Climate change blog posts

I’ve written about 25 posts on climate change on the Th!nk About It and UNDispatch site.

I’ll also be blogging from COP15 in Copenhagen, so subscribe to the above links to get all my analysis and commentary.

COP15

I’m super excited to be attending the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen in December this year.

Its called the COP15 because it is the fifteenth Conference Of the Parties. When the year started off great many things were expected as an outcome of the COP15. It’s quite clear now that most of those expectations will not be met, the climate issue has turned out be too complicated to be resolved soon.

It is one of the largest UN conferences ever and the Copenhagen will be the center of the world for two weeks. The city also promises to turn into a colorful place with lots of activists and environmentalists. The hippy in me can’t wait to meet young activist folk from all over the world. In my September trip to Copenhagen I figured out the places to eat, drink and chill out; so I’m going to have fun. A damper though, Copenhagen is possibly the world’s most expensive city, an American friend described the prices as “makes US look Mexico and India look like Nigeria”.

What’s obstructing the Copenhagen deal?

Last month in Bangkok, as the Canadian lead negotiator was mid-way through his keynote that proposed a radical measure of abandoning most parts of Kyoto protocol, dozens of delegates from developing nations walked out. This was only the latest symptom of the rapidly growing rift between the developed and the developing nations. 

At the Bangkok negotiations, the American delegation spoke from a very familiar script and proposed that developing nations put their emission cutting targets on the table. Such a statement of ‘You first’ comes at a time when it is abundantly clear that USA will not be able to pass a climate change bill outlining its emission targets. What is especially unfortunate is that this particular stance of USA and other developed nations (or Annex 1 countries as the Kyoto Protocol refers to them) is derailing all possibilities of reaching a fair deal in Copenhagen. I can only agree with the Chinese delegate who so bluntly remarked that the ‘rich nations are trying to kill the Kyoto pact’.

 

The Indian minister of state for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh has the very unenviable job of being India’s main spokesperson on the COP-15 and other climate change issues and is under tremendous pressure from the national and international factors to commit to emission targets. And as India and other G-77 nations have been vehemently saying, binding emission targets are absolutely unacceptable. The Indian tone till recently has been provocative, but that has been softening over the past few months starting from Hillary’s trip in the summer to yesterday when Jairam Ramesh agreed to an international audit for India’s greenhouse gas mitigation steps. And I’m certain this is not due to mounting pressure, but due to the very real fear of not reaching a deal in Copenhagen this December.

 

The Indian minister recently publicy aired views that a deal in December at Copenhagen was unlikely and another meeting “next summer” would be required. The Indian minister also suggested ’scaling down ambitions’. This pessimism is not without merit after the Bangkok talks ended on 11th October, when even Yves de Boer, UN climate change chief, conceded that there has been ‘no advancement on key political issues’.

Not reaching a deal is simply unacceptable and will be a major failure in our global political system which cannot come to an agreement to even tackle the major challenge of this century. I’ve briefly described the key political issues and the obstacles standing in the way of an agreement here:

1. Replacing the Kyoto protocol with a new pact: Few nations lead by the US called for replacing the Kyoto protocol framework completely which would require India and China to commit to binding emission targets. The new framework will share similar principles with Kyoto, but call for emission targets from developing nations.

 

Obstacles: This is unacceptable to most countries because it would mean restarting the negotiations governed by a new framework, certainly unachievable before December. Developing nations especially oppose this because they believe it’s in violation of the ‘the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, also accounting for the historical responsibility of developed countries, providing an equitable approach to fair burden sharing.’ on which Kyoto protocol was built on. This displeasure was so radically demonstrated when delegates walked out of Canada’s keynote which proposed creating a new pact.

2. Emission targets of industrialized nations: In principle all nations agree that it is critical to limit temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. But there’s little agreement on the exact emissions target for each country. Annex 1 countries are targeting upto 23% decrease from 1990 levels, while scientists say 40% is the necessary target to adhere to the temperature limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

Obstacles: Unfortunately even this number is hypothetical because most annex 1 countries have not passed laws with any such specific target. The Nobel committee recognized Obama’s climate change leadership due to which “the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.” Its a Nobel Peace prize in vain because it is improbable that the US senate can pass a bill outlining the emission target in such a short period before the COP. Not in the least because of the concurrent debate on its health bill or the major opposition from the Republican party. Without the USA, there’s no possibility of a successful Copenhagen protocol.

3. Emission targets of developing nations: There is a call for major developing nations to agree to binding emission targets, which will use a future year as the base. This is because according to current trends, they’re on an unsustainable GHG emissions growth path.

 

Obstacles: Major developing nations oppose this because it goes against the Kyoto protocol which doesn’t need emission commitments from developing countries. In addition there is no concrete agreement on the financing and technology transfers that are a must to achieve even the most modest of targets. Without a predictable channel of financing, all emission targets will be pulled out of thin air and simply unachievable. 

4. Financing commitments: The Kyoto protocol outlines that developed countries will provide adequate, additional and predictable financing to developing nations to meet the requirements expected from developing nation parties. This is one of the pillars of Kyoto protocol to channelize funding for mitigation and adaptation in developing nations.

Obstacles: There is no binding financing commitment signed by a developed nation. The issue is especially complicated after the recent recession, which has contracted national coffers considerably. And EU is considering cutting international aid and use the same for climate change financing. Unfortunately few developing nations have put a number to the amount of financing they need to fund their national plans of mitigation and adaptation. Financing is a major concern of all developing nations and India for one might not sign the final deal if the financing mechanism is inadequate or vague. The African leaders estimated the cost of mitigation to be 44 billion Euros for their continent which emits just 4% of the world’s GHGs.

All these issues will be the major factors that will lead to either a half baked deal in Copenhagen or a deal unacceptable to many. We especially need to conciliate the developed and the developing nations.

I found the four expectations of Yves de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to be the best articulation of the least that should come out of the Copenhagen deal. 

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?
 
2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?
 
3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?
 
4. How is that money going to be managed?

Simple enough? Now lets work on achieving this! Lets seal the deal.

crossposted on Th!nk About It blog.

twenty one

The Tale of Two Cities during the French Revolution saw, ‘The best of times…the worst of times…the age of wisdom…the age of foolishness…’

Dickens’ just about describes my recent past and impending future. I’m writing this with six days to go before I turn twenty two. I’ll call twenty-one the most extraordinary year of my life. I took some adult decisions and did some adult things the past year, but I’m fairly certain I’ve not grown up. Growing up is my resolution for next year.

Looking back at the year with rose tinted glasses:

1. I grew a pair of balls and dropped a semester to figure out my future

2. Went on a fulfilling Grassroutes trip to Pochampally with good friends

3. I worked for nearly seven months at New Energy Finance, which was an enriching experience.

4. I had the time of my life in Hyderabad and enjoyed spending my own money for everything

5. I spent two dream weeks travelling across Switzerland

6. Attended a life-changing St Gallen Symposium

7. Dated a beautiful-beautiful girl I met on a flight

8. Joined the policy team of the Indian youth delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen

9. Had a fun trip to Copenhagen for five days with two of my favorite people in the world

10. Fell in love with the low carbon and new energy sector

11. Fought some of my weaknesses and lost

12. Made a lot of good friends throughout the year who I hope will continue to be in my life

All of the above have fortunately or unfortunately left indelible marks on my life and self. Although I can’t see how could I ever top twenty one, I can only hope that twenty two will be just as eventful.

I remember a time when I was around fourteen-fifteen and I would spend hours trying to imagine what it was like to be an adult. I don’t think I ever thought it would be more complicated than adolscence. But it is.

A self sustained community in India

Tilonia is better known as the ‘Barefoot College’(because people who come to train literally couldn’t afford shoes), which has been drawing all its electricity from the sun since 1986. The college was designed to be a self-sustained community that generated its own power, supplied its own water, recycled its waste and also train people from different parts of the country to replicate the same model in their villages. This college covers around 82,349 sq km with 110 villages and 100,000 inhabitants.

Click for more.

Climate Change podcast for Th!nk About It

I’m a blogger for Th!nk About It’s Th!nk2 Climate Change competition. This entitles me to a free trip to Copenhagen(!yay!), which is 11 days away as I write this post.

Even before the competition begins, few of us got together to start discussing our ideas and thoughts on climate change and putting them out as podcasts. I was in the second podcast which also included Domen Savič from Slovenia, Yordanka Stoyanova from Bulgaria and Joël Adami from Luxemburg.

It was very interesting to exchange ideas with smart and motivated youth from different parts of the world. I wasn’t very well prepared and was quite tired, so I’m not very satisfied with my thoughts. I’ve linked the podcast below for you to listen to or download. I can’t figure out how to embed it, so I’ve linked to a different page where it is embedded. It is a tad bit long at 46minutes, but I suggest listening to the first 20minutes of our discussion.

Description: What is climate change and how do we respond to it? How is the media covering the climate change, where is the political backing of the efforts and how effective are the NGOs who are working in this area?

download

http://www.dsavic.net/2009/08/29/thinkcast-002-climate-change-and-us/

Also expect a barrage of posts coming up in the future on climate change. I’ve been writing a lot of exciting stuff on climate change as a part of IYCN’s Agents of Change Policy working group member. I shall share some of my finished papers and articles soon enough.

Suggested Reading List

Here’s a list of non-fiction books that I read or I’m in the process of reading in Hyderabad, and I recommend. Please don’t expect me to lend these .

1. Economics – A Very Short Introduction by Partha Dasgupta: Partha Dasgupta is one of the best developmental economists around. This is a 150 pages book that briefly explains the motives of economists and introduces few important basic concepts. This is NOT a textbook, it contains everything that the rest of us need to know.

2. Supercapitalism- Robert Reich: I can’t recommend this book enough to people who want to understand our messed up world. Reich gives a brief understanding of the current form of capitalism, which is most efficient in generating money. It fails when it tries to be other things.

3. Making Globalization Work- Joseph Stiglitz: Stiglitz is my favorite economist. He’s worried about the negatives of globalization and free market economics. In this book he talks about fallacies of globalization and proposes solutions to handling challenges like third world debt, global warming, ineffectiveness of IMF & World Bank, etc

4. The Collapse of Globalism- John Ralston Saul: This a great account of failures of globalization with the ending chapters on what is and will replace our current free-market systems. I’ve not read Globalization and Its Discontents by Stiglitz, which is supposed to be a good book on similar lines.

5. Guns, Germs and Steel- J Diamond: I re-read an ebook of it this time and still loved it. It briefly explains our history and its implications on our present. He argues that geography and environment shaped our modern world. This one is hard to find in bookstores, look for scond hand ones.

6. The Discovery of India- Jawaharlal Nehru: Very well written account of Indian history with comments on the events by Nehru

7. Phantoms in the Brain- Vilayanur Ramachandran: Supposed to be the best popular science book on understanding our brain. Very fascinating to read and written well.

8. White Mughals- William Dalrymple: This book changed my impression of the British, who are typically thought of as oppressors. For a major period of history they mingled and lived freely with Indians and adpoted Indian cultures. The book is uses the tale of an affair between the British Resident of Hyderabad with a noble woman of the Nizam’s family, to describe more about the Deccan’s culture between 1700’s-1800’s.

9. Five people you meet in heaven- Mitch Albom: This is a good fiction book on life and how people influence ours unknowingly. Its about a man who makes sense of his life in heaven. Very beautifully written. Even though I’m an atheist and I stay away from motivational books, this book is poetic.

More books that I read, but thought were just decent:

1. Predictably Irrational- Dan Ariely: I didn’t really learn anything from this book. Its a short book, so if you find theTED talk by the author fascinating, buy it.

2. Black Swan- Nassim Nicholas Taleb: After loving his previous book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ I was let down by this. I found it popmpous, based on personal anecdotes, and not much substantial theory on taking advantage of a Black Swan, which the author say, is an extremely rare event. Buy Fooled by Randomness, don’t buy this one.

3. Outliers- Malcolm Gladwell: As much as I hate Malcolm Gladwell’s continual usage of anecdotal evidence to prove his theories, I still end up learning something out of his books. So I borrowed this one from a friend. I didn’t learn anything out of this book other than 10,000 hours is what is supposed to be the magical number of hours required for you to become successful in a certain field. I would suggest to gift this book to your friends and family who are convinced they need something special in their lives to succeed or be extraordinary.

Anything similar to these that I should read?

Experiences from the 39th St Gallen Symposium

I had been trying to write a post on the St Gallen Symposium, but I had so many things to say that it was hard to write anything at all. I think whatever I remember right now is what will stay with me for a long time. Everything else is either lost or hidden in my memory.

First about the symposium. It brought together 200 students from 68 countries along with a couple of hundred high quality business delegates and university professors. The idea is to create an atmosphere for debate and exchange of ideas between qualified and important stakeholders on an important world theme. This year was the 39th symposium and the topic was ‘Revival of political and economic boundaries’. The organizers pay for all the expenses of the traveling students. It is a free trip to Switzerland with no strings attached. Just write the essay.

Hanging out before the conference.

Because they can

Most students were accommodated in apartments of University of St Gallen students or in a youth hostel. My host was exceptionally accommodating and that made my experience very pleasant. I can’t thank him enough or stop talking about his wonderful thatched house.

The beautiful house my host lives in

I really loved the internationalism of the entire conference. The student participants all hailed from different backgrounds which created opportunities for lively dinner table discussions and debates, in addition to learning more about different cultures. And all of them had qualified through an essay competition which meant they were very smart, especially when it came to economics and business, which was the major focus of the symposium. I was in the mini-club of engineers and scientists at the symposium and in the smaller club of non-academically inclined. Most students were pursuing economics, political science, international relations, business, law, etc. Since I hardly have any friends who are in similar disciplines by virtue of interest, I enjoyed their company. In fact I felt they were my peers compared to my Pilani classmates, since I have very few friends I can have a stimulating discussion with on politics, energy or economics. Towards the end of the conference most of us agreed that an university that consists only of the symposium attendees would be an amazing place to study in! I will miss the people I talked to and learnt so much from a lot. Also a friend from Japan who till the symposium was planning for a masters in biotechnology, decided to instead get a masters in economics. That is the kind of influence this conference can have on lives!

Eating together

Good old coffee and conversations in the sunshine

One very comforting truth I realized there was that we all might have been from completely different cultures and value systems, but we all had so much in common; mutual respect, curiosity, passion for knowledge and genuinely trying to make this world better. Me and a French student had surprisingly so much in common not only in the way we thought but also in movies, music, websites or books we loved. The world really is such a small village. And for the first time I was actually finding a practical use for all the random trivia that I have stuck in my head. For example just being able to recollect the capital of Mongolia or the flag of Portugal is such an ice-breaker and comfort builder. I was very surprised by the amount of knowledge people had about India and their interest in the country. Also a few of them had traveled in India. My substitute for lack of traveling outside the country, was a fantastic recollection of country capitals, personalities from lots of countries.

One of the fun pre-conference activities

Not sure what's happening here

BRIC citizens

The quality of the conference itself was outstanding. They had a wide gamut of topics for discussion in either the keynotes or in the smaller special sessions. Topics covered themes of financial crisis, energy, government regulation, emerging economies, politics, automobile and aircraft industry, BoP, etc. It had something for everybody. With the financial crisis on everybody’s mind, there was quite a bit of focus on it. But it also meant that not too many peopel were over-optimistic or arrogant with their thoughts. And also students were the loudest mouths in the Q&A sessions. Perhaps the business leaders wanted some fresh ideas, so they were interested to listen. Not all sessions satisfied me, but some surprised, while others excited me. I listened to all energy sessions carefully, and though I was disappointed with a few answers to my questions, over all I got a lot of perspective on what my career could be and future of energy for the world. I would suggest going through the videos of the symposium to get bites of the sessions. 

One of the keynote speakers talking about oil security

One of the special sessions

About 20% of the time was dedicated to Q&A, which the students just loved

Finally I can’t help, but feel inspired by the ISC team which organized the entire conference. 24 undergraduates leading 300 others pulled off the entire conference, with a budget of certainly a few million USD. I’ve attended the Fortune Global Forum 2007, which had some of the most famous businessmen of the world and I can tell you organization-wise, this was way better. Everything was well planned and the students were friendly, calm and helpful. There was hardly a glitch! And my room was much better than the 27K INR-per-night suite at a 7star hotel. I was surprised that they had hired a few ex-airforce men to teach the committee how to handle stress!

 

One of the volunteers for the Food&Beverages team

They had these cute cars branded with the symposium logos to drive people around

They even dressed up in the cultural dress of the country they were serving food from. Here being taught the right way to serve something by the chef.

So in brief about the symposium:

1. Its a free trip to Switzerland

2.  Its as international as you would want it to be

3. Brilliant speakers and sessions on business, economics, and politics

4. Posh treatment and hospitality

5.  One of the best experiences you would have as a student

6. And it is a lot of fun

I am applying again next year and I see no reason why you shouldn’t. It is totally worth the pain you would go through writing the essay.

ps: Ah and one last thing about my essay. I was reading essays of a few people I met at the symposium and compared to theirs mine looks so mediocre. Not in terms of facts or my style of writing, but rather in terms of actually contributing to the dialogue and discussion of the theme. Mine reflects the most obvious view point, which is decreased Globalization, without presenting any good case in its favor. A very journalistic account of things, perhaps I should have spent more time on making my thoughts clearer. I am glad that there are others who’ve got optimistic ideas for the direction the world should move in. I’ve personally always been quite libertarian in terms of how indviduals in a country should be treated, but I’ve been more leftist, inclining towards increased regulations in cross-border affairs. I don’t think this is against the spirit of economic Globalization.

I am dark skinned and proud.

I was just reading this article in Outlook about how this election perhaps proves that voters are not swayed by religion, caste etc any more. At least not the majority of them. I am not fully convinced about it, because Congress did play the caste card frequently. But nevertheless it is a good piece and we need more discussions like these.

It actually got me thinking about how much discrimination exists in India today. Both negative and positive discrimination. By negative I mean, decreasing opportunities for people of a certain segregation. Its the discrimination we all know. And by positive I mean, creating opportunities for people of a certain segregation, like reservations in universities, jobs, etc. My post is too short for me to give enough justice to both the discriminations, I hate so much. I also feel so strongly against them that I don’t think I can write sanely and make any sense.

So I will just talk about one not so invisible discrimination, but rarely talked about. Color.

I’ve been thinking a lot about it after my two weeks in Switzerland. For the first time ever in Switzerland I felt comfortable in my skin color and body appearance. Let me explain. I am dark skinned and Indians would call me ’skinny’. Both these characteristics have been the exploited to the core by my friends while teasing me. When I was a kid, being teased about being of a skin color not considered to be desirable by popular notion, made me cry. Later it just became easier to laugh at myself and secretly keep applying mom’s ‘Fair & Lovely’ to try and lighten my skin tone. And the first thing my female relatives or friends of my mom, would remark on seeing me after a long time, would be ‘You’ve grown darker.’ As if that was an unfortunate thing. I won’t even discuss that this obsession with fair skin seems to be more female driven than male. Seen the disgusting ‘Fair & Lovely’ ads? Only fair women get jobs and husbands. This is very well reflected in the matchmaking sections of the newspapers. Mentioning skin color is almost neccesary. And the high prevalance of ‘fair’ in the postings makes me think that perhaps dark skinned people feel inferior to even take out a posting.

What really pains me though is that I see this among my educated friends as well. Jokes about my dark skin seem so juvenile and painful to me that everytime a friend tries that on me, I hate him a little more for being so insensitive. People might say it doesn’t affect daily lives or hiring process. But I know for a fact that it does. I know for sure it does affect men’s perceptions of women, not very sure about vice-versa, but considering women are more obsessed with such trivialities I would be surprised if it didn’t. At my university, I was a part of a club(rather a festival department) which blatantly would recruit new female members on the basis of looks. If you conformed to commonly accepted notions of beauty, like fair skin, you were in unless of course someother club had snatched you already. I am sure the members of the club would go on to try and hire women for their looks in their day jobs as well.(This is not a jab at my club, but at the entire new member recruitment system at Pilani.)

So in India when I go to Northern cities, first thing people try guessing which state I might be from and then immediately expect me to be stereotypical. They are surprised when I speak fluent unaccented Hindi and curse that people down south don’t know any other languages, while they are content with speaking a single tongue and bad english. And then they are obsessed with skin color, going to no end with foundation creams and talcum powder to enhance theirs. That obsession extends to making fun of my ‘Gult’(slang for people from Andhra Pradesh) skin color.

This is simply insensitive and a very corrosive feature of our Indian society to consider dark skin as inferior.

So in Switzerland I was actually surprised when people didn’t stare(I get more stares walking in some Delhi lanes). People didn’t judge or size me up by my skin color. I expected some to immediately assume I was Indian or Sri Lankan, but I was always asked where I was from. And I didn’t feel any insensitivity about being Indian or dark skinned. Having friends who are shamelessly stereotypical, I initially made a few bad jokes about being American or China. I stopped the second I realized I was being a jerk.

In the entire country, entertainment industry especially is obsessed with fair skinned actors. In fact Frieda Pinto had no chance of entering the movie industry if it wasn’t for the western director. Andhra Pradesh movie industry hardly has any dark female actors. Dark male actors are used only for comic or negative characters. Now this is discrimination on the basis of color.

Think about it. How does it make sense that fair skin is better than dark skin? We love dark clothes, but wouldn’t like a dark skin? Isn’t beauty a matter of perception? I personally find dark skin more attractive than fair skin, but that doesn’t mean I let that inhibit my logic and discriminate against people with lighter skin. Think very hard about for how long has this idea about dark skin being uglier than fair skin has been stuck in your head. It is time that we as society stopped being

This is me.

Me

And I have a beautiful skin tone. I will no longer stop myself from being indecent when you are not decent enough to consider my feelings while making my skin color the object of your poor sense of humor.

Addition after reading Gangu’s comment. I am not against being jocular about this issue or trying to be extremely politically correct about this. What I can see is that such things are so deeply ingrained in our Indian psyches that it plays a role while making judgments. Now that is unfortunate. I agree not many would see the point of this post, but perhaps you would if you stand outside this all in my shoes and then think. A close friend pointed out that we have so many prejudices today, things we just can’t explain. Like naturally assuming beautiful people as dumb, there are so many of these that we suffer from. I think it is important that as we progress as a society, we would get rid of some of them.

ps: My friends reading this might find it surprising that I’ve written about this because I’ve never spoken about this to anybody since I was, maybe 10yrs old. I’ve ignored it for a long time but it does bother me.

CDM and Addionality

I was working on getting some data on Biomass CDM projects. From a few numbers on IRR, I realized none of these projects would be investment worthy without earning from CDM/Carbon offsets.

That was a correct observation because I then found this fascinating condition/clause for CDM/carbon offsetting. Financial Additionality is necessary for carbon offsets. Which basically means you cannot gain carbon offsets for your renewable energy projects if you do not prove that without earnings from those offsets, the project would be unviable.

It did seem like a stupid clause to me at first, but then just later Sara and SustainableJohn explained, ‘Because to offset emissions in another country, you need to prove that the project would not have happened without CDM.  Otherwise, it’s not really offsetting, it’s just giving renewable projects in another country an added incentive to develop. It is proving that the project is beyond business as usual.  Additionality comes mainly in two forms: investment and barrier.  Investment additionality is most often used by proving that your project has an IRR lower than the industry benchmark, but that the IRR would be higher if extra  revenue from sale of carbon credits could be earned. Barrier additionality has more to do with technology availability/other policy or market barriers.’

Makes sense from the perspective of the developed countries looking to offset, but to me this is just another reason why I don’t like carbon offsets. The viability of the entire project depends on the price of the CERs and nobody is really gaining much in terms of revenues. Maximum IRR I’ve seen yet is 28.33% and avg is around 15.45%. These are really low.

Anyways, I haven’t got the time or energy to debate carbon credits. Maybe later.

I also found a good ebook on calculation of additionality, which now looks very useful for my project last sem on SROI. Go ahead and download it. http://www.englishpartnerships.co.uk/images/C799363E2FFF45B789F70168169EBEE8.pdf