Filed under: Environment
On the evening of 29 October, l went to the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London’s East End to participate in a roundtable discussion hosted by the European Action Group on Climate Change, which brings together Bangladeshi people living in Europe to campaign about the impact of climate change on their original homeland. This is clearly an issue that we can all get together on and lobby for action both by the UK government and by others among the conference of the parties in the lead-up to the Copenhagen meeting in December.
In the discussion I reiterated what l have said before, namely that l was pessimistic about Copenhagen but optimistic about the role of cities in acting together across the world. I pointed out that after the Bush administration refused to sign up to the Kyoto agreement on climate change many cities across the United States went ahead and signed on their own behalf.
With 50 per cent of humanity living in cities now and 75% of all emissions coming from cities, in the end it is the actions they take that will make the difference. Rapidly growing cities such as Dhaka need to find ways of contributing to action to tackle climate change, as it is crucial for their own survival – for, if the Tibetan glaciers melt, then the majority of cities right across Asia will be without a reliable water supply and suffer severe floods.
On the back of all this interest, the London Assembly’s Environment Committee has agreed to work with Oxfam on a London Climate Hearing, which will be held on 26 November at 6.30pm in City Hall.
I also hope to be involved in organising other events on the impact of climate change in Bangladesh, for example with Frank Dobson MP, either before or after the Copenhagen conference. So watch this space if you are interested in opportunities to participate in this discourse on an issue that will be decisive for our future.
November 9, 2009
Cities are now the center stage in the battle against climate change, contributing as they do about 75 percent of carbon dioxide (C02) emissions across the globe. This at a time when more than 50 percent of humanity lives in cities and towns, a figure that can only increase given the scale of urbanization in the developing world.
In the lead-up to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December this provides us with plenty of food for thought on city-level strategies to deal with global warming. The cities have good reason to address the problem in order to improve the local environment for their residents.
What is happening sooner than expected is that the mega-cities of the developing world are already rivaling or even exceeding the CO2 footprint of major cities in the developed world, both in terms of total output and per capita.
The UN-backed Bangkok Assessment Report on Climate Change 2009 found that the Thai capital emitted 43 million tons of CO2 in 2005, lower than the figure for New York (58 million tons) but almost the same as London (44 million tons). In per capita terms, Bangkok residents were responsible for producing 7.1 tons of CO2 per year in 2007, the same level of emissions as New Yorkers and significantly higher than Londoners (5.9 tons per capita).
Transportation, electricity generation, solid waste and waste water account for about 90 per cent of the emissions in Bangkok.
The transport sector alone is responsible for 38 per cent of the yearly CO2 emission, reflecting a massive expansion in the use of passenger vehicles. The number of motor vehicles registered in Bangkok rose from 600,000 in 1980 to 4,163,000 in 1999, a sevenfold increase, and by the end of 2007 the figure had reached 5,614,294.
Let us not forget how vulnerable developing cities are to climate change. Bangkok gets its water supply from the Chao Phraya and Mae Klong rivers, both of which are fed by Tibetan glaciers, as are almost all the rivers of mainland Asia. So a rise in temperature, resulting in the further melting of the glaciers, would increase the likelihood of floods in Thailand.
The double-whammy for Bangkok is that it is also vulnerable to a rise in the sea level. Almost 55 percent of the city would be vulnerable to floods if the sea level rose by 50 cm, and 72 percent would be threatened by a rise of 100 cm.
So it is clear that Bangkok is primary example of a developing world city that needs to adapt to and mitigate climate change, not only as part of an international strategy to combat global warming, but also because of the immediate threat to its own residents.
The measures to be implemented by Asia’s growing metropolises to cut their CO2 emissions and improve the quality of life for residents include investing in public transport in order to achieve a modal shift away from private vehicles, appropriate road pricing to deter vehicles from entering city centers, as has been adopted in Singapore and London, and better public information on travel options as well as education on the health costs of poor air quality because of increased use of private vehicles. Similar measures need to be implemented in the energy and waste management sectors.
In Copenhagen, alongside the formal procedures of the conference of the parties, which are predominately nation states, there will undoubtedly be a lot of focus on what cities can contribute to humanity’s battle against climate change because the environmental impact of the world’s major cities is much greater than that of many nation states.
Indeed, capital cities in the developed and developing worlds both often dominate their national economies, with Bangkok acting as the economic hub of Thailand’s economy in a way that is not dissimilar to the role of London in the UK economy.
This does suggest that major cities should also be made into parties to the conference, legally bound to any future agreement and commitments. There could also be instances where cities and their regions may agree to many of the changes that their nation states’ representatives reject. This is what happened in the US when the Bush administration refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which many American cities and regions, such as San Francisco and the state of California, signed.
While opt-outs should be discouraged, this more flexible approach could be useful in any developing nation that refuses to sign an international agreement on the grounds that the developed world has failed to accept its responsibilities.
Published in China Daily, 22 October 2209
October 25, 2009
Last weekend l was in Edinburgh at the Co-op Party conference for the launch of its manifesto “A Co-operative Agenda for a Fourth Term” (pdf here). Now I have often thought that developing ideas for the future often means going back to old ideals and principles, particularly in light of the failure of the global capital markets. A manifesto to change the culture of our financial institutions is a must, and we can start by returning former building societies to the mutual sector. The remutualisation of the likes of Northern Rock will embed much needed stability in our economy.
The principle of mutuality is also applicable in other arenas like housing and energy. In housing it can mean mutual home ownership through housing co-ops and community land trusts holding and managing assets collectively, while residents are individually both tenants and shareholders. In the energy markets we could have co-operative energy schemes, whereby we enable local communities to buy their own energy collectively, saving them money and helping boost the take-up of green energy. More so after feed-in tariffs come into play next April.
Co-operation and mutuality maybe seen by some as retro, but their time has definitely come again.
September 14, 2009
Last Thursday evening I shared a platform with Lawrence Bloom, a leading light from the World Economic Forum, where I outlined my views about the forthcoming conference of the parties in Copenhagen for the post-Kyoto agreement on climate change.
First I expressed my concern that, whatever is agreed at Copenhagen, it is likely that the US will face difficulties in ratifying it, given the problems that are already occurring in the Senate with the Obama adminstration’s proposed cap-and-trade legislation. This indeed would be in line with what happened with the Kyoto agreement, where the US took the whole world down the yellow brick road of tradeable permits, only for Al Gore to be unable to get it ratified in the US. This time round it’s going to be a lot more difficult for the US to persuade the world to swallow market-based solutions anyway, given the paradigm shift away from the Washington consensus.
If there is to be a Plan B, l emphasised the importance of mega-cities like London working to limit the impact of climate change, as some 75 per cent of CO2 emissions comes from our cities and towns where over 50 per cent of humanity now resides. Nation states will meet in Copenhagen but there is a lot of scope for cities to collaborate and take their own initiatives, and even become a conference of parties themselves with international agreements at city level. There is a localised green economy effect possible, particularly in the transport and housing sectors, and with the right city level leadership it would help move us to a less carbonised world.
Finally l made a moral plea for some thinking beyond the box, in connection with climate refugees, because environmental degradation leaves the poor most vulnerable to natural disaster. Migration as an adaptative response to poverty, hunger and environmental disasters is a practice humankind has followed since the beginning when our species came out of Africa. Today’s environmental refugees should be acknowledged and assisted in the host countries by a similiar Geneva Convention to that for political refugees. Such a safety net is the least we in the developed world should offer, in recognition of our contribution to global environmental problems and our imposition of particular models of development on the developing world.
September 14, 2009
This morning l put in some hard labour with another 100-odd volunteers cleaning up the Thames foreshore immediately below Craven Cottage (Fulham FC’s football ground) along the side of Bishop’s Park on the north side of Putney Bridge.
It was good to see that Londoners care enough about their physical environment to give up some time during their annual holiday period to clean up the Thames, with the co-ordination and management of Thames 21 and the assistance of the Port of London Authority. This is further evidence that Londoners have been rediscovering the Thames in recent years.
And this is no bad thing, as at present there is no one authority that has responsibility for keeping our waterways clear of debris, unlike the situation onshore where it is clearly the local authority. Today I was able see at first hand the results of this situation, in particular the environmental damage that is being done by plastic bags.
Clearly legislation must be introduced to give a public body the appropriate responsibility, but in the meantime it is useful for such initiatives to take place and fill the gap.
August 20, 2009
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