Destructing Paris: Analyzing the Cop 21 draft text

The newest Cop 21 draft has several new edits. I am really enjoying this website à http://paristext2015.com/2015/12/1193/ that calls themselves “ Destructing Paris: Analysing the Cop 21 draft text. It has been helping me understand the compact information in the drafts better and what has been changing as edits happen. The differentiated aspects of the mitigation have been narrowed down considerably including policy regarding developing nations. The two options now are

            1. developed countries taking ‘quantified economy wide absolute emission reductions of all greenhouse gases’, and developing countries take ‘diversified enhanced mitigation actions.’ In other words, the developing countries will not have to submit strict targets (and their reporting requirements will be different).

2. Or, all Parties should aim to take quantified economy wide absolute emission reductions over time, with developing countries taking the lead (ie a transition period)

What the website that I have been looking at talks about is how this second option is slightly stricter on developing countries because many developing countries submitted INDC’s do not have emission reduction targets. But, larger emitter developing countries such as China and India have already submitted quantified reductions. So these options may not be that important since China and India would be the ones we are really worried about with these options.

As I read through these drafts and get very confused and have to use websites like the one I listed to help me understand... I feel this comic is very appropriate. 

Obama's speech at Cop 21: OMG he went over 3 min, climate change isn't real

I watched President Obama’s full speech at Cop 21 here is the link-à https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWKy9zN90A

To summarize this is a speech from Obama that all leaders could give. They were technically given 3 min though Obama stretched over that time with about 8 min. In social media I have heard a lot of controversy about him going over time from people commentating on his vide. But, I do not think that controversy is too important as it seems to me people just want something to complain about especially dealing with Obama. His speech seemed to be very motivating with the fact that it kept stressing all nations coming together, helping each other because there is not another choice. He touches on how we are all responsible for this and no nation is immune to the effects of climate change. He says we are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it. I thought this was a very powerful statement because I think it provides an explanation to why there is controversy over climate change. It is hard because our generation can’t look back into history to find a time when our world was the way it is today and seek for help to learn from the past. Instead this is all so new and urgent. In class today Professor Jessy, who just got back from a week at Cop21, said the debate over climate science or how real climate change is was gone at the meeting. It was a widely accepted fact and now it is just down to politics and taking action. Obama talked about how the USA recognizes our role in creating this problem and how we now embrace the responsibility to do something about it. We must deny the enemy of the notion that we can not do anything about climate change. We already are making progress and we need to stick with that and promote globally. We said yes to the first ever national standards of limiting carbon pollution. We are on track for our agreed reduction of emissions from 6 years ago and Obama just made a new target last year. Obama anticipates Cop 21 to give the world hope setting climate targets, setting long term strategies, and helping developing nations.

Going back to what Jessy talked about in class today about how the debate over whether climate change is real is over, instead not it is all about the politics. I thought this cartoon perfectly fit that.

Paris Dec 2nd Clusters & Water Pact!

A few days into the conference and through my skimming of the reports and following the news I have not heard much talk about my research topic public health and infectious diseases. I anticipate talk about it in the coming negotiations, as it is a crucial topic in climate change. But, I have heard a lot about what other clusters in our class are focusing on. The mitigation group met today and discussed several things one being REDD+ which is also what we discussed in class and had a reading on. The technology development and transfer group, within that group I was interested that India called for language on promoting access to technologies. This is something we talked about in class. We discussed how in the subject of climate change it is crucial to make information easily understandable and accessible.

Another important note about today in Paris! The creation of the international Paris Pact on Water and Climate Change Adaption was announced today. This pact is to make water systems more resilient to climate impacts. This pact is huge because it involves a coalition of national and cross-border river basin organizations, governments, funding agencies. Local governments, companies, and civil society. These projects make up over $20 million technical assistance and potentially over $1billion in financing . This is a great start to see some substantial pacts being made in Paris. Gives us hope for the rest of the negotiations!

Vulnerable Populations----Women and girls??

One of the most interesting topics to me was what President Michelle Bachelet of Chili spoke up about today regarding climate change.  She stated that women are both victims of, and apart of the solution to, climate change. She stressed the need for countries to seek inclusion of gender to ensure climate justice. I am VERY intrigued how this topic will play out in the conference as I have not heard much about gender and climate justice. I decided to look more up of Michelle talking about this issue. I found on ipsnews.net that Michelle wants for full participation of women at all levels of the negotiations, and an outcome that responds to women's needs and advances women's empowerment. This is because women and girls make up the majority of the world's poor because they have much more limited access to information and financial resources than men which puts them at higher risk of severe climate change impacts. This is definitely interesting as we have seen todaythe popular talk about vulnerable populations affected by climate change. Michelle brings a very interesting proposal to the table as I bet not a lot of people think of gender also when considering vulnerable populations.

DAY 1 @ Paris: Least Developed Countries Fund pledges!!

Today kicked off the first day of the UNFCCC meeting in Paris. As I follow the conference online I have tracked a lot of talk of supporting developing nations and those most vulnerable to climate change.  The leaders speeches talk about how poverty and climate change are intertwined. Presidents Danilo Medina Sanchez, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel Luxembourg, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and President ANote Tong Kiribati all discussed this issue in their statements. Prime Minister Xavier Betel Luxembourg said, “ The conference needs to send a strong signal to the poorest and most vulnerable countries about provision of support in the Paris agreement”.  This topic did not stop at conversation, instead 11 donors pledged close to $250 USD million in new money for the Least Developed Countries Fund.

The United States was apart of this pledge and Obama spoke saying, “ In concert with other nations, America confirms our strong and ongoing commitment to the Least Developed Countries Fund. And tomorrow, we’ll pledge new contributions to risk insurance initaitves that help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after climate related disasters.” It seems that this is a very pressing issue at this years UNFCC meeting and most nations agree that the developing world needs international support through climate change policy.

Anthropology and Policy Making- Because you know we are humans and not robots

This week we were instructed to read Collaborative Event Ethnography: Conservation and Development Trade-offs at the Fourth World Conservation Congress. This article was very interesting as it was an anthropological approach to policy making. They aimed to understand the both formal and informal nature of conservation policy-making in WCC international forum. This is very important to analyze because behind all policy we are all human and social structure and presentation effects our decision making. They noticed through their research that the most productive theme that arose was the way in which the structure and processes of the meeting influenced what was happening. When they entered the conference the pavilion hall was decorated with wall-sized illustrations. Throughout the conference each meeting they experienced large slideshows containing images with great detail and spectacular visuals. Structurally they noticed the organization of journeys, an experiment to facilitate communication and help attendees navigate the complex schedule of the WCC, greatly affected the participants. The journeys had hard copy colorful illustrated packets. These journeys allowed people to look through to see what meetings, what sections, and what times they were interested in. While this was convenient it affected the conference’s success in many ways because this way certain people were showing up to the same themed events. This helpful journey packet turned into a a communication barrier to the conferences attendees. This is interesting to a fact that you can argue this can be kind of corrupt. Policy making is a serious concrete thing that comes with a lot of thought and time. It is scary to think that not all thought and opinions could be incorporated because of structural things like journeys at these conferences. 

If climate change were whales we would help

This week was our climate policy and politics week and it was so interesting! I have always been fascinated with politics as it seems like such a mystery to me. First we had Jeff Anderson come to our class and he brought up examples of politics in our media and how we react as a nation. The first thing he talked about was a story of a whale that was caught somewhere in Alaska and how the media and everyone was so considered to go help this whale. He said a headline in the new read " If Bosnians were whales, we would help." We contemplated this for awhile and then changed Bosnians to climate change. To me this is a very powerful statement and exposes corruption among our nation and how we respond to things. I think about why and contemplate maybe it is urgency or the visual appearance of immediate danger. To society the whale was in immediate danger and they can see that, climate change isn't one thing one place immediate like that. Climate change is gradual, wide spread, and can't offer us a visual like the whale can. We also talked about 4 ideal environmental world views; market liberals, institutionalizes, bioenviromentalists, and social greens and how they play into climate change.

Today Matt Lindstrom came into our class and spoke about Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the commons". This is a metaphor for anything held in commons. Within the commons people are self-interested trying to maximize their benefits and profits. As we discussed solutions we talked about regulation, a top down command and control method. In terms of climate change this would be the solution of carbon taxes. A second solutions was privatization, so in terms of land putting fences up so the individual owning that area reaps all costs and benefits. A third solution is hybrid which would be cap and trade and climate markers. We experimented with these solutions by working in groups on hypothetical case studies. My group had CSBSJU parking regulations. Our top down solution was parking permits categorized by faculty,students, seniority, etc.. Our bottom up solution was for individuals to just understand and respect societal norms of seniors getting the best parking spots, out of respect first years just don't park up close. Our hybrid solution was a cap and trade type system where you purchase random parking passes and them sell your passes to the highest bidder. This activity was very interesting because as we progressed in case studies we implied these same ideas to climate change. An interesting case study was on rivers. If you have a huge chunk of land and split it in 4 equal square chunks and you have a river running through the middle. What if business A and that start of the river has cattle polluting the river that business B has a brewery that has a beautiful porch overlooking the river. A pollutes the river giving B a bad view. This  is called 3rd party effect where costs are pushed over to other resource users. This is the essence of climate change and why we need policy.