Author: Ross Garnaut, ANU and University of Melbourne

Human induced climate change is a global problem and an effective solution requires large mitigation contributions from all major developed and developing countries, and from the rest of the world too.

The search for effective climate change policy is partly a search for effective cooperation amongst countries of a kind and dimension that has never previously been known on a global scale. Read more…

Author: Frank Jotzo, ANU

The last two years have seen economic upheaval in the West, and climate change negotiations move along rather different tracks than most anticipated before the 2009 Copenhagen conference.

What are the implications for global climate policy, the Asia Pacific region and Australia? New papers by Australia’s Garnaut Climate Change Review Update released last week attempt to give some answers. Read more…

Author: Frank Jotzo, ANU

Climate change policy is alive again in Australia. Prime Minister Gillard has committed to introduce a carbon price during the current term of government. A Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change is at work, and an update to the Garnaut Review takes a fresh look at some of the tough issues facing the world and Australia in getting good climate policy off the ground.

Getting carbon pricing off the ground may seem a tall order after the attempt of the previous government under Kevin Rudd  to introduce emissions trading failed among a collapsed deal with the opposition (whose leader Malcolm Turnbull was deposed over the issue), considering that the current government’s needs rely on votes by Independents and the Greens to get any legislation through Parliament, and in the context of setbacks in US climate policy and widespread (if largely misplaced) disappointment with the international climate negotiations. Read more…

Author: Jeff Bennett, ANU

The 2011 floods in Australia have been remarkable for their intensity and geographic spread. Records for depth, frequency and extent have been broken, all due to a La Niña event only exceeded in recorded history by one in 1917–18.

The impact on agriculture has been similarly record-breaking. From tropical north Queensland to western Victoria and across the Murray Darling Basin in the east and in the Gascoyne region around Carnarvon in the west, a wide variety of farm enterprises have been affected. Read more…

Author: Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Advisor to the Cabinet, Government of Japan

The international approach to climate change is currently based upon the arbitrary ambitions of nations.

Although these bottom up attitudes have propelled huge climate investment, no goals have been set in relation to climate stability. Future generations will surely ask why such investments did not achieve climate stability. Read more…

Author: Jiahua Pan, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing

Although many external observers remain sceptical, China has in fact made substantial and successful efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Still, to ensure concerted, forward-moving action there is a need to understand the dilemma from a Chinese perspective. And what must be recognised is the need for low-carbon transformation to be adapted to suit China’s development and its status as a developing country.

To begin, it is important to realise why Beijing chose not to accept a 50 per cent emission reduction by 2050 at Copenhagen in December 2009. Read more…

Author: Tae Yong Jung and Jae Eun Ahn, GGGI

On 15 August 2008, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea (Korea), President Lee Myung-bak proclaimed ‘Low Carbon, Green Growth’ to be Korea’s new national vision for the next 60 years. This vision and the punchy slogan that heralded it highlighted a new development paradigm of quality-oriented growth based on the use of new and renewable energy resources. Chief among the aims of this strategy is a push to secure Korea’s future as a sustainable economy with expertise in energy conservation and environmental sustainability, which contributes to international efforts to fight climate change. At present, the Korean government is beginning to draw upon existing technological expertise to build the economy in ways that use less energy and ensure environmental sustainability.

The concept of ‘Green Growth’ is relatively new. Read more…

Author: Peter J. Wood, ANU

The UNFCCC COP16 climate conference has come to a successful conclusion with a series of decisions that are known as the Cancún Agreements. On the morning of the final day, there were tense moments, and it was unclear whether there would be much progress at all. But after the draft texts were circulated, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Patricia Espinosa, convened an ‘informal plenary’ where she said that in these texts, every Party had been listened to, and after two hours for people to examine the texts, the plenary will reconvene. There was then sustained applause and a standing ovation. From that moment on, there was a great sense of hope that there would be a positive outcome.

The main decision results from the work of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action. Read more…

Author: Peter J. Wood, ANU

In the final days of the COP16/CMP6 Conference, the negotiators at Cancún are currently trying to negotiate a ‘balanced package’ – also known as a ‘six-pack’, which combines progress on mitigation, transparency (measurement, reporting and verification – or MRV), adaptation, finance, technology, and REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). The Mexicans are extremely determined to get some sort of outcome from the conference – both for the climate and for multilateral negotiations. They so far seem to have been quite confident in the way that they have facilitated the negotiations, and there seems to be much more trust in the Mexicans from the parties than there was for the Danes last year.

What is uncertain is how ‘good’ the decisions will be – in terms of criteria such as ambition (including capacity to ramp up ambition later), efficiency and equity; how detailed the decisions will be; and whether there is sufficient consensus to get a package of decisions at all. Read more…

Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations

There are a couple of certainties about Cancun. It will not bring a global deal. The US will try to focus the agenda on a lack of transparency in China’s emissions control efforts — to cover the fact that the US also brings nothing substantial to the table and is stuck in an anachronistic, fuel-guzzling economy and mindset. Chinese negotiators will arrive with their usual arguments, but equipped with better PR techniques for making sure they aren’t seen as the game stopper — the real lesson they took away from Copenhagen. The poorer countries will clamour for more aid for both mitigation and adaption to climate change. The EU’s credibility among other key players will be slightly dented by its current internal skirmishes on moving from 20 per cent to 30 per cent reductions by 2020. At the end of these two weeks in Mexico, those who aspire to a global deal will be directed towards 2011 and South Africa, and few will believe that it can happen there either. Finally, the summit will be a lot warmer than Copenhagen, and the general world temperature will continue to rise, as the scientists keep telling us.

The conclusion is that big global deals are off – at least for the time being. That’s the short, and somewhat depressing, summary. Read more…

Author: Amitendu Palit, NUS

Oil, gas and coal are three critical natural resources playing major roles in economic growth. All three are essential for augmenting manufacturing and services outputs and increasing national gross domestic product (GDP). Economic histories of China and India for the last two to three decades underline their increasing reliance on these fossil fuels for sustaining high economic growth. Given their current growth trajectories, which are not only high but also manufacturing and services intensive, there is little possibility of them reducing their dependence on these energy sources.

Both countries are in search of energy-efficient processes. However, achieving energy efficiency is not easy. Read more…

Author: Peter Sheehan, Victoria University

The COP15 meeting at Copenhagen in December 2009 has been a watershed in international climate negotiations, both in terms of outcomes and of our understanding of the problems involved in reaching agreement. Widely regarded as a failure because no universal, binding agreement to reduce emissions was achieved, it did produce two notable outcomes: a shared commitment to hold peak global warming to less than 2⁰C and the provision by many countries, under the framework of the Copenhagen Accord, of new commitments to reduce future emissions. It also sharpened debate about what type of agreement should be aimed for – top down or bottom up, legally binding or not, and so on.

As observed in the East Asia Forum by Dr Stephen Howes, COP15 collapsed under the weight of inflated expectations. Read more…

Author: Seiji Ikkatai, Kyoto University

Japan’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the 1990 base year to 2007 have been increasing en route to achieving the 2008-12 Kyoto Protocol target of 6 per cent reduction. Since 1997, when Japan adopted the Protocol, a raft of climate change mitigation policies have been developed to reduce emissions across different sectors. A set of voluntary mechanisms, strongly advocated by the Japanese Federation of Economic Organisations, have been implemented to reduce emissions in the industry sector. For households and offices, the main measures used to reduce emissions have been environmental education and information dissemination. Some regulations have been introduced that can improve energy efficiency, but they cannot influence GHG emission volumes.

Moreover, there are subsidies and tax reductions or exemptions available to assist in replacing old facilities with highly energy-efficient ones, especially among small industries. Read more…

Author: Junichi Fujino, NIES

It is highly likely that there is going to be a gap between the Kyoto Protocol commitment period (2008-2012) and the commitment period thereafter. Industrialised countries such as Japan and the United States are facing difficulties passing climate change bills. Under such circumstances, it will be difficult to expect an agreement on a post-Kyoto framework at the 16th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Cancun, Mexico. Even if the international community were able to agree on one at COP17 next year, it would nonetheless be difficult to obtain a sufficient number of ratifications for it to enter into force in 2012.

One Chinese energy expert stated recently, in conversation on the topic of China’s target for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, ‘China has played the card of reducing emissions regardless of what other states do. The United States has not yet passed the bill through Congress. Japan’s plan is conditional, leaving its actual emissions cut uncertain. Now it is your turn to play a card.’ Read more…

Author: Yuhan Zhang, Carnegie Endowment

Climate change has become the most difficult collective action problem our world has ever faced. It cannot be resolved by a single country taking unilateral action. Together, the US and China are responsible for more than 40 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Their emissions have had dire impacts on the global climate. As the world’s two largest emitters, the US and China should take robust action.

First, policymakers and interest groups in both countries must completely abandon the non-cooperation strategy. Read more…