Why new thinking is needed on climate change

THE 2018 UN climate change summit, which ended on Saturday night in Europe, has underlined that the international consensus around tackling this issue is under attack again by multiple key governments. This threatens to slow the pace of efforts to decarbonise, and it is clear that a different approach is now needed.

While a deal was ultimately agreed at the weekend, a growing number of governments from the United States to Russia and Brazil and Turkey are raising concerns about the 2015 Paris deal. Hopefully, this year's event in Poland will prove a line in the sand here. For it is crystal clear that if the necessary action on global warming to mitigate its worst impacts is to be undertaken, critics such as US President Donald Trump need to be faced down with their views about global warming.

Mr Trump and others have lambasted the Paris agreement arguing it is a grand hoax and unwelcome distraction, despite the now overwhelming evidence about the risks of climate change. Yet, even if, remarkably, it turns out that the vast majority of scientists in the world are wrong about global warming, what the Paris deal will help achieve is moving more toward gradually cleaner energies, making the world a less-polluted and more sustainable place.

Alternatively, the consequences of a failure to act now, as climate sceptics seem to advocate, would be the growing likelihood of devastating environmental damage to the planet. As the overwhelming evidence base of science suggests, this is folly on a global scale.

As the US itself shows, the key to tackling climate change after Paris is increasingly a "bottom-up" rather than a "top-down" approach. Even within his own country, Mr Trump is losing the argument with the US private sector and many state and city governments pushing for decarbonisation from the grassroots. Indeed, in 2017, Mr Trump's first year in office, the US Environmental Protection Agency asserts that the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the US dropped by 2.7 per cent.

Going forward, former California governor Jerry Brown and ex-New York mayor Michael Bloomberg are leading an "America's Pledge" climate action group with more than 3,000 US cities, states and businesses attempting to deliver a 26 per cent reduction in greenhouses gases by 2025 under Paris. America's Pledge asserts that it's now within striking distance of fulfilling this promise made by the previous Obama administration.

What this underlines is the need for broader empowerment of sub-national organisations across the world who can help lead in the fight against climate change. While the Paris deal is not perfect, one of its key benefits is that it can cater for the flexible, "bottom-up" approach needed here whereby not just national governments, but also other regional and local players in the public and private sectors move forward on this agenda.

DIFFERENT WAY OF WORKING

While the wisdom of this may appear obvious, Paris represents a breakthrough from the more rigid "top-down" 1997 Kyoto Protocol which imposed global, uniform standards.

Kyoto worked two decades ago for the 37 developed countries and the European Union (EU) states who agreed to it.

But a different way of working is needed for the more complex Paris deal which involves more than 170 diverse developing and developed states which agreed to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

In this sense, Paris created a global architecture for tackling global warming, but fully recognises that a collective effort right across the economy and society is needed, not just national governments. Moreover, it also points to the fact that diverse, often decentralised policies will be required by different types of economies to meet climate commitments rather than "one-size-fits all".

That this approach makes good sense is reflected in the diversity of climate measures that countries have started to make in response to global warming. This has been illustrated in reports by the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, including in 2015, which focused on 98 countries plus the EU, together accounting for 93 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The study revealed there are more than 800 climate-change laws and policies in place across the world, rising from 54 in 1997. Around 50 countries, including the 28 EU members as a bloc, have economy wide targets to reduce their emissions. Together, they account for over 75 per cent of global emissions.

In addition, around 40 states have economy-wide targets up to 2020, and 22 have targets beyond 2020. Moreover, 86 countries have specific targets for renewable energy, energy demand, transportation or land-use, land-use change and forestry, while some 80 per cent of countries have renewable targets.

This underlines that the best way to tackle climate change, going forward, is nations meeting their target commitments in innovative and effective ways that builds on this momentum. Take the example of Morocco, a leader on the renewables agenda in the Middle East and Africa with the country getting nearly 30 per cent of its energy from renewable energy and is aiming for a goal of 50 per cent by 2030.

A key part of the drive here is harnessing how renewables could push forward a remarkable new industrial revolution potentially becoming a key source of economic growth and sustainable development. In Morocco, the drive toward renewables relies not just on big infrastructure projects like solar and wind plants, but also less expensive local, small-scale initiatives to encourage key eco-friendly projects including in agriculture right across the country.

BIG PLANS UNDERWAY

Thus, as well as major power projects, such as the Energipro initiative which has provided Africa's largest wind farm, and what will become the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world at Ouarzazate, there is emphasis on encouraging the agricultural sector (which employs more than 40 per cent of the workforce) to become more climate-conscious.

There are big plans underway, for instance, with irrigation systems to reduce use of water and energy and this again encourages a grassroots-driven approach which allows more organisations and individuals across society to play a role in tackling climate change.

Take overall, Poland has shown that a grassroots-driven approach needs to be accelerated which allows for more organisations across society from the public and private sector to lead the fight against climate change. If countries now leverage the flexibility of the Paris framework, it can therefore deliver on this ambition and become a key foundation stone of future sustainable development for billions across the world in the 2020s and potentially beyond.