Hurricane-hit Caribbean states target future safe from from climate harm

TEPIC, Mexico, Dec 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A group of Caribbean nations, many devastated by recent hurricanes, will work with companies, development banks and other organisations to curb damage from climate change and grow cleanly, under an action plan launched this week.

The countries aim to restructure up to $1 billion in debt to free up cash for coastal defences, switch from costly imported fuels to cheaper green energy, and buffer their communities and economies against the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels and heavier storms and floods.

Angus Friday, Grenada's ambassador to the United States, said the idea was to "inject a new DNA", breaking away from business-as-usual and bureaucratic measures so as to be able to act faster.

"Given the next hurricane season is just seven months around the corner, it's really important we move with the speed of climate change now," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Hurricanes Maria and Irma left a trail of destruction as they crashed through the Caribbean earlier this year, and many low-lying nations fear their infrastructure and economies will be devastated by more powerful storms and encroaching seas.

With many economies in the region plagued by high levels of debt, Caribbean nations have been pushing for rich countries to help bolster their defences and in turn, protect livelihoods.

Eleven nations, including Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica and the British Virgin Islands, signed up to the plan to create a "climate-smart zone", unveiled at the "One Planet" summit in Paris on Tuesday.

The plan's backers include the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, the Green Climate Fund, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and British businessman Richard Branson, whose Caribbean island Necker was hit by Hurricane Irma.

Branson has pushed for a scheme to help vulnerable islands, centred on replacing outdated fossil-fuel power grids with renewable energy systems that can better withstand extreme weather and boost economic development.

The Caribbean region needs $8 billion to roll out national plans to tackle climate change under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Around $1.3 billion has been pledged to help islands rebuild in the wake of the recent hurricanes, while a further $2.8 billion has been committed through longer-term investment and debt restructuring plans.

The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based environmental charity, wants to work with lenders and governments to find ways to restructure $1 billion in sovereign debt and free up funds to invest in the "blue economy", a statement said. More

Join the 4 0/00 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate

Building on solid, scientific documentation and concrete-getions on the ground, the "4%o Initiative: soils for food security and climate" aims to show that food security and combating climate climate are complementary and to ensure that agriculture provides sblutions to climate change.

This initiative consists of a voluntary action plan under the Lima Paris Agenda for Action (LPAA), backed up by a strong and ambitious research program.

The "4%o" Initiative aims to improve the organic matter content and promote carbon sequestration in soils through the application of agricultural practices adapted to local situations both economically, environmentally and socially, such as agro-ecology, agroforestry, conservation agriculture and landscape management.

* The Initiative engages stakeholders in a transition towards a productive, resilient agriculture, based on a sustainable soil management and generating jobs and incomes, hence ensuring sustainable development.

* Thanks to its high level of ambition, this Initiative is part of the Lima-Paris Action Agenda and contributes to the sustainable development goals to reach a land-degradation neutral world.

* All the stakeholders commit together in a voluntary action plan to implement farming practices

that maintain or enhance soil carbon stock on as many agricultural soils as possible and to preserve carbon-rich soils. Every stakeholder commits on an objective, actions (including soil carbon stock management and other accompanying measures, for example index-based insurance, payment for ecosystem services, and so on), a time-line and resources.

The Initiative aims to send out a strong signal concerning the potential of agriculture to contribute to the long-term objective of a carbon-neutral economy.

Our capacity to feed 9.5 billion people in 2050 in a context of climate change will depend in particular on our ability to keep our soils alive. The health of soils, for which sufficient organic matter is the main indicator, strongly controls agricultural production. Stable and productive soils affect the resilience of farms to cope with the effects of climate change.

Primarily composed of carbon, the organic matter in soils plays a role in four important ecosystem services: resistance to soil erosion, soil water retention, soil fertility for plants and soil biodiversity.

Even small changes of the soil carbon pool have tremendous effects both on agricultural productivity and on greenhouse gas balance.

Maintaining organic carbon-rich soils, restoring and improving degraded agricultural lands and, in general terms, increasing the soil carbon, play an important role in addressing the three-fold challenge of food security, adaptation of food systems and people to climate change, and the mitigation of anthropogenic emissions. To achieve this, concrete solutions do exist and need to be scaled up. More

 

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IPCC climate report: a route map for civilisation's greatest journey

The landmark UN report shows the affordable paths to averting a global climate catastrophe: now politicians must decide the route and who pays the fare

Jakarta traffic

If you are embarking on a long and essential journey, it really pays to book early. That is the key message from Sunday's landmark UN report that sets out the route to averting catastrophic climate change.

By starting right now to end the era of dirty fossil fuels and create a new world of clean energy, not only do you ensure you arrive at your destination – a safer world – but you also get the cheapest ticket. The report's message was as clear as a travel agent's advertisement: buy now or pay a premium later.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, drew on his early years as a railway engineer to drive the point home: “The high speed [carbon-cutting] train will leave very soon and all of the global community will have to be on board.”

But his IPCC colleague, Youba Sokona, a scientist from Mali and one of the trio who led the new report, was clear about the limits of the new plan: “We are the mapmakers: the [powerful] are the navigators.” He said the report is “telling truth to power”: the question now is whether the powerful want to listen.

The IPCC report sets out multiple possible routes. Some, based on renewable energy and cutting energy waste, are low-risk and comfortable, rather like a fast electric train. Other more circuitous routes, such as delaying action and then beingforced to suck carbon out of the air later, look more like a four-wheeled drive over a mountain range.

The IPCC has put a definitive map on the table and shown that the price of climate action is affordable. But the hardest choices remain in the hands of the powerful: which route to take and, even more difficult, who pays for the ticket.

The statements deleted from the final report summary, which is aimed directly at policymakers, reveal the political battles ahead. All mentions of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year from rich to poor nations to pay for going green were excised. Even the simple statement that 70% of all emissions come from just 10 big nations – think China and the US – was deemed too much like naming and shaming.

Nonetheless, many stark messages remain: all dirty fossil fuel use will have to end in the coming decades; huge stocks of coal, oil and gas will have to remain in the ground; countries and companies relying on fossil fuels may suffer big financial losses.

Choosing the route away from civilisation's looming climate car crash now falls to the world's leaders, with a deadline of December 2015 in Paris for a global deal. But they can no longer claim they don't know the way or can't afford the fare. As US secretary of state John Kerry put it on Sunday: “This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity.” More

 

© 2014

Who Will Pay for Climate Change Consequences?

A number of initiatives, including the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Recovery and the University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, have been developing models to assess climate risk at various scales.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has been trying to put numbers on the cost of adaptation. The journal Nature Climate Change recently published a paper entitled “Future Flood Losses in Major Coastal Cities” full of some very sobering numbers. The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change has developed recommendations on financing mechanisms for adaptation. These are just some of the initiatives underway to price the risks of climate-driven weather variations.

It is likely, however, that the extraordinarily complicated questions of what is at risk, what should be done about it and how much should be spent will be easier to address than the political question, who should pay and what’s their share. This is a question our clients, public and private, grapple with all the time as they consider their own risk attenuation. All but the most optimistic agree that substantial new revenue from existing sources dedicated to climate adaptation will not be forthcoming. There is hope that financial markets can develop instruments for investors that produce positive returns for adaptation investments. Without new funding sources, the best we can do is incorporate adaptation benefits into existing spending. But, how much do we spend on probabilities and what is the opportunity cost for that spend compared to existing needs? This is a very contentious political question. In politics, do we see the future considered as a constituent of decisions about the future? Sustainability demands the answer should be yes. For many, quite reasonably given the inability to know the future, the answer is largely no. But, there are future-minded companies out there that have risen above the political hubbub and recognized that protecting their assets from an uncertain, unknowable future is simply good business sense. I reached out to a few of my colleagues to get their thoughts and received some excellent examples of companies and organizations that have redefined this question in terms of sound business strategy.

The best mitigation and adaptation strategies are not stand-alone investments but part of a broader consideration of cumulative benefits.

The City of Blackpool in the UK reaped great benefits from its investment in a new seawall. It took advantage of the opportunity to reconnect the town to its famous beach; provide a better pedestrian experience; and create spaces for events, retail and community interaction. The improved community experience quickly translates into increased commercial success for neighboring businesses. Private and public sectors both win, even if the sea level doesn’t rise.

A similar story is true of the South Bay wetlands restoration in San Francisco Bay. The wetlands regeneration created significant water quality and habitat improvements that the South Bay public welcomed and was willing to invest in because the whole community loves to fish. While the public doesn’t really care about protecting itself from a fabled sea level rise and possible flooding, the wetlands generation will significantly mitigate damage in the event that this occurs.

The successful implementation of both these examples lies in their ability to articulate both public and commercial benefits that extend far beyond the simple cost/infrastructure equation.

The other compelling argument is business continuity. The study by Nature Climate Change estimates that the cost of flooding in the world’s 136 largest coastal cities could be as much as $52 billion a year over the next few decades (an increase of $46 billion a year from 2005 figures). Staggeringly, three US cities — Miami, New York City and New Orleans — could, between the three of them, be responsible for 31 percent of this total annual cost. These three cities stand out as having the most to lose given the contrast between their high wealth and the insignificant level of investment in flood protection.

Just looking at recent experience, the globe is littered with examples of catastrophic business losses in the aftermath of natural disasters. One thousand factories closed in Thailand after flooding. The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, had a serious negative impact on the Japanese economy — not only substantially reducing production in the regions directly affected, but also disrupting supply chains throughout Japan. This summer, the extensive flooding in Eastern Europe cost an estimated $18 billion in economic losses.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. My colleague Dale Sands’ response to my query was much more inspiring. He cited the example of a forward-thinking New Zealand utility enterprise that had reaped great benefit from placing adaptation considerations at the center of its business decisions.

Recognizing that earthquakes are a common occurrence in that part of the world, this company spent $6 million preparing for earthquakes. After the great earthquake of 2010, the utility realized an estimated savings of $60 million because the investments they had made in hardening their infrastructure ensured continuity of service in the wake of the disaster.

Not only did the utility company protect its own assets and revenue stream but its ability to continue functioning in adverse circumstances avoided the additional trauma the citizens of Christchurch would have experienced had they lost power, and also spurred the ability of the regional economy to recover more quickly. The brand equity such outstanding service in adverse conditions must have generated is surely a less tangible but equally important consideration for the future health of the company.

Presenting the case study at the UN Global Platform in May 2013, Roger Sutton, then CEO of the utility and now Chief Executive of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority stated, “…despite the high cost in damages of the 2010 New Zealand earthquakes, the Christchurch economy had never stopped functioning, which was a testament to investments in disaster resilience.”

Our challenge as creators of the built environment is to help our clients recognize that disaster preparation is not an incremental investment but a fundamental element of the core investment strategy. We know that a unit of planning will reduce response actions by four to seven units of expenditure. We also know that the frequency of natural disasters is increasing, and that the majority of the losses are uninsured. Some companies will not put an emphasis on business continuity planning while others will. Some companies will survive and flourish while others will not. Healthy companies cannot thrive in stricken cities any more than a city can flourish without a robust economy. More

 

Providing science to European climate policymakers

IIASA models provided quantitative input to the recent proposal of the European Commission on climate and energy goals for 2030.

On 22 January, 2014, the European Commission agreed on a proposal for new climate and energy targets for 2030, including a reduction of EU greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below the 1990 level. Negotiations leading to the compromise were informed by an extensive impact assessment, for which IIASA researchers contributed data and model results to help policymakers understand future emissions, as well as the potential benefits and costs of various climate policies.

Estimating future emissions

IIASA’s Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases Program estimated mitigation potentials and costs of non-carbon dioxide (non-CO2) greenhouse gas emissions for all EU member states. Non-CO2 greenhouse gases account for about 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Current policies, which address waste, fluorinated gases, and air conditioning systems, are expected to reduce these emissions by 20% in 2030 compared to 2005. Using IIASA’s GAINS model, the researchers showed that at a carbon price of €45 per ton of CO2, further measures could reduce non-CO2 emissions by about 40%. A higher carbon price would lead to emission cuts of more than 50%.

IIASA’s assessment also highlighted the importance of the co-benefits of addressing both air pollution and climate change simultaneously, showing that cuts in particulate matter concentrations compared to present policies would reduce health damage from air pollution in 2030 by around €5 to 11 billion and air pollution control costs by more than €2 billion. For more information see MAG News: EU climate and energy strategy.

Changing land-use

Researchers in IIASA’s Ecosystems Services and Management Program meanwhile contributed research to the process, showing that changes in land use from agriculture and forestry could mean that European carbon sinks could decline by 12% by 2030. The researchers estimated greenhouse gas emissions from land-use, land use change and forestry using IIASA’s GLOBIOM and Global Forest Models. European lands currently take up more carbon as they emit, making them a net carbon sink. But by 2030, carbon sequestration is expected to decline as the agriculture and forestry sector develop. For more information, see the EUCLIMIT Project Web page.

More information

Report: EU Trends to 2050 Update (PDF).

Will President Obama Seize the Moment for Action on Climate Change?

Superstorm Sandy changed the U.S. political zeitgeist on climate change virtually overnight.

When BusinessWeekruns a cover blazoned with "It's Global Warming Stupid" and politicians start breaking their "climate silence," you know the jig is up. President Obama acknowledged as much in his acceptance speech, when he said he wanted to "pass on a country that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet."

The question is, where we go from here. Are Americans now prepared to accelerate action to slow climate change? Or will a new fortress mentality take hold? And I mean that quite literally. One commentator recently suggested surrounding lower Manhattan with retractable walls, begging the question of where all that displaced water would go.

As the dust settles from the election, the president will come under increasing pressure to make good on his promise, through both domestic action as well as taking a more cooperative stance at the UN climate negotiations. Much will be written about this in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, he might take some inspiration from some of the many transformative solutions being put into practice elsewhere. The good news is that there are many such examples, so many that the United Nations climate agency launched an initiative to celebrate some of the most exciting, inspiring stories they could find. "Momentum for Change" is a platform for encouraging and celebrating innovative action -- designated as "lighthouse" activities -- either to reduce climate change, or to reduce its impacts.

In 2012, the initiative focused on the urban poor. To qualify as lighthouse activities, projects needed to not only address climate change, but also to improve the lives - both socially and environmentally - of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the community. They also had to demonstrate their catalytic potential for long-term transformational change, which meant that they had to be capable of being repeated elsewhere, and could be scaled up over time. More

 

NASA Warned New York About Hurricane Danger Six Years Ago - Chris Mooney

In 2007, I published a book called Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. It was inspired by what my family had been through in Hurricane Katrina (I'm from New Orleans), but at the end, I looked forward to what other families and other cities might have to experience—if we don't start to think in a much broader way about our society's stunning vulnerability to hurricane disasters.

As I wrote:

Even as we act immediately to curtail short term vulnerability, every exposed coastal city needs a risk assessment that takes global warming scenarios into account…Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York have been studying that city's vulnerability to hurricane impacts in a changing world, and calculated that with 1.5 feet of sea level rise, a worst-case-scenario Category 3 hurricane could submerge "the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge." (Pause and think about that for a second.)

No need to pause and think any longer—last night, just over five years later, much of it came to pass. And indeed, climate change, a topic embarrassingly ignored in the three recent presidential debates, made it worse.

Back in 2007, NASA scientists calculated that with 1.5 feet of sea level rise, a Category 3 hurricane could submerge the Rockaways, Coney Island, southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island.

Last night, southern Manhattan reportedly received a 13.88 foot storm surge, a record high and more than enough to flood much of the city. We’ve all seen the pictures. What’s more,according to Ben Orlove, director of the Master's Program in Climate and Society at Columbia University, about a foot of that surge would not have been there if not for the sea-level rise already caused by climate change over the course of the 20th century.


So, yes, we knew. We knew well ahead of time that this could happen, and we knew global warming was already making it worse. We knew, but we did virtually nothing. (Well, New York did empanel a sea level rise task force, which put out a report—and you can see how that turned out.)


But it’s not just about what we knew—it’s also what we know going forward. We know that if you think this is bad, well, global warming will make it still worse in the future.

Take a recent Nature study by climate scientists at MIT and Princeton, looking at future storm surge scenarios under climate change. The researchers used multiple computer model runs to simulate a variety of storm surges hurled at New York City—explicitly looking at future climate and sea level rise scenarios. By 2100, New York is projected to experience between .5 and 1.5 meters of sea-level rise. Taking the midpoint of this estimate, or a 1 meter sea-level rise, the paper found that what is currently a 100 year storm surge event for New York could become a 20 year event by 2100. More


 

Assessing the Damage From Hurricane Sandy

What will climate change bring to New York next year?

Wastewater

Five of New York’s 14 wastewater treatment plants are in the lowest-lying areas of the city, within the mandatory evacuation zone. When the plants get filled to capacity or flooded, sewage and stormwater mix and bypass the plant, flowing directly into New York’s waterways — and now, into flooded streets and buildings.

 

Subways and Railroads

By Tuesday evening, subway and commuter rail service remained suspended, and limited bus service was set to resume at 5 p.m. Joseph J. Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that damage to the subway system was being assessed, and that service would be restored in pieces. Tunnels under the East River were all flooded and pumping had begun at some of them. Mr. Lhota said that flooding was “literally up to the ceiling” at the South Street subway station in Lower Manhattan. Long Island Railroad remained closed due to flooding on the tracks. Two Metro-North lines north of 59th Street continued to be without power, and Mr. Lhota estimated that there were at least 100 trees downed on the tracks. Staten Island ferry and railway service were also still suspended. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said there was “major damage on each and every one of New Jersey’s rail lines.” New Jersey Transit and PATH service remained suspended.

Work Begins on Flooded Subways

Seven subway tunnels under the East River were still flooded on Tuesday, most of them in Lower Manhattan, where a 14-foot storm surge topped subway entrances and grates.

More

It is a horrible event and a rough lesson for any city and country to experience, however, I know that residents of Small Island Developing Stares (SIDS) and Arctic Communities will sympathize and commiserate with the residents of New York and other devastated area of the East Coast of the United States.

This however, is what residents of Small Island Developing Stares (SIDS) and Arctic Communities either go through or have the possibility of being faced, with every year. I therefore sincerely hope that the United States will become more cognizant of what the future holds for SIDS and Arctic communities, and support our adaption and mitigation efforts both financially and in the International Community by supporting international climate change treaties that will bring about a lowering of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, our only Home. Editor