On behalf of the committee, I formally welcome both Ms Niamh Garvey and Mr. Tom Athanasious. We look forward to the presentations. Some members of the committee are tied up in the Chamber, but they will attend as much as possible. I call on Ms Garvey to proceed as we are very interested to hear her comments.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Discussion.
Ms Niamh Garvey
On behalf of Christian Aid Ireland and Trócaire we are delighted to have the opportunity to present to the committee and we thank it for the opportunity to do so today. As the committee is aware, 2009 is a major year for climate change policy. By the end of this year, we hope to have a new global agreement that will affect climate policy internationally for many years to come. We believe the stakes could not be higher.
For those of us in Ireland, climate change will have a significant impact. More importantly for organisations such as Trócaire and Christian Aid Ireland and for the poorest and most vulnerable communities throughout the world, climate change poses a serious threat now and into the future. Together with other agencies involved in the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, we have been campaigning for a fair and equitable agreement by the end of this year. We commissioned some research by the organisation Ecoequity to help us think through more clearly what we mean by fair and equitable and what Ireland's fair share amounts to within any international agreement. We are delighted that Mr. Tom Athanasious is in attendance to present the findings of the research. I will pass over to him, after which I will briefly summarise what the research means in terms of what Trócaire and Christian Aid Ireland seek from the committee.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
It is very good to be here. I will be as brief as possible. The slides to which I refer are not presented as slides; they are print-outs, but I will speak to them anyway because I must do so. There is no need to speak to the first two print-outs as they represent the science. It is possible to talk a great deal about the science, especially now as there is a great deal of it. This print-out is simply a picture of the Nile delta in 2000, followed by a projection of how the Nile delta could appear with an increase in sea level of one metre. As the committee can see, it is completely inundated. New scientific data recently available has projected an increase in the sea level of more than one metre during this century. This is to make the point that what we are dealing with is a true emergency and one which could be very disruptive to society as we know it. It is an emergency which could impact on Ireland very directly. An increase in the sea level of one metre, or possibly two, would have a major impact.
Unfortunately, the main print-out to which I wish to talk did not reproduce very well. There are supposed to be three lines on this print-out. I do not really know what to do, except ask the committee members to invoke their imaginations.
That is no problem.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
Fortunately, Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has printed the labels of the three lines, so we can imagine the actual lines. The top line represents the science and an emergency global emissions reductions trajectory that has a reasonable chance of avoiding catastrophe. The bottom line, which is not visible on the slide, but which follows the path of the words "emissions pathway in the north", represents a 90% reduction in emissions in all wealthy countries by 2050. We might call this an aspiration. The line to which I wish to draw the attention of the committee is the middle line. This is formed by subtracting the bottom from the top and represents the remaining atmospheric space for the developing world.
The question on the floor in the international negotiations and the reason the international negotiations are deadlocked can be seen in this line. Essentially, it shows that no matter what the north does and no matter how aggressive its emission reductions, global emissions in the developing countries must peak very quickly and decline very rapidly, even while the population of the developing world is still poor. The question is: "What climate regime could enable this to take place?". That is the problem we are trying to solve as a collective human body and that is the problem on our plate. Not only must we solve that problem, but we must solve it in the middle of a development crisis. The question is how we do it. What would be fair in such a situation? That is the question on the floor.
I will skip to printout No. 8, which refers to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. This is a convention we have all ratified. This is the convention under which the current negotiations are taking place. The convention states that the only basis for an international deal is a deal in accordance with the principle of historical responsibility and national capabilities. Ecoequity and our partners at the Stockholm Environment Institute have codified that. All we have done is figured out how to measure historical responsibility and national capabilities for all countries to derive a share of the global burden or effort which must be taken for each country.
At this point in the conversation we could have a long technical discourse about how we did so. However, I will simply provide an example in this print-out. This one shows India, China and the United States of America. It shows a line going across all three countries which we call the development threshold. The line represents an income of $7,500 per person per year. As it is PPP adjusted, it represents the same ability to consume in all countries. The curve defines the income distribution in the countries in question. We define capacity as the sum of all income above the development threshold. If I were to show a slide of this type for Ireland, it would be too small to see because the width of the graphic represents the population of the country and Ireland has only seven hundredths of 1% of the global population.
The next print-out shows the same type of process with respect to historical responsibility and shows that the sum of the historical emissions in a country are not the same as the responsibility in that country as one must exclude the emissions of the poor. The challenge facing the international climate regime is to protect the poor from the very rapid economic and geopolitical transition which must take place if we are to avoid utter climate catastrophe.
On page 10, which shows a number-heavy chart, I draw attention to the line featuring the word "Ireland". Ireland has seven hundredths of 1% of the global population. According to projections taken before the financial crisis, its per capita gross domestic product in 2010 will be $39,000, which makes it a rich country.
The figure will have to be adjusted.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
Given that all the figures have to be adjusted, the percentages will not change much.
Unfortunately, they will change significantly because the burden is not the same in every country.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
A system such as this would be constantly readjusted and the figures would be recalculated annually for each country.
The next columns show percentage of global capacity, percentage of global responsibility and the responsibility and capacity indicator. This final column features the number I have come to the joint committee to discuss. We skipped a long conversation on how precisely the calculation was done. Unlike the process by which the European Union did its calculations, our calculation was done transparently and one can see what we did. We calculate that three tenths of 1%, or 0.3%, of the global responsibility and capacity belongs to Ireland. Members will note that this figure declines to 0.26% for 2020 and 0.22% in 2030. The reason for these reductions is not that Ireland is projected to become less rich but that other parts of the world are projected to get richer faster.
I will explain what that statement means for Ireland. The climate negotiations are basically deadlocked on the issue of comparability of effort, that is, how we can calculate an equal, fair, legitimate effort for every country. We argue that the only transparent and legitimate way of making such a calculation and the only one that will be accepted in international negotiations is by using a straightforward codification of the official equity principles of the framework convention we have ratified. These are historical responsibility and capacity to pay.
The graph shows the implications of the analysis for Ireland. The top line shows Ireland's business as usual projections, which were also calculated prior to the financial crisis, while the dashed line represents Ireland's share of the European Union's 20% target, which will officially be met irrespective of the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting. The dotted line represents the 30% reduction trajectory Ireland will face if the United States participates in any meaningful way and a global deal is reached. The bottom line in the tan area represents the allocation the greenhouse development rights framework gives to Ireland based on the emergency trajectory. Even on that basis, there is a strong chance of overshooting the official European Union temperature target of 2° Celsius and risking catastrophe.
Print-out 13 makes these figures a little more tangible. I would like members to stare at this print-out until my time runs out because it is of such interest. It takes the same obligation wedge that we claim represents Ireland's fair share of the global obligation under an emergency 2° Celsius increase in temperature, which is the degree stabilisation pathway, and divides it into indicative domestic and international efforts. The line in the centre which divides the indicative domestic effort from the indicative international effort — while not hard and fast — is worth thinking about because it represents what would happen to Irish emissions if they were to decline by 90% by 2050. As members can see, it is an extremely aggressive line.
How would Ireland meet its extremely challenging target, as calculated by the greenhouse development rights framework? It would do so by enabling mitigation in other countries. This would involve chipping into the finance and technology transfer that the developing world has made clear will be necessary if an international accord is to be agreed. That is not to say that Ireland would be able to buy its way out of making domestic emission reductions. It arises simply because the country could not possibly make enough domestic emissions reductions to meet its total obligation.
What this means in financial terms is the issue about which everyone cares. The deadlock in the international negotiations is really about money. If it cost one dollar to save the world we would all agree to put up the dollar immediately. The problem is we do not know what it will cost to stabilise the climate. For a variety of complex reasons, the cost estimates are all over the place, ranging from the very high estimates made by Nicholas Stern in his report of a few years ago to the low estimates the European Commission is currently promulgating around the world. The Commission figure of €175 billion in 2020 and a further €50 billion for adaptation is unrealistically low.
The second last print-out shows a similar chart to the print-out on global responsibility and capacity I have just described. However, the figures are shown in dollars rather than percentages. I am only showing the numbers for 2020, again using projections made prior to the financial crisis. Ireland's per capita income is almost $44,000 per person. Its capacity, that is, income exclusive of that of the poor, in other words, only the income of people living above the development threshold, is $186 billion. Its national obligation is $2.5 billion. As a percentage of projected GDP, this figure amounts to 1.1% or $486 per person per annum. The total cost of saving the world, at least on the climate front — there are other costs — is 1% of gross world product. The European Union assumes that the total costs of climate stabilisation will be only one quarter of 1%. Sir Nicholas Stern believes it will be much higher and that the costs of not doing so will be higher again, possibly as high as 50% of gross world product.
In that context it is interesting to note that if one adopts the European Union's projections — the per capita bill for this enormously ambitious mitigation programme I showed the members in the Irish reduction wedges — and assumes as the EU does, that this will cost one quarter of $1 trillion globally in 2020, the cost for a citizen of Ireland is much less than $1 a day. Everything depends not on how fair shares are calculated but the cost. What is it a fair share of?
The point of all this is that the international negotiations are deadlocked. They are unlikely to be successful unless there is real leadership from the European Community. There will be leadership from the new administration in Washington but it will not suffice to break the deadlock. Carbon based growth is over. The crisis is extremely bad. There are vast plumes of methane coming off the Siberian permafrost which is already melting. The projections in terms of ice sheet dynamics, which followed from the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are truly terrifying. It is a realistic possibility that we will see a sea level rise of two metres in the next century.
In that context we must talk about a treaty that would maximise sustainable effort over all countries for a long period. In that context we must ask what would be fair, even if we do not want to hear the answer.
Ms Niamh Garvey
It is a complicated piece of research to explain in a short period but I emphasise that from the perspective of Christian Aid Ireland and Trócaire it is incredibly useful because for the first time it sets out in a clear and transparent way Ireland's fair share of the global mitigation and adaption requirements. We urge the committee to do what it can to call for Ireland to demonstrate leadership within the United Nations negotiations by advocating an approach that is scientifically rigorous as well as fair and transparent. Ireland must begin to look at adopting targets at the scale implied by the GDRs consistent with our overall responsibility of 0.26% of the global effort required. I thank the members for their time.
As the witnesses are aware, we scrutinise the EU proposals. We have accepted the 20% reduction and a 30% reduction if there is a world agreement. That is 2012 to 2020.
On the various points the witnesses made, will they clarify whether there is an assumption of an increase in population?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
Yes. We use the United Nations median projection, which appears to be the one that will take place. We have taken population increase into account.
At what level?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
To approximately 9 billion, when it is projected to level out. If responsibility and capacity is to be calculated in any reasonable way, population must be taken into account.
Regarding these calculations, if circumstances in, say, the African continent continue to deteriorate and there is a shift of people to the wealthier sections of the world by way of immigration, who in turn will start using more carbon, is that taken into account?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
Immigration is a major issue. If we do not stabilise the ice sheets it is projected that approximately 300 million people will be on the move relatively soon in human time — 50 to 75 years from now. That would be terrifying and disruptive and would probably have unfortunate geopolitical consequences. Would it lead to more people coming to the wealthy world to live high consuming lifestyles? Yes, I suppose it would.
That is probably one of the most serious aspects of all of this. If every person who moves to the wealthier parts of the world engages in the greater activities we are involved in, it increases the problem.
I thank the witnesses for their presentation, which is quite technical. There is much to absorb and we will have to take time to examine it. I am curious about their approach because I get the impression that in terms of the European Union they are critical of the methodology applied to the challenge. Looking at what happened in Bali and the record in this area, and I appreciate America has a new President which hopefully means there will be a transformation, until now it appears that politically the European Union has been exemplary in setting the agenda and goals that at the time would have been seen as being overly ambitious — the 20% and the 30% if there is an agreement. I am somewhat surprised by that criticism. I am not saying it is right or wrong; I am simply saying it is a new angle. The witnesses referred to the calculations the EU makes as being non-transparent. Will they explain that in more detail?
The second point they make is that the financial estimates are off the wall, so to speak.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
They are just low.
They are low to a point that would be very worrying. The witnesses might flesh that out somewhat because one expects that the European Union is in a position to have the resources to make a fairly good stab at projections, and we all understand projections are "guesstimates" to an extent. The witnesses might discuss that in some more detail because they are saying a major commitment will have to be made in financial terms, that in terms of Ireland's obligations we will not be able to meet our obligations internally in total, that we will have to spend a great deal of money and transfer money externally to meet our commitments, and that amount is much larger than we had thought. That is an important area to consider. I would like to know more about the calculations, both in terms of what the EU has done and the difficulties the representatives are highlighting to do with transparency, and the disparity between the two.
I presume it is a mistake but Denmark is referred to on chart 10. I presume that should be Ireland.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
I suppose so, yes.
I am sorry, it is chart 13.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
I do not know how we missed that.
We are all fallible. I only asked in case I had missed something.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
On the EU question, I am sorry if I appeared critical. The more accurate adjective would be "disappointed". Many people waited a long time for the European Commission communication that officially launched the EU's negotiating process, which came out only a few weeks ago. The general sense is disappointment. The Kyoto protocol was not implemented. The deal made in 1997 was that the Annex I countries would go first and then the non-Annex I countries would also assume commitments. Now, 12 years later, with the scientific predictions having radically worsened, the question is whether the accord to be reached in Copenhagen will be dramatic enough to make up for lost time. Everybody appreciates that the EU has been the only source of leadership in the negotiations. However, the EU's announced negotiating position is so full of provisos and limitations that it is extremely unlikely to be well received by the G77 negotiators.
With respect to the cost calculations, it is true the EU has deep and extensive analytical capabilities. If we looked at the background papers behind the Commission's communication, we would see different cost estimates based on a variety of methodologies. By the time it got to political level, however, with the writing of the communication and the meetings of Ministers and Heads of State, the latter of which was last week, everything had disappeared except the lowest of the possible cost estimates. This is not too surprising because the tendency in the whole economic community, in estimating the total costs of the transition, has been to find the most plausible way of estimating the cost to be as low as possible, for obvious political reasons. If one believes the cost will only be $0.25 trillion per year globally, it is not that difficult to think about going forward with the transition. One only needs to come up with ways of obtaining the money. I hope that answers the question.
I thank the delegates for appearing before the committee. It is very interesting stuff. I was in Bali with one or two other people in this room; these conversations were beginning at that stage and they have developed somewhat since then. I would like the witnesses' view on how the existing commitments made by the European Union fit in with what has been attempted in terms of global agreement. Ireland and the other 26 European countries have all made commitments in terms of targets for 2020 and an even bigger target if there is international agreement. I am not clear, however, on how that fits in with the negotiations with other parts of the world and how an emissions trading system in the EU, for example, could synchronise with emissions reduction plans in other parts of the world.
Setting aside the challenge of the developing world, I have difficulty in understanding — I have studied this to a certain extent — how we can have any global agreement if the European Union sets up an emissions trading system while the US and parts of Asia have a completely different approach. If we are relying on emissions trading in one part of the world and seeking a global agreement in terms of shouldering the cost of reducing emissions, I do not see how we can achieve this unless there is a global emissions trading system or some new system which is bought into by the EU as well as the rest of the world. Clearly, Mr. Athanasious is someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about these issues.
The European Union has essentially tried to give leadership by example. We have set up an emissions trading system and put a whole set of emitters — 106 companies in Ireland — into the system. These will be taken out of the realm of Irish responsibility because they will have to trade all their emissions by purchasing carbon credits and so on. Meanwhile, the rest of the emissions problem is for the Irish Government to deal with in terms of financing, reducing emissions and so on. We have that system in place after much negotiation, but we are also negotiating a global agreement. I would like to hear how the witnesses think those two things can fit together. If there is to be true cost-sharing throughout the developed world, we must have a trading system or some form of carbon credit management whereby money flows across borders — out of the EU into other countries and into the EU from other countries.
I appreciate the scientific work being done in calculating Ireland's burden from the point of view of our global responsibility. I agree with that and I agree that ambitious targets should be set, even if they are very much above what we have agreed in terms of the EU. There are ways of doing that whereby we can create employment, so it will be a positive rather than a negative. My problem is that the systems to which we have already committed are not compatible with what we are now trying to achieve in terms of a global agreement. There seems to be avoidance of discussion of that problem. It is as if we have two parallel projects. The EU is doing its own thing anyway and we have agreed to improve on this if we can get global support, yet at the same time we seem to be having a debate on trying to get global agreement — as the witnesses are discussing — whereby every country takes its fair share of the burden in terms of actual cost. How, for example, will a country such as Ireland invest in the developing world to mitigate against emissions increases or insufficient reductions? I agree with that, but I do not see how it synchronises with the system we have agreed to pursue in terms of emissions reduction in the EU.
I am sorry for going on, Chairman, but we do not often see experts who can answer questions such as these. I appreciate the science behind the figures and I agree with them by and large, but the political challenge is that we need a system of payment. We have agreed that the 106 companies that are Ireland's biggest emitters will pay through the emissions system, but we do not know how the rest of the country will adapt. There will be everything from electric transport to bio-fuels to energy conservation projects. However, that does not solve the problem of the global system that is required to get agreement. I would be interested to hear the views of the witnesses in this regard.
I could not agree more with Deputy Coveney. We need a credible system because otherwise it will be difficult to sustain enthusiasm. I agree that it is a disjointed response and, therefore, hard to believe in. Economically, the world is in a downward phase, but it is cyclical; over a period of 100 years it might remain consistent. I am interested, however, in population growth and the relationship with climate change. What is the outlook of Trócaire and Christian Aid on the unmet need for contraceptives throughout the world? The growth in population is causing a problem for the planet. What is the attitude of the two charities to population growth and how can it be curtailed? It is the elephant in the room when discussing climate change — people cause trouble.
I was in Bolivia last week and the fumes from the buses would choke a person. Buses are an easy way to see pollution, with thick, black smoke coming from them. The standards in the transport sector are appalling but Bolivia is a desperately poor country. The last thing people there are concerned about is the cleanliness of the buses. It is as if we are banging our heads against the wall. We are in the settled world and experts such as the delegates live in an ivory tower, removed from the struggles of daily life in the developing world.
It is depressing to look at India, where the cheapest car in the world will soon be produced. I was stuck there in traffic. India is a big country and I was only in a tiny part of it.
What about carbon emissions? The Senator's carbon footprint must be huge.
I find it depressing that the developing world seems to be repeating the mistakes of the developed world. Would it not be better to allow the developing world to skip the mistakes we made and move forward to pure and total efficiency? From a road safety point of view, it is great that families in India will travel in cars as opposed to on motorcycles but we are storing up trouble. It is depressing that we are forcing the developing world to make the same mistakes we made.
I was lucky to hear a briefing on the presentation in Buswells Hotel yesterday. The fourth graph on page 2 of the presentation shows the emissions pathways in the southern and northern hemispheres. This is a symbolic graph but the emissions pathway in the south should perhaps not be so steep, while the pathway in the north should be steeper. Are we not assuming we will have to make larger percentage reductions in the north sooner than in the south?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
The point of the chart is to show that if we want to keep within a global climate budget that is plausibly safe and if the north does as much as it can possibly be expected to do, a 90% reduction by 2050 without international offsets, by subtraction the amount of space left for the south is so small that its emissions must peak before 2020 and then drop rapidly, although not as rapidly as global emissions must drop but still very quickly. This must happen while the people of the south are still poor.
The difference between very rapid reductions in a wealthy country and in a poor country is substantial. That is the point — what kind of a climate regime can enable this to happen in the midst of a development crisis? It is a challenging question and we are trying to answer it. We must ask if our answer is interesting but only in an academic way that has nothing to do with the real world. We do not think so because we are trying to show as clearly as possible why the international negotiations are deadlocked. I may be wrong but our presumption is that the success of the international negotiations is important and will manifest itself as an improvement in the lives of the poor.
There is no way to solve the climate problem that does not lift the poor. In a way it expands the agenda, an agenda that is already overwhelming but that is the fact of the matter. Most people in the world are primarily concerned about development and if the climate regime does not provide the ways and means for that development to be safe and clean, it will not happen.
Ms Niamh Garvey
Perhaps I can respond to Senator O'Malley. With regard to the second point about developing countries repeating the mistakes we have made, that is the strength of the greenhouse development rights framework. It states that if we conceive of Ireland's obligation as twofold, with domestic reductions in emissions but also emissions reductions in third countries for which we pay financially, these financial transactions will help the developing world to develop along a greener pathway, enabling southern reductions in emissions on the graph through financial transfers from rich to poor. That will allow green development in order that the mistakes of the developed world are not repeated.
That is an ideal.
Ms Niamh Garvey
It sounds like an ideal but the negotiations are ongoing and these issues are being discussed; it depends on us having the political will to deliver on them. There are ways and means to ensure it will happen.
There is a difference between developing countries and poor countries; we are mixing the two. India and China are developing countries but they are far wealthier than Bolivia or countries on the African continent. Therefore, they should not be put in the same category.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
It is the strength of the GDR framework that it treats each country as being on its own. There are no groups of countries. If one looks at this chart, it specifies a responsibility capacity index for Ireland. It also specifies one for China and India. This is the differentiation question. It is one of the goals to solve that question.
Ms Niamh Garvey
Yes, so GDRs would work out a responsibility for every individual country. The Senator mentioned the population question as being the elephant in the room, but I do not think it is. The population question is pretty much guaranteed to arise at any discussion I attend as a development person talking about climate change. The reason population does not feature in negotiations on climate change is because it is really not the most important issue. What is important in terms of climate change is consumption. In Ireland, our per capita emissions are around 17 tonnes per person per year, compared with countries in sub-Saharan Africa like Uganda or Malawi where the figure is 0.1 tonne per person per year. So we have over 100 times the emissions of people in those countries. Even in China and India the per capita emissions are quite small, around 1.9 and 2.9 tonnes respectively, or in that range.
The challenge in terms of tackling climate change is about reducing consumption or finding greener ways to consume, rather than looking at population figures per se. At a localised level, population pressures on the environment are a significant factor. The main approach by any development agency is that reducing poverty is the best way of tackling any sort of pressure on the environment in terms of population figures. As income levels rise, population numbers tend to decline. When we bring the population question into the climate change debate it tends to be a red herring — more people equal greater emissions — but in fact it is how we consume that is really important. From the perspective of a developing country, throwing the population question in may be designed to shift responsibility and blame away from the rich consuming world — the US and EU, including Ireland — to developing countries with growing populations. However, that is a bit of a red herring in terms of the historical causes of climate change and what we need to do in order to tackle it fairly, equitably and effectively.
If mass migration is one of the consequences of not doing anything, surely population is a key question.
Ms Niamh Garvey
If mass migration is something that we are concerned about and if displacement is something that we believe climate change is a cause——
Surely population is more than just a red herring.
Ms Niamh Garvey
It is certainly an argument for tackling climate change more effectively, if population movements are of concern to us.
Surely concerns about population and population control are the key to climate change. It is certainly more than a red herring if one of the consequences of us doing nothing and ignoring Trócaire's presentation will be, as the speaker has pointed out, mass migration in 50 or 60 years.
Ms Niamh Garvey
The point that we are discussing, about how best to tackle climate change, relates to how we can reduce emissions. When people throw in the population question it is about how we can reduce populations. It would be difficult for developing countries to come to the table and be told by the US and Europe that they must reduce their populations when the historical cause of climate change is consumption by the US and Europe. It is a major challenge but, in terms of the discussions, it is important to deal with it in a responsible way.
One cannot avoid the prickly question either. I know what Ms Garvey is saying, that we should not be lecturing the developing world on population, but it is a huge issue. The world's population in 1960 was 3 billion, while 50 years later it is 6 billion, and it will reach 9 billion. There are more people alive in the world today than have ever died. There has been an extraordinary growth in population, which will have an impact on climate change and development. Ms Garvey is right in saying that the best way to reduce rapidly increasing population is through education and development. However, as people's incomes grow through improved development, their consumption also increases. That is evident from the difference between 15 tonnes of carbon emissions per person per year in Ireland and less than half a tonne in Uganda. As one solves one problem, one can create another in wealth creation and development. Anyway, we can go down the route of population control.
I will now ask Mr. Athanasious to finish his contribution.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
The question is the system's disjointed nature and the relevance of this analytical exercise to the negotiations in Copenhagen on possibly getting out of the current situation, when what is being implemented in the EU does not scale to a global system. There are a number of very good proposals being mooted in the negotiations, including fund-based proposals from Mexico and the G77. An extremely interesting auction-based proposal came from Norway, but a tax proposal by the Swiss is going nowhere. Everybody knows that the international linking of CAP and trade systems will play a major role. The question, however, is the political context within which that can occur. What other institutions exist apart from the CAP and trade institutions? One cannot do adaptation finance though CAP and trade, even if it worked brilliantly and there were no problems with it, which nobody really believes anymore. A lot of ideas are being mooted and one of the reasons the EU communication was disappointing was that the EU was not concrete in terms of its institutional preferences. The Chinese put a very concrete proposal on the table saying "This is how we think financing should work", whereas the EU is still playing its cards very close to its chest.
Is Mr. Athanasious saying the EU does not have a clear idea of what it wants itself, or even between the countries?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
Right.
They are already committed to a system within the EU, and that is the problem. Countries have signed up to that detailed, laborious process. We only signed up to it in December 2008, but now we are talking about setting up a whole new structure. It is required but I can understand the political reticence within the European Union considering what we have achieved so far.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
I will make one last point. The EU architecture turns on an effort-sharing system. At the end of the day when one grinds all the numbers, that system produces results for the EU which are very similar to the results that GDRs produce. If one just uses GDRs to analyse the EU bubble, which is an exercise we have done, the difference is that this system is transparent and comprehensible. It is articulated only in terms of the UN's official principles — that is to say, there is a political buy-in for this. The other difference is that it explicitly protects the poor — it has a development threshold and because it does that, it can be scaled globally. In a sense therefore, the problem that the committee is pointing to — which is that the EU burden-sharing system will not scale globally — is the problem that we tried to solve with GDRs. The numbers that come out at the end of the day are large but that is less because of the burden-sharing system than the severity of the global emissions target we are analysing. We claim that this is the global emissions target which is dictated by the science and so that is the reality we have to face. Our plea is for Ireland to add its voice to the side of the negotiating table that is grounded in scientific and ethical realism as regards what needs to be negotiated in the next year or two, at the outside.
Mr. Athanasious mentioned in his presentation a number of times the divergence between the new approach and the Stern approach, as representing two ends of the argument. Where does he stand as regards that particular argument?
My second question is possibly more appropriate for Ms Garvey. In slide 5 she refers to the developing crisis which we are all familiar with. In terms of Trócaire, Christian Aid and the various organisations' responses to that crisis, how much of Trócaire's budget is spent on eco-friendly responses to it? As regards green solutions for dealing with water and electricity, does Trócaire invest in alternative fuels or energies to address those issues? Does either Trócaire or Christian Aid have a policy in that area?
Mr. Tom Athanasious
I am fascinated by the first question and could talk about it for a long time. To give a first approximation, it is the difference between top-down economic models and bottom-up sectoral country-by-country analysis. The emerging consensus is that when one takes the Stern viewpoint one is asking a different question and asking, in effect, what the long-term impact of the growth of the global economy will be. That is how one will think about cost and compare that to the long-term impact on the growth of the global economy caused by ecological catastrophe, which will be larger still.
The bottom-up analysis is also being pushed by the Mackenzie Institute, which is very influential in that it has done more detailed sector-by-sector analysis than anybody else. This analysis is bringing in much lower numbers, but these are not indicating what the impact on global growth will be but rather the incremental cost of mitigation, in other words, the size of the cheques that have to be written, as opposed to the growth that is going to be lost at the global level. It is very interesting to think about those two different ways of evaluating cost, but the EU's position, which is the emerging consensus, is that the latter, namely, the size of the cheques to be written, is the more interesting and politically salient question. Perhaps they are not quite as small as the EU has estimated, but still it is a consensus that in 2020 it will be less than $0.5 trillion. Some of that might represent loans or private expenditure. In a bottom-up perspective the pie may be sliced in many different ways. It is not a great deal of money compared with the size of the global economy, it is just that somebody has to pay for it.
At the institutional level, therefore, the question is about how one contrives institutions that allow governments to pay their fair share without having to actually write cheques. That is why the Norwegian auction, which we do not have time to talk about, is so interesting, because one never has to actually write a cheque – one just bids on allowances.
We have an enormous challenge over development aid and how we distribute it wisely and oversee it, the 0.7% of GDP argument. In other committees we have discussed the auditing of those funds and whether we should work through governments or NGOs and how we may have adequate oversight. We have similar or larger financial development flows to developing countries through climate change. Does this not pose similar if not even more difficult problems, as alluded to by Mr. Athanasious in his presentation, as regards auctions and different methodologies for making these transfers work?
Whatever way one looks at it, if we are to try to help people in the Congo, we are up against exactly the same types of challenges that we have with conventional development aid.
Mr. Tom Athanasious
I agree with the Deputy.
I will paraphrase a former Taoiseach who allegedly said to his economist, "Never mind whether it works in practice, does it work in theory?" My only difficulty in this regard is that I believe Mr. Athanasious has a very strong theoretical model that is fundamentally rooted in equity and responsibility, but we are up against the same enormous difficulties in going into Bolivia and making decisions on whether we pay the Government there to introduce cleaner buses. Whether we work with an NGO or a UN affiliate, we continue to face the same messy power versus responsibility, bottom-up, top-down challenges we have experienced with conventional development aid.
That is the difficulty in measuring the burden share in purely cash terms. Ms Garvey will probably kill me for saying this, but a fairly coherent argument could be made that the billions of euro spent on development aid have not resulted in many of these countries developing as they should. There is, perhaps, less poverty now, in terms of access to water and education and the millennium goals. Some progress has been made, but whether it is the progress we had hoped to achieve ten or 15 years ago relative to the money that has been spent, is questionable.
An honest question has to be asked if this is to be measured purely in terms of financial aid packages to actually deliver results on climate change. There is a failed model in terms of development, in many instances, although not in all of them. The global agreement on structure as regards how we are going to continue to deliver is what I am as interested in, in terms of the actual cost of that and who pays. I do not believe we are any closer to that and this is my problem.
Unfortunately, time has caught up with us, and I have to bring this part of our meeting to a close, as there are other commitments.
Ms Niamh Garvey
Perhaps I can make a very quick response because a number of issues have been raised. First, the GDR factor is a measure of how we share out that responsibility. GDR does not require that this has to be based on cost or emissions reduction targets and so on. It can be operationalised in a number of ways, whether through emissions reduction targets, our costs or whatever. It is purely a framework to allocate that responsibility among countries. All of the challenges around how we deliver it are open to question and we are interested in engaging in those types of discussions.
As regards overseas development aid, in our experience it is every effective. Irish Aid has a tremendous record, as well as Irish NGOs. Many of the challenges on poverty continue around issues of policy and coherence. Climate change is posing a whole new challenge that is undermining the gains we have made in terms of development aid. Equally, unfair trade rules continue to undermine people's ability to work their way out of poverty. Aid can only do so much and we need to get good policies in all of these other areas, of which climate change is——
That is just the point I am making. It is not just a cash-centred discussion.
Ms Niamh Garvey
That is correct.
Perhaps Ms Garvey might let the committee have some figures as regards green solutions.
Ms Niamh Garvey
I do not have the actual figures, but I should like to give the Deputy a full response on that. Is it best to do that by e-mail, Chairman?
Ms Garvey can come back to us through the clerk to the committee.
Ms Niamh Garvey
I thank the Chairman.
I thank both witnesses for the very informed discussion we have had. They have given us a good deal to think about. We will go into private session to deal with some matters, including the delegates' report.
The joint committee went into private session at 12.30 p.m. and adjourned at 1 p.m. until 2.15 p.m. on Wednesday, 1 April 2009.