Signs of progress on the road to a safer climate

This is an edited version of an article published in Australia’s ABC online.

There is no doubt that the road to a safe climate has been a rocky one. But after seven days of tracking negotiations at the UN climate talks in Panama, it’s clear to me that Australia can help pave the way for progress towards a fair, binding and ambitious global agreement at the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa later this year.

There have been many hurdles on the road towards a global agreement that both reduces carbon emissions and provides finance to help developing countries deal with climate change. At the Panama climate negotiations there were some important proposals put forward to overcome these hurdles.

Climate change is already affecting poor people in developing countries, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense extreme weather events are destroying crops and having a devastating impact on poor people’s lives.

At the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, world leaders committed to find $US100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change and develop along low-carbon pathways. To date, much of the money used as climate finance has been recycled and comes from existing aid budgets, reducing the funds available for areas like health and education. In this way, some of our governments are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

There have been a few innovative proposals around how to raise this money without drawing upon existing national budgets. At the Panama talks, one particular idea set sail: a global levy on shipping emissions, which could reduce emissions and raise money needed to support developing countries to adapt. The international shipping industry is responsible for approximately 3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and these are not capped under the Kyoto protocol. The idea of a shipping levy has been supported by many European countries, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Another idea to get money on the table is a financial transactions tax (FTT).

Also known as the Robin Hood Tax, the FTT is a tiny tax of between 0.05 and 0.1 per cent on institutional trading in derivatives, stocks and bonds. As a new source of finance it could help generate hundreds of billions of dollars to help fund domestic services like health and education and much-needed support to tackle poverty and climate change in developing countries.

Countries also debated the future of the Kyoto Protocol at Panama. Australia, which signed up 10 years after the Kyoto Protocol was initiated in 1997, stressed that it alone cannot solve climate change and emphasised the need for a global agreement that includes all major polluters. While the Kyoto Protocol is not perfect, it is an important agreement that recognises that wealthy developed countries, like Australia, are responsible for the majority of historical and present day emissions.

Its future is important and world leaders need to arrive at the UN Climate Summit in Durban with an understanding of its ongoing relevance.

Australia can and should do its part to support these initiatives at November’s G20 meeting and at the UN Climate Summit in Durban. We mustn’t let talk prevail over action, as the road to ruin is paved with good intentions.

I’m also blogging our sister site A Climate for Change (www.aclimateforchange.org) where you can read more of my work. You can also follow me on twitter @clancymoore