Living at the carbon margins: climate change and the environment. change and the environment

Living at the carbon margins: climate

change and the environment.change and the environment.

Michael Redclift

Department of Geography,

King’s College, London.

Global preparedness...

• Using thresholds for risk identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007), on current trends, in only 92 months - less than six years - we will move into a new, more perilous phase of warming. perilous phase of warming.

• It will then no longer be "likely" that we can prevent some aspects of runaway climate change. We will begin to lose the climatic conditions which, as NASA scientist James Hansen points out, were those under which civilisation developed.

The carbon margins

� In this presentation I want to look at life on the ‘carbon margins’ – areas most affected by climate change [Mexican Caribbean and Bangladesh coast].

� To illustrate the way in which the drivers of climate change carry implications for both mitigation and adaptation policy.

� To argue for locating governance in everyday life decisions.

Income level ‘capacity’ for mitigation and

adaptation above basic needs.

Global consumer classes 1990

1990-2010

• Transnational ‘consumer class’ probably rose from c.1.1 billion to

c.2.0 billion.

• China and India alone now account for more than 20 per cent of

this class: at least 326 million additional consumers.

• Below them those with more than $7000 (US) at ppp rose by an • Below them those with more than $7000 (US) at ppp rose by an

additional one billion people. These people are in the consumer

‘waiting room’..

• The ‘consumer class’ now represents c. 19 per cent of Chinese

population, 33 per cent in Brazil, 43 per cent in Russia and 89 per

cent in Western EU.

• The number of passenger cars in the hands of ‘new consumer

countries’ rose from 62 million in 1990 to over 200 million in 2010.

Carbon markets

• On top of low and inconsistent funding for renewable energy, the shift to a low carbon economy is being further frustrated by another market failure in the trade for carbon: in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme.

• Bad market design, feeble carbon reduction targets and the recession have all conspired to drive down the cost of carbon emission permits, undermining economic incentives to recession have all conspired to drive down the cost of carbon emission permits, undermining economic incentives to develop renewable energy.

• A ‘sub-prime’ carbon market may be developing out of the policy inadequacy.

• Relying on market mechanisms is attractive to governments because it means they have less to do themselves.

• There seems to be a hard-wired link between memory failure and market failure.

A tale of two vulnerable coastlines

Climate change

Responses: adaptation

and ‘mitigation’...

Responses: governance

Project workshops

Local governance

• Local governance is linked to wider legitimacy and

accountability – not a ‘given’.

• Local capacities and trust are undermined by political

system.

• Social and political exclusion of most people from

policy deliberations. Climate policy is not linked to

everyday life.

• Uncertainties abound – of policy outcomes as well as

science.

Bangladesh

Living on the carbon margins

�How do climate change scenarios affect the dynamics of local governance and its legitimacy?

�Good ‘adaptation’ policies do not add up to good governance

�Government structures and the urbanisation �Government structures and the urbanisation process determine the scale as well as the effectiveness of coping and adaptation strategies.

�The effects of living on the carbon margins vary widely. Adaptation = insurance/ more coastal urbanisation OR Adaptation= no insurance/small scale livelihood adaptation.

A tale of two coastlines...

• Living at the carbon margins demonstrates that risks are distributed very unequally between places and between social groups.

• In the Mexican Caribbean the ‘development’ that contributes little to mitigation [hotels, resorts, contributes little to mitigation [hotels, resorts, ecological damage] is, nevertheless, an ‘adaptive response’ to climate problems which makes long term adaptation more difficult.

• In coastal Bangladesh climate vulnerabilities are dependent on decisions taken – or not taken – at the national and global levels...