ClimatePrep

Notes from Copenhagen: Trust – Why Are We Here?

Copenhagen is a very open city. For instance, it’s really rare to see a bike in a stand that’s been locked.

Sculptor Marc Coreth made this brass and ice polar bear, currently on display in Copenhagen's Nytorv Square as a symbol of the plight of polar bears © WWF-Canon/Richard Stonehouse

Sculptor M. Coreth made this brass/ice polar bear, on display in Copenhagen's Nytorv Square as a symbol of the plight of polar bears © WWF-Canon/Richard Stonehouse

This is amazing, given the actual number of bicycles here in Copenhagen. There are counters at some of the major intersections that show the number of bikes that have passed by that day, and walking past one of these counters around noon I saw that over 10,000 bikes had passed. And this is in weather that has been hovering around freezing, very windy, and extremely wet for the past week.

All of these unlocked bicycles tell me two things. First, the Danes have a profound and implicit trust in the goodness of the world. And second, they are deeply committed to making changes in their daily lives to improve the sustainability of Denmark and the rest of the world.

This setting makes Copenhagen an inspiring place to be for this meeting. And here in the convention, the energy level is very high — even colorful. There are lots of men and women in suits running between meetings, but there are also lots of official “stunts”, activities and events that are meant to demonstrate the longing to reach some kind of strong outcome here.

Most of my time on the first day was spent making connections and focusing on my actions and priorities for the next two weeks. My particular focus here is on climate adaptation, and especially the role of ecosystems and water resources as cross-cutting issues for adaptation.

However, these are not the main issues here in Copenhagen for the negotiators and delegates. The biggest, most public issue of concern is a new treaty to supersede or improve the greenhouse gas climate mitigation Kyoto Protocol. But adaptation is on the agenda.

Over the next two weeks, discussions about adaptation will mostly center on how to finance the necessary projects that will help people and ecosystems adjust to the impacts of climate change. This money would come from countries like the US and Western European nations that have emitted most of the greenhouse gases over the past 300 years and would go to the most affected countries that also have the fewest resources to facilitate adaptation. These are places like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Vietnam in Southeast Asia, and Peru in South America. This issue is called “adaptation finance”, and most of the debate focuses on creating a pool of money for short-term funding (for countries already feeling dire impacts) and a long-term mechanism for facilitating more gradual change.

I’m here because I’m worried about how that money will be spent. Right now, the language describing adaptation is very vague. As someone who works in many countries on climate adaptation, I’m concerned that adaptation as it is now described doesn’t really describe actions that are environmentally sustainable. The way that adaptation is being talked about now ignores much of what we already know: we must be holistic, we must think of people and ecosystems together, and sustainable water management is critical for helping all nations adjust to most of the impacts of climate change we face now and will face in the future.

These issues seem very straightforward — at least they do to me. But they’re not. Most countries are hesitant to be told that adaptation must look a certain way. And many nations are afraid that thinking about ecosystems is a distraction when you’re thinking about helping people adapt.

Actionaid demonstration in Copenhagen on 12/6/09 speaks to the great tension surrounding adaptation finance © WWF-Canon/Richard Stonehouse

I fear this is short-sighted. We have to somehow carry everything and everyone through these crises together: humans and ecosystems and species. Humans are not separated from ecosystems. This is especially true for water issues. If we don’t manage water in a sustainable way, then we will lose our basis for agriculture, energy production, industrial water uses, and last but not least, domestic water use (i.e. drinking and sanitation). The way that we know we are managing water sustainably is to watch ecosystems and species and see how we’re doing.

The hold ups in the debate on these issues have been multifaceted, even in the first 24 hours. The G77— a group of 77 developing nations — and China have put forward a pretty good proposal for linking adaptation to ecosystems, and within the text are some useful mentions of water. But they are divided. Saudi Arabia, for instance, wants its own special form of adaptation — an economic adaptation to compensate for the loss of economic revenue if less oil is consumed globally. And the “umbrella group” (a set of large industrial economies, like Australia and the US) wants a more narrow and limited approach to adaptation. Perhaps this difference is natural. The umbrella group won’t ever be likely to receive any money for adaptation from an adaptation fund. They’ll be donors, even as they cope with the impacts of climate change. For example, places like the Murray-Darling basin in Australia are already dealing with very severe droughts and economic restructuring as a result of climate change. Adaptation agreements don’t have a lot to offer these countries. Moreover, most of them are strapped for cash right now as a result of the financial crisis. In this sense, their fears are not dissimilar to Saudi Arabia. The costs of adaptation are complicated, to say the least.

But we are in Copenhagen, after all. A city of trust in our fellow global citizens. If the Danes can keep their bikes lock-free, perhaps we can use this opportunity to communicate, compromise, and ultimately find some way to ride into a better future together.