Category Archives: global warming

Ecosystem Marketplace

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The Ecosystem Marketplace is a Web site devoted to information on environmental and climate change markets. The “library” link includes the following resources: latest laws, reports, whitepapers, articles, presentations, case studies, and books. The site also has a blog (EcoEko).

Ecosystem Marketplace

http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/index.php

From the Web site description:

The Ecosystem Marketplace seeks to become the world’s leading source of information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services; services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. We believe that by providing solid and trust-worthy information on prices, regulation, science, and other market-relevant issues, markets for ecosystem services will one day become a fundamental part of our economic and environmental system, helping give value to environmental services that have, for too long, been taken for granted.

China Greentech Report 2009

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The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have released the “China Greentech Report 2009″

http://www.amcham-shanghai.org/AmChamPortal/Committees/CommitteeSubCategoryStory.aspx?ID=460&CommitteeID=27&SubCategoryID=208&WT.mc_id=100285

From the Executive Summary:

This report is the culmination of an open source, collaborative research process, started in 2008 and concluded in August 2009, which has involved literally several hundred people in China and around the world. This process combined a dedicated strategic research team with ongoing and significant input from the Initiative’s partners and strategic advisors. The research process included the collection and consolidation of data from a wide range of Chinese and English language external sources; conducting of interviews with partners, strategic advisors and other industry experts; and in-depth analysis o fteh market. based on this research and considerable rounds of interaction with partners and strategic advisors, the Initiative developed key findings included in this report.

The China Greentech Report 2009 is the culmination of an open source, commercial collaboration of over 80 of the world’s leading technology companies, entrepreneurs, investors, NGOs and policy advisors. These organizations joined the China Greentech Initiative to address many of the important questions facing those interested in participating in this complex, rapidly changing market:

How should one frame the greentech opportunities that exist in China?

What are the most important environmental issues impacting China and whatare the forces driving them?

 How has China’s government and the international regulatory communityresponded to these issues?

 Which existing and emerging greentech solutions are most attractive forChina in the short, medium and long terms?

What are the biggest challenges facing China’s greentech markets?

 How might stakeholders overcome these challenges in order to accelerate

China’s greentech market development?

Country Profiles from UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office

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A nice complement to the “CIA World Fact Book” are the Country Profiles from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Although not as detailed as the World Fact Book, the FCO site does provide historical information with important dates and details on trade and investment policy for individual nations. Some country profiles also include paragraphs on environmental and climate change policy (e.g. Brazil).

Country Profiles – Foreign and Commonwealth Office

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/country-profiles/

China Green from Asia Society

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China Green, from the Asia Society, provides videos, photographs and graphics on climate change, energy policy, sustainability, and environmental conditions in China.

From the Web site’s description page: 

China Green, a multimedia enterprise, will document China’s environmental issues now and for years to come and will strive to serve as a web forum where people with an interest in China and its environmental challenges can find interesting visual stories and share critical information about the most populous nation in the world whose participation in the solution to global environmental problems, such as climate change, will be indispensable.

China Green

http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/

Geoengineering Reports from Copenhagen Consensus

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The Copenhagen Consensus (Bjorn Lomberg) has issued two reports on geoengineering as a response to climate change.

Engineer a Better Climate : Policy and Pespective Papers

http://fixtheclimate.com/#/component-1/the-solutions-new-research/climate-engineering/

An Analysis of Climate Engineering as a Response to Climate Change

J Eric Bickel & Lee Lane

Abstract

This paper offers a preliminary and exploratory assessment of the potential benefits andc ostsof climate engineering (CE). We examine two families of CE technologies, solar radiation management(SRM) and air capture (AC), under three emissions control environments: no controls, optimal abatement,andlimitingtemperaturechangeto2°C.Ouranalysissuggeststhat,today,SRMoffers larger net benefits than AC, but that both deserve to be investigated further. In the case of SRM,we investigate three specific technologies: the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere, theincrease of marine cloud albedo, and the deployment of a space-based sunshade.

We estimate direct benefit-cost (B/C) ratios of around 25 to 1 for aerosols and around 5000to 1 for cloud albedo enhancement. Technological progress might significantly lower direct costestimates of stratospheric aerosols and thus raise the expected benefits. Yet, large uncertaintiesremain about the science and engineering of SRM. Only a substantial research program couldresolve these uncertainties, but the very large potential net benefits of SRM offer strong prima facie evidence for including R&D on SRM as a part of any portfolio of climate policies duringthe next decade.

Therefore, we suggest that the Copenhagen Consensus allocate an average of approximately 0.3%of its $250 billion climate-change budget ($750 million per year) to SRM and AC research over thenext decade. SRM is the higher priority, owing to its larger and more current net benefit potential.This research program should explicitly focus on identifying possible side effects, especially thosewhich might imply non-trivial costs.

WeestimatethatthebenefitofasinglewattofSRMisworthover$6trillionunderanemissions control regime of optimal abatement. Furthermore, we show that a single watt of SRM has thesame economic benefit as capturing and sequestering almost 65% of yearly CO2emissions,which, in conjunction with AC’s significant costs, argues in favor of SRM in the near term.

A Perspective Paper on Climate Engineering as a Response to Climate Change

Anne E. Smith

Abstract

In their Assessment Paper, “The Potential Benefits and Costs of Climate Engineering: A Case for Research,” Bickel and Lane have provided a deterministic case for funding a long-term,intensiveresearchanddevelopment(R&D)programforgeoengineering.Becausetheir estimate of the requisite R&D budget is about 0.1% of their deterministic estimates of the net benefits of using geoengineering, they argue that it is unlikely any of the uncertainties they did not analyze would affect the case for performing the R&D. This Perspectives Paper overlays a consideration of potential unintended consequences from geoengineering onto theiranalysis and extends it with calculations of value of information from the R&D. It finds that the value of perfect information is indeed much higher than Bickel and Lane’s proposed research budget for almost all but the most extreme assumptions about probabilities (eitheroptimisticor pessimistic) on whether geoengineering will produce significant unintended consequences. However, it also finds that imperfect information may have zero value for a wide range of assumptions. Thus, a standard analysis of value of information seems to undercut a view that uncertainties not addressed in the Assessment Paper are unlikely to affect the merits of conducting the further research on geoengineering. This Perspectives Paper, however, also takes a more critical look at the theoretical assumptions underpinning the standard formula for value of information, and finds that they may be inappropriate in a public policy making process. This paper suggests an alternative value of information formula to match the current issue’s role as part of societal decision making by groups who hold very different sets of probability assumptions. When the proposed alternative calculation of value of information in a social choice context is applied, one obtains much larger value of information estimates over a broad range of probability assumptions.

UNFCCC Greenhouse Gas Emissions Map

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United Nation Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) has teamed up with Google to create a greenhouse gases emissions map.  Click on an individual country to see statistics and graphs on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and waste management. The map currently only includes developed countries.

UNFCCC Greenhouse Gas Emissions Map

http://maps.unfccc.int/di/map/

Online Publication:Human Rights and Climate Change

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This month, the Commonwealth Secretariat published a short discussion paper on climate change and human rights. It is available online for free, although registration is required.

Human Rights and Climate Change: An Approach that Puts People in the Forefront of the Debate. July 2009

http://publications.thecommonwealth.org/

From the introduction:

A human rights model shifts the paradigm from

one that identifies ‘victims’ (who are most often

perceived as passive) to one acknowledging affected

groups as active stakeholders and critical voices.

Indeed, a rights-based approach frames the terms of

engagement and lays the basis for claims to be made

by ensuring affected populations are given the space

to speak, be heard, take action and influence

responses.

Oxfam Briefing Paper on Climate Change

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On July 6, 2009, Oxfam released its report on the effects of climate change on communities around the world. It includes discussions of diseases, agricultural production, and flooding.

Oxfam Briefing Paper.  Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and Poverty

http://www.oxfamsol.be/nl/IMG/pdf/RAP_Suffering_Science_English_020709.pdf

From the reports introduction:

Climate change is a reality and its effects are apparent right now. The scientific predictions are shifting continually – they almost always look bleaker. But Oxfam’s experience in nearly 100 countries is definitive: hundreds of millions of people are already suffering damage from a rapidly changing climate, which is frustrating their efforts to escape poverty. This paper is the story of the ‘affected’.

To tell this story we have brought together the voices of two communities – scientists who study the impact of climate change, and the people who are suffering harm now. In March 2009, 2,500 leading scientists gathered in Copenhagen to present updated research across the entire spectrum of climate change. This paper is based on their work, and as much as possible upon the latest science, set alongside the first-hand stories that emerge from Oxfam’s work with poor people.

Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) Reporting Framework

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Climate Disclosure Standards Board is a NGO of major accounting firms, business groups and environmental organizations that studies how to account for carbon usage and climate change initiatives on financial reports and statements.

Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) website                       http://www.cdsb-global.org/

CDSB Reporting Framework                                                                     http://www.cdsb-global.org/uploads/pdf/CDSB_Reporting_Framework.pdf

From the report’s introduction:

CSDB is a consortium of business and environmental organizations formed for the purpose of jointly advocating a generally-accepted international framework for companies to disclose information about climate change-related risks and opportunities, carbon footprints, carbon reduction strategies, and their implications for shareholder value.

This Exposure Draft offers CDSB’s proposed Reporting Framework for public consultation. The Framework is designed on a principles-based model which aims to find the right balance between rules and principles, thus allowing flexibility for judgment to be exercised by management on those aspects of climate change they consider most likely to affect the economic performance and prospects of their company. The principles-based model also allows for management’s view to be balanced against the demand by users of information for greater consistency of disclosure. Whereas many initiatives that collect information about climate change focus on the essential matter of what should be reported, CDSB also focuses on how reporting can provide investors with information that is more useful to their decision making, (“decision-useful” information), by aligning its proposed Reporting Framework to existing relevant principles and objectives of financial reporting. In the process of continuous improvement that characterizes principles-based frameworks, CDSB aims to work toward the position reflected in its proposed Reporting Framework where decision-useful climate change-related disclosure is made in mainstream financial reports.

CDSB’s objectives are to:

• Respond to the demand for information about how climate change affects or is likely to affect the economic performance and prospects of companies;

• Elicit disclosures in mainstream financial reports that can be integrated into investor analyses for the enhanced efficiency of capital allocation;

• Provide business with greater certainty on how to respond to demands for information about climate change;

• Align the needs of information preparers and investors by connecting financial and non-financial business reporting through a focus on how climate change affects value creation;

• Harmonize corporate climate change-related disclosure to form the common approach that is necessary for comparability and for the implementation of policies under discussion through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations; and

• Provide conceptual and practical input into deliberations by regulatory agencies contemplating the introduction or development of requirements on corporate climate change-related disclosure.

WTO-UNEP report on Trade and Climate Change

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The World Trade Organization and the UN Environment Programme released their 194 page report on international trade and climate change.

WTO-UNEP Report: Trade and Climate Change

http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/trade_climate_change_e.pdf

Additional information at: http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres09_e/pr559_e.htm

From the report’s’ executive summary:

This Report provides an overview of the key linkages

between trade and climate change based on a review

of available literature and a survey of relevant national

policies. It begins with a summary of the current state

of scientific knowledge on existing and projected

climate change; on the impacts associated with climate

change; and on the available options for responding,

through mitigation and adaptation, to the challenges

posed by climate change (Part I).

 

The scientific review is followed by an analysis on the

economic aspects of the link between trade and climate

change (Part II), and these two parts set the context for

the subsequent discussion in the Report, which reviews

in greater detail trade and climate change policies at

both the international and national level.

 

Part III on international policy responses to climate

change describes multilateral efforts at reducing

greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapting to the

risks posed by climate change, and also discusses the

role of the current trade and environment negotiations

in promoting trade in climate mitigation technologies.

 

The final part of the Report gives an overview of a

range of national policies and measures that have been

used in a number of countries to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions and to increase energy efficiency (Part IV). It

presents key features in the design and implementation

of these policies, in order to draw a clearer picture of their

overall effect and potential impact on environmental

protection, sustainable development and trade. It also

gives, where appropriate, an overview of the WTO

rules that may be relevant to such measures.