Making sense of the climate impasse, writes Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University

ALL signs suggest that the planet is still hurtling headlong towards climatic disaster.
A “State of the climate report” from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, covering January-May, said these first five months were the warmest on record going back to 1880. 

May was the warmest month ever. 

Intense heat waves are currently hitting many parts of the world. Yet still, we fail to act.
There are several reasons for this, and we should understand them in order to break today’s deadlock. 

First, the economic challenge of controlling human-induced climate change is truly complex.
Human-induced climate change stems from two principal sources of emissions of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) – fossil fuel use for energy and agriculture (including deforestation to create new farmland and pastureland).
Changing the world’s energy and agricultural systems is no small matter. 

It is not enough to just wave our hands and declare that climate change is an emergency. We need a practical strategy for overhauling two economic sectors that stand at the centre of the global economy and involve the entire world’s population.

The second major challenge in addressing climate change is the complexity of the science itself. 

Today’s understanding of earth’s climate and the human-induced component of climate change is the result of extremely difficult scientific work involving many thousands of scientists in all parts of the world. 

This scientific understanding is incomplete, and there remain significant uncertainties about the precise magnitudes, timing and dangers of climate change.

The public naturally has a hard time grappling with this complexity and uncertainty, especially since the changes in climate are occurring over a timetable of decades and centuries, rather than months and years. 

Moreover, year-to-year, and even decade-to-decade, natural variations in climate are intermixed with human-induced climate change, making it even more difficult to target damaging behaviour. 

This has given rise to a third problem in addressing climate change, which stems from a combination of the economic implications of the issue and the uncertainty that surrounds it.
This is reflected in the brutal, destructive campaign against climate science by powerful vested interests and ideologues, apparently aimed at creating an atmosphere of ignorance and confusion.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, America’s leading business newspaper, has run an aggressive editorial campaign against climate science for decades.
The individuals involved in this campaign are not only scientifically uninformed, but show absolutely no interest in becoming better informed. 

They have turned down repeated offers by climate scientists to meet and conduct serious discussions on the issues.

Major oil companies and other big corporate interests also are playing this game, and have financed disreputable public relations campaigns against climate science.
Their general approach is to exaggerate the uncertainties of climate science and to leave the impression that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of conspiracy to frighten the public. 

It is an absurd charge, but absurd charges can carry public support if presented in a slick, well-funded format.
What is clear is that we are courting disaster as a result.
Nature does not care about our political machinations. And nature is telling us that our current economic model is dangerous and self-defeating.
Unless we find some real global leadership in the next few years, we will learn that lesson in the hardest way possible. –Project Syndicate

*Jeffrey D. Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals.

PNG Climate Change Office aims to reduce carbon emissions

The Office of Climate Change and Development is asking entities planning to install renewable and clean power projects to register immediately so they can benefit from the carbon market. 

The office executive director Varigini Badira said, baseline studies should be conducted to show how the projects reduced carbon emissions to be eligible for funds under the clean development mechanism programme to trade.

“The energy carbon prices are rebounding after tumbling significantly from 30-40 Euros (K88-K117) per ton of carbon emitted in 2008 to 6-12 Euros (K17-K35) per ton in 2010,” Badiria said.

“This rebound has triggered significantly in part, the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the United States of America and China last year to jointly reduce carbon emissions in both countries by almost 30 per cent each year.”

Badira said the project was linked with the government’s climate compatible development management policy. “The government aims to increase the amount of energy from CDM project to benefit from carbon trade,” he said.

“PNG has only 11 CDM projects while India has over 3000 projects and it is benefiting from energy carbon credits.

“At this stage there is a critical need for the country’s national energy policy to promote and guide the renewable and clean power generation in the country.”

Badira commended the PNG Power Ltd for reverting to solar power energy project like the Pomio project, which was environment friendly.

He said the solar power was clean, renewable and cost effective for the rural communities.

“PNG is blessed with abundant renewable and clean energy options which however require some considerable investments upfront to tap into resources,” he said.

Office of Climate Change and Development is a supporter of clean energy projects like the Aroma solar farm and is determined to do similar projects.

Source: The National newspaper

PNG Forestry will always against carbon trade, its logic - they wanted to cut the timbers not to preserve

PNG Forestry Authority says if the government preserves all its 27.1 million hectares of rain forests for carbon trade, it will not gain an average annual revenue of K150 to K200 million. 

“The price of timber at the world market is US$18 to US$20 per cubic metre compared with US$2 in the Pacific market or Euro 20 for carbon. Carbon trade is not as competitive as timber,” managing director Kanawi Pouru said yesterday.

Pouru said PNG had a total land mass of 46.4 million hectares (ha) and 27.1 million hectares, equivalent to 50% of the mass, was rainforest, adding 1.8 million hectares was protected, 14.6 for logging and 10.7 for reserve. 

PNG, he said, was ranked the third largest area of rainforest in the world after Amazon Forest and Congo Basin. 

The annual allowable logging, he said, under the forestry and logging act was 3.5 million cubic metres.

He said landowners had 80% to 90% business permits in the forestry sector, adding foreigners were engaged by the LOs because they did not have financial capital or expertise. Pouru was speaking to participants in Port Moresby at a workshop.
Joe Pokana, a senior policy analyst from the Office of Climate Change, said PNG was a world leader in pushing climate change negotiations.

Pokana said they were negotiating with the industrialised countries to increase the carbon market rate pending negotiations. He said by 2030, PNG would have reduced emission of green-house gas by 50%. 

The impacts of climate change, he said, were the spread of diseases, food security, and reduction in availability of drinking water, among others.

Source: The National newspaper.

Carbon trade is a valuable asset to Papua New Guinea's development and economic growth

By Martin Wai

AS the chairman of Vanimo, West Sepik, I extend my appreciation to those who assisted me with the opportunity to establish ‘carbon trade’ in our country:

Carbon trade is one of the valuable assets to our country’s development and economic growth.

It can play an important role in improving the living standards of our people in the nation, for instance, a country like Vietnam has developed in bigger scale, because of carbon trade being the core foundation to their country’s economic growth and development as well as other countries around the world.

Carbon trade can be categorised into four different types of categories: Grey carbon; green carbon; brown carbon; and blue carbon.

As naturalised citizens of PNG we should be responsible for our natural resources and encourage reforestations to areas that are experiencing deforestations and prevent any form of treat to our natural resources.

Basically our main aim is to trade our natural carbon to other countries so that the outcome can benefit our people and the nation, especially, economic growth and any form of development in our country.

If other countries can practically build that capacity, why not Papua New Guinea?

PNG can potentially benefit from carbon trade, forest landowners must be aware of how they can.

PAPUA New Guinea has the prospect of benefiting from the global carbon market worth billions of kina both through voluntary and compliance market scheme, the World Bank said.

The bank said in a report that the benefits of carbon market could be under the reduced emissions of deforestation and degradation (REDD) and REDD + Partnership initiative, which the government, through the office of climate change and development (OCCD), is working on the policy legislative framework to strategise the benefits.

The global carbon trade market is projected to reach US$144 billion (K407 billion) by the end of this year, according to the bank’s 2010 report on state and trends of the carbon market.

It said the market grew to US$144 billion (K407 billion) last year, up 6% from 2008, despite enduring its most challenging year to date. 

The bank said the global economic crisis negatively impacted both demand and supply sides and as industrial output plummeted, the demand for carbon assets fell.
The report was released last month at a carbon expo in Cologne, Germany.
It also said that on the supply side, the reduction in access to capital made it difficult for many project developers to lock in financing.

As a consequence, project origination ground came to a halt.
Director of World Bank environment department, Warren Evans, said: “The annual state and trends report has become a flagship publication.”

The bank continues to provide the world with objective and well-informed assessments of the carbon market. 

The authors have again succeeded in accurately measuring the pulse of the market in an extremely difficult year.

Alexandre Kossoy, co-author of the report, said: “Ironically, the same issues that have hindered the project-based mechanisms may ultimately be the silver lining that sets the stage for a stronger post-2012 market.”

Source: The National newspaper

China should lead on climate change, do you agree?

China is in the “driving seat” when it comes to “international co-operation” on climate, President Xi Jinping says.

He was speaking at a major political meeting in Beijing ahead of the United Nations-led climate talks in Bonn earlier this month, the first annual meeting of the negotiations since President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the agreement.

Trump’s decision had left a power vacuum. The historic accord reached in 2014 between then president Barack Obama and Xi, leading the world’s two largest economies, which together account for about 40 per cent of global emissions, had underpinned the consensus reached by the international community in late 2015 in Paris.
Could China alone fill that vacuum?

China certainly made its presence felt at the talks, but often in its traditional stance as defender of the developing countries, arguing that rich countries must shoulder the greater burden of decarbonisation, a position reportedly described by Greenpeace East Asia campaigner Li Shuo as “an inevitable result of international climate diplomacy in the post-US era”.

China’s carbon emissions have also risen this year, after two years of slight decline.
Still, it is committed to peak before 2030, and it leads the world in clean technologies — accounting for five of the world’s top six solar PV manufacturers, and seven of the top-15 wind turbine manufacturers.

China is also investing more than $US100 billion (K315bil) a year in domestic renewable energy projects — more than double the US figure.
At about US$32 billion (K103bn), its investment in green technology overseas is also the largest in the world.

Xi has made environmental ambition a signature of his rhetoric, having coined the florid phrase, “clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver”.
By contrast, Trump is not only averse to environment regulation, but even once tweeted, preposterously, that climate change is a Chinese hoax. So, is China ready to lead on climate?

Not yet. To assume a real leadership role, China needs not only to fulfil its Paris pledges — no small challenge, given the difficulty of shifting its huge economy away from a reliance on coal-fired energy — but also to demonstrate a strategy for overseas investment that is consistent with its environmental ambitions.

Domestic local implementation tends to be a major problem for central planners in China, and to shift the economy away from fossil fuels means bracing for the social stability risks of declining employment in carbon-intensive sectors.

An illustration of this was the recent approval by provincial authorities of numerous plans for new coal-fired power stations, which were later cancelled by sweeping central government decrees.

On the international front, as China’s energy-intensive sectors slow, there is a risk that companies such as those producing the technology to mine and burn coal find an escape valve for overcapacity by exporting capital and technology outside China’s borders, driving carbon-intensive growth in other countries, particularly along the so-called “Belt and Road” trade routes in central, south and Southeast Asia.

In Turkey, Chinese companies have signed agreements worth billions of dollars to construct coal-fired power stations. There is little question that China deserves praise when contrasted with Trump’s retreat from climate action. But unless China can implement its domestic energy transition to phase out coal, and green its Belt and Road Initiative and overseas investment more broadly, its rhetoric about playing a leading role on climate change globally is unlikely to be realised. – ABC.

Source: ABC NEWS.

Can PNG learn something from China about climate change policy?

THE country can learn from a lot on managing climate change from China by drawing policy or reviewing land tenure policies, an analyst says. 

Office of Climate Change and development senior policy analyst Joe Pokana said this after returning from an international workshop on exploring potential South-South Cooperation on monitoring and assessment of forest, deforestation and land degradation in the context of climate change in Beijing, China.

“As leaders in climate change negotiation and with a steady economy, China has so much to offer to developing countries, including Papua New Guinea,” Pokana said. 

“If China has the political will and good policy to change the mindset of its two billion people to re-course their carbon–neutral pathway, then Papua New Guinea, with a population of only seven million people, can learn from these experience in taking the right approaches by drawing policy or reviewing land tenure policy or other related policies that can identify gaps and address them accordingly.”

But Pokana said the country was on the right track with land use change and forest and low carbon growth as the country’s key policies in promoting green economy.

He said the country required greater investment in this natural ecosystem service as well as in alternative energy and resource efficiency to move forward to a greener economy.

The workshop ended with a way forward for the government of PNG’s bilateral work with China through their embassy in Port Moresby to take advantage on their lessons learnt, technology transfer, funding support and capacity building, especially in forestry and agriculture sector and climate change.

Office of Climate Change and Development acting chief executive officer Varigini Badira supported the initiative and said he would work with the Chinese government. 

“The government of PNG will pursue this bilateral arrangement through a memorandum of understanding between the two countries to assist PNG in piloting low carbon growth projects in the country,” Badira said.

Source: The National newspaper.