Animal Agriculture

One documentary I watched recently was called “Cowspriacy”.  This documentary looked at the agriculture and the meat market and all of the negative effects that it has rising the global temperature.  I found out that methane produced by the livestock is more powerful than CO2 but it is out of the atmosphere faster than CO2.  However, water and land consumption were also a big part of the message.  An article said that animal agriculture is responsible for anywhere between 18 and 51% of total greenhouse gas emissions.  I was disappointed to find there little is being talked about in terms of animal agriculture at COP21.  It seems that this is a powerful industry and it appears difficult to make changes here.  There is an expectation of this business growing in terms of production and consumption rather than decreasing which seems to be an environmentally more sustainable option.  An article found that agriculture is responsible for 93% of water depletion worldwide.  It seems to me that this topic needs to at least be talked about at COP21 at the least.  This might be one of the harder tasks to tackle because of the ties of companies but sooner or later this issue must be brought up if we want to really address the climate issues today.  The documentary and some articles have suggested not eating any meat or dairy to pull these businesses out and not let them be a major contributor to global warming.  I think that it is essential that restrictions are made on the animal agriculture industry as soon as possible.  

Alaska in Paris

I wanted to keep up to date with what was going on in terms of Alaska at Paris and I found some interesting things.  I found videos from a panel that addressed climate change and migration.  The talk amongst the panelist was that this talk was multifaceted.  The idea that this is more of a social science issue than any other issue came up.  There are still disputes over the correct terminology to use but everyone on the panel agreed that there must to be a binding agreement dealing with human mobility.  Even though the idea of human mobility is controversial a medium term action that helps people migrate is needed.  The panelists were hesitant to say that there is a direct causal relationship between climate and migration.  Other interesting information that I found about from Paris was that many indigenous groups felt that more needed to be done to help their particular needs.  One article found that relocating a single community in Alaska can cost $100 to $200 million dollars and there are 186 communities that are affected by flooding and shoreline erosion.  The Denali Commission was designed to provide support and stability to Alaska.  This commission committed $2 million for relocation in Alaska.  A leader from the Inuit Circumpolar Council spoke of the subsistence lifestyle that is being torn apart and the need to focus on communities that are vulnerable in Alaska.   A lot of money was committed to the Least Developed Countries communities but not much has been committed to helping other vulnerable people.  This article draws a link between these two groups and calls for a greater financial commitment to Alaskan communities. 

Awards at Paris

I had no idea that climate solutions awards were given out in Paris, but it was very interesting to read about who got awards and what they received them for.  I think that it is a great idea to recognize new ideas and programs that are working.  There are four focus areas; urban poor, women for results, financing for climate friendly investment and ICT solutions.  One of the more interesting programs that I read about was entitled “Planting Trees to Save the Mangrove” this is taking place in Guinea.  Local women there have decided to do something about overuse of wood in that region.  One thing they have done to improve this was to use non-polluting solar driers to dry and smoke the fish they eat instead of using firewood.  The women in Guinea have decided to plant trees to reforest the land.  The four solar dryers that have been built will save up to 40 tonnes of CO2 per year.  There were many other very cool programs that received awards.  One was even from the U.S., which was for building a network of electric vehicle express, charging stations.  Some other ideas were powering homes with solar energy, generating income with geothermal waste-heat, the sustainable cities initiative and more.  Another solution that I found to be really interesting was the “Solvatten Solar Safe Water Heater” in Kenya.  This deals with the treatment and heating of water to give people safe water.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that these projects were recognized. 

Sustainable Buildings

Twenty countries and sixty organizations decided to implement the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction.  This is to create buildings and infrastructure that will reduce emissions and be more sustainable.  There are many NGO’s that are committing to green buildings around the world.  For example 27,000 companies are involved in World Green Building Council.  The International Union of Architects represents 1.3 million architects throughout the world.  There are ninety-one countries that have included elements of commitments or plans pertaining to buildings in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.  The population continues to grow and become more urbanized, therefore this initiative is very beneficial.  The overall goals of this action plan include: minimizing energy demand, greening the construction value chain, integrating renewables through district energy, implementing integrated building design and urban planning, and engaging financing institutions.  This plan will require a great deal of financial support.  For example an additional $220 billion dollars will need to be invested in this process by 2020, which is an enormous increase from what is currently being invested.  I find this committed so exciting, especially since it happened unexpectedly.  I am curious as to how Europe will follow through with this plan, with a lot of older and historical buildings.  I would like to find out more as to if this plan will mean only implementing this on new buildings or calling for revamping older buildings as well.  I know that we have done something like this here at CSB and I think it would be really interesting to get specifics on how our buildings here are more sustainable than before. 

Protect and Restore Forests

Progress to protect and restore forests has been supported by many countries as well as non-state actors.  The private sector has the goal of ending natural forest loss by 2030.  In order to do so major companies have agreed to find responsible sourcing for major commodities like palm oil, beef and paper.  Other non-state actors have committed to investing in the production of sustainable products.  Some countries are creating a REDD+ strategy like we have read about previously in this class while others have committed to improved forest governance and transparency.  It was great to see that countries are deciding on tangible terms in ways to directly work on protecting and restoring their forests.  For example African and Latin American countries have the 20x20 initiative, which means 20 million hectares by 2020.  However this article didn’t say specifically which African and Latin American countries are helping in the process.  Overall sixteen countries recommitted to improving rural economic development while also reducing deforestation and increasing forest restoration.  Another action plan for this project that seemed very ambitious was the Landscape Restoration in which both national and subnational government under the Bonn Challenge are expecting five million hectares under restoration and more commitments for another sixty million hectares of restoration.  I am glad that leaders are able to give a personal talk to the project because often those seem to be more powerful and more moving when it is expressed that we rely on forests for every aspect of our lives.  I would like to see what the U.S. has offered in terms of forest protection and restoration. 

Paris Pact on Water adn Climate Change Adaption

One news story that I found interesting from this week’s UNFCCC negotiations was the Paris Pact on Water and Climate Change Adaption.  The plan calls to improve water resource management which will turn create sustainable development economically, socially, and environmentally.  The document laid out what certain countries will do and what bodies of water they will improve.  For example Mexico has committed to a four year plan to improve management of water resources and water series in the Mexico valley.  Mega cities Coalition is establishing a knowledge exchange platform.  Something I have really liked from reading drafts and documents of the IPCC report it that sharing information is always part of the process, I am glad to see that it has come up again.  There were many bodies of water that are focused on in this agreement, deltas, river basins, oceans, water systems to reduce poverty, distribution of water, etc.  As for the ocean, commercial shipping said they will decrease greenhouse gas emissions, there will be a plan on marine ecosystem conservation, and costal risk management and adaption plans for protection and restoration are now in place as well.  It is incredible to see so many groups of people confronting one of our biggest problems and working to fix things that could be pushed off to someone else.  There were five LPAA initiatives addressing the water and ocean resilience and that is great to see that the many aspects are being taken into account and even specific areas are given attention. 

Policy Briefing

From this week’s reading, I was able to get a better understanding of different networks and groups involved with climate change as well as how their interactions and meeting work.  I realized that there is a great deal of trade-offs and negotiations made in order to reach goals.  It was interesting to see how meetings are prepared, run and the outcomes of them, or in other words meeting culture.  I learned that the structure and processes of the meeting influences what happens and what is accomplished during the meeting.  Some of the things that happen is sharing observations and addressing a common set of questions.  This way the agenda is set for everyone to bring their own take and opinion to the meeting instead of starting from scratch.  The document noted that there are two areas of concern when having conversations, actors and scale.  These two determiners can cause tension because of different views on these two areas.  That nature of trade-offs is naturally difficult and it is not easy to point directly at a person, place and time that they are made.  Trade-offs help discussion stay on track with what needs to be accomplished according to many people.  This calls for better understanding of how to decrease the underlying tensions between members first and foremost.  For me, being able to see how meetings are structured was very helpful in understanding what the outcomes of meetings are.  I have high hopes for all of the meetings to come in Paris this upcoming week.  

Climate Policy and Politics

The guest speakers this week helped me see the economic and political side when looking at the climate.  I had never even heard of chlorofluorocarbons before.  I learned that this caused significant ozone depletion and that we were able to make a change and decrease our use of that to stop damaging the ozone.  I realized that the way we word things and the emphasis we put on certain topics can give it importance and make it an issue to focus on.  Ozone depletion was a much easier task to take on than is climate change for many reasons, but maybe this means that if we broke up climate change into smaller and simpler parts, we could see more of an affect happening.  People will have their own way of looking at concepts and I was able to look at the different motivations behind various world views in class.  The Tragedy of the Commons was a very interesting look that we applied to climate change.  At the beginning of class, I thought that when there were things open to the public and everyone didn’t own everything that might be good for sharing and everyone’s enjoyment.  A new idea with privatization was that if someone owns something then they are going to take care of it, because they can call it their own.  This could be helpful when looking at climate change or other issues we are facing.  Overfishing our oceans seems to be a big problem today, maybe because the oceans serve everyone as a common resource.  I wonder what would happen if certain countries took ownership of parts of the ocean and it was their job to protect it.  I understand that we couldn’t just put boarders in the ocean, and that if one country polluted their area, it would have a negative impact on the other parts but it might be an interesting idea to look into.  Setting regulations on what one can do to their part of the ocean may be part of this idea.  The whole idea I realized when making a positive impact, whether it’s sharing a common good or looking to make a global change, is that everyone must work together.