The climate alarm could not have been much louder than the special report (SR15) that was released on Monday, October 8, 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). While the Paris Agreement presented the famous target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or well below 2.0 degrees, the special report shows that such a range may actually be political wishful thinking. The Special Report clearly shows that a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels will bring about severe changes compared to current extreme weather events.

Professing a diagnosis is easier than providing a solution, especially when you do not wish to ruffle feathers. Most scientists and laymen agree that although global warming has risen and abated in the past, what has happened since the industrial revolution is a vertical climb that shows no sign of reversion. It is also generally agreed that the catastrophic rise is largely systemic – caused by the exploitative economic system that the world is locked on. It is this rigged system that blocks the routes to the needed climate action.

Is it not known that the problem is about the continual burning of fossil fuels that stokes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases? Why is the world reluctant to stop the extraction and burning of fossil fuels even though these are known to be detrimental? The answer is simply that the powers-that-be prefer profit to people and the planet. So, business as usual continues and disaster brings even more profit through displacement of poor people and the grabbing of resources that the poor and the vulnerable are unable to access or return to.

The world will cringe at the dire prognosis of the report, and then go right ahead to dig up more coal, more crude oil and proceed with more fracking. Governments will still dig for coal and destroy forests in the process, despite loud alarms raised by forest protectors such as the ones at the Hambach Forest in Germany. And in Nigeria, the flaring of associated gas will continue and the dream of a superhighway through the last pristine forest will persist in Cross River State.

Happily, the appeal court at The Hague sided with Urgenda in the case against the Dutch government and declared that the government has a duty to take adequate climate action as a means of protecting the citizens from climate impacts and for securing the human rights. Interestingly the court also discounted the Dutch government’s argument that the carbon being pumped into the atmosphere today will be sucked out in future. We note that SR15 also acknowledges that the carbon-sucking technologies being bandied about are unproven.

The IPCC report diagnosed the problem and raised the alarm urging politicians and economic leaders to act. However, some of the suggested actions are equally alarming and will likely add more problems for the poor, the unprotected and the vulnerable, in the unfolding climate chaos.

We are told that the window for halting the chaotic climate march is a narrow 12 years. It is stated that by 2030, the global emissions of carbon dioxide must be cut by 45 percent from 2010 levels. It is also estimated that by 2050 renewables should provide 85 percent of global electricity.

So, what is to be done? When the IPCC says that action must be taken to ensure that the store of carbon in the atmosphere is brought to net zero, what is meant is that the amount of carbon released from excessive consumption and burning of fossil fuels and the like must be equal to the amount of carbon that is captured and stored somewhere, locked in sinks or deflected by some other means. These proposed actions, the hallmark of market environmentalism, are the real alarm bells that we should wake up to.

And, we cannot forget that about seven million square kilometres will be needed for so-called energy crops.  That sounds nice, no? The more understandable names for those crops are biofuel and agrofuel crops. These are crops grown to feed machines or to provide biomass for some synthetic processes. An uptake of that massive size of land away from food crops will bring profit to industrial farmers; promote genetically engineered crops and attendant agrotoxics while raising global hunger and diverse social malaise. Also, more forests will be designated as carbon sinks with corresponding exclusion of communities from enjoying and managing their common heritage.

It is estimated that up to $2.4 trillion would have to be invested in energy systems in the next two decades to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is at a time that the world cannot raise $10 billion for Climate Finance.

Polluting and capturing and locking up pollutants in some carbon prisons, is not a new idea. It is a brilliant marketing spin. It allows business as usual, permits climate irresponsibility and delivers heavy cash to the polluters. For example, oil companies that use associated gas to literally scrape the bottom of oil wells will claim they are engaged in carbon capture and sequestration – even though they release the carbon in the first instance by drilling for oil. Companies engaged in geoengineering will don their beautiful badges as climate engineers and work to deploy an array of climate-interfering planetary experiments – including cloud whitening, solar mirrors in the sky, other forms of solar radiation management as well as ocean fertilisation. Yes, with net zero carbon targets we can keep cranking up global temperatures but hope that “we have the technologies” to handle the problems.

Humankind’s techno optimism gives policy makers that assurance and also that the oceans and genetically engineered trees can suck carbon from the atmosphere. It assures them that we can ape volcanoes and release particles into the sky that would block the sun and cool the earth. Suddenly it is as though our planetary systems are not interconnected and one part can be tweaked without a corresponding result elsewhere. But, who would really care if the negative impacts can be deflected on those destined for the slaughter?

Catastrophe is not inevitable if we can wake up from slumber and face reality. Life style changes and alternative investment patterns can no longer be delayed. Investment in socialised forms of renewable energy cannot be postponed. Fossil fuels must be seen as stranded or bad assets and left in the ground. Agroecological food production cools the planet, so investment and support must be extended to that and to small scale producers.

The cost of inaction or bad action is extreme. Temperature increases will make it impossible for certain crops, including maize, rice and wheat to be cultivated. Millions more will be hit by flooding. Sea level will rise, and coastal erosion will be more dramatic. With the suite of negative changes, the tide of climate refugees will rise.

The voluntary, nationally determined contribution of the Paris Agreement is clearly not the solution. It is time for nations to step up and accept legally binding emissions reduction based on historical and current carbon emissions. The alarm has been sounded. It is no more time to sleep.

By Nnimmo Bassey (Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation)

Institutional reform is a key intervention towards ensuring the resilience of African economies and the livelihoods of communities, says the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

According to James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge of ACPC, communities have long practiced many adaptation strategies and devised many viable responses to changing conditions.

“However, there are limits to how well communities can continue to practice adaptive livelihoods in the context of a changing climate. They need the support of an enabling environment created by government-planned adaptation,” he observed.

He was addressing participants at the First Kenya National Climate Governance Conference on Tuesday, October 9, 2018, which preceded the Seventh Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-VII) commencing on Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya.

The climate governance conference comes on the heels of the IPCC report on Global Warming of 1.5oC, which says the world is heading towards catastrophe if immediate action is not taken to halt greenhouse gas emissions.

“We have adequate knowledge of the causes of global warming, and the science is conclusive. There is no room for climate deniers in this discourse,” said James Murombedzi. “However, the inaction that we have seen is not because there is insufficient knowledge or technology or finance. We have enough of these to be able to change the way in which we produce, distribute and consume goods and services.”

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms what the impacts of climate change that African is already experiencing.

Mithika Mwenda of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) said the implementation of climate policies remains crucial.

“The successful implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a set of actions each country has committed under Paris Agreement to combat climate change, will be determined by the policy and legal frameworks which will be laid down by individual countries,” he noted.

African economies and communities are generally dependent on natural resources. The use and management of these natural resources also tends to be characterised by institutional structures which are poor, making them vulnerable to climate extremes.

CCDA-VII will focus on mobilising action towards the achievement of the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

The ACPC, through the ClimDev Africa initiative, is already exploring the climate governance prospects for Africa structural transformation towards achieving the aspirations of Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Climate change is cross-cutting. It affects every aspect of life, and our ability to achieve the SDGs or indeed any of the aspirations of agenda 2063 is constrained by climate change. Because of its cross-cutting nature, climate governance is complex. It requires the participation of multiple stakeholders, with sometimes conflicting interests,” said James.

With the support of DfID, the ACPC is also implementing the Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) which seeks to promote the production and use of climate information and contributes to building the capacities of hydrological and meteorological authorities across the continent.

he ACPC has also developed a five-year programme which seeks to support African countries in building resilient infrastructure and economies.

Climate finance is however a major constraint to climate action.

The ACPC posits that “if local governments access decentralised climate finance, they should be empowered to disburse these climate funds for investment in priorities chosen with communities for adapting to climate change”.

Courtesy: PAMACC News Agency

Three and a half year after the historic Urgenda-verdict by the The Hague district court, the Dutch judiciary, again, ruled in favour of Urgenda. The The Hague Court of Appeal affirmed the 2015 decision of the The Hague district court that the Dutch State violates its duty of care by not taking enough action to lower its CO2 emissions by 25% in 2020. The Court of Appeal even took it one step further by, this time, basing the duty of care on the human rights provision of article 2 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Femke Wijdekop writes.

Three and a half years ago I was present at the court house, this time I watched the verdict via live-stream, with my own future generation playing on my lap. I was nervous and in my mind I joined the other co-litigants in the courtroom. However, soon after the chief-judge started reading the summary of the verdict – which, she warned, was elaborate and would take up to half an hour – I started to feel hopeful about the direction the verdict was going.

Unlike the district court, the court of appeal accepted Urgenda’s appeal to article 2 European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life) and article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (the right to family and private life), also in a “collective action”-case as is the Urgenda climate case (I am one of 886 co-litigants). The Court said that the duty of the Dutch State, as a State Party to the Convention, to protect the human rights to life and to family and private life, requires it to take action to ward off dangerous climate change. The Dutch State had not challenged the scientifically back-up facts presented by Urgenda regarding the impending dangers of climate change, and the Court of Appeal affirmed these facts.

The next question was if the failure of the Dutch State to meet the goal of minimally 25% CO2 emissions by 2020 was tortious. The Court concluded that it was. Meeting this internationally agreed and scientifically based goal, in order to at least stay below global warming of 2 degrees celsius, requires the Dutch government to take speedy climate action. Delay of such action leads to even bigger risks of dangerous climate change.

Alternative pathways to reduce emissions presented by the State, such as CO2 capturing technologies, cannot (solely) be relied upon to reach the 25% goal. Also, the precautionary principle requires the State to take climate-action amidst the insecurity of the exact global warming and emissions-tipping points which lead to catastrophic climate change.

Next, the Court of Appeal rejected all the arguments of the State against the 2015-verdict. The verdict did not violate the separation of state powers since it is the duty of the judiciary to protect human rights which have direct effect in the Dutch legal order, such as articles 2 and 8 of the Convention. The order of the 2015 verdict to reduce CO2 emission with 25 % leaves the State with enough policy freedom in choosing the adequate measures to achieve this goal.

With other words, the State is left with enough manoeuvring space in fulfilling the obligations of the Convention (‘margin of appreciation’-doctrine). Also, the fact that the Dutch CO2 emissions form only a small part of the global emissions leading to dangerous climate change does not take away the responsibilities of the Netherlands to address its own share. (As a side-note, the chief-judge joked that ‘it would be too much to ask of Urgenda to start climate cases against all the other nations of the world’).

This all led to one conclusion: the State acted tortuously by not taking enough measures to reduce CO2 emissions according to its international obligations. The State thus violates its duty of care to protect Urgenda, its co-litigants and the Dutch populations from future human rights violations caused by dangerous climate change.

After the reading, sighs of relief and cheers sounded through the courtroom. Marjan Minnesma, CEO of Urgenda, in tears said she ‘could not have hoped for a better result’. I too felt cheerful and empowered, cheering in my living room which startled my baby and our animal companion. I felt empowered in my search to practice law from a personal values-driven place.  Many lawyers, including environmental lawyers, much to my surprise, had responded to the 2015-verdict in a ‘wait and see’, almost cynically, way. Many agreed with the objective of the climate case on a personal level, but professionally disagreed that the judiciary was the right place to enforce stricter climate policy.

This would violate the constitutional principle of the separation of state powers. The Court of Appeal today (October 9, 2018) showed that it could think beyond legalistic interpretations in order to honour its function as the protector of human rights while being rooted in the reality of our rapidly changing climate and ecology. Yes, the order to reduce CO2 emissions at a quicker pace would bring with it financial costs – the Court acknowledged – but these costs are the sacrifice we have to make to avoid much more serious ecological and social costs; harm both to human life and to nature and biodiversity.

Applause for the Court of Appeal for looking at the climate case through a wider lens and for bringing the human rights-dimension of government inaction so clearly into focus.