Filed under: Environment
During the same week that London Mayor Boris Johnson celebrated his first anniversary at City Hall, a report from the environment committee of the London Assembly, appropriately entitled Every Breath You Take, highlighted how bad the air quality in london was getting for its residents.
It confirmed that premature deaths and years of life lost caused by pollution in the capital is three times higher than claimed, confirming the city has the worst pollution levels in Britain and some of the worst in Europe.
This at the same time as the Government is under pressure to improve air quality as a result of European Union proceedings which began earlier this year following this country’s failure to comply with the directives on levels of PM10. This could mean Britain being fined up to £300 million.
So what’s the Mayor of London doing? So far, we’ve only seen backward steps from Johnson on this. Behind his charm and bluster, he has been actively dismantling measures to reduce pollution in London. He claims to be supporting 90,000 small van drivers by cancelling the next phase of the low emission zone, but he has lost sight of the approximately 107,000 people made ill in London each year by pollution levels. This is on top of Johnson’s plans to scrap the western extension of the congestion charge.
So there is a worrying disparity between the Government, which is legally bound to reach air quality standards, and the mayor and local authorities, which merely have to show they are “working towards” targets.
In the meantime, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has submitted an application to extend its deadline by 2011 to avoid the fines. DEFRA is also looking seriously at its powers of direction over the London Mayor, following his decision to suspend the third phase of the city’s low emission zone. This would mean the Mayor would be directed to implement alternative measures to meet the air quality limits set out in the directives. And the expectation would be that he would put in place other measures Designed to deliver equal, if not greater, benefits to improve air quality than the third phase of the low emission zone, at the least.
So the showdown with DEFRA and the Mayor of London is very real. Unless Johnson can implement a big new idea to slash pollutants within the next 12 months, DEFRA will have to use the power of direction on the Mayor, as his decision to cut down the congestion charging zone and the scope of the low emission zone are proving to be ruinous for london’s environment.
Over to you, Hilary Benn.
Published in Tribune, 18 May 2009
May 21, 2009
The creation of a “low carbon” economy that will provide jobs and clean up industry is now a crucial policy objective for countries trying to spend their way out of the world economic downturn. A recent report by HSBC calculates that the United States is allocating 12 per cent of its fiscal stimulus to the green economy and China, 34 per cent.
There is a compelling scientific, economic and strategic case for low carbon development and the first movers have a lot to gain with worldwide investment in renewable energy having grown by 65 per cent a year since 2004, and projected to reach $600 billion a year by 2020.
China’s 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) includes a target to reduce energy intensity by 20 per cent during that period. This would translate to a saving of emissions around four times greater than the European Union’s current commitment under the Kyoto Protocol.
But despite these ambitious objectives China’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are already on par with those of the US and rising fast. This is clearly driven by the imperative of economic growth for China’s 1.3 billion people. China thus faces a qualitatively different challenge to the one that faced by industrializing nations in the past: of combining rapid industrialization, urbanization and poverty reduction with the transition to a low carbon economy.
No country has ever done this before, but the Chinese appreciate that carrying out the work of energy conservation and emission reduction and coping with climate change is a requirement of the Scientific Development Concept.
In response to the challenge of achieving a low carbon economy in China, a number of research institutes working with Chatham House in London have developed the concept of low carbon zones (LCZs). These will aim to stimulate transformational regional political leadership in a similar fashion to the special economic zones (SEZs) in the early 1980s, which gave certain regions the power to introduce more liberal economic regulations than the rest of the country, with some spectacular results.
Under the LCZ scheme, designated regions could be granted similar powers to experiment with a low carbon policy. To qualify for the LCZ status, regional leaders would have to commit to low carbon standards beyond the existing benchmarks at the national level.
These LCZs could then attract hi-tech foreign direct investment through measures such as strong patent protection, tax incentives and targeted recruitment of skilled workers. They could attract new types of carbon finance, too, by building the institutional capacity required to support local emissions trading schemes, drawing on international experience and underpinned by strong monitoring and reporting systems.
Furthermore, allowing them to pilot harmonization of standards with Europe in key low carbon sectors such as vehicle emissions, energy using products and construction would help facilitate Chinese exports and enhance trade and investment flows in the LCZs.
A second variant of the LCZ can be found in the UK, where there are similar proposals but on a smaller scale and mainly in the context of local rather than regional government. Cities are massive producers of carbon dioxide not just from traffic, but also from more energy use in buildings. So it is not surprising to hear calls to introduce a rolling program of LCZs aimed at dramatically improving the energy efficiency of all buildings — public and commercial premises and especially houses.
Here a precedent exists in the smokeless zones of the 1950s, which reduced pollution arising from the use of coal after the smog of 1952 killed 4,000 people in London. These LCZs could be rolled out across the country incrementally, with local authorities declaring an area to be an LCZ. Private sector partners would then be invited to deliver the actual service.
These partners would assess each building or house for energy efficiency and design and implement individual energy saving regimes. Within a specified time, it would become mandatory for all properties in the zone to reach the minimum ratings of energy efficiency.
A range of technologies and measures is available to ensure that energy efficiency addresses the whole property, and many of the measures will pay for themselves through lower bills. Focusing the zones on neighborhoods has great advantages because there are economies to be made from concentrating on defined areas and scope — for example, by introducing combined heat and power plants. This second form of LCZ was proposed by the last administration at London’s City Hall by the then deputy mayor.
Designing and implementing effective policies to drive the transition to a low carbon economy and share the costs equitably is a major political challenge for governments across the world. As we pursue the low carbon route to future economic development, LCZs both in their Chinese and UK variants offer an important means of dealing with the challenges ahead.
Published in China Daily, 5 May 2009
May 8, 2009
Boris Johnson demonstrated his neo-liberal credentials once again in his latest Daily Telegraph column by suggesting that the slogan for the G20 protestors (or “the G20 mob” as he prefers to call them) should be “What do we want? Free trade!” My response would be “Jobs, justice and climate” – the banner under which tomorrow’s G20 demonstration in London has been organised.
The dual challenge for the G20 Summit, the main thrust of which is a major fiscal stimulus and banking reform to counter the global recession, is to promote economic recovery without further damaging the environment and to limit the impact of the economic crisis on the developing world.
It is crucial that development assistance should be maintained, at a time when aid and Foreign Direct Investment have fallen and the populations of developing states increasingly rely on money transfers from migrants in the developed world.
Also, the developed world must keep to its commitments made at the 2007 Bali conference on climate change, in preparation for the negotiations over the post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen at the end of this year – that is, to trim our own lifestyles while allowing poorer countries to develop without strings and conditions, and assisting them with technology transfer and innovative finance.
As Nicholas Stern and his colleagues have recently pointed out (in An outline of the case for a ‘green’ stimulus), in the developed world the best way to boost employment during a recession while at the same time reducing carbon emissions is to invest in new green industries like renewable energy projects. We should put more money into energy efficiency rather than exporting our waste to the developing world.
Examples already exist. In the USA, Obama’s economic package proposes to put billions of dollars into green jobs. A third of China’s recovery programme is in creating green jobs. And Germany is directing 19 per cent of its recovery expenditure into new green industries.
London needs to show that we can do this as well. With just over 50 per cent of humanity now living in cities, which are responsible for 75 per cent of CO2 emissions, we could make a real difference. The commitment of our current Mayor to the ideology of neo-liberalism is of course a major obstacle here.
That said, the main show at the G20 will be Obama’s first meeting with the Chinese premier. At the end of the day, it’s the G2 who will determine what really happens to the world economy.
March 27, 2009
Last night l attended a showing of The Age of Stupid at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn. The film comes out at an important time – before the G20 Summit in London next month and the Copenhagen meeting of the post-Kyoto negotiations of the UN on climate change in December. It’s certainly worth seeing.
The Age of Stupid is very much in keeping with the times, with its lack of faith in markets and capitalism in its present form. It links its climate change analysis with political events in the Middle East. And it has some useful graphics of how London would look if it was flooded by the Thames (see below).
Because of its subject matter and its documentary format, there is an obvious comparison with An Inconvenient Truth. But The Age of Stupid is a much better film, as it gives far more emphasis to the role of people power rather than key individuals like Al Gore in changing the world.
We shouldn’t forget that for all his green talk, Gore failed to get the US to ratify the Kyoto agreement while getting the rest of the world to accept some tough medicine like tradable permits. So much for ecotoffs! This illustrates well that the campaign over climate change is not that dissimilar to the fight for universal suffrage or against apartheid. To be successful it requires a struggle organised at grassroots level.
March 23, 2009
Painting by Lakshmi Shree, India
Asian countries have an important stake in this year’s climate change negotiations and, as a result, a critical part to play in the negotiations.
Climate change is hitting the Asian continent already and big global decisions will be made this year. An agreement to cut greenhouse gases emissions will hopefully exceed what the Kyoto agreement previously negotiated.
The negotiations over the rest of the year will culminate in the new Copenhagen Agreement in Denmark in December 2009 at the 15th conference of the parties (COP 15) on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The main focus, agreed just over a year ago at the 13th conference of the parties in Bali, Indonesia, consist of four building blocks, of which two – “Mitigation” and “Adaptation” – are considered major.
The former denotes actions by the major emitting countries to reduce their emissions and to prevent that future dangerous climate change. The latter seeks to ensure that countries vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change are duly assisted with technology and funding to cope. The other two building blocks include technology transfers for both mitigation and adaptation and innovative financing for mitigation and adaptation.
The most immediate concern for Asia is the issue of Adaptation and funding for it. Estimates of global adaptation funding range from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. These funds will need to come from “new and additional” sources not from previously rolled out development assistance.
A number of proposals to raise such significant sums for adaptation already exist, including a proposal by Bangladesh and formally adopted by the least developed countries (LDC) group at the Poznan meeting to charge an “adaptation levy” on all international air passengers. Estimates put the total figure at more than $10 billion a year.
Even if the LDC proposal ultimately falls over, at least it gives the group a strong card to play against other countries. They will need to assure funding in the tens of billions of dollars for adaptation to be acceptable to the LDC group, as well as other vulnerable countries and Africa group.
Asian countries need to use their strong presence within the LDC Group to build bridges and establish a common negotiating position with these other groups of most vulnerable countries, and the African group.
The focus on adaptation, however, should not distract us from also paying attention to the other major building block, mitigation, and formulating a clear strategy on the issue.
At the moment the strategy of countries like Bangladesh, together with the LDC group, is to call for a target temperature rise of “well below two degrees centigrade”. While not avoiding some damage, this will enable the world to survive climate change. Such an ambitious global temperature target is still far from certain as it will require very strong mitigation actions to be undertaken first by the developed countries and then also by some of the major developing countries.
Published in China Daily, 17 March 2009
Mainland Asia has a common source of water – the Tibetan glacier
March 19, 2009
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