Tag: environmental politics

The Final Stage of IPCC AR5 – Last Week’s Outcome in Copenhagen

Some of you may recall that following the Government Approval Sessions for the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of Working Group 3 (WG3) of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Berlin last spring, I expressed my disappointment and dismay regarding that process and its outcome in regard to the greatly abbreviated text of the SPM on the topic for which I was responsible, “International and Regional Cooperation.”  I expressed my frustration (and my hopes for the future) in two essays at this blog:

Is the IPCC Government Approval Process Broken?, Posted on April 25, 2014

Understanding the IPCC: An Important Follow-Up, Posted on May 3, 2014.

Last week, I was in Copenhagen for what was essentially the final stage of the five-year enterprise of research, writing, and government approval of the various reports of IPCC AR5, namely the government approval sessions for the Synthesis Report (SYR), which summarizes and synthesizes the key findings from the three Working Group reports.

While I was in Copenhagen and since my return, many people have asked me how it went.  “Was it as bad as last time?”  “Was the material on international cooperation that was deleted in Berlin reinserted, or did it remain out?”  “Did other material get deleted?”  This essay provides my response to those and some related questions.

The Outcome in Copenhagen

First of all, here’s the simplest headline statement:  Things improved significantly at the Synthesis Report (SYR) government approval sessions in Copenhagen last week, but in saying this, I am only referring to the material for which I’ve been responsible.  Let me explain.

The relevant section of the SYR is section 4.4.1, “International and Regional Cooperation on Mitigation and Adaptation.”  As the section title implies, we combined material from WG3 Chapter 13 (International Cooperation:  Agreements and Instruments), WG3 Chapter 14 (Regional Development and Cooperation), and various chapters on adaptation from WG2.

Overall, as far as this material (SYR 4.4.1) is concerned, the outcome of the SYR approval process in Copenhagen was much better than the outcome in Berlin of the WG3 approval process.  Part of that may be due to the fact that I learned some valuable lessons from that previous painful experience.  But part was also due to some significant bureaucratic subtleties.

A Positive Outcome, but with Some Important Caveats

I will not drag you through the details of what transpired this past week in Copenhagen (including several sessions that went past 3 am), but here is the bottom-line.

First, the material (from throughout the WG3 report) that was excised from the WG3 Summary for Policymakers (SPM) in the government approval sessions in Berlin was not resubmitted by the Lead Authors in the Synthesis Report SPM for government approval in Copenhagen, because there was clearly no point to doing so.  Hence, that excised material did not re-appear in the approved SYR SPM, but, it would be incorrect to say that it was excised again by the governments.  If anything, this was a case of self-censorship.  (Also, in many parts of the SPM for which I did not have primary responsibility, the government approval process again resulted in substantial revisions.)

For the full Synthesis Report (SYR), however, I was able to reinsert into the draft submitted for government approval in Copenhagen all of the material removed from the text on international cooperation (WG3 SPM 5.2) in the WG3 SPM in Berlin, plus some additional material from the underlying WG reports.

There is a bureaucratic subtlety I need to explain.  For the WG reports, the governments have no authority to approve the actual, underlying reports.  They only approve the SPMs.  But for the SYR, the governments approve the SPM, and also approve the main SYR, but they do so not line by line as with the SPMs, but only section by section.

By working with a number of government delegations in “contact group” sessions over two days, plus holding a series of one-on-one bilateral meetings with nearly a dozen key country delegations over the last few days in Copenhagen, it was possible to revise the text in ways that satisfied the governments (remember, each and every government has something close to veto power), but did not compromise the scientific integrity of the material.  How could that be?

This was accomplished by addressing stated concerns not by deleting text, but by adding scientifically-correct text (and in virtually all cases that text came directly from the underlying WG2 and WG3 reports), carrying out some sensible revisions here and there, and – in just one case – deleting a single sentence that was clearly going to be unacceptable to almost all governments.  Also, I revised (and, in my view, improved) a figure imported from Chapter 13 of WG3.

As a result, in contrast to what happened in Berlin with the WG3 SPM, the full text on international and regional cooperation in the full SYR essentially survived in Copenhagen.

Some More Key Caveats

I need to emphasize again that I am referring only to the part of the IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report for which I had primary responsibility, SYR 4.4.1, “International and Regional Cooperation on Mitigation and Adaptation.”  My fellow SYR Lead Authors, with primary responsibilities for other parts of the work, might have very different assessments of the Copenhagen outcome.  Some might be more positive, and some would surely be quite negative.

It is also important to keep in mind that the text excised through the WG3 SPM government approval process in Berlin last spring was — by-and-large — not reinserted in the SYR SPM submitted to the governments for approval in Copenhagen.  This self-censorship by the Lead Authors, including me, ought to remain an important concern.

A final caveat is in order.  As I emphasized in my two blog posts last spring, the SPM of WG 3 was only one relatively small part of the overall AR5 effort.  The full reports of the three Working Groups (several dozen chapters), as well as their Technical Summaries, were not affected by government interventions (and presumably not by self-censorship), as they did not require government approval.  So, notwithstanding the issues discussed today in this essay, the fact remains that the IPCC’s three-volume reports — including the Fifth Assessment Report — largely succeed in synthesizing the best scientific research. The reports are essential resources for understanding climate change and formulating appropriate responses.

The Path Ahead for Assessment of the Science of Climate Change

It is one thing to complain about the status quo.  It is another thing to seek to identify potential improvements in the process that can lead to better outcomes in the future.

With this in mind, a group of academic researchers who have been engaged in social science assessment within the IPCC process is organizing an academic workshop scheduled to take place in Berlin in February, 2015, in their capacities as scholars, independently of the formal IPCC process.  This workshop on “Assessment and Communication of the Social Science of Climate Change:  Bridging Research and Policy” will be hosted by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, and co-sponsored by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, the Mercator Research Institute, and the Stanford Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis Center.

The aim of the workshop will be to take stock and reflect on lessons learned in past assessments, in order to identify future social science research priorities, as well as options for improving future assessment processes. Workshop participants will include experienced authors and users of IPCC reports, including government representatives; researchers experienced in other social science assessments; and scholars studying the science-policy interface.

I look forward to reporting to you in the future on what I hope will be some constructive outcomes of this new initiative.

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What Can Universities Do About Climate Change?

There has been considerable debate about whether universities – and, for that matter, foundations – should divest fossil-fuel stocks from their investment portfolios as a way to reduce the risk of global climate change.  My own institution, Harvard University, decided that such an action was neither warranted nor wise (a position that I have supported in a post at this blog, as well as in a longer essay published by Yale University’s environment360).  Our sister institution on the West Coast of the United States, Stanford University, decided to divest coal stocks only, a position that apparently will have trivial implications for that university’s portfolio, partly because it does not affect investments in funds in which coal stocks are commingled, such as exchange-traded and mutual funds.

A broader, more positive, and fundamentally more important question is what role should universities play in addressing the threat of climate change (a topic I have addressed at this blog in the past).  Recently, the Presidents of Harvard and Stanford co-authored an op-ed on precisely this topic, and so today I am pleased to reproduce it below.  The original version was published in The Huffington Post.

What Universities Can Do About Climate Change

Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University

John L. Hennessy, President, Stanford University

September 24, 2014

This week’s UN Climate Summit calls upon people and institutions around the world to consider how they can become active leaders in combating climate change. What is the role of our colleges and universities in this effort? Those of us in the academy should be asking ourselves what more can we do to confront one of the most urgent and consequential challenges facing our civilization.Among those advocating for action in New York are many thousands of students, from our institutions and others. We are inspired by the passion and purpose they bring to this issue. We applaud and encourage the dedication of students who are determined to translate passion into action, to invest themselves in a cause that reaches far beyond themselves and their lifetimes and to remind us that the future of our planet is our collective, immediate responsibility, not something to leave to others for another day.

Educating informed, effective citizens of the world is a central part of the mission of our universities. Today’s students will lead our world in what will be a most critical era for assuring our planet’s health. We must continue working to provide innovative academic pathways that will equip them for that responsibility, along with leadership opportunities that build the skills they will need to be effective influencers, consensus builders and decision makers. We must intensify and expand our courses and programs focused on energy and environment, educating our students even as they educate us.In addition to their educational objectives, universities must continue to do even more in the research arena to provide actionable solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

University scientists play crucial roles in investigating the origins and trajectory of climate change, in gauging its present and prospective consequences and in devising the new technologies that will accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources. Whether through breakthroughs on battery technology that will make energy storage more reliable and economical, or improvements in efficiency and production costs for solar systems and hydrogen fuel, a wide span of university research both fundamental and applied will drive many of the solutions to climate change.

The effort must go well beyond our scientists and engineers. University scholars across fields are vital actors in efforts to shape policy, organizational practices and wider attitudes regarding climate change and the grave risks it poses. This week, Rob Stavins and his team at the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements released new research that centers on aligning national and regional climate policies through a new international framework. Stanford faculty have been leaders in the international UN effort to document the scientific consensus on the state of the world’s climate and the impacts of climate change in fields ranging from human health to food security. Economists and lawyers, architects and ethicists, political scientists and experts in organizational behavior and finance, sociologists and humanists — all have essential parts in envisioning and spurring creative, pragmatic strategies to align governments, businesses and others in a shared quest for solutions.

A third area for university leadership is in piloting and modeling effective operational practices. Stanford has dramatically reduced employee drive-alone rates to work and is building a new campus energy system that will substantially reduce water use and carbon emission on campus. Harvard has implemented initiatives that have already resulted in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 21 percent, when we include the effects of growth and renovation in our physical plant (31 percent excluding growth), and has joined forces with other universities and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to develop the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, which uses state-of-the-art approaches to reduce energy consumption by minimizing cooling needs. Universities must “walk the walk,” acting as pioneers in embracing the new technologies and policies that will be needed to sustain our ecosystem.

The work of universities alone will not be sufficient, of course. We agree that — in the words of United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon — ‘everyone must step up and become a leader on climate change’. Nations — including the largest emitters of greenhouse gases — must step up and play a collaborative role in shaping new international agreements if we are to make meaningful progress. Local governments must also step up, as they shape regulations and infrastructure that will guide development and growth in cities around the world. Industry must step up, accelerating the development and deployment of alternative and affordable sources of energy while committing to greater energy efficiency.

But we in higher education must continue to step up, as well. Universities have the opportunity and obligation to look toward the long term. Uniquely, they bring together a wealth of intellectual resources across fields, an abundance of creativity and collaborative energy across generations, an opportunity to convene key actors on neutral ground, a commitment to serving society in ways that privilege objective evidence and rigorous analysis and the dedication to pursuing powerful long-term solutions without becoming subservient to near-term economic interests or partisan political concerns.

Universities must use these inherent strengths to make the most potent possible contribution on climate change. There is no challenge facing the world today whose effective redress depends more on the capacity and commitment of every part of society — governments, industry, universities, nonprofits and each one of us as citizens. Whether we rise to that challenge, with the urgency it demands, will largely determine what sort of world we leave for the generations to come.

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The UN Climate Summit and a Key Issue for the 2015 Paris Agreement

World leaders converged at the United Nations in New York City this past week for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s much anticipated Climate Summit, a lead-up to global negotiations that will take place in Lima, Peru, in December of this year, and culminate a year later in Paris.  The challenge before negotiators is great, because there are significant obstacles to reaching a meaningful agreement, as I describe in an Op-Ed that appeared in The New York Times on Sunday, September 21st, “Climate Realities.”

However, partly because of the new path that is being taken under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, in which all countries will be included under a common legal framework in a politically realistic hybrid policy architecture, the prognosis for a meaningful international agreement is better now than it has been in decades.  I discuss this briefly at the end of the Times article, and emphasize it in a follow-up Op-Ed that appeared in The Boston Globe on September 23rd, “UN summit can accelerate momentum to a new approach to climate change.”  (Also, for my overall assessment of the UN Climate Summit, see this interview carried out by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Doug Gavel.)

A New Development at the UN Climate Summit

The most significant development at the UN Climate Summit this past week was the degree to which carbon pricing became central to so many discussions, including with leaders from the business community.  As carbon pricing – in particular, cap-and-trade systems – have emerged as the policy instrument of choice in many parts of the world, interest in linking these systems together has grown.  Linkage (unilateral or bilateral recognition of allowances) among carbon markets — and, for that matter links with non-market-based systems — can reduce the aggregate cost of achieving climate targets.  And lower compliance costs can in turn encourage countries to increase the ambition of their contributions under the 2015 Paris agreement.

New Research from Harvard

Because of this, the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements has been collaborating with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) to explore the role of linkage in the new international climate change agreement to be completed in Paris.  In this new research, my co-authors (Daniel Bodansky of Arizona State University, Seth Hoedl of Harvard Law School, and Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University) and I examine linkage — not only among cap-and-trade systems, but among cap-and-trade, carbon tax, and non-market regulatory systems — and the role that linkage should play in the 2015 agreement.  We look both at what would inhibit or even prevent linkage and should therefore be avoided in the 2015 agreement, and what – in a positive sense – should be included in the agreement to facilitate effective linkage of regional, national, and sub-national climate policies.

We released an Executive Summary of our research paper (“Facilitating Linkage of Heterogeneous Regional, National, and Sub-National Policies Through a Future International Agreement”) in New York City on September 22nd at an event co-sponsored by IETA and the Harvard Project, on the sidelines of UN Climate Summit, “Carbon Pricing and the 2015 Agreement” (the agenda of the event is available here).

In the executive summary (which can be downloaded in full here), we conclude that among the design elements the 2015 agreement should avoid because they would inhibit linkage are so-called “supplementarity requirements” that require parties to accomplish all (or a large, specified share) of their emissions-reduction commitments within their national borders. The 2015 agreement also should avoid including detailed linkage rules in the core agreement; an agreement with more flexibility would allow rules to evolve on the basis of experience.

Importantly, we also find that, to advance linkage, the 2015 agreement should:  define key terms, in particular the units that are used for compliance purposes; establish registries and tracking mechanisms; and include default or model rules, from which nations are free to deviate at their discretion.  Overall, the most valuable outcome of the Paris Agreement regarding linkage may simply be including an explicit statement that parties may transfer portions of their emissions-reduction contributions to other parties — and that these transferred units may be used by the transferees to implement their own commitments.

Looking Forward

We will release the complete research paper in November of this year, prior to the Twentieth Conference of the Parties (COP-20) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima, Peru, in December 2014, where the Harvard Project and IETA plan to conduct a side-event that will focus on this work.

When the full paper is released in November, I will provide a more complete description at this blog of our research methods and our findings.

[Additional press coverage is here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.]

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