Download CASE STUDY - Climate change

CASE STUDY
Climate Change and
Sustainable Development
EXERCISE
• Examine the position of your country in
the Human Development Index and
discuss the changes during the last 2
decades
• Basic bibliography:
• Dresner, S. (2008) The Principles of Sustainability. London:
Earthscan.
• UNDP, Human Development Report, 1990-2012. URL,
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/
• United Nations (1987) Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Official
Records of the General Assembly, A/42/427
• Climate change is now a scientifically
established fact. The exact impact of
greenhouse gas emission is not easy to
forecast and there is a lot of uncertainty in
the science when it comes to predictive
capability. But we now know enough to
recognize that there are large risks,
potentially catastrophic ones, including the
melting of ice-sheets on Greenland and
the West Antarctic (which would place
many countries under water) and changes
in the course of the Gulf Stream that would
bring about drastic climatic changes.
• The early warning signs are already visible.
Today, we are witnessing at first hand what
could be the onset of major human development
reversal in our lifetime. Across developing
countries, millions of the world’s poorest people
are already being forced to cope with the
impacts of climate change. These impacts do
not register as apocalyptic events in the full glare
of world media attention. They go unnoticed in
financial markets and in the measurement of
world GDP. But increased exposure to drought,
to more intense storms, to floods and
environmental stress is holding back the efforts
of the world’s poor to build a better life for
themselves and their children.
• Stocks of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the
atmosphere are accumulating at an
unprecedented rate.
• Current concentrations have reached 380 parts
per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent
(CO2eq) compared to about 280 ppm a century
ago.
• Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are on a
sharply rising trend. They are increasing at
around 1.9 ppm each year.
• Global average temperature is increasing by
about 0.2 degrees C per decade and has gone
up by about 0.8 degrees C since late 19th
century.
7.9%
1.1%
14.3%
56.6%
17.3%
2.8%
CO2 (fossil fuel use)
CO2 (other)
CO2 (deforestation)
CH4
N20
F gasses
• Behind the numbers and the measurement
is a simple overwhelming fact. We are
recklessly mismanaging our ecological
interdependence. In effect, our generation
is running up an unsustainable ecological
debt that future generations will inherit.
• Even if we stabilize emissions at current
levels CLIMATE CHANGE IS
UNAVOIDABLE
• The IPCC has developed a family of six
scenarios identifying plausible emissions
pathways for the 21st century. These
scenarios are differentiated by
assumptions about population change,
economic growth, energy use patterns and
mitigation.
• None of the IPCC scenarios point to a
future below the 2°C threshold for
dangerous climate change.
Estimated temperature rise at the end of 21ου century
Relative to 1850-1899
average temperature (0C)
Concentrations CO2 –eq.
in 2100
Β1
2,3 (1,6-3,4)
600 ppm
Α1Τ
2,9 (1,9-4,3)
700 ppm
Β2
2,9 (1,9-4,3)
800 ppm
Α1Β
3,3 (2,2-4,9)
850 ppm
Α2
3,9 (2,5-5,9)
1250 ppm
Α1FI
4,5 (2,9-6,9)
1550 ppm
Scenario
WE CANNOT CONTINUE IN
THE SAME PATH. WE HAVE
TO CHANGE OUR PATTERNS
OF CONSUMPTION AND OUR
IDEAS ABOUT WHAT
CONSTITUTES
DEVELOPMENT
UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE
MOVING IN THE WRONG
DIRECTION
Total emissions CO2 (million metric
tons)
10000
9000
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1900
1910 1920
1930
1940
1950 1960
Year
1970
1980
1990 2000
2008
• Three distinctive features of the problem.
• The first feature is the combined force of inertia and
cumulative outcomes of climate change. Once emitted,
carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases stay
in the atmosphere for a long time.
• Urgency is the second feature of the climate change
challenge—and a corollary of inertia.
• The third important dimension of the climate change
challenge is its global scale. The Earth’s atmosphere
does not differentiate greenhouse gases by country of
origin. One tonne of greenhouse gases from China
carries the same weight as one tonne of greenhouse
gases from the United States—and one country’s
emissions are another country’s climate change
problem. It follows that no one country can win the battle
against climate change acting alone. Collective action is
not an option but an imperative.
• The most difficult policy challenges will relate to
distribution. While there is potential catastrophic risk for
everyone, the short and medium-term distribution of the
costs and benefits will be far from uniform. The
distributional challenge is made particularly difficult
because those who have largely caused the problem—
the rich countries—are not going to be those who suffer
the most in the short term. It is the poorest who did not
and still are not contributing significantly to greenhouse
gas emissions that are the most vulnerable. In between,
many middle income countries are becoming significant
emitters in aggregate terms—but they do not have the
carbon debt to the world that the rich countries have
accumulated and they are still low emitters in per capita
terms. We must find an ethically and politically
acceptable path that allows us to start—to move forward
even if there remains much disagreement on the long
term sharing of the burdens and benefits. We should not
allow distributional disagreements to block the way
forward just as we cannot afford to wait for full certainty
on the exact path climate change is likely to take before
we start acting.
Countries with the highest emissions of CO2 in 2008 (in thousand metric tonnes)
2008
2000
1990
China1
1.922.687
928.868
658.554
USA
1.547.460
1.565.925
1.326.725
India
479.039
323.647
188.344
Russia
435.126
393.729
-----
Japan
357.534
343.695
319.704
Germany
210.480
225.605
276.425
Canada
153.659
146.556
122.739
Britain
148.818
149.578
156.481
South Korea
142.230
122.071
65.901
Iran
133.961
92.512
61.954
Italy
125.015
122.079
115.925
Mexico
124.450
104.704
104.907
South Africa
120.520
100.537
90.963
Saudi Arabia
119.374
81.197
58.646
Brazil
110.833
90.028
56.966
France
103.845
100.126
108.576
Indonesia
99.648
67.068
41.032
Australia
96.168
89.744
79.943
Spain
94.468
80.722
62.497
Poland
90.072
82.139
94.876
1
Hong Kong is not included
16
14 13.46
12
9.35
10
8
5.18
6
4
2.99 2.8 2.67
1.27
2
0.51 0.41 0.37 0.19 0.11 0.09
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Per capita emissions CO2 (in metric tons)
• While governments may recognize the realities
of global warming, political action continues to
fall far short of the minimum needed to resolve
the climate change problem. The gap between
scientific evidence and political response
remains large.
• The deeper problem is that the world lacks a
clear, credible and long-term multilateral
framework that charts a course for avoiding
dangerous climate change—a course that spans
the divide between political cycles and carbon
cycles.
• Therefore, the role of citizens is crucial.
Only political pressure/cost can force
governments to move more decisively.
• Climate change is a threat that comes with
an opportunity. Above all, it provides an
opportunity for the world to come together
in forging a collective response to a crisis
that threatens to halt progress.
SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Corporate Social Responsibility
• The triple bottom line:
• Financial responsibility
• Social responsibility
• Environmental responsibility
Management commitment and
governance
• Environmental management and social
development commitment and capacity
• Corporate governance
• Accountability and transparency
At the core of S.D. is the need
to consider three pillars
together:
• Society
• Economy
• The environment
• The Human Development Index (HDI) is a
composite statistic used to rank countries by
level of Human Development
• The HDI combines three dimensions:
• Life expectancy at birth, as an index of
population health and longevity
• Knowledge and education, as measured by the
adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and
the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary
gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).
• Standard of living, as indicated by the natural
logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at
purchasing power parity.
Four essential components in
the new paradigm:
• Equity in opportunities
• Social, economic and environmental
sustainability
• Productivity
• Empowerment
• A holistic and human-centered approach
• People are the real wealth of a nation. The basic
objective ofdevelopment is to create an enabling
environment for people to enjoy long, healthy
and creative lives. This may appear to be a
simple truth. But it is often forgotten in the
immediate concern with the accumulation of
commodities and financial wealth.
BASIC BIBLIOGRAPRHY
• IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. URL,
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_
assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm
• Strange, T. and Bayley, A. (2008) Sustainable Development. Linking
Economy, Society, Environment. Paris: OECD
• UNDP (2011) Human Development Report 2011. Sustainability and
Equity: A Better Future for All. New York: UNDP
• United Nations (1987) Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Official
Records of the General Assembly, A/42/427