Climate stake and climate policy

1. Introduction

2. Climate stake

3. Response to the climate stake : the climate policy

1. Introduction

Since several decades, and mainly around the 70s, governments and the private sector begun to be conscious of the negative impacts of human activities on different environmental compartments (such as the air, the soil, water systems, ecosystems, etc.). In order to reduce the pollution, the depletion in biodiversity or natural resources, and to tackle waste management, they set up different instruments like laws, regulations for the public sector and self-regulation and rule-making for the private sector.

All those instruments and other policy mechanisms related to environmental issues and sustainability are part of the environmental policy. Since the environment is considered as a transversal approach through the traditional policy pillars and so environmental policy may cover other policy sectors such as energy, transport, economy, etc.

The first great international event to focus on the environment and to consider the water problematic was the United Nations conference of Stockholm in 1972, where the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was created.

2. Climate stake

Concern about climate change is relatively a recent topic in the environmental policy, compared to other environmental themes with more local consequences such as health impacts of pollutants for example. In fact, scientific evidences about the influence of anthropogenic activities, the potential impacts and the necessity of an international approach of the climate problematic were quite difficult to identify.

Generally speaking, climate change refers to any change in climate over time, due to natural variability. For some time past, scholars have shown that this change can also be a result of human activity (anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases).

Indeed, the average temperature at the Earth surface has fluctuated quite a lot. These temperature variations have several natural causes, such as the plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, solar radiation variability and the orbital variability of our planet. In addition, without natural emissions of greenhouse gases (like water vapour ⁽¹⁾, carbon dioxide and methane emitted by living species or by evaporation), the average temperature on Earth would be 30°C colder than it is today.⁽²⁾

Graph on the global temperature evolution

2.1. Anthropogenic influence

However, scientists have taken note that starting from the industrial revolution in the 19th century, concentrations of different greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see Figure below) have gradually increased in parallel with the growth of human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture ⁽³⁾ and stock farming ⁽⁴⁾, the use of refrigerants ⁽⁵⁾ and some other chemical components ⁽⁶⁾.

These activities have in fact an important impact on the emission of GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, etc.) and the carbon cycle balance.

Graphs on the evolution of the radiative forcing of CO2, methane and N20

2.2. Climate impacts

The increased concentrations of those different anthropogenic greenhouse gases have induced a global warming phenomenon due to the fact that less infrared radiation is re-emitted by the atmosphere towards space (cf. greenhouse gases absorb those kinds of radiation and influence the radiative forcing of the atmosphere). This is called the greenhouse effect (for more detail, see http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/greenhouse_effect).

It is expected that this global warming will have different impacts on the sea level, biodiversity, rain and drought patterns, etc. (see http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/caring2005_en.pdf for more detail) and that this phenomenon will be more or less serious and rapid according to the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere, hence according to human beings capability to slow down or, even better, stabilise and decrease their emissions.

3. Response to the climate stake : the climate policy

Climate policy covers all plans, measures and instruments implemented in order to tackle climate change and its impacts. One major characteristic of climate policies is the direct and strong link existing between the measure adopted and the causes or impacts of the climate change.

Knowing those stakes, climate policy can be split into two main categories: adaptation and mitigation.

3.1. Adaptation

Adaptation involves all decisions or activities aiming at "adjusting natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities"⁽⁷⁾. These decisions/activities can then be classified according to binary characteristics: anticipatory / reactive, autonomous / planned, private / public. ⁽⁸⁾

From a climate policy point of view, adaptation includes among other things R&D funding, technology transfer, monitoring and estimations of future climate impacts, financial means to help countries that will most probably be victims of future climate impacts, etc. However, following the IPCC definition of adaptation, measures aiming at covering damages from unavoided climate impacts (e.g.: relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction, etc.) or indirect effects ("impacts of response measures") are not taken into account.⁽⁹⁾

Some multilateral funds have been set up to support financially adaptation measures (cf. the Special Climate Change Fund of the UNFCCC created by the CoP7 in 2001 ; the Least Developed Countries Fund financed by voluntary contributions of industrialized countries ; the Adaptation Fund established under the Kyoto Protocol in favour of developing countries that are Parties to the protocol ⁽¹⁰⁾ ; the Strategic Priority on Adaptation fund of the GEF Trust Fund ⁽¹¹⁾) but bilateral agreements are the commonest funding solution.

The greatest challenge related to this topic consists in estimating the cost of adaptation measures at the present time and in the future for developed as well as for developing countries.

Seeing that the underlying philosophy of this category of climate policies consists of tackling the potential impacts of climate change and not acting on the causes of this change, adaptation measures will not be studied further on in this project.

3.2. Mitigation

In the context of climate change, mitigation means "a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Examples include using fossil fuels more efficiently for industrial processes or electricity generation, switching to solar energy or wind power, improving the insulation of buildings, and expanding forests and other 'sinks' to remove greater amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere" ⁽¹²⁾.