The Dhaka Declaration

To build on some of the points made in the last post, it should be said that climate change is not just an issue of temperature. The effects of a changing climate will ripple through environmental systems and impact both ecosystems and human society in a variety of different ways. This is not just a problem for climatologists, this is a problem that will literally affect us all in one form or another.

Intergovernmental organizations such as the UN have the unenviable task of trying to solve problems that transcend borders. Most environmental problems fall into this category as physical systems rarely respect political boundaries. In this way, they are rather untidy.

The Population Elephant

The are enough "elephants" in the room whenever climate change is discussed that it is amazing that there are ever any rooms big enough in which to hold these conversations. One such elephant that few want to discuss but all acknowledge is critical to understanding cumulative impacts and social vulnerability is population.

As part of the background conversation, the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) has documented the critical need for nations to examine population dynamics when it comes to vulnerability and enhancing our ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Vulnerability describes the different ways in which groups (of people usually) are particularly susceptible to small changes in environmental systems. Resilience is the ability of those affected to adjust and accommodate changes as they happen.

Fighting Climate Change

One thing that is becoming clearer and clearer is that there is often a dissonance between groups of people who talk about "fighting" climate change. Some see it as trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of decreasing or mitigating the worst effects these gases will have on how quickly and to what extent climates are affected. Others interpret fighting climate change to mean a recognition that difficult and painful changes are underway and we need to prepare for and adapt to these changes the best we can, with special care to look out for the most vulnerable groups.

Perhaps "fighting" is simply a bad metaphor that doesn't convey the complexity of the situation. "Coping" would be a more apt description of adaptation strategies while "debugging" might be a better way of speaking about mitigation.

Much of what people hear about on the news concerns the failure of the UN talks to produce any meaningful reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change around the world. The main provisions of the Kyoto Protocol were voluntary targets for emission reductions that nations pledged to reach. What was hoped for in Copenhagen last year was a legal agreement that would be able to force nations to live up to those voluntary pledges. Instead, what was accomplished was that everyone agreed that this is a very bad problem that we should all work towards solving at some point. Essentially, that is what the Copenhagen Accord concluded.

Mitigation and adaptation

One of the many differences being featured in the negotiations is the amount of emphasis different parties are placing on the concepts of mitigation verses adaptation. Mark and I have had a number of conversations about the importance the talks should be placing on one or the other. Mitigation is what most of the press is talking about when they cover Copenhagen and the work of the UNFCCC in general. It involves stopping and ultimately reversing the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Whether you are talking about cap and trade, carbon taxes, carbon capture and sequestration or stopping deforestation, they are all different strategies working towards the same goal. Ultimately, this is the key to solving the problem. The real problem is that so far, we haven't even been able to slow down the rate at which gasses are being emitted let alone reverse the trend.

The relevance of this distinction is perhaps best encapsulated in a quote from a book I read before coming to Copenhagen, Kjellen (2006) writes: "In a world with so many other problems, it will take time for emission reductions to have a real impact, though this ultimately needs to happen. Therefore, adaptation will be a major component of the climate change regime. So far, more attention has been paid to mitigation than to adaptation."

So if our ability to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is going to take a while, then what do we do about the effects of climatic change that we are already seeing and expect to get worse. Adaptation won't solve the problem of climate change, it will simply alleviate the symptoms. It's like taking Tylenol when you have a headache. At some point, alleviation of symptoms is good medicine.

I wrote earlier about vulnerability and the notion that certain populations (and ecosystems, and environments) are going to pay a much higher cost than others. The ways in which climate changes are impacting different places is highly variable. This sets up a situation where existing inequities are highlighted. The UN is a place where amazingly wealthy nations sit side by side with the very poor. Inequities are important here and highly visible.

So at the same time that there is a wide gap between the big emitters of greenhouse gasses and countries that produce less than their fair share, there is a wide gap between the countries that are expected to shoulder the burden of climate impacts and those that are less vulnerable. As luck would have it, many of the poor countries who have contributed less to the problem of global warming are going to be impacted more. The very existence of small island countries like the Maldives will be threatened as sea levels change. (Even discounting the addition of glacial meltwater, as seawater gets hotter it will expand on its own, leading to higher sea levels.) Kenya and other semi-arid countries will be more susceptible to drought and water stress. So how much do we (or should we) concentrate on alleviating the symptoms of the disease verses curing the cause?

One interesting aspect of this distinction between mitigation and adaptation is that climate skeptics who remain unconvinced (or unconvincable) about the human causes of warming trends witnessed over the period of historic record, should really have no problem with the concept of adaptation. If, for whatever reason they would like to believe, observed temperature trends are causing ancillary problems such as drought, desertification, floods, and human migration, then these should be addressed regardless of the ultimate cause.

If you were walking down the street and saw someone who had just been stabbed lying there bleeding to death would it be ethical to walk on by and excuse it by telling yourself you're not responsible because it wasn't you that stabbed them? At some point broader discussions about climate change become complicated. This is not because the physical and chemical mechanics of atmospheric composition and behavior are difficult to predict but because the formulation of the problem itself shifts constantly. Is climate change a mechanical environmental question, a political question, or an ethical question? The answer so clearly illustrated here in Copenhagen is that it is inevitably all of them. This is why we need Geographers and researchers who can integrate research across boundaries.