincipleof Contraction and Convergence.The Kyoto
size, the sheer scale of their internal costs will elevateProtocolispurely tactical, and unless more fundamental
them into an object worthy of serious management
strategies
areagreed soon, there is a real possibility that
attention. When allied to the political and public
dangerous
levelsof climate change could occur. Figurepressure for environmental efficiency, some insurers
10.11
summarises
thecomprehensive
programme
which
might see an opportunity to create an independent profit
is required.
centre to provide third party services in the field of officeand transport management.

Conclusions—a proactive response
to climate change
The insurance industry will need to make big changes in
its strategies to adapt successfully to climate change.
Ignoring the issue will lead to serious problems and evencorporate failure, while recognising the challenge could
generate entire new profit-streams.
From a societal viewpoint, risk will grow, and thismeans a greater demand for risk transfer. If the industry
does not supply the products, either someone else will,leading to a loss of markets, or there will be a painfulprocess of adjustment often at the behest of other parties
with different aims in mind. While there are great

•
•
•
•

•
•
•

Assist research on weather patterns
Identify key hazards
Educate property stakeholders
Co-operate with government/professionals etc. to
1. improve physical risks
2. provide ‘essential’ cover/recovery
3. build up reserves
4. control exposure
Develop new products
Back renewables against carbon
Lobby on emission controls
Figure 10.11. A proactive response to climatechange96149

Chapter 11: Action plan

CHAPTER 11: ACTION PLAN
Research GroupTo cope with climate change, corporate bodies andindividuals will need to move the issue up the agenda byregular action. The guiding principle is
INFORMATION—acquire it, use it, share it.
The various stakeholders all have interlocking roles forwhich they must take responsibility, like the players in a
football team. To carry out their action plan will requir eresources. Allocating these resources means either
demoting other issues, sequestering more funds or
becoming more efficient, and the various bodies
therefore need to remember this aspect, not merely
make pious statements about the desirability of thework. Whether sufficient resources are being allocatedwill become evident to observers seeking timescales forthe completion of the action plan.
However, the actions should not be viewed as additionalburdens which prevent ‘real work’. If they are notaddressed, there will be considerable disruption to‘normal’ activity.
Government• Seek international and domestic agreement on
climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, inparticular—advocate ‘contraction & convergence’—set challenging domestic targets for emissions
reduction—seek to provide assistance forless developed
countries at risk.
• Implement ‘no regret’ strategies, in particular—support the development of renewable energy.
• Provide information to stakeholders on climatechange.
• Consult on climate change strategies.
• Formulate policy and embed it in practicalregulations, procedures and guidelines, inparticular—define an appropriate framework for landdevelopment and construction design which will
identify, quantify, and respond to the risk of natural
hazards, now and in the future.

Individuals• Consciously monitor and learn about climate change—seek information on the internet, read articles in
the press.
• Apply this knowledge in your work
—include climate change/weather variability on the
checklist of items for each project or process.
• Conserve energy directly and indirectly.
• Lobby politicians to ensure that climate change
receives proper priority.
• Ask how the companies you invest in are planning to—cope with climate change—help to decelerate global warming.
Media• Give the issue regular coverage, both as news andreview items.
• Reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus that
there is a discernible human influence on the climate
system.
Association of British Insurers• Continue and extend the programme of research into
the risk management of natural hazards associatedwith climate change, particularly flood.
• Improve communication on these initiatives—by systematic inclusion in public relations workoutside the industry—by a coherent strategy of passing information tomembers and providing them with opportunities toaccess scientists.
• Become proactive with other stakeholders on
insurability issues in high-hazard areas—in particular influence local and central
government on planning control and building design—initiate discussion of the issues with other
European insurance associations.
• Address the issue of environmental policy more
actively (eg, briefings for members).
• Address the issue of asset management and themitigation of climate change (eg, briefings formembers, dialogue with government on energy andtransport policy).

97

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Chapter 11: Action plan

Chartered Insurance Institute• Raise the profile of climate change as an issue withmembers (eg, journals/conferences/seminars).
• Identify any CIP and ACII syllabuses where climatechange might be assessed.
• Commission further studies on issues related toclimate change (eg, economic exclusion, renewableenergy, alternative risk transfer).
• Commission a review of the climate change issue in2005, perhaps in conjunction with other professions.
Enterprises (insurance underwriting)• Collect information on exposure and claims to
improve the knowledge base for climate change
impact studies—in particular consider adopting common
procedures, which will also facilitate claimshandling.
• Engage with external bodies on regulatory issues insupport of industry strategies.
• Address insurability issues responsibly, recognising
the needs of different stakeholders.

•••Develop products and services to improve society’srobustness in the face of climate variability andchange (eg, to deal with weather variability, not only
‘events’).
Adopt environmental policies.
Communicate the issues to staff, customers,
intermediaries and suppliers.

Enterprises (asset management)• Actively seek to influence the detail of how to
implement the UN Framework on Climate Change
Convention, in particular through support of the‘contraction and convergence’ principles.
• Develop products and services to improve society’srobustness in the face of climate variability andchange (eg, support for renewable energy investment).
• Adopt environmental policies.
• Communicate the issues to staff, customers,
intermediaries and suppliers.
• Exert pressure as shareholders to ensure otherenterprises take climate change seriously
.

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2001
2001 – A BRE / LPC Publication

The Implication of Climate Change for the
Insurance Industry – an update andoutlook to 2020
Contraction andConvergence (C&C)

Professor Tom Spencer,
winner of the 1999 European
Parliament “Green Ribbon
Award” for his work with
GLOBE International
parliamentarians network, hasbeen promoting the conceptof Contraction andConvergence (C&C),
developed by Aubrey Meyer of
the Global Commons Institute(GCI).

Sir John Houghton, Chair of
the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC)
recently told the British
Association for the
Advancement of Science,
global greenhouse emissions
need to be reduced by atleast 60% in less than ahundred years.

adhered to, each year’s
tranche of this global
emissions budget gets shared
out among the nations of theworld in a way which ensuresthat every country converges
on the same allocation per
inhabitant by, say, 2030, thedate Sir John suggested.
Countries unable to manage
within their allocations would,

The concept has won support
from other influential experts
around the world, and has
been praised by Michael
Meacher, the UK Minister ofEnvironment (see: www.gci.org.uk ).
The concept has been supported by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) and the World
Disasters Report 2000, published by the International
Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies.
The aim of the Contraction
and Convergence (C&C)
initiative is to break the
North/South deadlock in the
UN negotiations over the
Kyoto Protocol. The following
description is based on an
open letter published in the
Independent on the 24th ofDecember 1999.

If governments agree to bebound by such a target, thediminishing amount of carbon
dioxide and the othergreenhouse gases that theworld could release whilestaying within the target canbe calculated for each year in
the coming century.

Contraction

Convergence
If the IPCC recommended
global reduction scenario was152

within limits, be able to buy
the unused parts of theallocations of other, morefrugal, countries.
Sales of unused allocations
would give the countries of
the South the income topurchase or develop zeroemission ways of meeting
their needs. The countries of
the North would benefit fromthe export markets thisrestructuring would create.
And the whole world would
benefit by the slowing therate at which damage wasbeing done.
Relevance to theInsurance Sector
Kyoto is a good start but
there is a danger that it could
degenerate into a market fortrading carbon emissions.
There is a need for a longterm global strategy which isfair to all the regions of theworld and which has a clear
reference path to a long term
stable solution to risingconcentrations of greenhousegas emissions.
Contraction and Convergence(C&C) seems to be a sensible
framework to proceed: theconcept first was developedby the Global Commons

Institute (GCI) in 1990, and it
is probably the most widely
accepted formula for a longterm strategy to control
greenhouse gas emissions.
Policy makers in the insurance
industry would be wise to
study the concept and ideas
in some detail because
insurers would be well placed
to benefit from any effective
scheme to limit the growth ingreenhouse gas emissions.
Not only does the Global
Commons Institute (GCI)
scheme have the potential tolimit the likely increases in thenatural disasters from climatechange, the concept ofContraction and Convergence(C&C) offers the added
potential benefits of greater
investment opportunities in
the clean energy industries.
As the Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution (RCEP

2000) points out, to achieve
convergence by 2050 would
imply a reduction of 60% in
carbon dioxide emissions, butwould bring many benefits inaddition to mitigating climatechange. For example areduction in air pollution
would which harms humanhealth and a reduction in thecongestion and pollution
caused by rising levels of roadtraffic, are all issues that havean indirect benefit to insurers.

Schumacher Newsletter

Global Solution to Climate Change
Schumacher Briefing No.5

‘Contraction & Convergence: a
global framework to cope withclimate change based on
precaution and equity’ waspublished last autumn amidst
apocalyptic weather.
Its publication couldn’t havebeen more timely as thereality of climate changebegan to hit public consciousness while relentless floods
and storms swept the UK.
Author, Aubrey Meyer, cofounder for the Global Commons Institute (GCI) in London, has spent the last decade campaigning at theUnited Nations negotiations
on climate change to win

acceptance of the global ethicof ‘equity and survival’ andthe policy framework known
as ‘Contraction and Convergence’ (C&C).
C&C is now becoming themost widely supported global
framework within which toresolve policies and measures
to avert dangerous climatechange.
However, in spite of being
endorsed by governments
representing the majority of
the world’s population, thisbriefing is the first time C&C
has formed the subject of abook. Aubrey Meyer was corecipient of the SchumacherAward 2000.

153“If you read only one bookon climate change — its
past and future, politics andsolutions - read this one.
This is the global picture
and the key to a global
solution.”
Tom Spencer,
Professor of Global Governance, University ofSurrey and President,
GLOBE International
1994-99

March - New Scientist

Give us a plan
We know we can beatclimate change. Just one
thing is missing
SHI PENGFEI is bemused. His
country, China, leads theworld in installing wind turbines—a technology UN
scientists said this week isvital for fighting global warming. More than 100,000 farmers run their own wind generators in Inner Mongolia. And
Shi, who works for China’s
State Power Corporation,
wants to harness Mongolia’s
winds to power Beijing. Thereis World Bank cash, Inner
Mongolia wants to sell, but
Beijing, a city choking on coalfumes, won’t buy.
Why has the wind gone out of
the industry’s sails? Local
political wranglinghas stopped China
meeting its nationaltargets for installing
turbines. Shi’s
problem is mirroredin the latest report
this week from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (see p 12).
The report looks at fixes for
global warming and says that“known technological options”
could help the world to prosper while preventing greenhouse gas concentrations
rising higher than twice preindustrial levels. The IPCC
argues that progress in fuelcells and wind turbines has
been far faster than anyone
imagined. Great news, exceptthat the panel also argues
that politicians don’t yet know
how to implement the technologies.
Those Chinese wind turbines

typify the problem. China is
not the main generator ofgreenhouse gases. But any
plan for saving the world’s
climate must let countries like
China—which has the world’s
largest coal reserves—get richon other energy sources. How
do we make it happen?
Here is one blueprint. First
world governments agree on aceiling for greenhouse gaslevels in the atmosphere—say,twice pre-industrial emissions.
Then emissions entitlements
are calculated for every country to ensure we keep below
the ceiling. Setting thesetargets will depend on governments “converging” on aformula based on national
populations. To minimise
disruption,
overpolluters could
buy spare permits
from “underpolluters”.
Such a system, called“contraction andconvergence”, would
be fair and economicallyefficient, and create incentives
for clean energy technologies.
Its backers include France’s
Jacques Chirac and Britain’s
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. But not the
IPCC’s policy wonks. Theirsummary for policy makers
ignores this eminently sensible blueprint. The authors,
fighting shy of saying anything “political”, do not evenclearly back a ceiling on
greenhouse gas concentrations.
This is madness. Clearly, the
IPCC can’t endorse one blueprint. But it should lay out theoptions. And contraction andconvergence is only one. This

154

report is the third in recent
weeks from the IPCC’s various
working groups. The first two,on the science and impacts ofclimate change, courageously
explain the risks the world
runs. This third one fails totake up the challenge.
All is not lost. In September,the three IPCC groups willcomplete a “synthesis” reporton their work. They must takethis chance to put things
right, and spell out clearly
how the world should head off
climate catastrophe. Once
politicians can see the method
and the benefits, they can getback to work.

April - New Scientist

Bad move, Mr Bush
The alternatives to Kyoto may
be even harder to swallow
GEORGE BUSH is right about
one thing: the Kyoto Protocol
is a flawed treaty. But for
Europeans looking on inhorror as he tries to destroy
it, one thing really sticks inthe craw. Most of the flaws
were put there by US negotiators trying to makethe treaty palatableto business. Now,
having made thisrumpled bed withits mass of complicated “flexibility
mechanisms”, they refuse tolie in it.
Bush insists that he is notagainst action on global
warming—only the Kyoto
formula. So, putting disbelief
and frustration to one side,
maybe we can help him. We
wrote here a month ago
about a plan called “contraction and convergence”. It
works like this. Initially, theworld sets a ceiling on the
maximum acceptable concentration of a greenhouse gas.
Then it sets out a realistic
timetable for keeping global
emissions below that ceiling.

Finally, it apportions to nations the rights to make thoseemissions according to their
populations. Over 50 years,
we could cut the global entitlement to perhaps half atonne of carbon per person
per year—about half what it istoday. If nations want to emit
more than this, they would
have to buy permits fromcountries with emissions tospare.
Most greens havetraditionally rejected
this formula as too
idealistic. They
preferred the Kyoto
process, in which
industrialised countries pickeda figure and then haggled. But
things are different now. And,
oddly enough, contraction andconvergence meets the main
criticisms that Bush and fellow
critics make about Kyoto.
First, it includes developing
countries, which get emissions
entitlements like everyoneelse. Second, it meets mostcriteria of economic efficiency.
Countries shopping around foremission permits will makeevery dollar count. Third,
unlike Kyoto, it is scientificallycoherent, as it is aimed atstabilising greenhouse gas

155

concentrations
Every
Americaninisthe
responsible
air.
for about 5 tonnes of carbon
emissions a year, so thisformula will still cost the US
dear. But if Bush is serious
about global warming, heshould be thinking along
these lines.

April - Parliamentary Monitor

Policing P
ollution
Pollution
Aubrey Meyer examines thecurrent political thinking on
the major environmental
question
TONY BLAIR addressed issuesof potentially devastating
significance in his recent
major environment speeches.
For the first time anywhere in
the industrial world, our prime
minister gave voice to thedreadful dilemma we now
face.

“Climate change is thegreatest threat to ourenvironment today...if there
is one issue that threatens
global disaster it is thechanges in ouratmosphere...we have to
face a stark fact, neither wehere in Britain, nor ourpartners abroad, havesucceeded in reversing theoverall destructive trend.
The challenge continues togrow and become moreurgent.” In the more recent
speech he said, “the process is accelerating. For
some parts of the world,
particularly the poorer
parts, the effects will becatastrophic.”
Drawing on the latest data
now available from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC) sciencegroup (reflected in thegraphics alongside), he acknowledged that the trends ofglobal climate changes - dueto the human pollution behind
global temperature rise - arenow worsening towards
potentially catastrophic
outcomes.
Inexorably, and from now on,

the supreme test of any
government’s policy andperformance is whether they
are acting effectively to reverse these trends. The test isboth national and international. Failing in either dimension means our other efforts
will be progressively overwhelmed by the consequences of this failure. The
0.02 per cent of UK GDP essentially new money Tony
Blair proffered to “kick- start
self-sustaining markets” inrenewable energy developments to deal with this coming catastrophe - was risible.
It implied a degree of somehow getting lucky with theglobalization of climate disruption that is obviously just noton the cards. Getting hurt orgetting seriously organized toprevent this hurt, is all thatcounts now. World businessleaders meeting a year ago at
the World Economic Forum in
Davos described the trends as
already “devastating”, asking,“Why had more not been
done to avert them?”
Sadly, based on the latest
summary of the IPCC policy
group, the impression given isthat there is no certainty that
averting them is possible atall. This reflects the views of alargely outdated and myopic
group of economists thatabsurdly prioritizes the pursuitof economic growth ahead of
the global environmental
security on which this so
obviously depends. It also
reflects, however, the alarming properties of the devastating trends themselves. It canbe-said that these are possible156

to miss precisely because
their enormous implications
are so hard to absorb, letalone rationalize in policy
terms.
While discreet events of local
devastation - such as violent
storms and flooding - arecosts rather than benefits, inconditions of overall global
climate and temperaturestability, we understand andcope with these as parts ofthe swings and roundaboutsof global “weather” patterns.
When, as now however, they
become inexorably fiercer andmore frequent with the passing of time -because of increased heat being trapped in
the atmosphere by accumulating pollution - this growing
instability constitutes a trend
into a global climate equilibrium shift, potentially a runaway greenhouse effect.
Averting this is not an everyday policy challenge. And, if
difficult to accept, it is perhaps easy to understand why
the political response to
climate change to date has
been so far short of what isreally needed. For example
the sub-global proposals
passionately championedby
John Prescott in the Kyoto
Protocol - to semi-randomly
pursue policies and measures
to limit, reduce and also tradepollution entitlements
amongst the industrial countries only - are correctly
understood as inadequate andmerely a first-step.
However hope for even thisinadequate first-step to betaken appears now to have

been crushed by the refusal of
the new US President, George
Bush, to submit any version ofthis Protocol to the US Senate
for ratification. The world’s
largest polluter reminded us
all that in June 1 997 theSenate had voted unanimously for the so-called ByrdHagel Resolution that insists
on emissions reduction, or atleast limitation commitments,
being undertaken by all countries - not just the industrial
countries. Intriguingly noclues were given as to how
these would actually be quantified.
While Bush’s move may reallybetray his overriding loyalty to
the fossil fuel industry whatever the environmental cost, areason cited for his refusal
was that it would have exempted developing countries
from such emissions control.
At the same time, in responseto this refusal, a recent CNNpoll in the US showed that
two thirds of its citizens
believed that Bush shouldcome up with a plan to savethe climate. Once again noclues were given as to what
this might be.
This would however appear to
be asking for a plan thatshows how developing countries can integrate their contribution into the global effort tocontrol emissions needed toprevent a runaway greenhouse effect. And to avert thisdoes require committing
globally to a rate of implementing the solution that isfaster than the rate at which
we are collectively creating
the problem. Our own Royal
Commission on Environmental
Pollution (RCEP), joined
recently by the liberal Democrats, has forcefully advocatedto government how thisshould be done through theformal procedures of “Contraction and Convergence”
explained in their exemplary
report from the June last year,
Energy - the Changing Climate.
If we are to stabilize rising
global temperature, we aregoing to have to rapidly
stabilize the upward acceleration of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. According to the RCEP,
and many others, this in turnmeans that we must effect a
global contraction of emissions of greenhouse gases by
60 to 80 per cent from humansources. This must be
achieved internationallythrough a global transition or convergence - to develop
goals based upon per capita
calculations. The problem iscumulative. This means,
simply but devastatingly, thatthe atmosphere retains atleast half of any year’s emissions semi-permanently.
Consequently, contracting
emissions only slows the
upward rise of their concentrations in the atmosphere.
Thus it can be argued thatunless we become organizedsoon in a global programmethat is committed to this end,
we might As well not botherto try and solve the problem
at all as we may just remaincaught in the randomness ofpartial, and effectively, symbolic emissions control while
the problem continues toaccelerate to the point of
becoming insoluble altogether.
As the developing countries accurately say that they
did not precipitate and will notprosper in this growing climate crisis, the diplomacy
required to sell such a global
programme will be a chal-

157

lenge made easier if the
global emissions gas emissions from the global entitlements created by C&C are
assumed to be readable. And
whatever way we do it, theproblem is by definition basedon the a prior need for a“pre”- distribution of entitlements, (as you can not trade
what you do not own) andtradability makes possible an“accelerated” rate of convergence with potentially much
more generous entitlements,
and therefore revenues,
accruing to those countries
than would otherwise be thecase. Moreover much of thelong-standing global economic dysfunction such as thedebt crisis could be addressed
this way. This is a more honest approach than indulging
the view that a long gameworks in their favour.
The graphics alongside givean overview of this new
battleground of the rates ofchange. It was in this context
that the insurance industry
made media headlines at the
UN climate negotiations lastNovember with their stark
projection of damages. Fossil
fuel consumption had averaged two per cent growth ayear since the end-of the war.
During this period, while theGDP dependent on this energy
expenditure had averaged
three per cent growth a year,
the damages from the climatechange related disasters
caused had been rising at 10
per cent a year. Unless, theysaid, the dependency of thiseconomic growth on fossil fuelburning was now fundamentally broken, the damages (orwealth destruction measured
as uninsured losses) will
overtake gross wealth-creation in real terms within thenext 65 years. This, theinsurance industry pointed
out, is obviously unsustainable
and joined the RCEP in the
advocacy of the global “Contraction and Convergence”
procedures - an example ofwhich is portrayed in thebottom graphic.
While Mr. Blair has yet torespond to this advice fromthe RCEP, Michael Meacher
did recently instruct his negotiators in the IPCC policy
forum to promote C&C in thesummary output from thegroup.
Ludicrously, considering theirrecent contribution, theAmericans blocked this at the
key meeting.
In the big picture we all havereal cause for concern as
there is little mainstream‘discourse at this time upholding the notion that we will
have curbed and stabilized the
upward rise of global temperature within less than 100
years from now. To do thiswould require nearly complete
removal of greenhouse gas
emissions from the global
economy within the next 50
years. Noting the exceptional
contributions of Amory Lovins,of the Rocky Mountain Institute and Greenpeace, few
have argued for this and been
seriously listened to so far. Yet
not to argue for this suggeststhat we will all lose in thebattle of rates of change.

no precedent – except perhaps nationally in wartime.
Averting devastating global
climate change is going to helike fighting a hundred years’
war. Unless the total notion
and process of governance isreconfigured to the over-riding
purpose of winning this war,
Mr. Blair’s strong words will
gradually become a selffulfilling prophecy.
Aubrey Meyer is the Director of the Global Commons
Institute and author ofContraction and Convergence – the Global Solution to Climate Change.
Graphics are reproducedwith the kind Permissionof Green Books.

It is these comparisons thatare at the heart of the “devastating trends” of climatechange. To do enough toavert the trends requires
now a globally coordinatedrate of the organized transformation of human behaviourand development techniques
on a scale for which there is

158

May - Ecologist

Contraction and Convergence the global
solution to climate change
We are capitalists,’ is therevelation of Martyn Turnerand Brian O’Connell on page
one of ‘The Whole World’s
Watching’. But Aubrey Meyer
can match that. ‘I’ve neverbeen anything other than amusician,’ he declares at thestart of ‘Contraction andConvergence’. Two newbooks; two proposed solutions to humankind’s greatest
ever challenge. Both claim
to be founded not on
environmentalists’ fantasies
but on harsh realities.
Which one has the answer?
Both books start from thepremise that global warming is real, and that it isalready happening. ‘I am
not being alarmist,’ says
Meyer. ‘[But in] the worst
case scenario, the survivalof all but a tiny minority of
the human race comes into
question.’ This is not simply
because of the increasing
amounts of CO2, methaneand other greenhousegases that humans are still
pumping into the atmosphere,
but because the earth’s
natural regulating systems arethemselves in danger of being
knocked out of kilter. In a
recent model, the UK-based
Hadley Centre found thatwarming temperatures would
kill tropical rainforests in
Brazil - turning vast swathesof Amazonia into desert andgrassland, and pouring still
more carbon into the atmosphere. Several more ‘positive
feedbacks’ threaten to havejust as much of a catastrophic
effect.

So can Armageddon be
averted? Yes: if we stop
listening to environmentalists,and start talking the languageof capitalism, say Turner andO’Connell. Greens are great at
diagnosing problems, butwhen it comes to proposing
solutions - forget it. And don’t
worry either about the whole
messy Kyoto Protocol business, because the US isn’t

playing ball. ‘The possibility is
not realistic, even if snow
became a distant memory in
Alaska and the state of
Florida became an underwater theme park.’ With the
Democrat and Republicanparties representing ideologies which are essentially thesame, even a total global
meltdown won’t convince
Americans to get out of theirsports utility vehicles and taketo their bikes. So there’s only
one option left - to harness
the power of technology,
industry and finance to shift

159

the US and the world onto a
no-carbon economy.
Fair enough, you might think.
But here things start going alittle weird. ‘Windmills... areimpractical, uneconomic andenvironmentally unfriendly.
They may produce no greenhouse gases, but the saving
represented is so minimal thatit barely merits mention.’
Huh? ‘Biomass is a classic
example of a good idea
gone horribly wrong.’
Hello? ‘Solar power is the
stuff of romantic books andfairy tales.’ Hang on aminute. If renewableenergy sources are going
to be so thoroughly dismissed, how are we evergoing to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions? You
guessed it - we’re back tonuclear power. Read onwith mounting dismay as
Turner and O’Connell go on
to point out that Chernobyl
and Three Mile Island
weren’t nearly as bad as
we all thought and that
nuclear waste, ‘if stored
properly, does not pose any
danger to mankind.’
After voicing such shrill complaints about the subsidies atlast going into wind power, it
seems a little cheeky for theauthors to plump for nuclear surely the most bloatedly
subsidised industry of all
time. And after condemningrenewables as unproven anduneconomic, it seems evenmore surprising that the book
finally touts some new‘pocket’ South African reactor
for large-scale power genera-tion and far-off fuel cell
technology for cars as heralding the long-awaited green
panacea. Controversial?
Definitely. Thought-provoking? Absolutely. But maybe
Turner and O’Connell, whoare both financial analysts,
should stick to what they dobest - figuring out the rather
tedious intricacies of a global
carbon trading market.
Thank God, therefore, for
Aubrey Meyer. ‘Contraction
and Convergence’ was never
the most catchy title (imagine-it on a banner: ‘Contraction and Convergence -now!’),
but hidden within this shortbook is a proposal which
could and should alter thecourse of history. In its essential principles, it’s really very
simple. The Earth’s biosphere
only has the carrying capacity
to absorb a certain amount ofcarbon per year - and humans
have to cut their emissions toa safe level within it. That’s‘contraction’. Within thiscarbon ‘budget’, every humanbeing on the planet has anequal right to the use of theatmosphere, so countries
which emit more than theirper-capita fair share must
reduce their emissions, whilstthose which emit too little areallowed an increase. That’s‘convergence’. In a world
where 4 per cent of theworld’s population, in the US,
are able to emit 25 per centof its CO2, this brings theconcept of equity - fairness,basically - to the fore.
For many, equity is a moral
standpoint. But it also acts at
the level of realpolitik -bringing into the climate process
those heavily-populated
countries like India and China
which are planning to dramatically increase their fossil
fuel consumption in the near
future. Remember: even if
the Kyoto cuts are implemented in full (which they
won’t be), world carbon
emissions are set to increase
anyway by some 30 per cent,mainly because of the ‘developing’ world. Why, runs theargument, should thesecountries deny themselves
electricity, heat and transport
simply to support the profligate consumption of rich
Europeans, Australians andAmericans? In contrast, byrecognising these countries’
per capita emission rights,
and even allowing them toacquire a tradeable market
value, Contraction and Convergence establishes an
incentive for clean development. (There is a legitimate
argument about whether thiskind of emissions trading canbe conducted fairly orwhether it could end up
representing ‘carbon colonialism’, but we won’t go into it
here.)In short, these books bothpresent us with a choice. Is
tackling climate change sourgent that we should use allmeans at our disposal, evenones that promote corporate
power? Or can the global
warming crisis not be solved
anyway, except through theestablishment of a fairer andmore ecological society? We
can’t all duck this thornyquestion forever. And bothbooks are a valuable contribution to the debate.
Mark Lynas

May - Prospect

Fresh AirBY ALEX EVANS
The policy framework "contraction and convergence"
offers President Bush a way tosave face and the planet
AMIDST THE PANIC andrecrimination over President
Bush's decision to withdraw
from the Kyoto Protocol, thestartling fact is not that the

US should have pulled out. It
is that a credible alternative
policy framework exists thatcan encompass the apparently
incompatible demands madeby the EU, US, developingworld and others; and yet themedia and the environment
NGOs have been almost silent
about it.
The concept, known on the160

international climate scene as"contraction and convergence"(C&C) was developed ten
years ago by the Global
Commons Institute, a tiny
British organisation with
virtually no resources that was
set up (and is still run) by
Aubrey Meyer, a professional
violinist and composer. Unlike
any other option on theagenda, C&C meets US de-mands for developing country
participation, developingworld equity concerns, private
sector needs for flexibility andefficiency, and (most importantly) EU and NGO calls for aframework with environmental
integrity.
The logic of C&C is simple andtransparent, in contrast to theextravagant complexity sotypical of Kyoto. The "contraction" refers to a global emissions reduction trajectory forspecific greenhouse gases.
The trajectory could be modified at any time in line withthe emergence of new data.
The next question is how toallocate the emissions available under this trajectory, andthis is the "convergence" part:
national emissions entitlements are deliberately designed to converge by anagreed date at equal per
capita emission entitlements
for all countries, so thatemissions allowances are thenproportional to population.
Crucially, C&C also allows forfull emissions trading between
countries: so if the US wishes
to, it can purchase credits
from, say India, as long as
India is willing to sell them.
This allows for the efficiency
that the private sector demands in order to be able tomeet climate change abatement in the lowest cost manner available. C&C would yieldsignificant cashflows to thedeveloping world from thesale of spare emissions, butwould also give them an
incentive to invest some ofthis income into additionalenergy efficiency projects,
since this would allow them tosell still more emissions. And,
since all trading would takeplace beneath the global cap

on emissions, trading would
not undermine the environmental integrity of the system.
The political implications of
C&C in the current situation
are enormous. The US Administration has made clear that it
takes climate change seriously
and that its opposition is not
to precautionary action per se,
but to the Kyoto Protocol inparticular. This is due largely
to long-standing US demands
that developing countries
accept emissions limitationcommitments, not least in the
famous 1997 Senate Resolution (passed 95-0) that decreed that the US would not
ratify any climate treaty that
did not include developing

countries.
However, both EU and developing country governments
have made clear that there isno question of fully global
commitments until developed
countries have "taken a lead,"as enshrined in the 1992
Climate Convention: richcountries have far higher per
capita emissions and a greater
share of historical culpability
for climate change. Why, after
all, should developing countries be forced to pay theprice of a problem that is notof their making-especiallywhen they are heavily burdened in other ways?

161

Right question; wrong answer.
A cap on emissions, such as
those accepted by the developed world at Kyoto is, bydefinition, also a property
right-and one that can be
traded. The EU, in committing
to reduce its emissions to 8
per cent below 1990 levels by
2010, has acquired a tradeable right to pollute up to thatlevel. What Kyoto in effect did
was to initiate a form of
atmospheric enclosure: theprivatisation of the climate,with property rights accruing
solely to the richest, highest
per capita emitters. The
developing world, vastly moreenergy efficient in per capita
terms than the north, is on
the verge of missing out onan unprecedented windfall.
Therefore, rather than opposing US calls for their participation, developing countries
should be rushing to congratulate President Bush on
his offer of a share of theclimate cake. For the end
point of Bush's stance isunavoidable: if developing
countries are to have atmospheric allocations, the only
logical, transparent and fairbasis for emissions entitlements is equal per capita
emission rights. It was only
just possible to agree differentiated commitments for 38
countries at Kyoto, and as
recent events have shown,even this deal may yet unravel. With 180 or morecountries participating, one
straightforward rule for allocations will be needed if negotiations are not to sink backinto a morass of complexityand horse-trading.
Yet C&C offers massive advantages to the US as well.
Economic efficiency, President
Bush's top priority, is provided

for in that full emissions
trading would be allowed.
C&C would allow Bush todefer domestic emissions
reduction for two full presidential terms through purchasing developing world
emission quotas, if needed;
the net environmental integrity and emissions contractionof the global framework would
remain.
Above all, environmental
integrity, the main concern of
EU governments, is ensured
by the presence of theoverarching global cap on
emissions, which would taper
downwards over time to aim
at a specific, safe concentration of C02 in the atmosphere.
This factor, more than any
other, is the key strength of
C&C. No one in the climate
debate has yet come up witha way of solving the problem
faster than it is being created.
It is essential to start with thequestion not of "what reductions are countries prepared
to offer?" but of "what level ofatmospheric C02 concentration is safe, and what is thepath to get there?" EU governments and mainstream
environment NGOs are making an appalling tactical error
in attacking the US for being"unfair" or "immoral." Suchattacks on the US are doomed
to failure since rebutting themconfers upon Bush a positive
advantage with climate hawks
in Congress and industry.
Instead, the world should
respond to Bush's withdrawal
from the protocol by pushing
the US to take a position on
developing world participation, and then playing thedebate on purely logicalgrounds.
The outlook for C&C has
improved dramatically inrecent months. The framework has been backed bygovernments as diverse as
those of France (Jacques
Chirac proposed the framework as the ultimate objectivein the Hague), India, Sweden,
Belgium, the Africa Group andthe Non-Aligned Movement. It
is supported by John
Houghton, head of the science
working group on the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, by Raul
Estrada-Oyuela (chair of the
Kyoto talks), and by Jan Pronk(chair of the Hague talks). In
Britain, too, C&C is advancing
up the agenda rapidly. It was
put forward as the best international climate framework by
the Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution in its
report on climate change lastyear and advocated recently
by Liberal Democrat leader
Charles Kennedy. Perhaps
most interestingly, C&C now
has the backing of the insurance industry, waking up atlast to the potential of climatechange to sink it altogether. In
a report on climate change
published earlier this year, theChartered Insurance Institute(the largest professional bodyfor insurers in the world),
argued that "above all, theindustry must show someleadership by coming out insup-port of the principle of
C&C," adding for good measure that "as the insurancecompanies own the oil companies (through equity stakes),
insurers form the only industry that has the collateral andneed to adopt the C&C logic."
As to why C&C has remained
the best kept secret in international climate change, theresponsibility lies in no smallpart with mainstream environment NGOs. For forgivable but

162

strategically flawed reasons,the international arms oforganisations such as Greenpeace, the WWF and theWorld Resources Institutetook a decision in the late1980s and early 1990s to
push for the principle ofdeveloped countries "taking alead"; even now, they can beseen defending this tenaciously. Perhaps these organisations were unable to compute the dramatic implicationsof allocating property rights tothe atmosphere, and consequently tried to defer theissue; yet, as Kyoto shows,there is no way around thequestion of how to allocate
these entitlements. Like it ornot, Kyoto is a rights-based
framework and one that
confers no rights at all on
developing countries.
In walking on eggshells
around the question of atmospheric rights for developing
countries, with all of theimplications that this has fornorthern consumption, southern equity and the future of
the climate, we have ended
up with a fudge that suits noone.
Alex Evans
The Global Commons
Institute website is at
http://www.gci.org.uk

May - Resurgence

A Thousand Loopholes
ALEX EVANS
Although the Climate
Change talks at The Hague
collapsed, there are signs
that an alternative proposal is gaining support.
MANY environmentalists must
be shaking their heads inbewilderment after the collapse of the climate talks in
The Hague and asking themselves what they are expected
to do next about global warming.
The UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, due
to present its Third Assessment Report in June 2001,
has revised upwards its estimates of temperature changeover the next century, from 13.5 degrees Celsius to 1.5-6
degrees.
There have been the floods, inthe UK, Italy, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and elsewhere —even before we recall Mozambique. The financial community is waking up to the scaleof the problem: a director of
one of the world’s six largest
insurance companies, CGNU,
said in The Hague that onpresent trends insurance
damages would exceed thegross domestic product of theentire world by 2065. And still
no deal.
Just what went wrong?
Environmentalists, at least,
are in no doubt about what
happened: the US, Canada,
Japan and Australia tried tokill the treaty through a deathof a thousand loopholes.

Concerns about equity raised
by India and others at the endof the Kyoto talks were derided by the US, which accused the developing world of
risking the best deal that wasavailable at the talks. A dealat The Hague would havedisadvantaged poor countries
still further: the Clean Development Mechanism would
have allowed rich countries
free rein to pick the so-called“low hanging fruit” — thecheapest emission-saving
projects — thus denying
developing countries theopportunity to make thesecheap savings themselves
when the time came for themto adopt their own commitments.
The Hague talks were any
case a wholly inadequate
response to the problem. With
its global target of a 5.2
reduction from 1990 emission
levels by 2010, it falls hopelessly short of the 60 reduction called for by the UN’s
international panel of scientificexperts. Defenders of theProtocol reply that, whilst they
acknowledge that it is not in
itself sufficient (even before“loophole accounting”), it isnecessary to maintain momentum in the process.
What is clear from the failureof The Hague talks is that it
will not be possible to move
forward on climate change
unless we institute a proper
constitutional framework forthe process. The lesson to
draw from The Hague is that
focussing on intricate minutiae
before there is agreement

163

about the principles that
underpin the process will
simply not work.
There is widespread agreement on what the constituent
elements and drivers of thedebate are. They are precaution, equity, efficiency andprosperity. Precaution in thatsomething needs to be done,
and fast: a cap on global
emissions is required, and ashift towards a carbon-free
economy. Equity because of
the still unanswered questionof developing nations’ role inaction as well as their evenmore urgent need for reductions by the big emitters.
Efficiency in the need formarkets to be involved in thesolution, together with all ofthe questions about emissions-trading and so on thatthe term implies. And prosperity in that all countries are
keen to maintain and improvetheir standards of living as far
as possible under the new
regime. But, although all
agree on these four elements,
the fundamental problem with
the Kyoto Protocol as it stands
is that it has these priorities
the wrong way around. Prosperity is being put before
Precaution, and Efficiency
before Equity. There are only
two possible outcomes: baddeal or no deal.
THERE IS, HOWEVER, analternative approach thatmade significant advances in
The Hague and may yet
emerge as the constitutionalframework that the Kyoto
process so badly needs. It is
an idea known in the interna-

tional climate change game as“contraction and convergence”
and was developed ten years
ago by a UK-based organization called the Global Commons Institute.
Although the approach was in
the past regarded as Utopianby some, it has been supported by many authorities
including the last chair of the
UN Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change, Sir John
Houghton; the UK Royal
Commission on Environmental
Pollution; and the governments of many developing
countries including China andIndia. Now, with the endorsement of the concept by
Jacques Chirac at The Hague
talks, it looks as though
Contraction and Convergence
may shift from idea to deal.
The Contraction refers to a
global cap which would be set
on world-wide emissions,
together with an overall
reduction trajectory for the
century ahead. This trajectory
could be modified at any timein line with new data emerging from scientists. The system thus regards precaution
as the highest priority.
The next question is therefore
how to allocate the emissions
available under this cap, andthis is the Convergence part:emissions entitlements converge over time towards equal
per capita emission rights for
all countries, so that emissions allowances are proportional to population. This is
the only logical and fair way
to proceed, and these terms
are also the only ones thatallow the gulf between the US
position and that of developing countries to be bridged.
There is meaningful participation by developing nations, as

demanded by the US Senate;
but developing countries can
support the system since it
puts them on an equal footingwith other countries.
Crucially, the framework also
allows for full emissionstrading between parties: so if
the US wishes to, it can purchase credits from (say) India,
as long as India is willing tosell them. This allows for theefficiency that companies
demand in order to be able tomeet climate change abatement in the least-cost manner
available. Of course, deep
Greens have long been sceptical of emissions-trading. They
argue that it would privatize
the global climate commons ina modern version of enclosureof common land.
These concerns are wellfounded, especially in the lightof the emissions-trading
system proposed under the
Kyoto Protocol, and it is to thecredit of deep Greens thatthey put these issues on the
map in The Hague. However,these concerns would be met
by a system of equal per
capita entitlements to theatmosphere. This is not only
equitable — and in this sense
the antithesis of colonialism —but also heralds the way to a
new global market which
would facilitate huge transfersof wealth from the developed
to the developing world asrich countries buy up developing countries’ spare emissions.
At the same time, since theoverall global emissions cap
would remain, this trading
would not compromise theenvironmental integrity of thesystem.
Action would be taken to savethe climate whilst simultaneously setting up a mechanism

164

for paying the rich countries’“carbon debt” to the developing world.
The final element of theequation, prosperity, enters
the picture in that a contraction and convergence structure would enable the market
to have transparent conditions
in which to anticipate andwork towards future development of alternative energy
sources. The sheer
unpredictability of global
climate change policy has
meant that demand for renewable energy is still nothigh enough for renewables tobe able to compete withfossil-fuel sources. Prosperity
under contraction and convergence is thus prosperity byother means: the lockstep
between economic growthand fossilfuel consumption isbroken, so that the economy
can at last be built on sustainable foundations.
Contraction and Convergence
does not offer a total solution.
Countries would still need todecide the rate of contraction
and the date of convergence,and the approach does notoffer a panacea for the question of sinks. What it would
provide, though, is the constitutional framework and levelplaying field that has been sosorely lacking from the Kyoto
process so far. It would meet
US concerns about the participation of developing countries
and access to emissionstrading without compromisingdeveloping nation demands
for equity and transparent
frameworks. Above all, it
would provide a structure inwhich the world could agree a
trajectory of global emissions
reduction and a clear path
towards a carbon-free
economy.

Contraction and Convergencegives the world a chance toback out of the mess that it
has created on international
climate change policy. It istime politicians and Greensalike took the initiative andargued for a return to theoriginal 1992 UN Climate
Change Convention goals ofequity and environmental
protection.
Alex Evans works with the
Global Commons Institute.

June 2001 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Contraction and Convergence” –A Policy Briefing on Climate Change to the UNEP Financial Institutions.
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

165

June - Resurgence
Resurgence

Climate Negotiations
James Bruges sees theimmense potential inContraction and Convergence.
Aubrey Meyer
Schumacher Briefings,
Green Books, Totnes,
THE WILFUL destruction, withforeknowledge, of entire
countries and cultures represents an unspeakable crime
against humanity.” The President of Nauru said this as hecontemplated the obliterationof his Pacific island state due
to rising sea levels. Climatechange is serious, and poor
nations are suffering disproportionately.
Withdrawal of the UnitedStates from the Kyoto processneed not prevent governments representing the vast
majority of the world’s population from implementing policies that address the crisis.
Aubrey Meyer, of the Global
Commons Institute, describes
an equitable framework that isinclusive of all countries,
called Contraction & Convergence. It was widely discussed and well received at
the November 2000 negotiations in The Hague. Buildingon Meyer’s Contraction &Convergence framework, theeconomist Richard Douthwaite
is now proposing an economic
framework to keep humanactivity within the environmental limits of the planet.
Once these two frameworks
have been implemented by
the majority nations, it would
be in the interests of others,

including the US, to participate, whether or not they hadtaken part in the negotiations.
Contraction & Convergenceseparates principles from all
the confusing detail into which
the 1997 Kyoto protocol has
sunk. It establishes rules bywhich the game should beplayed, rather than calling forarbitrary deals. Meyer declares, passionately, that weare dealing with nothing lessthan the survival of humanity.
And he insists that the ordering of human affairs must be
based on equity. When thinking about the negotiations
and the clarity Meyer brings
to them, I find it helpful to
use the image of a tree — its
trunk formed of core principles from which the branching
discussions grow. There arebound to be arguments overdetail but these are twigs andleaves that should not harm
the main structure. Meyer’s
core principles, the trunk, aresurvival and equity.
For survival, greenhouse gas
emissions must reduce (contraction). But how quickly?
The Economist magazine
takes a relaxed view that “it isa hundred-year problem” so
don’t do anything to upset theeconomy just yet. The Royal
Commission on Environmental
Pollution, in its report dated
June 2000, says that theconcentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere isapproaching the highest it has
ever been in forty million
years so we cannot predict
what will follow; in otherwords, concentrations are
already too high to be safe

166

and we should cut emissions
as quickly as possible.
Equity must be the guiding
principle for agreement on
how reductions will be made.
The carbon cycle was inbalance before human intervention. All land areas were
net emitters of carbon dioxide
and only the oceans were net
absorbers. What has changedis the increase in emissions
since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It is only
these emissions that are
relevant to the negotiations.
If we set on one side thedamage already done bycountries that have grownrich bringing us to the present
crisis, a huge concession to
ask of poor nations, the only
fair approach to rationing thefuture use of fossil fuel isthrough equity — an equalper-capita allocation (basedon 1990 population Figures).
Negotiations that do not takeeveryone into account on thebasis of equal rights are like atree with a rotten heart —doomed to collapse.
The first branch is that convergence from unequal use toequal-per-capita allocations
will take time — industrial
economies could not survive asudden massive reduction in
their use of oil and gas. So a
convergence period will benecessary. Thirty years has
been suggested but it may
need to be much less.
A second branch: it will be
virtually impossible for somesocieties to reduce theiremissions adequately,
whereas others are at present
within their allocation. Soallocations should be traded,but only if the total of allemissions is within the reducing target. Each country
would be issued with Standard Emission Rights (SERs)
coupons by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) for thispurpose. Industrial nations
will want to cut their emissions as quickly as possible inorder to reduce the number of
coupons they need to buy
from those with coupons tospare. Poor nations will want
to reduce the growth in theiruse of fossil fuel so that they
have coupons to sell.
China, India and most Africancountries endorsed the policyof equal-per-capita allocation
at The Hague. President
Chirac specifically stated that
this is France’s goal. The
Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has said “theUK should be prepared toaccept the contraction andconvergence principle as thebasis for international agreement.” If world affairs were
democratic, this would now
be an adopted policy.
Some commentators accept
the logic of equal-per-capita
allocations but question
whether the US will ever sign
an agreement based onequity — it is only commercial
incentive that will bring the
US on board. The majority
nations should recognize thisas a fact of life and change
the financial architecture of
the world. This sounds ambitious but it is just a questionof revisiting the Bretton
Woods agreement.
So the third branch is about
monetary reform. At the 1944
Bretton Woods conference,John Maynard Keynes argued
for an international currency,

independent of national
currencies, but the UnitedStates overruled him. The
Majority Nations should now
establish an international
currency for trade acrossboundaries.
A fourth branch (which relates
to monetary reform): adequate reductions will not be
achieved unless the monetarysystem rewards those who
reduce their emissions. In
1944 currencies were basedon gold.
The gold standard was subsequently abandoned in 1971 socurrencies are now freefloating and unstable, a highly
unsatisfactory situation. The
new international currency
should be linked to carbon, orthe emission of carbon. It
would be issued in proportion
to standard emission rights.
Douthwaite calls it the ‘emissions based currency unit’(ebcu).
A fifth branch: developing
nations should take the initiative (and Europe would probably join in). They have great
power — most of the world’scommodity resource is locatedin them, India does most of
America’s accountancy overnight, and these nations could
drag the rest of the world into
climate chaos if they adopted
our coal and oil technologies.
But they also have the incentive to make changes —emissions-trading would
cause money to flow to themfrom rich nations as of rightnot as aid, and monetaryreform would enable them to
use the dollars sitting idly intheir banks.
An export tax, levied in proportion to the amount a
country exceeds its emissions
allocation, would establish a167fund to encourage carbon
sequestration.
Contraction & Convergence
allows the Kyoto protocol tobe taken forward; it meetsthe reasonable US requirement that all nations should
be involved; and it supersedes
the protocol’s arbitrary allocations that favour historicallyhigh polluters.
If the policy is linked to monetary reform, it will be in theinterest of all nations, including the US, to participate.
Contraction & Convergenceaddresses the two great
issues of our time — climatechange and inequality. It
would provide the incentive
for all nations to reduce
emissions.
And it would result in a progressive tendency towards
equality between nations,thus relieving poverty, encouraging trade and removing
many causes for conflict.
Hopefully it will becentrestage at Bonn.

James Bruges is authorof The Little Earth Book
(Alastair Sawday Publishing, £4.99) (see review inthis issue).

June - The Guardian

Emissions that countIf the Kyoto agreement collapses, which thanks to Bush,looks increasingly likely, a 3rd
way has emerged that may yet
save the planet.
In less than five weeks, countries will reconvene in Bonn tothrash out the Kyoto treaty,
which aims to reduce global
warming emissions by anaverage of 5.2% on 1990
levels by 2012. It looks bad.
George Bush has returned to
Washington more than everconvinced that it is unworkable, unrealistic and against
American interests.
The US argues that because
there has been such a tremendous growth in its economy
since 1990, the treaty as it
stands would require a 2530% reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions and that
this in turn would mean a 12% reduction in US GDP by2010 - comparable, the US
argues, to the oil shocks of the
1970s. The US also insists that
the Kyoto targets are unrealistic and that many countries
are unlikely to meet them. It
believes the treaty to befundamentally flawed because
it excludes developing countries - 80% of the world,
including China and India whose emissions will inevitably
grow as they develop.
On the other side there isEurope, which agrees that thetreaty is flawed, but argues
that it has taken 10 years oflong and complex negotiations
just to get to this point andthe chance of addressing aphenomenon which potentiallythreatens all life on earth mustnot be lost. Europe has pragmatic reasons for not wanting

to see the treaty unravel. It
negotiated as a unit andagreed an overall EU target cutof about 7%, using a complex
process known as "the bubble", whereby different countries agreed to different levelsof commitment. Portugal, forexample, is allowed an increase in emissions, whilst the
UK agreed to cuts of 12.5%
and Germany to cuts of around21%. If the Kyoto process
were reopened, it could provedifficult, perhaps impossible, toever put back together. The
gaps between the two sides
are now greater than even six
months ago. Indeed, there is a
growing acceptance that bothnot only agree to disagree, butthat nothing is immediately
resolveable.
If this is the case, then Bonncould become a global anti
Americana-fest. If other countries can agree on the precise
mechanism of how to achieve
their commitments and thensign up to Kyoto, with the US
reduced to observers, then the
US would become a pariah
state. The popular theory goesthat it would then, perhaps
under a new president in2005, be forced to join. But
this is by no means certain,
and is diplomatically unacceptable.
It is far more likely that thewhole Kyoto agreement will fallapart before it is ever ratified
by 55 countries, so ensuring astalemate and taking theblame away from the US. This
could happen in any number ofways. The US has a long
history of twisting arms andmaking deals. It might try toisolate countries such as Italy,
most vulnerable under168

rightwing president Silvio
Berlusconi, or pull all thestrings it can with friends suchas Britain, whose diplomatic
loyalties in this case are
stretched between Europe andthe US.
If Kyoto collapses, the options
for addressing climate change
are limited. It would take years
to piece together anothertreaty of the same complexity
and many countries would balkat the idea of going through it
all again. But hovering in thewings is a proposal, known tobe acceptable to almost everyone in the de veloping world
and increasingly by the developed countries. It would seemto resolve almost all US objections to the Kyoto agreement,
and has the advantage ofbeing demonstrably fair, pragmatic and politically neutral.
"Contraction and Convergence"(C&C), dreamed up by thesmall Global Commons Institute in London, is based on
two principles: that global
emissions of greenhousewarming gases must be progressively reduced and that
global governance must be
based on justice and fairness.
Rather than look at emissions
on a country by country basis,
C&C proposes reducing emissions on a per capita basis.
It means agreeing internationally how rapidly greenhousegas emissions should contract
each year and then allocating
permits to emit them to all
countries on the basis of their
populations. The permits would
be tradeable, so that thosecountries which could not
manage within their allocations
could buy extra ones fromthose with a surplus. It would

strengthen the global
economy and address manyof the concerns of the WTO,
the IMF and the World Bankby channelling money to poor
countries not as aid but as aright. Its simplicity and its
potential is appealing and it
has powerful supporters,
including Svend Auken, theDanish environment minister,
his counterpart Jan Pronk in
Holland, Michael Meacher in
Britain, Jacques Chirac andKlaus Topfer of the UN environment department. The

British royal commission on
environmental pollution has
advised the government topress for an approach like
this, and many developing
countries, including China andIndia and the Africa group,
have voiced support. Insurers
and MPs from various countries, even US senators, havepublicly shown enthusiasm.
Even Tony Blair said the C&C
approach "merits full consideration".

make a late surge to the topof the climate talks agenda,
but it shows that there areways beyond the present
impasse and that there could
be a creative basis for longterm cooperation between
countries.

It is unlikely that C&C will

July 7 - New Scientist

Calling the tune
With the Kyoto Protocolon the verge of collapse,
the search is on for a
formula to get us off thehook of global warming.
One of the main contenders is a proposal by aprofessional violinist withno scientific training.
Aubrey Meyer has entranced scientists andenraged economists andmany environmentalists
with his idea, but it iswinning high-profile backers, such as China and theEuropean Parliament. He
says it embraces science,
logic, fairness, even art.
Could it yet save theworld? Fred Pearce gets tothe bottom of it
How did a musician get
into the high politics ofglobal warming?
I had been a practising musician and composer for 20
years. In 1988, I wanted towrite a musical about Chico

Mendes, the assassinatedBrazilian rainforest campaigner. I began to explore
rainforest politics and wasoverwhelmed by a sense oftragedy. I could not understand why anyone would wantto murder a butterfly collector.
Soon afterwards I joined theGreen Party, where four of us
formed the Global Commons
Institute in London to fight toprotect the planet’s sharedresources—the forests, theatmosphere and so on. We
scraped together money fromsupporters, and I’ve neverstopped since.
Did you have any background in science?
I didn’t have any backgroundin maths or science. My only
real contact with numeracy
until GCI got going was thekind of kinetic numeracy ofmusic, its structure, and thediscipline which goes with
that.

169

You developed the formula called contraction
and convergence. What isthat?
At the early conferences onfighting climate change I saw
this hideous charade being
played out in which the politics was divorced from thescience. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change said we needed a 60
per cent cut in emissions ofgreenhouse gases to halt
global warming. But thepoliticians had no plan even to
stabilise emissions, let alone
cut them. So I did some
simple calculations. To dowhat the IPCC wanted meant
reducing global emissions toan average 0.4 tonnes ofcarbon per person per year.
That was the contraction part.
It seemed to me that the only
politically possible way ofachieving that was to work
towards national entitlements
based on size of population.
Today, some nations areemitting 20 times more perhead than others. The US, forexample, emits 5.2 tonnes perhead, Britain 2.6 tonnes, India
0.2 tonnes. This means thatIndia could double its emissions while the US would haveto come down by more than90 per cent. That is the convergence part. Clearly nocountry is going to be able to
make those changes immediately, but the beauty of thesystem is that it allows themto trade in emissions permits.
Other people, like Anil
Agarwal, the Indian environmentalist, had similarideas at that time. Why
did yours stick?
Yes, Anil had got very angry
when some leading American
environmentalists tried tosuggest that India, which has
one of the world’s lowest percapita emissions, was one of
the leading causes of global
warming because of its large
population. But the caseagainst such crazy views
wasn’t getting anywhere—weneeded a new language. I had
become fascinated with thegraphics capabilities of computers as I saw them as thevisual equivalent of musicalcommunication, a universal
language. So at GCI we
produced large colour graphics showing how countries
could converge towards equal
per capita emissions whilebringing overall emissions
down by 60 per cent. You
could argue about the rate of
the contraction and convergence, of course—whether itshould take 20 or 50 years—
but basically we had synthesised the whole problem andthe whole solution onto asingle graphic(www.gci.org.uk). For

musicians, mathematicians,
scientists, it was, frankly,
beautiful. I took 300 of thesegraphs to a climate meetingand put them outside theconference door. They went in
30 seconds. I think contraction and convergence cuts tothe chase. It flushes all thepoliticians out of their hideyholes.
Why did it take a musician
rather than scientists tocome up with it?
Many scientists have taken toit, but perhaps it needed a
musician to produce it. Maybe
the idea is not intellectual in
the usual scientific sense. It
has rules but it is also active,
and it embraces creativity. It
has harmony, rhythm andform. And it embeds anethic—of equity and survival.
We musicians spend a lot oftime on repetition and variation. I kept taking variants ofthese graphics to UN climate
meetings.
But it sounds rather idealistic. It may be a faircarve-up of the atmosphere, but the world
doesn’t really work fairly,
does it?
Initially, fairness was justwhat we were pushing for. I
remember quizzing a woman
economist at the World Bankon her cost-benefit analysis of
cutting greenhouse gas emissions. I pointed out that small
island states like the Maldiveswould almost certainly disappear under her plan. She said:“What’s all the fuss about
small island states? They will
just be compensated; and we
can send lifeboats.” She had
no sense of the depth ofdisregard for real people

170

contained in that. But thetruth is that the rich are as
vulnerable as the poor toclimate change. So while thefairness of contraction andconvergence is a powerfulargument, I personally don’t
think it is the key. The
stronger argument is thepurely logical one. It doesn’t
solve all our problems at astroke, but it creates theframework in which we cansolve them. If people disagree, then the challenge forthem is to think of something
better.
Presumably, the big environmental groups embraced the idea.
Far from it. Many have refused to talk to us or evenacknowledge our existence.
How come?
I think they took a judgement
at the start of the climate
debate that the enormity ofwhat we faced was so devastating that you couldn’t spring
it on ordinary people all at
once. And they didn’t want tofrighten the politicians with
grand strategies. They
thought contraction andconvergence would do that.
Instead, they called for sharp
cuts in the emissions of developed countries only. It may
have been politically correct,
but the approach was random
and timid.
Greenpeace, timid?
Yes. They were part of thistimid approach. They avoided
facing the global dimension of
the problem. It was tokenism.
But broadly that was theroute taken by the Kyoto

Protocol. So the timid
approach worked, didn’t
it?
Well, I’d say that the timid
approach is why we are in themess we are in today. The US
has ripped it up.
You have annoyed theeconomists, too.
They annoyed me. The analysis produced by the mainstream economists suggested
that this problem was insoluble; that it was too expensive
to save the planet. This isbecause their work conceals
daft and immoral assumptions
not only about the expendability of natural resources but
also of human beings. Climatechange is not an economic
problem. It is an organisational problem to do withprotecting the real atmosphere, the only one we have.
It is not good enough forthem to just nod at the scientists and say: “Thank you,now we’ll tell you how theworld works.”

like President George W.
Bush?
Bush acknowledges the problem is real and serious andlike everyone else he has toface this. Kyoto is probably
better than the chaos that is
now on the cards, but theodds for getting this deal aredwindling. Anyway, as I see it,
the protocol is Plan A. At best,

China, the non-aligned movement, many African nations,
the Red Cross, Britain’s Royal
Commission on Environmental
Pollution and Jacques Chirachave all said they support theidea in principle. Many economists say they have no real
quarrel with it, provided itallows countries to trade theiremissions entitlements. If therevenues from trade are spent

What response do you getfrom scientists?
They really do make an effort
to remain calm and neutral intheir judgement. Many seethat contraction and convergence tries to mirror that
objectivity by attempting to
respond directly to what
scientists say is the situation.
But many identify with us in amoral as well as a logicalsense. They are also humanbeings. They have children
and think about the future.
Politically, your ideas havenot got far yet. By criticising the Kyoto Protocol,
have you played into thehands of its opponents,

it will moderate increases inemissions a bit—until 2012.
So, regardless of what happens to it, there has to be aPlan B. The real question iswhether contraction andconvergence follows on fromthe protocol or picks up thepieces when it falls apart.
Who backs it today?
The European Parliament,171

on renewable energy, it willbring the efficiency gains thatthe economists are so keen
on. And it will allow the poorest countries with the low
emissions to sell their spareentitlements for profit.
What about the US government?
Some senators already support it. It is the only practicalproposal that does what
they’ve asked for, namely
simultaneous emissions controls on all countries. It promotes economic efficiency
through emissions trading andenables progressive American
firms to get involved andmake money. That’s certainly
what I would tell George W.
Bush.

very interested when I said I
was going to Beijing. They
said: “You’d better watch yourback because you’re gonna bewatched.” I got quite nervous.
I’m not a diplomat, I’m just amusician. But the idea is notleftist, or even rightist. The
morality you can take orleave, but the logic is inescapable.

That makes you sound likean arch-capitalist, rather
than the communist you
have sometimes beenlabelled. How come theChinese like it?

But don’t developing
countries have the right totell the rich countries thatthey created the problem
and should solve it?

False dichotomy. The Chinesecame on board, at least
tentatively, when they realised
I was talking about distributing emissions rights. They
liked the idea of equal rights
rather than equal restrictions.
But this is high politics. The
US Energy Department got

controlling emissions they
could get paid to convert theireconomies to run without
fossil fuels.
So your formula meets theneeds of both the US andthe developing world?
Yes. It’s a framework for theretreat from our dependency
on fossil fuels. The way I see
it, the world starts a race to
get out of carbon ather than arace to get into it.
Fred Pearce

So far, most developing countries have indeed united
around that message. Thatmay be morally valid, but it isa disastrous strategy for themas well as for the rich world.
The carrot for them in adopting contraction and convergence, apart from saving theclimate, is that in return forJuly - The Guardian

Blueprint to avert global disaster
Larry Elliott
In one respect, Tony Blair islike every British prime minister since Churchill - he believes in a unique bond between Downing Street and theWhite House. The existence ofthe so-called special relationship is much disputed, but
one thing is certain; if London
does exert any influence inWashington then next weekend will be the time to wieldit.
Today in Bonn talks begin thatare designed to keep alive the
Kyoto agreement on cutting
greenhouse gases. Plan A is
to browbeat the Americans

into supporting the protocol,
even though it has been
rejected as fundamentally
flawed by the new Bushadministration.

politicians in Genoa thisweekend may have to face up
to one uncomfortable truth:
whatever is cobbled together
in Bonn, Kyoto is dead.

Despite complaints from therest of the world that the US
will be held responsible if thecontinued build-up of greenhouse gases causes irreparable damage to the global
environment, the strategy has
two big drawbacks. The
Americans are unlikely tobudge and there’s no plan B.

It is true that the UnitedStates is responsible for 25%
of global emissions with only
4% of the world’s population.
It is true that the developed
world (not just the US) has amoral duty to sort out the
problem it has created. But it
is a fantasy to believe that theBush administration is going
to change its mind on Kyoto.

Actually, that’s not quite true.
There is but for it to have achance of succeeding the172

Only when it is accepted that
the Americans are not goingto roll over will the way becleared for some new thinking.
Better alternative
The desperate attempts tohold Kyoto together withsticking plaster are understandable because the feelingis that the alternative to Kyoto
is no deal at all. But thealternative is better andpossible, given political will.
Blair is well placed to provide
the sort of leadership that is
now required. He knows fromthe Labour party’s experiencethat the moment of total,
dismal failure is the moment
when new ideas have theirgreatest potency. He likes
thinking “outside the box” andis good in negotiations at seeing the big
picture.

time to time. But even if the
optimists are right, the consequences will be so dire if they
are wrong that it is worth
adopting a precautionary
approach. Insurance companies certainly think so.
The US government has
never sought to deny thatclimate change is a problem,
simply that Kyoto is thewrong way of dealing with it.
In particular, Washington hasargued that a global problem
needs a global solution, whichmeans including countries inthe developing world, too.
Fortunately, a blueprint exists
which not only answers the
US objections to Kyoto but
offers a coherent strategy forcutting greenhouse gases.

Blair also knows theenvironment is the
big challenge facing
today’s global leaders.
As he once said:“If there is one
issue that threatens
global disaster it is
the changes in ouratmosphere ... wehave to face a stark
fact, neither wehere in Britain, nor
our partners
abroad, havesucceeded in reversing theoverall destructive trend.
The challenge continues togrow and become moreurgent.”There are, of course, those
who argue strongly thatclimate change caused by
CO2 emissions is a myth, andthat the increase in global
temperature over recent
decades is simply a natural
phenomenon that occurs from

The plan, known as contraction and convergence, issimpler than Kyoto’s Byzantine complexity, offers a wayof getting the Americans tocome on board, has built-in
flexibility, and a market
mechanism built into it.
Although C&C was the brainchild of green activists, theirony is that it would be goodfor business. It is hardly
surprising that it is winning173

new supporters all the time,
including Michael Meacher,the environment minister.
Contentious issue
So how would it work? Aubrey Meyer, founder of the
Global Commons Institutesays the plan has three distinct phases.
First, governments get together and, on the basis of
the best scientific advice,
decide how much further thelevel of CO2 in the atmosphere can be allowed to rise
before the environmental
damage becomes too great.
Given the lack of scientificunanimity, this is certain to bea contentious issue, but itneed not be insuperable.
Once the overall
limit has been
agreed, Meyer
says the next stepis to use an estimate of the proportion of the gas
released which isretained in theatmosphere to
determine thespeed at whichemissions have to
be cut in order tohit the target.
Finally, once weknow by whatpercentage emissions have to be reduced,
there has to be agreement on
how to allocate the fossil fuelconsumption that lead tothose emissions.
In his pamphlet (Contraction& Convergence; Green Books,£5), Meyer argues that thecorrect and fair approach
would be to enshrine the rightto emit carbon dioxide as ahuman right “that should beallocated on an equal basis toall of humankind”.
Clearly, this would be far
more attractive to countries
that are consuming smaller
quantities of fossil fuels perhead (poor countries) thanthose that have relied on theburning of fossil fuels to growtheir economies (rich countries).
One solution would be forover-consuming countries tobe allowed an adjustment
period - of say 25 years - toreduce their emissions to theconvergence level. In addition, those countries thatwere unable to live within
their allocation would be able
to buy extra permits fromthose countries which weremore efficient in the use offossil fuels.
This would have a number ofbenefits. It would lead to aflow of funds from rich topoor countries that would not
be contingent on the willingness of creditor nations tosanction debt relief; it would
encourage those countries inthe south to run their economies in energy-frugal ways,
so that they continued tohave pollution permits to sell;
finally, it would provide a

considerable boost to thedevelopment of sophisticatedenvironmental technologies in
the north, which could be asimportant to capitalist development in the first half of the
21st century as was oil in thefirst half of the 20th.
Considerable thought has
been given to the C&C proposal. The economist, Richard
Douthwaite, has developed
the idea of a new currency,
the emissions-backed currency unit, which would
operate rather like a green
Gold Standard. Ebcus would
be used for trading in greenhouse gas emissions permits,
and if the price of permits
started to rise the international body responsible forpolicing the system would sellmore permits and then withdraw the currency permanently from circulation,
thereby limiting further damage to the environment.
Are there any objections? You
bet. The plan relies on thefact that politicians can focus
beyond the next election; it
requires a willingness for us
in rich northern countries,
consumers as well as producers, to change our lifestyle174

and for developing countries
to come off the sidelines; itmeans facing up to the factthat Kyoto is a barely twitching corpse. C&C, in otherwords, is no magic bullet.
But crude anti-Americanism is
not either; it is the equivalentof firing blanks, since it plays
into the hands of those in
Washington who want to
defend the status quo anddrowns out the voices ofdeeply concerned US citizens
who recognise that there is aproblem and want their government to be part of thesolution.
This is not the time for theblame game but for some
fresh thinking.

February 28 - BBC online

Climate panel urged to ‘‘get
get real’By environment correspondent Alex Kirby

both environmental andeconomic”.

A damaging row is threatening to envelop a panel of
United Nations experts
charged with recommending
the best ways of softening theimpact of climate change.

It says policymakers should
be ready for “possible revisionof the scientific insights into
the risks of climate change”.
The draft says: “Climatechange decision-making isessentially a sequential proc-

below the level where they
intensify global warming.
French support
The advocates of contraction
and convergence include mostof the European Union’senvironment ministers, theEuropean Parliament, and theUK’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

The panel starts work on 28
February in Accra,
Ghana, to finalise its
report to govern“None of us would wantments. The report will
the IPCC reports or their sumbe the third issued inmaries to be ridiculed for being
2001 by the Intergovvague or evasive on this point
ernmental Panel on
Climate Change
in this increasingly critical cli(IPCC).
mate”
Its two earlier reports
Aubrey Meyer, GCI
this year said unambiguously that there
was greater scientificconfidence that theess under uncertainty . . . itworld was warming, thatshould consider appropriate
human activities were at least hedging” until there is agreepartly responsible, and thatment on the level at which
the consequences would begreenhouse gas emissions
serious.
should be stabilised.
But this third report, by contrast, by the IPCC’s working
group three, looks likely todwell instead on the remaining uncertainties surrounding
climate change, and on theconsequent difficulty of choosing suitable mitigation policies.
Unwillingness or inability?
A copy of the draft which the
Accra meeting will be seeking
to finalise was passed to BBC
News Online. It urges “aprudent risk management
strategy” and “careful consideration of the consequences,

But the panel’s apparent
unwillingness - or inability - tobe as forthright as the authorsof the two earlier reports has
been attacked by a UK-based
group, the Global Commons
Institute. This argues for apolicy of “contraction andconvergence” (C&C) as thefairest way to tackle climatechange.
C&C insists, in essence, thateveryone in the world, fromrich and poor countries alike,has an equal right to emit
greenhouse gases, but that
total emissions should be kept

175

It was given asignificant boost at
the climate conference last Novemberin the Dutch capital,
The Hague, when
President Jacques
Chirac of France
spelt out his support
for it.

Now, Aubrey Meyer, thedirector of the GCI, has written to Bert Metz, who cochairs the IPCC group meetingin Accra, urging him to include
a recommendation of C&C in
the policy-makers’ summary
which the meeting will issue.
Mr Meyer writes: “Failing this,a residual character of randomness and drift in thesummary will continue todissipate the process that the
IPCC exists to inform. None of
us would want the IPCC
reports or their summaries tobe ridiculed for being vague orevasive on this point in thisincreasingly critical climate.

“Such an outcome is irresponsible, unnecessary anddangerous.”

Dissenters’ viewSupport for the GCI stancehas come from an influential
climatologist, Sir John
Houghton. Sir John is aformer head of the UK Met.
Office, and now co-chairs the
IPCC’s working group one, theteam which last month said it
was more confident that
global warming was happening, and that average temperatures might rise twice as
fast by 2100 as had beenthought.

Global ice cover is diminishing, but are humans really toblame?

He told BBC News Online: “Ihope contraction and convergence will find some part inworking group three’s report.
I think these ideas are important because of their logic,
and because of their appeal
on grounds of principle. C&C
does actually address three
distinct principles: that weshould take a precautionary
approach, that the polluter
should pay, and that we must
be concerned with equity.
“Because it addresses these,
C&C needs to be taken very
seriously.”
However, there are also thoseobservers who will want the
scepticism that has crept into
the IPCC’s working group
three draft to be maintained.
Those scientists who doubt
the global warming hypothesis, and humankind’s part init, were delighted to see what
they regarded as some realism enter the thinking of the
UN body.

176

July 17 - Guardian

How to rule the world
Rich nations should stoprunning the planet andgive way to global democracy
George Monbiot
The leaders of the free worldpresent a glowing example to
the rest of the planet.
Of the eight men meeting in
Genoa this week, one seized
the presidency of his country
after losing the election.

and that they would preserveand strengthen the antiballistic-missile treaty.
One man is replaced and all is
lost.
Similar problems delegitimise
almost every global body. The
World Bank and IMF, whichapportion votes according to
the money they receive, aregoverned by the countries inwhich they don’t operate.
The five permanent membersof the United Nations security
council, charged with maintaining world peace, also
happen to be the world’s fiveprincipal arms traders.

fear.
Writing in the Guardian last
week, Philippe Legrain, aformer World Trade Organisation official, argued that world
elections to a world parliament are not realistic. “Sixty
million Britons would not
accept 1,300m Chinese outvoting them.”
Mr Legrain has, unintentionally, presented the antiglobalisation movement with
its central challenge.

Another is pursuing a genoIf those of us in the rich world
cidal war in an annexed
who are protesting against the
republic. A third is facing
inordinate powers of the G8,
allegations of corruption. A
the World Bank or the WTO
fourth, the summit’s host, has
are serious about overthrowbeen convicted of illegal
ing unaccountable
party financing, bribery
power, then we must riseand false accounting,to his bait.
“Indeed, the only fair andwhile his righthand man
lasting means of reducing CO2 In 1937, George Orwell
is on trial for consorting
observed that “every
namely“contraction
andconverwith the mafia.
revolutionary opinion
gence”, which means working out
Needless to say, thedraws part of its
how much pollution the planet
major theme of thisstrength from a secret
can take, then allocating an
week’s summit is “proconviction that nothingequal pollution quota to everyone
moting democracy”.
can be changed”. Bouron Earth - would surely be imgeois socialists, he
But were the G8 napossible to implement without acharged, were prepared
tions governed by
world
parliament.”
to demand the death ofangels, they would still
capitalism and the
be incapable of promotdestruction of the British
ing global democracy.
empireonly because they
These eight hungry men
The UN general assembly
knew that these things wererepresent just 13% of therepresents governments
unlikely to happen.
world’s population.
rather than people: a poor
They were all elected topursue domestic imperatives:
their global role is simply a
byproduct of their national
mandate. The decisions they
make are haphazard andephemeral.
Last year, for example, the G8
leaders announced that they
were determined to achieve
the goals of the Kyoto protocol limiting climate change

nation of 900m swings, inpractice, less weight than arich nation of 50m.

The G8 leaders know that the“global democracy” they are
due to discuss is a sham, andthey will do all they can tokeep it that way.
There is, we are told byalmost everyone, no alternative to the rule of finance and177“For, apart from any otherconsideration, the high standard of life we enjoy in England
depends upon keeping a tighthold on the Empire - in orderthat England may live incomparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must liveon the verge of starvation - anevil state of affairs, but you
acquiesce in it every time you
step into a taxi or eat a plate

of strawberries and cream.”
The middle-class socialist, heinsisted, “is perfectly ready toaccept the products of Empire
and to save his soul by sneering at the people who holdthe Empire together”.
Since then, empires havewaxed and waned, but thatbasic economic formula holds
true: we in the rich world live
in comparative comfort only
because of the inordinate
power our governments wield,
and the inordinate wealthwhich flows from that power.
We acquiesce in this systemevery time we buy salad froma supermarket (grown withwater stolen from Kenyan
nomads) or step into a planeto the climate talks in Bonn.
Accepting the need for global
democracy means accepting
the loss of our own nations’power to ensure that theworld is run for our benefit.
Are we ready for this, or isthere lurking still some residual fear of the yellow peril,an age-old, long- imprinted
urge towards paternalism?
Global democracy is meaningless unless ultimate power
resides in a directly electedassembly. This means, ofcourse, that a resident of
Kensington would have nogreater influence than aresident of Kinshasa.
The Ethiopians would havethe same number of representatives as the British (andrather more as their population increases). The people of
China would, collectively, be
22 times as powerful as thepeople of the United Kingdom.
In a truly democratic world,
the people’s assembly would,
unlike the European parlia-

ment, be sovereign. All otherglobal bodies would report toit and act on its instructions.
The UN, WTO and otherbodies, if they survived at all,would be reduced to thestatus of the parliament’s civil
service. But, as the World
Citizen Foundation has
pointed out, to preserve local
democracy its scope must be
limited by subsidiarity.
It could not interfere in strictly
national decision-making, inother words, but would seek
to do only what existing global
bodies are attempting - andfailing - to do today: resolving
disputes, tackling global
poverty, defending people
from oppression and protecting the world’s resources.
But it’s not hard to see how aworld parliament could bypass
and undermine dictatorships.
Just as proportional representation in European elections
has encouraged us to startquestioning our own, flawedsystem, genuine global democracy would highlightdemocratic deficits all over theworld.
The danger, of course, is thatthe world parliament mightmake decisions we don’t likevery much. We may discoverthat people living in theworld’s most populous nations
don’t want to tackle global
warming or to control nuclear
weapons. But danger is what
democracy is all about.
And it’s hard, in truth, toimagine a people’s assembly
making a worse fist of theseissues than the G8 and thewarmongers of the security
council.
China has curbed its carbon
dioxide emissions while energy use in the US has

178

soared. Indeed, the only fairand lasting means of reducing
CO2 (namely “contraction andconvergence”, which means
working out how much pollution the planet can take, thenallocating an equal pollution
quota to everyone on Earth)would surely be impossible toimplement without a world
parliament.
The very existence of a global
assembly could help to resolve
disputes: people often take uparms only because they haveno other means of being
heard. I suspect, too, that theWorld Bank and IMF, whoserole is to police the debtors onbehalf of the creditor nations,would disappear almost
immediately.
A democratic assembly would
almost certainly replace themwith something like Keynes’s“International Clearing Union”,
which would force creditors aswell as debtors to eliminate
third world debt and improvethe balance of trade.
But the democratisation which
may or may not result in suchchanges cannot even be
widely discussed until we, the
new world order’s prosperous
dissidents, are prepared totake our arguments to theirlogical conclusion, and let goof the power our nations
possess and the disproportionate wealth which flows
from it.
I hope that we, unlike Orwell’sbourgeois socialists, are readyfor this challenge. If not, we
may as well as cancel ourtickets to Genoa and stay athome eating strawberries andcream.
comment@guardian.co.uk

179

July 23 - E-Finacne News
E-Finacne

Universities Superannuation Scheme
An article in E-financial
news, quotes Colin
Maltby, head of investments at BP pension fundas saying:“The authors of the USS(Universities Superannuation
Scheme) Climate Report) have
put forward a framework that

could enable us as institutions
to assess and manage more
effectively the risks to ourinvestment portfolios.”

This article in eFinanceNews at: - http://
www.efinancialnews.com/
story.cfm?passedref=17000000000016517&xsection=16

July 26 - Guardian

Letters
Martin Quick writes: “While Japan and some othercountries may be criticised forweakening the Kyoto agreements, to criticise countries
for being reluctant to facefines for non-compliance with
their targets (Leaders, July24) seems unreasonable while
the biggest polluter of all, theUS, is outside the agreement.
Unless some means of charging the US for additional
damage to the environment
caused by its opting out of theagreement is devised, the US
will have an unfair advantage.

converge to a per-capita
amount that can be sustainedby the atmosphere’s carrying
capacity is such a framework.
The Russian “surplus” would
then be rapidly eroded.”Martin Quick, Stroud, Glos,
mj.q-@virgin.net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
letters/story/
0,3604,527366,00.html

The agreement to allow
emissions trading while Russia
has huge surpluses of “reductions” to sell, will lead to a low
price per ton of carbon
traded, discouraging the
introduction of renewableenergy and energy efficiency
measures.
Trading will only become fairwhen national targets are set
in a rational way. The principleof “contract and converge”, as
proposed by the Global Commons Institute, where allcountries’ emissions quotas

180August 2 - Commonwealth Human Ecology Council Journal

Why Contraction & Convergence is
The Framework to Solve Global Climate
ChangeAlex Evans and Aubrey
Meyer
Introduction
In spite of the deal on the
Kyoto Protocol in Bonn, along-term global solution forclimate change appears
almost as far away as ever.
How can US demands forparticipation by developing
countries and full use of
market mechanisms likeemissions trading be reconciled with the South’s demands for equitable treatment– and with assurance ofmaking the necessary reductions in emissions?
Developing countries argue
that they have minimal historical emissions compared to theNorth, still have much lower
per capita emissions, stand tolose out most from climatechange, and above all thatdeveloped countries should“take a lead” in tackling the
problem.
In the background, meanwhile, climate change itself
grows steadily worse, still with
no approach in evidence thatcan solve the problem fasterthan it is being created.
Climate change is truly theGordian knot of our times. Is
there any ray of sunlightamidst all the dark clouds?
Yes, says the London-based
Global Commons Institute(GCI), which has developed apolicy framework called “Con-traction & Convergence”(C&C) - a proposal advocatedin the past by the governments of China, India, theAfrica Group, France, Belgium,
Sweden, and the Non-Aligned
Movement; by Climate Network Africa (a network of
African NGOs), UN Environment Programme CEO Klaus

Topfer, the science chair of
the IPCC, Sir John Houghton,
the UK-based Chartered
Insurance Institute, the European Parliament, and most EU
environment ministers. C&C
has also been supported by
the Red Cross, Jubilee Plus(the successor organisation to
the Jubilee 2000 developingworld debt relief campaign)and most recently the Climate
Action Network federation ofNGOs, which called in its
publication “Eco” for a C&C
approach.

181

The concept
Under C&C, all countries
would collectively agree anannually reviewable target fora stable atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, and thenwork out the rate at whichemissions must contract inorder to reach it. The needfor a specific concentration
target to be set is absolutely
critical, as the UN Climate
Secretariat’s Executive Secretary, Michael Zammit Cutajar,
made clear in a recent interview. Without a clear global
trajectory towards a specificlevel of CO2 in the atmosphere, action taken to address
climate change is no morethan a spin of the roulette
wheel in a climate casino.
Lack of certainty about the
precise safe level of atmospheric concentrations is noreason for delaying action –on the contrary, it makes
action more urgent, andrequires C&C’s stipulation ofan annual scientific review of
the concentration target.
Once the concentration target
and the resulting “contraction
curve” have been defined, thenext question becomes how
to share out the slices of thiscarbon “cake”. Under C&C,
the allocations would converge by a specific date (suchas 2030) from current sharesof emissions – broadly proportional to GDP - to allowances

countries with spare emissions
to sell.
Why it would work
Beneath the US policy reversal
on Kyoto and the outraged
reaction from all quarters tothis announcement, a moresignificant shift has takenplace across the Atlantic.
President Bush has acceptedthat climate change is real,and called for an approachconsistent with stabilizing
atmospheric concentrations.
More than this, he has called
for a return to the first princi-

conceded explicitly in a recent
television interview).
As President Bush and otherleaders are discovering, thelogical endpoint of his Administration’s position on climatechange is Contraction &Convergence. It is the only
framework there is that canfulfill the need for stabilizationof atmospheric greenhousegas concentrations whilst
encompassing at the sametime Northern demands forflexibility and Southern demands for equitable treatment.
Since developing countries
have much lower per capita
emissions than the developed
world, convergence at equal
per capita emission rights
would allow developing countries to sell their surplus
emissions to the developed
world at a profit. (This would
not compromise the environmental integrity of the system, unlike the Kyoto systemof emissions trading with its“hot air” since all trading
would take place beneath theone overarching global “contraction curve” and one standard allocation formula.)

proportional instead to national population.
This approach is based on therealisation that one logicaland equitable allocation
formula will be needed inorder to distribute entitlements between more than180 countries if negotiations
are not to sink once more intoa morass of horse-trading.
Full international emissions
trading would be possible
under C&C, so that countries
unable to meet their targets
could purchase permits fromples of the 1992 Climate
Convention – precaution andequity.
The US has recognised that a
global problem needs a global
solution, which by definitionmeans including all countries.
At the same time, President
Bush has also acknowledgedthat there are no military
solutions to climate change.
This means that a co-operative approach is needed,which in turn requires that all
countries recognize the policy
framework as equitable (asSecretary of State Colin Powell182

This trading would also help
to establish clean technologies, especially in the South.
The South would have a clear
incentive to reinvest theproceeds of its permit sales
into zero emissions technologies, since this would allow it
to continue to sell permits;
whilst businesses would
benefit from a long-term
framework that would allow
them to plan effectively theircapital investment in clean
technology, which would
become a vast growth sector.
What about Kyoto?

Kyoto, for all that it represents
a first step of sorts, is neither
science-based nor equitable.
Its emissions quotas are theresult of political haggling
rather than any obvious
correlation with the cuts being
called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, and even these havebeen watered down throughconcessions made at the lastclimate summit in Bonn.
An even more fundamental mistake enshrined in Kyoto was
the principle of developed countries “taking
a lead” in tacklingclimate change. Worthy though the principle
sounds, it does notwork in Southerninterests.

time when the scale of emissions reductions needed
globally may mean that they
have no surplus to sell, evenwith immediate per capita
convergence.
Developing countries would
face enormous pressure insuch a situation, and even risk
being perversely blamed forclimate change if they stayedout. This would be despite

1.
Climate change willdefinitely get worse unless weaddress it now;
2.
A global problem needs
a global solution, and developing countries must be
involved;
3.
Any workable solution
must therefore treat all parties
fairly or it will stand nochance of being agreed upon
globally.

The ‘UN Observer & International Review’ called it theseminal book on climate policy.
Jonathon Loh from Conservation
Policy WWF International says it
is, “brilliant and reads like anovel. The policy analysis is ofcourse as sharp as ever (and)the analysis of how the climate
negotiations leading up to andbeyond Kyoto went off track isspot on.”C&C is the only way
forward in this situation. By specifying adate for convergenceat equal per capita
emission entitlements,
it gives a clear assurance of equitable
treatment and createsa virtuous circle inwhich Southern countries benefit from an
income flow with aclear incentive toinvest the proceeds inclean technology.

First, it excludes developing countries fromthe pre-allocation of a
new asset – tradeable
atmospheric property
It is now necessary
rights – worth trillions
Itisavailable
from
Green
Books
that the world learnsof dollars annually.
price
£5:
http://
the hard lessons of theThis means that develKyoto Protocol. First, it
www.greenbooks.co.uk/cac/
oping countries arewill in future be essenbeing excluded from ancacorder.htm
tial to start not with
opportunity to profit
the question of “whatfrom their far lower per
reductions do countries
capita emissions, eventhe fact that in such a situathinkthey
can afford?”, but
as the UK (a far higher pertion, the North would be“what is a safe atmosphericcapita emitter than mostdoing precisely what it hadconcentration of CO2, andSouthern nations) stands toalways said it would not do –what is the path to getmake billions of dollars from‘pulling the ladder up after it’,
there?”. Second, a constituthe emissions it saved bywith no space for developing
tional framework is needed toswitching to gas rather thancountries to develop or for
reduce the morass of comcoal-fired power generation.
consensus to be achievable.
plexity and horse-trading that
Secondly, there is no escaping
so typified Kyoto. C&C reThe only alternative to thisthe fact that all nations will atduces negotiations down to apolitical nightmare is to consome point have to be inmanageable two variables:
duct the climate change
cluded in global binding
what is the rate of contracdebate openly and honestly
targets. The risk for thetion, and what is the date offrom this moment on. This
South is that in the future,
convergence?
means that all countries, andworsening climate disasters
especially those in the North,
As the world moves towards
will lead to urgent demands
must be very clear about
Earth Summit 2002 and thefor their participation – at athree basic truths:
Commonwealth Heads of183

Government Meeting in Brisbane in October, attention will
once more focus on theinterconnections between
equity and sustainability. This
is not equity for its own sake,based on purely moral
grounds. It is equity for thevery pragmatic and down-toearth reason that a frameworkthat is inequitable will not be
agreed by all countries. No
amount of rhetoric, worthy
sentiment, aid programmes ofa few million dollars orcommuniqués from the OECDwill change this. Johannesburg must be used to agree along-term, equitable global
framework to solve climatechange. For as EU environment Commissioner Margot
Wallstrom recently observed,
while countries can negotiatewith each other, they cannot
negotiate with the weather.
Alex Evans is the director
of communications of the
Global Commons Institute(GCI). His email addressis alex.evans@visto.com.

GCI’s website is at http://
www.gci.org.uk.
Aubrey Meyer is the Director of the GCI. His email
address isaubrey@gci.org.uk He is
the author of “Contraction
and Convergence – theGlobal Solution to Climate
Change”.

August 23 - AlAhram
Al-Ahram

The Heat is on
Scientists are conjuring
fire and brimstone, butwhere does the scienceend and the paranoia
begin? Nyier Abdou traces
the panic over global
warming
In the last couple of years, it
has increasingly seemed likethe apocalypse is nearing:
hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanoes wreak
havoc with greater frequency.
In November 1998, Hurricane
Mitch took some 10,000 lives
in Central America and deadly
earthquakes have ravaged theglobe. Turkey, India, Venezuela and Taiwan are justsome of the countries thathave suffered catastrophic
earthquakes in the last two
years resulting in significant
loss of life. Flooding, from theMississippi to the Yangtze,
from England’s Yorkshire, toAfrica’s Mozambique, has
drawn a chilling picture ofwhat reports on rising sea
levels and melting ice caps

may mean.
Fear of the unknown is a
powerful thing, and it is thisterrible uncertainty that has
driven the global interchange
on one of the more elusive
issues of our time: climatechange. Were it not for conservationists’ and environmentalists’ ability to paint global
warming as a common foe itwould have been near impossible to put climate change on
the international agenda. But
with world leaders pulled into
the debate, politics has driven
the science, rather than theother way around. The results
have been both edifying anddiscontenting.
The landmark 1992 Earth
Summit, in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, was the birthplace of
the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
signed by 153 nations swept
up by the call to keep theearth a liveable place. Governments sounded the alarm
about global warming and184

worrying predictions veered
into view.

nitrgiFl

An increase in so-calledgreenhouse gases could spura runaway “greenhouseeffect,” warming the earth inways ecosystems cannot copewith. Increased levels ofgreenhouse gases like carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane,
nitrous oxide combined withchlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
which eat away at the earth’s
protective ozone layer, are theproduct of the industrial age.
Concentrations of these gases
allow sunlight through, but
keep some of the subsequent
radiation emmitted by theearth in. The greenhouseeffect is what makes life aswe know it possible on theplanet, but it is a delicate
balance. The burning of fossil
fuels like coal, oil and naturalgas — our main energy
sources — increases the build
up of greenhouse gases in theatmosphere. Models based on
the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs)
portend global warming
running out of control.
Because emissions do not
distribute themselves evenly,
they are denser in someareas, forcing warmer
weather patterns. The difference in temperature thencreates turbulence in theatmosphere. The basics ofglobal warming are straightforward: more GGEs mean
more trapped heat, whichmeans more violent weather
patterns. Warmer overalltemperatures means themelting of polar ice caps,
glaciers and permafrost. Ice
traps CO2, but once melted,
more CO2 is released into theair, in a vicious cycle. The
warming of surface waters
causes the seas to expand,encroaching on coastal cities
and possibly sinking small
island nations.

devastating Typhoon
Toraji earlier this month;
Greenpeace protesters at
the climate talks in BonnThe UN Inter-governmental
Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), set up to monitor
policy development andproduce an informed body ofknowledge on the slippery
topic of global warming, hasrepeatedly issued dire predictions of accelerated heating of
the atmosphere and thepossible repercussions weface: severer weather extremes, lengthened periods ofdrought in some areas andincreased rainfall in others. A
report on climate change
released in February by an
IPCC working group warns
that we can expect more
“freak” weather conditions
and pointed to strong evidence for human culpability.

It has been widely noted thatthe 20th century was thehottest stretching back amillennium, and numerous
reports, including a joint US
Department of Energy and UKhw
ti Natural Environmental Research Council study issued in
May of 1999, and a London
Imperial College study comparing satellite data fromdisaster: changing
around the globe released inweather patterns have
March of this year, claim
been blamed for nature’s
strong evidence that theincreased wrath. fromwarming trend will continue.
top) Flooding in Mozambique last year; at the eye The World MeteorologicalOrganisation (WMO) taggedof a hurricane; searching2000 as the fifth warmest
for survivors of Taiwan’s

185

year on record.
Warmer weather year roundmight seem a bonus for cooler
climates, but when you consider that this would also
allow insects and rodents tosurvive the winters and multiply, you can begin to imagine
mosquito-borne diseases likemalaria infiltrating countries
like England and Canada.
Countries already suffering
the drying of lands, like thecountries of southern Africa,
could become uninhabitable.
China is already losing thousands of square kilometres ofcultivated lands andmarshlands each year todesiccation. Meanwhile, theerosion of coastal areas andnatural barriers would leave
coastal populations open tostorm surges. No country isimmune: the United States —the world’s largest producer of
GGEs — has been reluctant toimplement emissions reducing
policies, but scientists havewarned that the country’s
eastern and westernseaboards would be hard hit.
Manhattan could become
Atlantis.

The greatest impact will beset
the developing world, particularly in densely populated
coastal areas (Egypt is one of
the countries the IPCC thinks
is in danger). Already, more
people are dying of natural
disasters (the world’s largest
re-insurance company, MunichRe, says that its figures indi-cate a three-fold increase innatural disasters in the lastquarter century) and, ofcourse, more people arepushed into disaster-prone
areas by economic hardship. A
University College in London
study estimates that a staggering 120,000 people a year
are killed by earthquakes,
tidal waves, volcanoes, floods
and the like. The annual
World Disasters Report for
1999, issued by the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies,

earthquakes, volcanoes andother such phenomena are
not connected to global
warming. Rather, increased
awareness, coinciding withheavy coverage of the climatechange issue, has brought thetwo together.
Russell Schnell, director ofobservatory operations at the
Climate Monitoring and Diagnostic Laboratory (CMDL) in
Boulder, Colorado — an armof the US National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administra-scientific data are quite another. Herein lies the heart ofthe debate about climatechange.
Since the Rio Earth Summit,
worst-case scenarios issued
by the IPCC and other scientific studies have been steadily
worsening. With the UNFCCC
already in place, and thethreat of global warming
burning a hole in international
convention agendas, it would
seem that a mechanism forreducing GGEs will soon

“This point is stressed by Aubrey Meyer, director of the UK group the Global Commons Institute (GCI) and author of Contraction and Convergence: the
Global Solution to Climate Change (Green Books). Without a feasible and binding
plan for dealing with global warming, Meyer predicts climate change will wreak
havoc on the developing world. Talking to the Weekly, Meyer noted that population
increases will inevitably increase the number of people affected by natural — and,indeed, “unnatural” disasters. “If these occur [in places] where there are alreadylocal conflicts over the use of land and other resources — as with storms in Orissa
or droughts in the Middle East, for example — these impacts can only aggravatesuch conflicts.”

noted that natural disasters
were the leading cause of
refugee crises, more so thanarmed conflicts.
Prodded by instant coverageof natural disasters by international news channels, thesetragedies seem more real tous than they have in the past.
And this may be leading us tothink things are worse thanthey are. As the disseminationof information becomesincreasingly advanced and
immediate, we are prone tobelieve that the world iscollapsing around us. It becomes easy to assume that
extreme weather is rising, andthe next logical step is tofinger global warming as thecause. But most scientists
agree that events such astion (NOAA) — notes that achange in the intensity ofsevere storms “would have to
be large and persistent overlong time scales to be detectable.” But Schnell argues thatrecordings of storm intensity
before a few decades ago are
insufficient to make this kindof judgment. He suggests thatsharp population increases
over the last half-century havepushed people into places
more susceptible to weather
hazards, like flooding andtornadoes, and hence, “storm
detection and storm fatalities
are both going up — when in
reality, storm numbers andintensity are probably changing little.”
Which is to say, the layman’s
perception is one thing, and186

follow. But policies are not set
by scientists; they are agreed
on by politicians and ministers, who have to answer toangry taxpayers if fuel prices
go up and powerful companies, like the oil industry
players who poured money
into the campaign of US
President George W Bush.
Once the glow of collective
do-goodism wore off, governments became less enthusiastic about the reality of cutting
down CO2 emissions andcommitments were stretchedand carefully worded. Twomeetings of the countries
party to the UNFCCC (inBerlin, in 1995, and in Geneva, in 1996) stressed theimportance of action, but
quibbled over the means tothe end. And yet, despite
tough negotiations and thehighly charged atmosphere of
the third conference of parties(COP3), in Kyoto, Japan, theonly document on the table
about climate change — theKyoto Protocol — wasadopted.
It was at the Kyoto summitthat the main bargaining
points of an international
agreement were delineated —and they remain today. The
US introduced the highly
controversial concept of“flexibility mechanisms”(FMs), which treat the amountof carbon emissions allotted
to a country under the protocol like currency. A country
over its GGE limit can trade
emissions or promote projects
believed to “absorb” CO2emissions (so-called carbon
sinks), like forests or
grasslands, in other countries.
They might also fund projects
in developing countries thatwould eventually decrease
their emissions (known as
clean development mechanisms). Negotiations over FMs
dissolved the COP6 talks in
The Hague in November
2000, and threatened to do
the same when the Conference of Parties met again lastmonth in Bonn, Germany. But
a tightly crafted deal saved
the last remnants of the Kyoto
Protocol, despite significant
watering down of the original
deal and the US’s refusal tosign.
Though it is a pale shadow of
the original UNFCCC, mostscientists feel that a weakagreement is better than noagreement, even without the
US. The CMDL’s Russ Schnell
was pragmatic on the subject.
“Something is better thannothing in this case, if one

accepts that we have a major
problem with CO2,” he told AlAhram Weekly. “Agreements
and treaties can be amended
and modified. What one callsa treaty is not as important as
what it does or where it could
lead to. When it is in its
economic interests, the US
will do more on CO2 control.”Given the claims of so-calledskeptics, one has to wonder if
the doomsday scenarios are a
way of provoking lethargic
governments into action for a
cause that is undeniably
noble, even without global
warming: a reduction ofpollutants and a shift tocleaner energy sources. DavidR Easterling, principal scientist
at the NOAA’s North Carolinabased National Climatic Data
Center (NCDC), goes a stepfurther. “The end goal is anadmirable one — to reduce
pollution and dependence ona fossil fuels, since these are a
finite resource,” he told theWeekly, noting that since
there will be warming, it is amatter of how much we arewilling to risk. “The questionis how much it will warm andhow fast. The issue is, wedon’t know how sensitive theclimate is, and it is just as
likely that we will have significant warming than little
warming.”
Others are even less equivocal. In her State of the World
2001 chapter, “Averting Unnatural Disasters,” Janet
Abramovitz, senior researcher
at the Worldwatch Institute in
Washington, DC, wryly notesthat although the United
Nations had earmarked the1990s as the “International
Decade for Natural Disaster
Reduction,” this period “maygo down in history as theInternational Decade of Disas-

187

ters.”“Not every natural disturbanceis a disaster, and not every
disaster is completely natural,”writes Abramovitz. “We havealtered so many natural
systems so dramatically that
their ability to bounce backfrom disturbance has been
greatly diminished.” The ideathat Abramovitz drives home
is that we cannot wait until
the disaster strikes, we must
consider not having a “disaster” at all.
This point is stressed by
Aubrey Meyer, director of the
UK group the Global Commons Institute (GCI) andauthor of Contraction andConvergence: the Global
Solution to Climate Change(Green Books). Without afeasible and binding plan for
dealing with global warming,
Meyer predicts climate change
will wreak havoc on thedeveloping world. Talking to
the Weekly, Meyer noted that
population increases will
inevitably increase thenumber of people affected bynatural — and, indeed, “unnatural” disasters. “If theseoccur [in places] where there
are already local conflicts overthe use of land and otherresources — as with storms inOrissa or droughts in the
Middle East, for example —these impacts can only aggravate such conflicts.”
With more and more parties
pulled into the debate, it
seems that more questions
are generated, more data isammassed and more agendas
are plugged, while inaction
remains constant. How to pin
down a goal so elusive? Thisis a question the politicalestablishment has never beenable to answer.

August 23 - AlAhram
Al-Ahram

Who’s talking about what?
Not only do they disagree,
they disagree about
whether they agree. AlAhram Weekly examines
the state of the debate
among scientists aboutclimate change

blame for warming squarely
on man — hence implying
culpability for all the humansuffering caused by changes
in weather patterns. The UN
framework for climate change(UNFCCC) assumes this culpability and tries to lessen it bycontrolling emissions in a waythat gives ecosystems enoughtime to adapt and cope withor minus 0.2¡C. Evidence thatthe earth is warming seems
overwhelmingly strong, butsome scientists argue that theearth goes through phases
and that what is currently
dubbed “global warming” issimply part of the natural ebb
There are three separate
and flow of the earth’s atmosissues often lumped under thephere — a worldwide pattern
all-purpose heading “climateof cooling and heating. Andchange.” The foundation ofthough the scientific
the debate is that
community is often
average temperalumped into a collectures, including“The level of greenhouse contive voice heralding
figures for land
centration in the atmosphere at thisthe earth’s destrucand ocean surtime is higher than anywhere in datation, there are many
face temperatures
researchers andsets going back half a million years,”
have risen overclimatologists who
says GCI’s Meyer. “Historically these
the last century. A
question the directlevels have varied but at significantly
significant inrelation between
crease in Greenlower average value than the levels we
GGEs and climatehouse Gas Emishave achieved since the industrial revochange. These
sions (GGEs),
lutionbeganaround
200
years
ago.
It
scientists are laparticularly CO2,
belled “sceptics” andis possible — perhaps probable — thathas also been
are often dismissed
continuing this unrelenting pulse ofrecorded. These
as being on the cusp
two facts tohuman emissions will trigger globalof the scientificgether have led
climatic upheaval.” Referring to thecommunity or having
scientists toclaim that it is not clear that anythinga hidden agenda.
conclude that
has indeed gone “wrong,” Meyer indamage to the
The logic of global
sists, “The point [Lindzen] makes is
earth’s ozone
warming seems
layer, along withdifficult to dispute.
simply: if there isn’t a problem, don’t
the increased
Even if GGEs did not
fix it.
GGEs, are warmspark the warming
However, it is obvious that there is a
ing the earth. The
trend, they can only
problem, and that we are all going tofirst observation,
aggravate it. The
which simply
majority of scientists
be broke if we don’t fix it.”recognises ain the field arechange, is “clipersuaded that themate change”;
evidence linking
increased temperatures.
the second deduction fromemissions and warming isthat to a theory of global
According to the Environmen- incontrovertible. Environmenwarming.
tal Protection Agency (EPA),
tal groups insist that denying
global temperatures havehuman culpability is to persist
Though there are manygone up between 0.3¡C andin wilful ignorance and toscientists who question our
0.6¡C. This roughly concurs
resist constructive change inability to make this deduction,with UN Inter-governmental
the way human civilisation
it is the nexus on which thePanel on Climate Change
draws its energy.
whole debate about climate(IPCC) estimates, whichchange depends. It places theBut asked about increasedsuggest a 0.6¡C increase, plus

188

disasters due to climatechange, S Fred Singer of the
Science and Environmental
Policy Project was adamantthat the media misrepresentsscientists as unified in thecontention that global warming is a reality, implying that
only a few, rogue malcontents
depart from this view. “I don’tknow of any responsible
scientist who would linkearthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc., to increases inatmospheric greenhousegases,” Singer told Al-Ahram
Weekly. “In fact, many scientists are becoming convincedby the data that [global
warming] is negligible.” This
opinion has been echoed byseveral scientists in the field.
MIT climatologist Richard S
Lindzen, who took part in areport issued in June by the
National Academy of Sciences,
said as much last month in his
comments published in the US
magazine The New American,
and environmental scientist
Patrick J Michaels wrote ascathing op-ed deconstructionof the myth of scientific consensus in a July issue of The
National Review.
Russ Schnell, of the US Climate Monitoring Diagnostic
Laboratory (CMDL), admits
that not all scientists agree
about global warming, but
adds that many do. He told
the Weekly that there is equal
dispute over the effects of
CO2 build-up and how it will
manifest itself. “But, no scientist disputes that CO2 isincreasing faster today than in
the past million years or so,”Schnell notes. “Climatechange has always been partof the natural cycles of earth
and atmosphere. It is just thatthe current CO2-inducedchange may be faster andmore dramatic than has
occurred in the past and thatman, plants, and animals will
not be able to adapt fastenough to handle the change
gracefully.”“Mr Singer does not speak formost climatologists,” remarked David R Easterling,
principal scientist at the
NOAA’s North Carolina-based
National Climatic Data Center(NCDC), the world’s largest
active archive of weather
data. “He chooses only evidence that seems to support
his position, ignoring mostcredible evidence. Most climatologists in climate change
research do not think that
global warming is ‘negligible’.
On the contrary it is becoming
more clear that climatechange is real.” Citing themost recent IPCC report — “aproduct of many hundreds ofscientists actively working inclimate research” — Easterlingnotes that the evidence isbecoming very clear that“humans are impacting theclimate, resulting in climatechange.”“The science behind the IPCC
report is the best available in
the field,” says Schnell. “Thereis no doubt that humans havethe capability to change
climate. Just look at deforestation and desertification.
There is debate on how thewhole CO2 scenario will playout, but the basic physics ofthe phenomenon are not inquestion.”
Aubrey Meyer, director of the
London- based Global Commons Institute (GCI), agrees.
“The laws of physics andthermo- dynamics are universal and apply regardless ofthe number of people who
may or may not recognise189

them,” he told the Weekly. “Ifthe earth had no atmosphere,
and therefore no greenhousegas concentration and warming effect, the planet would be
sub-zero temperature at night
and above boiling during theday. In these conditions — ason the moon — life as weknow it would not be possible.
The atmosphere, aided by its
interactions with the oceans
and the biosphere, moderates
these extremes. However, theglobal temperature increases
now reported by most serious
scientists are a simple resultof the uncontested increase ofgreenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere,
which result from the uncontested increase of humanemissions of these gases.”
Simon Torok, of the UK-based
Tyndall Centre for Climate
Change Research, is equallycertain of the case for warming. While he dismisses connections between disasters
like earthquakes to global
warming, he does suggestthat “future increases insevere weather events arelikely, and the vast majority ofscientists believe climatechange is happening and thathumans have been a contributing factor.”
In an article in The New
American, MIT’s Richard
Lindzen argues that the periodof time during which we havestudied trends in climatechange — roughly 20 years —is too short to be able todetermine if there is a real
threat, or, in fact, anything
extraordinary going on. The
article also notes that temperatures were similar topresent conditions in 1940,
and that in the 1970s, people
were even worried about a
new ice-age. But the NCDC’s

Easterling rejects this claim,
saying that climatologists lookat the past 120 years, not 20
years. Refuting the claim thattemperatures in the 1940s
were much cooler worldwide,
Easterling noted that “climate
science has advanced a lot
since the mid- 1970s, andwhat was believed then is not
relevant today.”“The level of greenhouseconcentration in the atmos-

phere at this time is higher
than anywhere in data setsgoing back half a million
years,” says GCI’s Meyer.
“Historically these levels havevaried but at significantly
lower average value than thelevels we have achieved since
the industrial revolution beganaround 200 years ago. It is
possible — perhaps probable— that continuing this unrelenting pulse of human emis-

sions will trigger global climatic upheaval.” Referring to
the claim that it is not clearthat anything has indeed gone“wrong,” Meyer insists, “Thepoint [Lindzen] makes is
simply: if there isn’t a problem, don’t fix it. However, it isobvious that there is a problem, and that we are all going
to be broke if we don’t fix it.”August - The UN Observer

Risk Management of Climate Change“ . . . . . Contraction &Convergence” would be thedriving principle behind the
new approach.
Contraction & Convergencetargets (upper global cap
on emissions and convergence point) would be
adjusted according to thelatest scientific findings
emenating .from the IPCC.
The upper carbon cap could
be adjusted downwards if
the latest findings showedthat climate change wasincreasing at a dangerousrate.

Two new protocols would
be created to deal with theissue of sinks (forestry) andnew technology (renewables). Carbon credits forenhanced sink capacity anduse of renewable energy
would be overseen by a
Carbon Credit body.
Emissions trading would still
exist but initial allocationsof credits would be basedon the equity principle(population based).
Ideally, the ultimate end
time-frame for completion

190of the “C&C” process would
be 2050 or sooner if possible. Emissions contraction
should start immediately tobe effective. Time is of theessence.”
Julian E Salt - of the LPC
Centre for Risk Sciences,
BRE -September 2001 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Contraction and Convergence” –A Policy Briefing on Climate Change to the Performance and Innovation
Unit of the UK Government Cabinet Office.
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

November 30 - Finacial Times“ . . . . Many politicians and businesses making
long-term investment plans- would prefer to agree onsome overarching principles
that would determine future
emissions targets.
For some policymakers, theanswer is “contraction andconvergence”, an ambitious
proposal for stabilisinggreenhouse gases underwhich every country would
converge on the sameemissions allocation per
inhabitant by an agreed
date.
This simple, bold approach
has commanded support
from many sources, ranging
from President Chirac ofFrance to the Chartered
Insurance Institute of theUK. But wealthy countries
may baulk at the stringencyof the cuts it implies, which
could be as much as 80 per
cent by 2100.
Given the controversy
surrounding the Kyoto
Protocol, the international
community has alreadyachieved a stronger agreement than many sceptics
thought possible. But ascountries start to prepare
the ground for the nextstage of the global agreement on climate change, it
is clear that past achievements are dwarfed by themagnitude of the challenges ahead.”191

November - Libdem News

Green Justice in a Climate of T
error
TerrorIn his ground-breaking Green
Alliance speech in March thisyear Charles Kennedy coined
the phrase Green Justice tosum up the ethos which
inspires Liberal Democrats as
we address the global challenges of poverty and environmental degradation.
A key step to endorse andgive shape to that strategy
was taken by Party Conference when it called for “aEurope-South initiative for along-term global framework to
cap CO2 concentrations bycontraction of greenhouse gas
emissions down to the levelneeded to stabilise the climate, and convergence toequal emission quotas perhead of population”.
In so doing it gave timely
political backing to the Royal
Commission on Environmental
Pollution which has urged thisstrategy of “Contraction andConvergence” as the bestprospect of achieving “equity,
economy and international
consensus” and whose report
is a key element in the Government’s current energy
review.
The policy has urgent relevance to the deeper global
issues raised by the sufferingof Afghanistan and the struggle with terrorism. Though a
modified Kyoto climate deal
has been rescued from oblivion, the world’s carbon
emissions will still be over 20
per cent higher than the 1990
level in 2010.
Meanwhile climatic upheavals
continue to take their grimtoll, not least in the drought
and famine which havegripped Afghanistan and large
parts of central Asia in the last
three years.
Halting climate change implies
a 60 per cent reduction ingreenhouse gas emissions
during this century and evenbigger cuts in the rich north.
That sounds daunting. Yet thetechnologies are becoming
economically available to
make that shift - throughwind, tidal, solar and hydrogen power, through energy
efficiency and decentralised
combined heat and power.
The need is for a strong
political framework which
gives clear market signals fora longterm investment effort
by the world business community.
As for equity, the talk of worldcommunity in face of terrorism has starkly exposed thefailure of a global system that
relies on hegemony instead ofsolidarity and forced a complacent West to acknowledge
the need for a fairer sharing
of world wealth and resources. What sharing could
be more fundamental than afair sharing of the limited
capacity of our atmosphere toabsorb the polluting emissions
which, until now, have been
the concomitant of economic
growth?
The US justifies its failure toact on climate change byclaiming that a solution to a
global problem must involveall countries. Yet the developing countries which have avital interest in action cannot
commit to play their part if
restrictions on emissions aredesigned to freeze the gulf
between rich and poor. Con-

192

traction and Convergence ofgreenhouse gas emissions toequal quotas for every world
citizen will meet the need forequity but give the world time
to plan and develop its response through new technology and ways of life, while
trading of emission quotas will
maximise the efficiency ofchange.
In his Green Alliance speechCharles Kennedy pioneered
the idea of a global Community on these lines. Today theGovernment’s energy review,
together with mounting crossbench support in the House ofCommons, offer an opportunity to press the Government
to adopt this strategy. If thePrime Minister takes it up hewould find ready collaborators
amongst other states of the
EU and an opportunity for
global leadership at the Earth
Summit next year.
The US under Bush may
continue to hang back. That is
why Europe and the South
must lead the way. But recent
events have underlined thesurreal geopolitics of a US
energy policy which will rely
on Saudi Arabia and central
Asia for over half its oil supplies and puts its faith inexpanding nuclear power. As
the US learns painfully that it
is not omnipotent, it too willneed the security of a sustainable energy policy in solidarity
with the rest of the world.
Once again Liberal Democrats
are pointing the way.
by Chris Layton

2002
January - New InternationalistAParliament for the Planet
Parliament“The only fair and lastingmeans of reducing CO2(namely ‘contraction andconvergence’, which means
working out how muchpollution the planet cantake, then allocating anequal pollution quota to
everyone on earth) would
surely be impossible toimplement without a world
parliament.”

Full article can be found atwww.newint.org

George Monbiot, Author
Captive State

January - New Internationalist

Going Down in History“The legacy of ecologicaldebt can be recognized anddealt with by adopting aforward-looking plan on
climate change. Developing
countries can argue for a
global deal that acknowledges their logical entitlement to an equal share of
the global commons of theatmosphere. Instead of thehistorical expansion ofgreenhouse-gas emissions
and divergence between
the world’s rich and poor,
there needs to be a plan forboth contraction and con-vergence.
Fortunately, just such aplan, stemming from theLondon-based Global Commons Institute, is gaining
favour among governments,
the financial community andin developing countries.
Contraction and convergence requires setting amaximum greenhouse-gas
concentration target for theatmosphere. After that, allcountries logically claim
their right to share the‘emissions pie’, but cantrade their entitlements ifthey wish. This way, if richcountries want to continue
taking up more than theirfair share of the world’s
environmental space, they
will at least have to pay forthe privilege, generatingmuch-needed resources forcountries that need them.”
Andrew Simms
Policy Director
New Economics Foundation
LONDON
Full article can be found at:www.newint.org

January 15 - Euromoney.com
Euromoney.com

Emissions“It seems like the perfectmarriage of market forcesand global ethics.
Emissions trading reduces
greenhouse gas levels while
giving companies andcountries room tomaneuver if they are willingto pay. And there’s money
in it for the brokers that get
involved early . . . . . . Thismethod, which moves
beyond Kyoto, is known asContraction and Conver-193

gence.”

February 25 - American Prospect

Beyond K
yoto Lite
Kyoto
The Bush administration’s
absence from the globalwarming talks could actually lead other nations topursue a bolder approach.
At the end of the hottest
October on record, delegatesfrom 165 countries met in
Marrakech last fall to finalize
the Kyoto Protocol on global
climate change. At firstglance, the Kyoto goals seem
negligible: By 2012, greenhouse gases must be cut toslightly below 1990 levels—areduction to be realized
through a loophole-ridden
system of emissions trading.
And thanks to the Bush administration, the 165 signatory
nations do not include theUnited States, the superpowersuperpolluter that emits aquarter of the world’s greenhouse gases.
But the agreement’s puny
goals may have masked the
beginning of a seismic shift in
the global balance of politicalpower—away from the UnitedStates and toward the European Union. “The view isnonetheless widespread in
Europe,” Jessica Tuchman
Matthews wrote recently in
Foreign Policy magazine, “thatthe U.S. decision on Kyoto
could become a turning pointin trans-Atlantic relations.”
Some European officials
actually exulted because U.S.
delegates were not present.
Indeed, with the United States
not involved, the agreement
may prefigure more aggressive solutions to global warming. The European Union has
already insisted that the World
Trade Organization addressenvironmental impacts—arequirement that could
dampen President Bush’s
ability to make use of his
anticipated new trade-negotiating authority from Congress.
Time and again, the Bushadministration has isolated
itself by refusing to joininternational agreements on
everything from land mines
and international criminal
courts to biological weaponsand global climate change.
Domestically, Bush reneged
on a campaign promise tocap carbon emissions frompower plants. His energy plancalls for construction of atleast 1,300 new plants overthe next 20 years. Bush’s
withdrawal from the six-yearold international climate
negotiations, then, epitomized his views both onenergy and on international
agreements.
Bush’s dismissal of Kyoto
sparked hostile demonstrations in Madrid, Stockholm,
and Geneva, and drew angry
words from EU officials. Even
Tony Blair, America’s staunchest ally in the antiterrorism
campaign, declared justweeks after September 11that “we could defeat climatechange if we chose to. We
will implement [Kyoto],” hesaid. “But it’s only a start.
With imagination, we could
use technologies that create
energy without destroying ourplanet.”In the face of the U.S. withdrawal, the other nations
gamely struggled to produce
a consensus plan to address
the climate crisis. Having
already made significant

194

concessions in a futile effort
to secure U.S. participation,negotiators inserted moreloopholes into the Marrakech
version to overcome objections from Russia, Australia,
and Japan.
Critics dubbed the resulting
product “Kyoto Lite.” On its
face, the treaty obligates theworld’s 38 industrial nations(minus the United States) to
reduce carbon emissions anaverage of 5.2 percent below
1990 levels by 2012. But
given the additional loopholes—chiefly, the inflation ofallowances forcarbonabsorbing trees—thereal reductions will barely
amount to 3 percent below
1990 levels, several analyses
show. (The use of forests tooffset global warming isdubious at best. If all theworld’s forests were preserved
and its deforested areas
reforested, all those trees
would absorb only about 15
percent of the fossil-fuelemissions necessary to stabilize the climate, according to
the UN-sponsored IPCC, theIntergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, which includes more than 2,000
scientists from 100 countries.)
Most European nations willmeet the Kyoto Lite goals
through such relatively painless domestic efforts as increased energy efficiency,
small carbon taxes, or internal
emissions trading.
Still, the Kyoto Protocol was areal diplomatic accomplishment. Despite its loopholes,
minimal goals, and lack of an
enforcement mechanism, it
does at last provide an inter-national framework for diminishing the climate crisis. And
with the absence of recalcitrant, foot-dragging U.S.
delegates, other countries
may find it easier to promote
more aggressive approaches
to reversing climate change.
There is, in fact, a range of
cost-effective solutions that
could both pacify the climate
and begin to reverse thegrotesque economic inequities
that fuel anti-U.S. hostility inthe third world. Three years
ago, more than 2,500 economists, including six Nobel
laureates, declared that we

found that by 2020, theUnited States could meet 20
percent of its electricity needs
with renewables, save consumers $440 billion, and avoid
having to build 975 new
power plants.
The world needs global strategies that will enable countries
like India, China, Mexico, andVenezuela to replace theircoal- and oil-based energy
economies with wind, solar,hydrogen, and biomasssources—and provide sufficient clean energy for future
development. That transition
would create huge numbers ofCommons Institute in Britain.
It addresses a fundamental
inequity embedded in the
Kyoto Protocol, which essentially allows high-polluting
nations to keep on polluting
by using their past emissions
levels as a baseline. The
burden of reducing global
emissions would fall disproportionately on less-developed
nations. Not surprisingly,
those nations want a single
global per capita allowance forcarbon emissions so that they
have room to develop.
Contraction and Convergence
provides an ingenious mecha-“ . . . . . The world needs global strategies that will enable countries
like India, China, Mexico, and Venezuela to replace their coal- and oil-basedenergy economies with wind, solar, hydrogen, and biomass sources—andprovide sufficient clean energy for future development. That transition
would create huge numbers of jobs abroad and allow the world’s poorest
citizens—many of whom feel abused and exploited by the wealthy nations—higher living standards, without the assault on the environment that characterized Western development.
One such plan, called Contraction and Convergence, was developed by the
Global Commons Institute in Britain. It addresses a fundamental inequity
embedded in the Kyoto Protocol, which essentially allows high-polluting
nations to keep on polluting by using their past emissions levels as a baseline. The burden of reducing global emissions would fall disproportionately
on less-developed nations. Not surprisingly, those nations want a single
global per capita allowance for carbon emissions so that they have room todevelop. “

can cut our emissions—up to
30 percent, by some estimates—simply throughefficiencies and conservation,with a net gain in jobs andproductivity. A report issued inearly December 2001 by the
Tellus Institute, the Union ofConcerned Scientists, and theAmerican Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy,jobs abroad and allow theworld’s poorest citizens—
many of whom feel abusedand exploited by the wealthy
nations—higher living standards, without the assault on
the environment that characterized Western development.
One such plan, called Contraction and Convergence, wasdeveloped by the Global

195

nism for the world both to set
a maximum carbon limit by adate certain and to achieve
convergence in the nations’emissions rights, which would
gradually be redistributed sothat the world would achievea uniform per capita allocation. This would put appropriate pressure on rich nations,which generate the mostpollutants, to shift tononpolluting renewables.
An even bolder approach, theWorld Energy Modernization
Plan—drafted by a group ofenergy-company presidents,
economists, energy-policy
specialists, and others (including this writer)—proposes a
combination of three policies
that would reduce carbon
emissions by 70 percent. The
plan calls for the redirection ofenergy subsidies away fromfossil fuels to renewablesources in industrial nations;the creation of a fund on theorder of $300 billion a year totransfer clean energy todeveloping countries (financed
either through a .025 percent“Tobin tax” on international
currency transactions or
through carbon taxes inindustrial countries); and thereplacement of the Kyoto
framework of international
carbon trading with a progressively more stringent fossilfuel efficiency standard.
Under the stricter standard,
every nation would increase
its fossil-fuel efficiency by 5
percent a year until the global
70 percent reduction isachieved. Since few economies can maintain a 5 percent
annual growth rate, emissions
reductions would outpace
economic growth. This would
be much easier to monitor
than measuring emissions; itwould simply entail comparing
the ratio of carbon-fuel consumption with gross domestic
product. Countries would
initially realize their goals byimplementing inexpensive
energy efficiencies, such as
better conservation and morefuel-efficient cars. As thoseefficiencies became more
expensive to capture, countries would meet gradually

tougher standards by drawing
more energy from renewablesources. That shift, in turn,would create the mass markets and economies of scale
for renewables that would
make them as cheap as orcheaper than coal and oil.
This subsidy switch would
convert oil companies into
energy companies. The progressive fossil-fuel efficiency
standard would also jumpstart renewable energy, propelling it into a global industry. Worldwide competition for
the new market in clean
energy would power thewhole process.
By refusing even to consider aplan of this scope and scale,
Bush is not only risking the
U.S. leadership role; he is also
ceding the leadership of thenext energy economy asEuropean-produced solar,
wind, and hydrogen technologies gradually come to dominate world energy markets.
In Marrakech, November isnormally the height of therainy season. As the delegatesconvened, however, Moroccans were struggling throughthe fourth year of a severe
drought that is destroying
forests, depleting watertables, and promoting the
spread of deserts into villages.
In nearby Algeria, the worst
flooding in memory killed
more than 1,000 people,
collapsed buildings, andturned streets into rivers—
another indicator of the violent and unseasonal weather
that marks early-stage global
warming.
Climate change is unmistakably accelerating. The deep
oceans are warming. The
tundra is thawing. The glaciers are melting. Infectious

196

diseases are migrating. Violent weather events are
occurring more often. Thevery timing of the seasons haschanged. And all this is theresult of just one degree ofwarming. According to the
IPCC, the earth will warmfrom 4 degrees to 11 degrees
later in this century.
In November the highly respected British medical journal
The Lancet estimated thatmillions of people, mostly indeveloping countries, will die
over the next 20 years fromwarming-driven outbreaks ofdengue fever, malaria, cholera, encephalitis, and pulmonary diseases. If the world
does not soon address theclimate crisis in its true dimensions, it will not muchmatter where global politicalleadership lies. Our fossil-fueldependency will propel us all
into an indeterminate seasonof disintegration.
Ross GelbspanMarch/April - Green Futures

Energy......Environment
Energy......Environment
If we want to create amore secure and sustainable world, we need somepretty fundamental rethinking of traditional
policy divisions. So is it
happening?

on energy supplies from far
flung sources, and acknowledge in forward strategy
documents that climatechange may lead to serious
destabilisation of nations andwhole regions.

Caspar Henderson scans
Whitehall for signs ofsome strategic joinery,and comes out sceptical.
But, over the page, Foreign Office Minister ismore optimistic . . . .

So who’s pulling these together into a coherent policy
framework?

Energy - where we get it andhow much pollution it causes lies at a crossroads of many
concerns about security andthe environment. Wars arefought over oil, and climatechange threatens the securityof millions. How, then, todeliver durable and affordable
supplies of energy to British
industry and consumers, while
reducing the risks of conflictover resources and the impacts of climate change?
This is a bigger challengethan, say, making the trains
run on time or organising asystem to recycle refrigerators. Some call it the ultimate
test of joined-up government,
requiring reform in everythingfrom transport to toasters.
Making links between energy
solutions and security strategy
has been a popular pastimesince at least the late 1980s.
In the green hats, environmentalists call for a new‘Manhattan Project’ (bringing
the same scale of commitment and urgency to building
a renewable economy as wasapplied to making the atomic
bomb in the early 1940s). In
the tin hats, military analysts
point to the dangers of relying

Britain, with roughly 1% of
the world’s population, consuming 2% of its energy andproducing 3% of GDP, is asmall to middle-sized player,
which nevertheless likes tosee itself at the forefront offinding solutions. We have a
climate strategy intended todeliver a 20 cut in greenhousegas emissions on 1990 levels
by 2010 - one of the mostambitious targets of any
industrialised country. We
have a cautious, yet solid andgrowing commitment torenewables. The Foreign
Office has a team dedicatedto finding solutions to energy
challenges with both anenvironment and a security
aspect. Looks like a pretty
coherent agenda. So are weon target for a more peaceful,renewable world? After 11
September, almost nobody
thinks that. Speaking tomilitary analysts a few weeks
after the event, Peter Hain
painted a telling image: “Asignificant proportion of thefunding for the Taliban camefrom consumer choices madein our midst, the sale ofheroin in our backyard funded
Bin Laden.” But there is another consumer choice madeby millions every day thatlinks us even more strongly
than drugs to the Middle East

197

and Central Asia: the oil habit.
For all our carping about
American gas-guzzlers, Europeans are actually more
dependent on this supply thanthe New World. Britain has its
own, rapidly dwindling stash,
and is teetering on the edgeof becoming a hungry importer. In the two months
after 11 September, British
purchases of large, fuelhungry vehicles grew by amassive 15% - a growth rate
exceeded only in the US itself.
Oil, and to a lesser extent gas,
is at the heart of the matter,because the hyper mobile
economies of the West are
ineluctably dependent onthese fuels, and are set toremain so. Even the most
optimistic forecasts for technological innovation don’t see
a phase out of oil within 30
years. And the serious money
in capital investment - from
Airbus’s new generation ofsuper-planes designed tocater to the anticipated annual 5% growth in demand
for long haul flights, to thenext generation of motor cars(including those that will run
on fuel cells) - is predicatedon a virtually endless supplyof affordable petroleum.
What to do? Price rises may
be an option, but they’re
hardly seen as politicallyfeasible. In Britain, the government notoriously ran forcover when one of its mostprogressive environmental
taxes, fuel price escalator,
started to hurt. Even in Germany, with its comparatively
excellent public transport
alternatives, environmentalists
got clobbered at the polls

when they tried to raise fuelprices to a degree that would
affect demand.
In the light of this, somesuggest that only a price risesomehow imposed fromoutside could do the trick.
Islamic fundamentalist activists in the Gulf have, course,
been touting this for years.
Osama Bin Laden, no less,proposed $144 as a ‘fair price- at which rate the hydrogen
economy so beloved of environmentalists would become
the cheap, and much morecheerful, alternative. Such a
scenario is, of course, unlikely- to say the least. Even if the
Saudi oil fields fell under thecontrol of a fundamentalist
regime, OPEC is notoriously
fickle, and the global market
would doubtless deliver a
price well within the realms ofaffordability, whoever held thereins in Riyadh. There is also
the small matter of a hefty
western military presence inthe region.
Britain’s self-appointed role as
leading peacekeeper in Afghanistan may indeed be anoble thing. But it is not thewhole story: companies suchas BP have major interests inthis area and the French havenot positioned a nuclearpowered battle group in the
Arabian Sea for humanitarian
purposes. Whatever our
differences with the US over,say, the Kyoto Protocol, or thewisdom of gung-ho interventionism, British defence policy
still looks to be fused at the
hip to that of America.
OK, you might say, the situation is far from ideal, but wehave to start from where weare. The answer is clear
strategic goals for the longer
term, and incremental steps in

the meanwhile.
The government’s review ofenergy supply, which aims to
set a framework for the next
50 years, looks like a goodplace to start. This recommends 20% of electricity
should come from renewables
by 2020 - a less ambitious
target than most of the EU,
but a big change for Britain.
Absent from the review,
however, is transport - thefastest growing source ofgreenhouse gas emissions.
National programmes toincrease fuel efficiency in thevehicle fleet will at best marginally reduce the race ofgrowth in the consumption offuel that will increasingly be
imported from further away.
The 10-year transport plan ispredicted to knock one minute
off journey times, but will not
reduce petrol consumption.
The energy review also skatesaround some knotty concerns
to do with nuclear power. The
House of Commons Defence
Committee hears that a terrorist attack on Sellafield
could take out a large part ofnorthern England. The government tells us that the, er .
. . . Territorial Army will help
prevent such an eventuality,
keeps fighters on standby atnorthern airfields to shootdown any rogue airliners - andclears the decks for a large
programme of nuclear newbuild.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of
Defence gives a good impression of a left hand not knowing what the right is up to. Its
performance in countryside
management on its ranges
wins plaudits from wildlife
groups; its willingness toengage in peacekeeping andconflict prevention is a welcome contrast to some of the198

more bellicose rhetoric fromits Ministers. But where is thelink for example, the visionary
concern expressed in its
strategy documents about
insecurity and climate change,
and its opposition to theconstruction of offshore windfarms?
Nor is our record overseas
anything to shout about. Since
the Rio Summit in 1992, theExport Credit Guarantee
Department has supported£15 billion or more in fossil
fuel and nuclear projects indeveloping countries, effectively accounting for additional
greenhouse gas emissions
around one third the size of
the UK’s own. Over the same
period, it has supported
virtually no renewable energy
schemes. Only in the last year
has the ECGD, together withother leading export credit
agencies, begun to take steps
to monitor emissions from the
projects it supports. The
Department for International
Development is estimated tospend less than 0.7% of its
assistance on renewables. But
there are 2 billion people
living off grid whose lives
could be greatly improved by
the deployment of technologies such as solar panels toschools and hospitals. So therecent signs of a priority shift
in Foreign Office policy in thisdirection is both welcome, andoverdue.
Indeed, it is perhaps ironicthat some of the most promising signs of joined-up thinking
in government come from thediplomatic, rather than domestic, quarters of Whitehall.
But if government efforts toturn round the super tanker
are only beginning, could
investors, chastened by dete-riorating security and hardened by market discipline,
stimulate more rapid change?
Tough commercial interests
have fostered fast growth inrenewables. Generation fromwind power, the premierrenewable, jumped a stunning
58% worldwide last year. So
has the changed atmosphereof the last six months madeany difference?

renewable energy even if you
want to, and there are very
few “pure plays’ in renewables
that are not tied up in energy
companies with other operations”. Add to that “the performance of renewable energy
stocks over the last year has
been abysmal - worse eventhan other speciality stocks
like high technology. It’s beena sobering year.” Like Stetler,

sions for all, and big cuts forthe rich countries. Meanwhile,
notions of rapid and radical;
change look set to remain
peripheral to the ‘real’
economy and the awarenessof most voters, many ofwhom will be climbing on
those extra long haul flights.
While some hope that a rising
wave of popular awareness,
coupled with technical advances in areas such as
renewables and energy
efficiency, might indeed
Signs, for example, thatbe enough to affect asome big insurers and pension
smooth about turn of thisfunds may endorse ideas asrogue super tanker,
radical as ‘contraction andothers are not so sanconvergence’ - the quiet revoguine. In the words oflutionary in the ranks of cliPaul Hirst, author of War
andPower in the 21stmate change; strategies,
Century, a dispassionate,
which requires equal greenand rather scary view ofhouse gas emissions for all,the future, “it will takeand big cuts for the rich counsomething that frightens
tries.
the pants off people” tochange things.

“No,” says James
Stetler, head ofrenewables atDresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstiens London
office. “September
11th and security
issues more generally
have had no discernible effect.” Suchmatters are beyond thehorizon of most investors, he thinks. And inany case, for all theirfast growth rate,
almost no one believes
renewables are near toa scale where they could
make a meaningful difference
to the energy demands ofindustrialised economies as awhole. (Stetler suggests wind
power growth will slip to a‘mere’ 17% this year.)

So what would help? “A
production tax credit for
renewables - especially in theUS, the market with far thebiggest potential,” says Stetler,
placing the ball firmly back ina government court.
Nick Robins, head of researchat the Socially Responsible
Investment team at
Henderson Global Investors,
points to other problems.
“Most fund management
operates on a very short termview, which simply does nottake account of this sort ofthing. Tracking and index
funds make it hard to pick out

Robins says a clear lead fromgovernment is crucial. “Ultimately, it is only governmentthat can change market
conditions - integrating longterm security questions into
the City’s time horizons. The
challenge for socially responsible investors is to movebeyond micro-questions ofwhich is the best renewable
stock, and get our voice heard
there.” And there are indeed
rumblings that some major
investors are beginning to
speak with a coherent voice togovernment. Signs, for example, that some big insurers
and pension funds may endorse ideas as radical as‘contraction and convergence’- the quiet revolutionary in theranks of climate change;
strategies, which requires
equal greenhouse gas emis-

199

Caspar Henderson issenior correspondent for
GREEN FUTURES

May 23 - Presented at the International W
orkshop on Oil Depletion
Workshop

Building Limited Fossil Energy Supplies
into the W
orld Monetary System
World
Richard Douthwaite“Contraction and Convergence (C&C), a plan for
reducing greenhouse gas
emissions developed by the
Global Commons Institutein London which has gained

the support of a majority of
the nations of the world,
provides a way of linking a
global currency with thelimited capacity of theplanet to absorb or break
down greenhouse gas

emissions.”
full paper at: - http://
www.gci.org.uk/papers/
EBCUS.pdf

June 6 - Climate Change Knowledge Network

Business P
erspectives - A Quickly
Perspectives
Changing T
une
Tune“The mixed response to theBush administration’s movepartly reflects the perception that tackling climatechange will create winners
as well as losers. Somecompanies would benefit
from curbs on carbon
dioxide emissions. Others
might not benefit but would
prefer governments to face
the issue rather than be leftin a state of uncertainty
about when and how it will
be tackled. Continuing
support for limits on carbon
emissions comes largely
from companies that makeenergy-efficient products
and sophisticated controls.
A more surprising source of
support comes from certain
car companies, despite theindustry having to copewith more stringent regulations. The explanation,according to an article inHarvard Business Review inJuly, was that companies
such as General Motors andFord Motor “see climatechange as an opportunity togain advantage over theirless technologically sophisticated rivals.” Some go so
far as to claim that Bush’s
stance could damage the
US economy because it
would give its competitors ahead start in developing
and using climate-friendly
technologies. They draw ananalogy with the oil priceshock of the 1970s, whichspurred the Japanese car
industry into producing
highly efficient cars thatwon new markets.
At the other end of thespectrum, some companies
are now lobbying for surprisingly radical solutions to
the problem of climatechange. The Chartered
Insurance Institute, aprofessional body for the
UK insurance industry,
recently called on governments to replace the Kyoto
protocol, which calls for a 5
per cent cut in emissions by
2010, with a proposal
known as “contraction and200

convergence”, a longerterm plan to reduce global
emissions by 60 per cent.
The Respect Group, aEurope-wide businessnetwork based in Stockholm, is putting anotherbusiness initiative forward.
It says it is “critical” that
the EU introduce policies
that make the use of fossil
fuel more expensive. Most
businesses will take theopposite tack. Lobbying
efforts will center on avoiding extra taxation andpromoting flexible, costeffective ways of reducing
emissions.”
http://www.cckn.net/compendium/business_background.asp
The CCKN is made possible by the generous support of:
Canadian International
Development Agency(CIDA)
Department of ForeignAffairs and International
Trade (DFAIT), Canada
Royal Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Norway
International Development Research Centre(IDRC), Canada

June 13 - Le Monde Diplomtique“Contraction & Convergence” The Global
Framework for Solutions to Climate
Change“ . . . . Asymmetric conditions in the economy make‘carbon’ cheap and renewables expensive. They also
decrease sustainability andincrease poverty.

Full article at: - http://
www.amisuk.f9.co.uk/
ourarticles/Apr02art4.html

However, imagine a future
where climate change has
been avoided and humanity’s long-term prospects are
more secure than now.
Looking back from there we
see that by definition
greenhouse gas emissions
have contracted to a safe
level and that within thiscontraction, the per capita
emissions levels of different
countries have converged.
The fact is this “Contraction
and Convergence” process
is intrinsic to any emissions
scenario that stabilises therising concentrations ofgreenhouse gases in theatmosphere.
So the real questions are
only, does this come about
by chance and guessworkor by building it formally
into an international framework. This largely determines the second question;- at what rate will C&C
occur?”

201

July 19 - W
orld R
eview of Books
World
Review“Contraction & Convergence – the Global
Solution to Climate Change”
Schumacher Briefing
number 5 by Aubrey
Meyer
Some comments by theauthor on the book, theissues and the state ofplay
In 1989 I made a decisionthat rearranged my life. I
joined the efforts by theGreens to prevent global
ecological collapse.
For years prior to that decision, I had been a professional musician. At the time I
had wanted to write a ‘musical’ and unexpectedly, thesearch for subject matter got
out of control. The assassination of Chico Mendez reported
in the Observer the previous
December had seemed like apossible idea for the musical.
But researching this horrible
murder became a crashcourse on the growing environmental crisis. In a momentof revulsion and anxiety thathas never really gone away, I
joined the UK Green Party.
Instead of writing the musical,
I read things like Jonathon
Porritt’s, “Seeing Green” andthe ‘Penang Manifesto’ of theWorld Rainforest Movement
and so became involved inwhat was already called, thestruggle to save the planet.
“Contraction and Convergence – the Global Solution
to Climate change” is thelittle book I wrote ten years
later about what happened
because of that decision.
With three friends from theGreen Party I formed the

Global Commons Institute(GCI). From the outset
Dave Bradney, Jim Berreen,
Tony Cooper and I agreed
that more than anythingelse, by changing the global
climate, humanity was on acollision course with itself
and with the planet. We
adopted the simple formulation of “Equity and Survival”. And as we analysed
the destructive trends ofexpansion and divergencein the global economy, wecame to formulate andcampaign for “Contraction
and Convergence” (C&C) as
the remedy.
Looking at the data, it was
obvious from the outsetthat the wealthy countriesof the world had grown richand powerful while runningup on the global account a
massive environmental debt
that exposed the countries
already impoverished bythis process to shrinking
development opportunities
and a growing vulnerability
to damages from climatechange.
The book recalls getting togrips with this. It describes
how for ten years GCI
reasoned with the diplomats, negotiators, experts
and policy makers all over
the word. It explains how
and why C&C evolved in thelight of this considerable
struggle. It details how we
won a great struggle ofideas in the policy debate in
the mid 1990s in the Second Assessment of theIntergovernmental Panel on

202

Climate Change (IPCC). The
book also reproduces
miniatures of some of thequite startling mural-sizegraphic C&C imagery wecreated for use at the UN
climate negotiations andrecalls the effects of thisand how reactions to thecampaign changed as aresult over the years. However the C&C book was
published before the Third
IPCC Assessment was
published (June 2001) inwhich we had built on thatsuccess to the IPCC’s recognition that, “C&C takes therights-based approach to its
logical conclusion.”
Increasingly in recent years
the reactions are positive. The
Financial and Insurance
Initiative of the UNEP has
adopted a position in favour
of C&C. Numerous ordinaryand eminent individuals andinstitutions have added theirsupport. But early on there
were very trying times aseveryone struggled to confront this awesome newproblem with arcane andarchaic habits. In essence,
GCI challenged the formulations of the neo-classicaleconomists who had presumed to dominate the policy
debate, for what they were marginal. We sought to enclose their methods within the
more durable formulation of
securing prosperity throughprecaution, equity and efficiency in that order. This iswhat C&C does and while realpolicy thinking matures slowly
in favour of C&C, lack of its

real application keeps us on
the collision course.
As it grows, the global
economy has become almost
seamless, because money like air - penetrates all theavailable space. And there is
no pretending that people
don’t go after both. At thesame time, because of interdependence, this now meansthat every unit of activity inthis economy is in somemeasure linked to the effectsof burning fossil fuels. In
other words, rich or poor andwhether we burn fossil fuel orwood copiously or frugally, we
are all now linked via theeconomy and the environment
to both the causes and theeffects of human induced
global climate change.
The ‘greenhouse-gas’ (ghg)emissions from this fossil fuelburning are accumulating in
the global atmosphere andslowly but surely trapping
more and more of the sun’sheat as time goes by. While
the rise in global temperatureis uneven over time andspace, altogether this trend ofenhancing of the natural
greenhouse effect is causing
global weather patterns tobecome progressively more
violent and erratic with more
floods, droughts, storms andsea-level rise. According to
the estimates of the big reinsurance companies, thisoverall syndrome is causing a
rate of economic losses that is
now rising at four times therate of economic growth. In anutshell, this is already adeath knell for low-lying
coastal areas in Holland,
Bangladesh, Egypt and theSouth Pacific because of rising
sea level. In a hideous asymmetry, while the GDP rich getricher, the CO2 poorer get

moved on and even wiped
out. Tuvalu is already being
evacuated and hundreds ofthousands of people living on
the margins have already diedin catastrophic climatechange-related hurricanes inCentral America and cyclones
in Africa and in Asia.
Worse, much worse, is yet tocome. If we project the current rates of GDP/CO2 growthand climate related damages,
the value of the damages will
exceed the value of the global
economy within about 60
years. If humanity succeeds instopping this from runningcompletely out of control,
construction of the Great Wallof China will seem by comparison like a weekend inLego Land. The post-war
Marshall Plan will seem likethe redeeming of so many
book tokens. If we succeed,
security through rigorously
planned international cooperation will have superseded
economic competition, coercion, conflict and terror as theprimary framework of security
with the ethos of conserving
and sharing the resources that
preserve civilization.
In its report “Energy – theChanging Climate” (June2000) the Royal Commission
on Environmental Pollution
made the advocacy of C&C
the third of its 87 recommendations to the UK Government. A leading British broadsheet claimed, “little man’s big
idea could save the world”
and I winked. Now that the
recent UK Energy Review by
the Cabinet Office has broadly
supported C&C, some people
feel the argument has won.
Campaigners are joining
hands in calling for it to bepart of Tony Blair’s ‘big idea’at the World Summit on

203

Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg later this year.
While the Kyoto Protocol isseen as ‘a first step’ it is
widely recognized as a profoundly inadequate responseto this looming crisis.
Sadly though, winning theargument is not winning thewar. As the C&C book only
partly records, it already had
many powerful backers
around the world at the time
it was published in November
2000 and it has acquired
many more since then. As asingle coherent proposition itprobably now has more support than any other. At thesame time, getting off thecollision course to catastrophic
global climate change is goingto require much more than
this and the advocates of C&C
face the numbing counterculture of military-commercial
priorities centered in Washington DC. Recent developments
show how incongruously easy
it is to be blind to the enormity of the obstacles against
rising effectively to the global
climate challenge.
President George Bush has
just aptly - if unintentionally demonstrated again thatleading with economic ‘efficiency’ (in his parlance ‘intensity’) arguments can be utterly
misleading. As a US ‘alternative’ to what he called the‘unfair’ Kyoto Protocol, herecently had the sauce tocommit the US to ‘voluntary’gains against their current
efficiency value of $5,464 per
tonne of carbon rising to$6,623 per tonne over the
next ten years. While thisroundly commits the US to
carry on with business-asusual, this is held up by theadministration as, “a morepractical way to discuss goals

with developing countries.”
However, with their currencies
corrected for exchange rate
distortions, developing countries (on this measure) remain
consistently orders of magnitude more efficient than the
countries of the OECD. In
other words they may bepoor, but the awkward bit for
the US is that they are more
efficient.1 At the rate of gain
projected by the White House,
the US might become as
efficient as Nepal or Namibia($100,000/tonne) by the late
22nd Century.
Furthermore, depreciating forthe energy content of its
imports, the US produces net
probably nearer $3,000 than
$5,000 of income per tonne offossil fuel burned domestically.
With the US’ global trade
deficit alone now accumulated
at nearly three trillion dollars,
this is equivalent to 1 billion
tonnes of the extra atmospheric carbon now forcing
Tuvaluans to flee the risingseas of climate change. To getsome sense of perspective, 1billion tonnes is almost what
the US emits annually. This is
the figure that by mid-term
the world should limit emissions to annually if rising ghg
concentrations, temperatureand damages are to be
slowed and stabilised.
As if that wasn’t bad enough,Dr. Thomas Barnett2 in U.S.
Naval Institute, 2002 (January
issue, pp. 53-56) under thetitle ‘Asia: The Military-Market
Link’ clearly foresees that thislittle ‘deficit’ ensures we’re allon our way to Tuvalu . . . . .
He says: -“The good news is that
there’s plenty of fossil fuelto go around. Confirmed oil

reserves have jumped
almost two-thirds over the
past 20 years, according to
the Department of Energy,
while natural gas reserves
have roughly doubled. Our
best estimates on coal say
we have enough for the
next two centuries. So
supply is not the issue, andneither is demand, leaving
only the question of moving
the energy from those whohave it to those who need it- and therein lies the rub.
U.S. naval presence in Asia
is becoming far less an
expression of our nation’s
forward presence than an“exporting” of security to
the global marketplace. Inthat regard, we truly domove into the Leviathan
category, for the “product”
we provide is increasingly acollective good less directlytied to our particularistic
national interests and far
more intimately wrapped up
with our global responsibilities.
And in the end, this is apretty good deal. We trade
little pieces of paper (ourcurrency, in the form of a
trade deficit) for Asia’s
amazing array of products
and services. We are smart
enough to know this is apatently unfair deal unless
we offer something of greatvalue along with those little
pieces of paper.
That product is a strong
U.S. Pacific Fleet, whichsquares the transaction
nicely.”Is it any wonder the US
Government slipped that little
clause in just before theoriginal Kyoto meeting in
December 1997 which established that military emissions

204

would be on the global account.
However valiant the many andvaried efforts to rebut thislitany of complacency are,they will remain divided andruled by this arrogance until
there is a really coherent andunited global campaign for
C&C based on the realisationof equity and survival.
But then I’m just a musician
and what do I know?
Aubrey Meyer
Director
Global Commons Institute(GCI)
1

See: -

http://www.gci.org.uk/images/
Efficiency.pdf
Professor at the U.S. Naval
War College, currently serving
as the Assistant for Strategic
Futures in the Office of Force
Transformation within the
Office of the Secretary of
Defense2

Aubrey Meyer was born in
Bradford in 1947. He grew up
in South Africa and studied
music at the University ofCape Town during the 1960s,
from where he graduated B.
Mus. in 1968 and later M.
Mus. After a brief period at theRoyal College of Music in
London in 1970, he played as
Principal Viola in the Ulster
Orchestra in Belfast, theGulbenkian Orchestra in
Lisbon, the CAPAB Orchestra
in Cape Town and then as asection player in the London
Philharmonic Orchestra in the
1980s. Intermittently throughout this period he wrote musicfor various ensembles including two prize-winning orchestral ballet scores.

It was while searching for a
subject for a musical in 1988
that stories of the death of theBrazilian social activist Chico
Mendez led him to join the UK
Green Party in 1989 and thento co-found the Global Commons Institute (GCI) in London in 1990.
He spent the next decadecontributing to the policy
working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), and campaigning at the United Nations
negotiations on climatechange to win acceptance ofthe glob-al ethic of ‘equity andsurvival’ and the policy framework known as ‘Contraction
and Convergence’ (C&C).
C&C is now becoming themost widely supported global
framework within which toresolve policies and measures
to avert dangerous climatechange.

In 1998 he won the Andrew
Lees Memorial Award with thefollowing citation: “Aubrey
Meyer, almost singlehandedly and with minimal
resources, has made an
extraordinary impact on thenegotiations on the Climate
Change Treaty, one of themost important of our time,through his campaign for agoal of equal per capita
emissions, which is now theofficial negotiating position ofmany governments, and isgaining acceptance in developed and developing countries alike.” In 2000 he received the SchumacherAward for the continuation ofthese efforts.

2002 - GCI PUBLICA
TION
PUBLICATION“Wilton Park Slide Show” –With Notes
Available at:www.gci.org.uk/articles

205August 2 - Frontline Magazine - The Hindu

For climate justice
If the world is to be saved
from an environmental
catastrophe, it is essential
for the civil society inThird World countries totake an active role inpressuring their governments and in moulding
opinion to move in the
direction of a solution
based on the principle ofequal atmospheric rights
for all.

that we collectively possess isfinite and limited. The only
enduring basis by which thisspace can be shared is todivide it equally among all
human beings. Any methodthat is established on thestrength of the present power
relations, and is thus iniquitous, cannot be sustained forlong.
It is this realisation that has
made far-sighted persons

will be allowed to develop
their economies by increasing
their emission to that level.
This convergence target will
have to be reached in a given
time-period and, thereafter,
will decline uniformly for all
countries.
The per capita emission andthe time for convergence will
have to be negotiated internationally, taking into accountthe safe levels of CO2 concen-“ .. . French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet support thestrategy of contraction and convergence.
According to this strategy, all countries will be allotted entitlements topollute on the basis of a single per capita allowance. While the rich countries will have to contract their emission levels to reach this target, the poor
countries will be allowed to develop their economies by increasing theiremission to that level. This convergence target will have to be reached in agiven time-period and, thereafter, will decline uniformly for all countries.
The per capita emission and the time for convergence will have to benegotiated internationally, taking into account the safe levels of CO2 concentration that can be allowed in the atmosphere. If these entitlements are
permitted to be traded, developing countries can get substantial resources
as a matter of right and not as handouts. These resources would help them
leapfrog into clean technologies for power and transport and for overall
development as well, without having to worry about losing their bargaining
positions.”

The final part of a three-partseries.
THE atmosphere, like the air
we breathe, belongs to everyone. It has now become
obvious that the extent towhich it can be polluted bycarbon dioxide (CO2) andother greenhouse gases(GHG) in the course of ournormal living has a ceiling;that is, the pollution spacesuch as French Environment
Minister Dominique Voynet
support the strategy of contraction and convergence.
According to this strategy, allcountries will be allotted
entitlements to pollute on thebasis of a single per capita
allowance. While the richcountries will have to contract
their emission levels to reachthis target, the poor countries

206

tration that can be allowed in
the atmosphere. If these
entitlements are permitted to
be traded, developing countries can get substantial
resources as a matter of rightand not as handouts. These
resources would help them
leapfrog into clean technologies for power and transportand for overall development
as well, without having toworry about losing theirbargaining positions.
A sub-text to this argument isthat within countries, depressed sections of people
have an ecological debt thatthe affluent sections owe
them and they have a right toclaim it. A study by the Indira
Gandhi Institute for Development Research found that in
1989-90 the per capita carbon
emission of the top 10 per
cent of the urban populationin India was 13 times that of
the bottom half of the rural
population. It is the povertystricken Dalit woman who
fetches headloadsof shrub from long
distances for the
day’s kitchen fireand her children
who pore over theirbooks in the glow of
the kerosene lamp
who have saved thisplanet from a worse
disaster than it
faces now. If the
excluded and oppressed sections in
the Third World
countries demand
their rightful shareof equitably distributed CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) funds fortheir own development, it
could lead to social dynamics
that are different from whatthese societies are used to atpresent.
But, for now, the dominantdiscourse in the dominant
country is focussed on the‘non-responsible’ emissions by
the populous developing
nations. Green movements inthat country are quick to pointout to their government that itis the countries that are nonaccountable to Kyoto that are
behaving more responsibly
than those that are account-able to it. For instance, according to researchers at theLawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in California, China
has reduced its emission by
17 per cent since the mid1990s, a period when its
gross domestic product increased by 36 per cent. Said
Zhou Dadi, Director of theEnergy Research Institute,
China: “Strategically, we haveadopted climate change as animportant concern in ourenergy planning. Before 1980,
China’s energy use increased
1.6 times as fast as the
economy. But in the last 20

years, energy use has grownat less than half the rate of
the economy... Our per capita
energy use is just one-tenthof that in the United Statesand one-seventh of that inEurope. Americans drive cars
while we ride bicycles; youlive in houses while we live indormitories.”
India has also done much toconserve, though its record is
not as spectacular as that ofChina. India is now theworld’s fifth largest fossil-fuelCO2-emitting country; theemissions having grown at 6per cent a year since 1950. It
is the world’s third largest

207

coal-producing country andcoal accounts for 70 per centof fossil emissions. However,at less than 0.3 metric tonnesof carbon emission per head,
it is the lowest for any large
country, far lower than the
global average of 1.13 tonnes
and one-twentieth of the U.S.
per capita emission.
There have been several
studies of the impact of global
warming on India, especiallyon food production and oncoastal areas. The United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) lists India
among the 27 countries that are mostvulnerable to a risein sea level. A study
by the Jawaharlal
Nehru University in
1993 found that a
one-metre rise in
sea level would
inundate approximately 5,800 square
kilometres of coastal
area and directly
affect 70 lakh people; the economic
loss would range
from Rs.2,30,300
crores for Mumbai to
Rs.400 crores for Balasore, atcurrent prices. India is alreadyreeling under weather disasters of unprecedentedly large
scales. Most environmentalists
link this to global warming. A
heat wave in Orissa in 1998,
the hottest year of the millennium, claimed 650 lives; thenext year, 10,000 people
perished in Orissa’s worst-everfloods.
This year’s heat wave wasworse than that of 1998 andclaimed more than 600 lives inAndhra Pradesh alone, despite
prior warning to the people
and some preparations. A
UNEP team that went to theHimalayas recently found thata glacier near the first campthat Edmund Hillary andTenzing Norgay set up during
their conquest of the Everestin 1953 had receded by 5 km
and that a series of small
ponds had now formed a big
lake.
The lack of sufficient data andresearch on the impacts ofclimate change has prevented
India, and other developing
countries, from playing anassertive role in global negotiations. India cannot hope tomake the kind of investmentthat the U.S. has made. (Twonational laboratories in the
U.S. have launched a $20
million project, with 1.5
teraflops of computing power,
to evaluate scientifically thepolicy options on climatechange.) Also, the ‘expert’
advice India gets on policy
matters is less than neutral. Ina briefing paper sent by theCentre for Science and Environment to the Members of
Parliament in India before The
Hague conference, the late
Anil Agarwal pointed out that
Bill Clinton’s principal environmental adviser Kathleen
McGinty stationed herself at
the Tata Energy ResearchInstitute in Delhi for a year
and went round the country
to paint an alluring picture of
the CDM, without pointing out
its inequity in the absence of
established entitlements.
According to him, the Confederation of Indian Industry(CII) was among those who
fell for her argument. It isonly to be expected thatprivate industry everywhere
will be short-term-oriented.
The government and thepoliticians too have little
incentive to take a long-term
view. In fact, the subject getsvery low priority and the
public awareness of the issues
involved is also abysmally low
as compared to the awarenesslevels in the industrialised
countries. Besides, when pushcomes to shove, the only
superpower of the world will
not hesitate to apply openpressure on national governments, using its leverage. In
fact, some non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) in the
North, such as the World
Resources Institute in Washington D.C., want international
financial institutions to use
aid, loan and trade to pressure developing countries toadopt climate-friendly, andobviously costly, technologies.
Thus one cannot assume that
the Indian government willautomatically act in such a
way as to protect the longterm interests of the people.
So, if the world is to be saved
from a looming catastrophe
and international and intergenerational justice is to be
maintained, it is essential for
civil society in Third World
countries to take an activerole in pressuring their own
governments and in moulding
world opinion to move in the
direction of a swift ‘equal
rights for all’ solution. In thiseffort, they need to contend
with, and engage in dialogue,even well-meaning NGOs in
the North, which, in theiranxiety to get some action off
the ground, are prone to seek
accommodation from thenations in the South. Attending a conference of northernNGOs on climate change, anactivist from the South foundto her dismay that the question equity ranked lowest in
the delegates’ priorities.
The forces ranged against acredible and just solution are

208

many and mighty. One silver
lining is that the extremism of
the Bush variety is creating abacklash of public opinion andpulling together environmentalists for vigorous joint actions. An example is thelargest ever paid media campaign by any environmentalgroup during August and
September 2001 in the UnitedStates. Americans in 23 States
were educated by a clutch ofenvironment groups on how
their Congressmen listenedwhen (oil) money talked, how
they voted for $30 billion in
taxpayer handouts to oil, coaland nuclear power companies,
how they “voted time andtime again for more pollution,and more global warming”
instead of for lower energy
bills and a healthier environment, how they should not
now allow their Senator to do
the same when the bills comeup for approval.
There is a need for similar
concerted action by the NGOsof the South. This need not
be, and probably ought not tobe, limited to advocacy of theequal-rights-to-the-air-above
principle; it can extend to theissue of reparations for thedamage caused to the environment in the past. Even as
voices are raised now for
reparations for slavery andcolonialism, just recompensefor environmental imperialism
is bound to become a major
issue several years hence. But
raising it now has the advantage of driving home theequal rights message withgreater force. In fact, thecurrent environmental intransigence of the U.S. President
can be countered by taking
him to court for the economic
costs of the disasters faced by
the poorer countries because

of climate change - up to $9.5
trillion over the next two
decades, according to one
estimate by developmentgroups. The Red Cross suggests in a report that poor
countries could seek legal
compensation to pay forreconstruction through an“international tort climate
court”. It says: “Increasingly
sophisticated analysis ofclimate change means that
ignorance of the consequences of industrial consumption and pollution can be
no defence for inaction.”
In a recent article in The
Guardian, Stephen Timms of
the Global Economy Programme at the New Economics Foundation points to theestablishment of a principle ina U.S. court that no State had
the right to cause injury toanother by emitting “fumes”.
This was in a case relating toa Canadian smelter plantdamaging crops and livestockin Washington State in the
U.S. Timms says: “The next
message G-7 heads of state
receive from their poorer
cousins may not be an invitation to a reception, or a plea
for more aid. It may be much
more abrupt: ‘We’ll see you incourt for global warming.’ A
concrete step towards thiswas taken recently when twodozen lawyers representing
environmental groups met in
Washington to explore thepossibility of class-action
lawsuits against the U.S.
government and corporations
on behalf of Tuvalu - whose
10,000 residents are emigrating to New Zealand as theisland nation faces total
submergence by 2050 - or the
Maldives or Jamaica, likethose filed by the Holocaust
victims or those filed against
the tobacco companies.

Tuvalu’s new Prime Ministerhas signalled his intention tosue.
The principle of contraction
and convergence is gaining
ground, albeit very slowly. The
Environment Ministers ofDenmark, the Netherlands
and the United Kingdom havevoiced their personal support
to it; Britain’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in a report on climatechange published recently,
has endorsed it. However, it is
nowhere near claiming serious
attention at Kyoto discussions.
A large part of the responsibility to see that this happens
rests on the NGOs in Indiaand in the other countries of
the South.
C.E. Karunakaran is anengineer who has studied
and worked on issues
relating to carbon credit
trading.

August 23 - Church Times

Anglicans urge greater concern for the
earrthby Vanya Walker-Leigh inSouth Africa
BISHOPS attending the Anglican Congress on the Stewardship of Creation at
Hartebeestpoort Dam, near
Johannesburg, this week,
urged the Anglican Communion to take a stronger standon climate change and related
environmental issues.
“Christian theology drives us.
As partners with God in Jesus,
we Christians are responsible
for the whole created order,”the Bishop of Canberra &Goulburn, the Rt Revd George
Browning, told one of thesessions. He was echoing theArchbishop of Canterbury’s
message to the Congress, that
“We have an inescapable
obligation to cherish the living
planet entrusted to us by ourCreator.”
The Congress, which ends
today, intends to submit astatement to the forthcoming
World Summit on Sustainable
Development, which begins
next Monday in Johannesburg. It will also submit a
policy document to the next

209

Anglican Consultative Council
meeting, in Hong Kong, in
September.
Bishop warns of “desperate plight”
Bishop Browning’s appeal wasendorsed by the Bishop of
Hereford, the Rt Revd John
Oliver, who is the Church of
England’s spokesman onenvironmental affairs in theHouse of Lords. “We are in a
desperate plight as regards
global warming and climatechange. The planet is going tothe buffers very much sooner
than people realise,” theBishop said.
He strongly supported the“Contraction and Convergence” (C & C) approach to
cutting emissions of greenhouse gas. This meets US
concerns, “and is supported
by China, India, France,
Belgium, Sweden, the European Parliament, the Nonaligned Group, and South
Africa”, he said. “I hope theAnglican Communion will
formally endorse C & C in
Hong Kong.”
A grim picture of the present
state of world agriculture andrural poverty emerged inpresentations to sessions on
food-security and water. Peter
Mann, a former Benedictine
monk and a director of World
Hunger Year, said that theworld needed to make atransition from “theagribusiness-dominated‘industrial agriculture’, which is
destroying soil quality, andrural livelihoods”.
The co-ordinator of theemerging Anglican Environment Network, Canon Eric
Beresford, a geneticist, said
that, though it was suggested
that genetically modified (GM)crops might feed the world,
their yields were 15-20 per
cent below those of non-GM
crops. The earth’s produce
and species must not bepatented for corporate profit,
he said.

Magaliesberg mountains, near
Pretoria. The daily eucharists
were held in a mixture ofEnglish and one of South
Africa’s nine native languages.
Calls to prayer and action
The World Bank on Wednesday urged a more global
approach to development. In
its World Development Report, it urged rich nations tostop spending $1 billion a dayon agricultural subsidies, toaccelerate the transfer of newtechnologies, and to provide
more aid, particularly to subSaharan Afria. This would help
the poorest in the world boost
their incomes.
New alliances were needed, at
national and global levels, toaddress these issues, theWorld Bank said. Governments must act now to avert
a growing risk of damage tothe environment.
Four Christian environmentalorganisations have joined inurging Christians to support
the Summit with prayer. There
are briefings, for those interested, atwww.churchesearthsummit.org.uk,
and also a “Creation Care”
prayer that they hopechurches will use in services
on Sunday, which is the eve of
the Summit.

The 50 participants from 20
Churches had gathered on
Monday at the Good Shepherd
Roman Catholic Retreat Centre, a hillside collection ofsmall African thatched buildings set in gardens, with apanoramic view of theHartebeespoort dam and the210August - Open Democracy

Meyer corrects Müller on C&C
Mü
Benito Müller :“As for the issue of anequitable distribution of(global) emission targets,there have been, as you
know, numerous proposals.
One of the best known isthe ‘contraction and convergence’ model suggestedby the Global Commons
Institute.”
Open Democracy :“This is based on the idea
that, ultimately, everyonein the world has an equal
right, as it were, to emit
greenhouse gases; andthat the expression of thisright must be limited, sothat the aggregate amountof emissions is safe for the
global climate . . . . “Benito Müller :“In my view, the maindrawback with ‘contraction
and convergence’ is that it
starts out with a‘grandfathering’ allocation– essentially a uniform
percentage target acrossthe board – and only
moves towards presumably

the fair per capita solution
over time.

international accounting
figures.

Depending on the speed of
the convergence and thecontraction, it is thus not
only likely to impose initial
reduction targets on eventhe least developed countries, but it deprives themof their legitimate surplus
permits at the time when
they need these most in
their quest to reach a pathof sustainable development– namely now.

It is not accurate to saythat C&C “starts out with a‘grand-fathering’ allocation,
essentially a uniform percentage target across theboard”.

In contrast, I think it would
be feasible, affordable, fairand sensible to give everyone in the world an equal
per capita allocation now.
Each person would also
have the right to trade
emissions so that the poor
low emitters could benefit
from this legitimate asset . .
...“Aubrey Meyer:“In fact, the C&C model
remains possibly the only
calculating device put
forward so far that not only
embraces exactly what
Benito is arguing for, butwhich is capable of calculating in full the necessary

From day one, C&C removes grandfather rights at
a rate that is determined by
the disparate initial per
capita emissions levels
internationally, in favour ofequal rights by an agreed
date.
However, this process
would apply the principles
of C&C at rates that havebeen negotiated by theparties themselves, rather
than those pre-determinedand handed down by experts and observers.
If the international community commands an immediate convergence within astaged contraction, themodel will calculate it.
It is not GCI’s role to decree
the content of decisions
that can only be reached bynegotiation, but it is ourrole to point out theirdetailed consequences in
the light of the C&C model.”Full articles at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/
document_details.asp?CatID=99&DocID=1638&DebateID=177
and
http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/
Message_Details.asp?StrandID=83&DebateID=177&CatID=99&M=1308&T=1308&F=177

211

September 3 - The Times

Capitalism is best way to save the planet
Economic View by Anatole
Kaletsky
THE Johannesburg summit on
sustainable development has
been widely ridiculed foremitting more hot air than acoal-fired power station. Tony
Blair’s African speeches havecertainly left us no wiser
about his personal plan tosave the world. Yet behind all
the empty rhetoric, the cynicalphoto-opportunities and thebureaucratic self-indulgence,some enormously important
issues have been opened up
for discussion in the past two
weeks.
In saying this, I do not mean
to contribute to the hysteria
about mankind’s survival andthe threat posed by global
warming to life on earth. Stillless do I believe that “Africa isa scar on the conscience of
our world and the world has aduty to heal it”, to quote Mr
Blair.
Global warming may well be aserious threat to humanwelfare. The poverty, disease
and barbarism rampant inmuch of Africa is certainly anindictment of the way that
almost all African countries
have been run in the colonial
era and the post-colonial
decades. But the outside
world has neither the moral
authority nor the will to stop
Africans committing mass
suicide through Aids. The true
scale of climate change andits effect on mankind’s future,
will be unclear for many
decades, probably until mostof us are dead.
Both as an economist and ahuman being I have always
believed in focusing on thepresent and the immediate
future, leaving the long-term
to look after itself. The reason
for doing this is not a contempt for future generations,but quite the contrary. Any
attempt to look many decades
ahead and then to inflict ourflawed ideas on future generations, is an exercise inoverweaning arrogance.
Moreover, the experience ofthe past two centuries suggests that the generations of
the future will be infinitely
cleverer than we are. They
will devise solutions to theirproblems with an ingenuity
that we cannot begin to
imagine today. It is not justlazy and selfish to leave thesolution of many long-term
problems to future generations; it is rational. It is rightto delay difficult decisions aslong as possible in the hopethat “something will turn up”
and only to make painful
choices at the eleventh hour.
Having laid out this sceptical
credo, let me jump straight tomy personal conclusions from
Johannesburg. The homilies
on aid, disease and sanitation
will be of little value until wesee dramatic political changes
in the poor countries themselves. The fact is that competent and honest economic
management, plus the avoidance of wars, are infinitely
more important conditions fordevelopment than any conceivable inflow of external aid.
But turning from the pietieson poverty to the environmental negotiations which were
the summit’s real issue, Johannesburg could go down inhistory as one of the major

212

events of the early 21st
century, eclipsing even September 11.
Firstly, the summit has madeprogress on such urgent
environmental issues as fishstocks, deforestation andwater supplies. The damage
to human welfare fromoverfishing, uncontrolled
logging and water pollution
has gone so far and has
become so palpable thatthese problems easily pass
the eleventh-hour test suggested above. Secondly, andeven more importantly, thesummit has brought climatechange to the centre of attention. It could mark the start ofa period of much more intensive government intervention
and business activity on
carbon emissions and energy
policy, at least outside the US.
Despite my general scepticism
about long-term planning, I
think such action could be
beneficial, not only to ourchildren’s environmental
future, but also to our own
prosperity and safety andeven to global economic
growth. The idea that trying
to control the human contribution to climate change
could be an economic opportunity, and not just a sacrifice,has long been the missing
element in the global warming
debate. The fact is that aconcerted global campaign
against climate change could
present opportunities of atleast three kinds.
The first benefit would bescientific and technologicalprogress, as moribund industries such as carmaking andenergy extraction were given

incentives to move to the
cutting edge of technologicalprogress. Government subsidies for energy research could
have far more productive
spin-offs than defence andspace programmes. It has
always struck me that car
manufacturers and oil companies reveal extraordinary
managerial incompetence
when they oppose government regulations to reduce
emissions, increase fueleconomy and develop new
zero-emission engines. These
companies are at present

stuck in commodity businesses with ever-dwindlingprofit margins, few competitive advantages and a dinosaur image among investors,
leading to extremely low stock
market valuations. They
would be far better off emulating computer companies
and competing in the development of new technology.
Government regulations to
reduce emissions would help
them to limit competition,
thereby increasing, rather
than stunting, their profits.

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The second benefit would be
geopolitical stabilisation, as
fundamentalist Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia andIran lost their grip on theworld’s jugular through the oil
price.
The third benefit would begreater trade integration andthe possibility of a moderate
redistribution of income fromrich countries to poor.
To see why this might be so,consider the ambitious target
mentalists have all, for their
Kyoto targets at several
for reducing carbon
own reasons, emphasised thehundred billion dollars, a priceemmissions suggested two
economic sacrifices required
he regards as unacceptable,
years ago by Britain’s Royalto control climate change. We what hope could there possiCommission on Environmental hear constantly of the limits to bly of making any worthwhile
Pollution. Its proposal was to
growth implied by energy
progress? But what Mr Blair
reduce emissions by 60 per
conservation and the mindhas failed to point out in his
cent by 2050, possibly
boggling trillions of dollars
messianic fervour, is that thethrough an internationalthat will have to be sacrificed
ambitious 60 per cent target
agreement called Contraction
either to reduce global warmis only due to be achieved by
and Convergence, which has
ing or to cope with its de2050. The magic of compound
been much discussed instruction.
interest could make this quite
Johannesburg. This would
feasible without any undue
Yet all these horrific figures
give every couneconomic sacritry a quota forfice. According tocarbon emissions,the authoritative
To see why this might be so, conbased on its
report publishedsider the ambitious target for reducing
population andin February thiscarbon emmissions suggested two years
would allow
year by the DTI’sago
by
Britain’s
Royal
Commissiononcountries to tradeinter-departmenthese emission
tal analysts group
Environmental Pollution. Its proposal wasrights. This would
for Britain toto reduce emissions by 60 per cent by
gradually reduce
meet the 60 per
2050, possibly through an international
worldwide carbon
cent target would
agreement called Contraction and Conemission andrequire a reducvergence, which has been much disencourage thetion of 4.3 perdevelopment ofcussed in Johannesburg. This would givecent a year in the
more efficient
intensity of carevery country a quota for carbon emistechnologies. In
bon emissions,sions, based on its population and would
the meantime, it
assuming GDP
allow countries to trade these emission
would ensure a
growth continued
rights. This would gradually reduce
flow of funds
at its long-termworldwide
carbonemissionandencourfrom rich countrend rate of 2.25
tries to poor
per cent.
age the development of more efficientones, which,technologies. In the meantime, it wouldThis would be
because of their
only slightly
ensure a flow of funds from rich countries
lower levels of carhigher than theto poor ones, which, because of theirownership andhistoric trend oflower levels of car ownership and indusindustrialisation,
carbon intensity
trialisation, would have surplus emission
would have
reduction, whichsurplus emission
rights.
has been runningrights.
at 3 per cent a
This Contraction
year since 1970.
and Convergence concept,
are meaningless unless preUsing a slightly different
illustrated in the charts above
sented in context. For exammethodology, the same reportfrom the website of the Global ple, Mr Blair noted in Africa
concludes that the cost ofCommons Institute, is onlythat the Kyoto protocol would
reducing carbon emissions by
one of many market-based
only reduce greenhouse
60 per cent in 2050 and thenproposals designed to create
emissions by 1 per cent,stabilising them from thatincentives for big emissions
whereas the British Governpoint onwards would be
cuts without unduly disupting
ment believes that a 60 per
equivalent to between 0.2 perglobal economic growth.
cent reduction is needed.
cent and 1.5 per cent of GDP.
Given that President Bush has
Yet politicians, business lobEven in the absence of firm
put the cost of meeting thebies and anti-growth environevidence on the precise scale214or effects of global warming,
this would be a very small
price to pay for the potential
benefits of reducing air pollution, not to mention thepolitical and technologicalbreakthroughs mentioned
above.
In Johannesburg, the conceptthat global action on climatechange could be an economically beneficial exercise,instead of an immense sacrifice began to make an appearance. This was partly
because many environmentalorganisations started toengage in a more constructive
economic dialogue with businesses and governments
instead of trying to turn the
global warming issue into a
weapon in a global war
against capitalism and modern
science.
Modern science and market
economics, far from being theenemy of the environment,
are by far the most powerfulmechanisms ever developed
for achieving human objectives. If the world needs to be
saved, they are by far thebest tools available to mankind. It is time to put them togood use.

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