Climate Change Talks - Why The UN's Sustainable Development Goals Just Might Work

The current metrics used in the existing climate change resolutions are not efficient enough. UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) might provide a better and more inclusive alternative

So can the world really be changed simply by changing the manner in which we measure progress? This is what the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in the United Nations General Assembly in September, aspire to do.

The SDG’s seventeen goals and one hundred and sixty odd targets seek to combine a concern for our green future with the shared growth and prosperity concerns of development.

In a sense, the SDGs are the fallback, if the climate change talks – code named COP 21 to be held in Paris in December 2015, fail to reach a binding agreement on how the world is to reduce carbon emissions to what they were in 1990. By 2012 carbon emissions had increased by 50% above that level.

Cutting emissions means one of four things – cutting back on luxurious and energy guzzling lifestyles; cutting back on growth; spending more on adopting clean energy technology- renewable energy technology being the cleanest; and improving efficiency in the use of energy by end-use appliances like cars, air-conditioners, heat exchangers or industrial furnaces.

Most rich countries have responded to the climate threat

The developed countries, which account for 40% of total emissions have generally done a good job on making energy use efficient. One reason why this has happened is because doing this increases the competitiveness of an economy and in most cases, reduces their dependence on imported energy- a commercial and a security risk.

Europe and Singapore have been most diligent in switching to low carbon footprint lifestyles and ramping up the use of renewables. The US, Canada and Australia remain energy guzzling outliers, who have done little to save the planet. Their per capita energy use is more than double the per capita energy use in Europe.

The temporary relief from an economic downturn

The slowing down of the world economy since 2008 and uncertain revival prospects up to 2020 has also resulted in lowering disposable income and consumption all around and consequently dampened carbon emissions.

As a result carbon emissions from the developed world have reduced marginally by 2 billion tons from 1990 levels. The problem is that during the same period poor countries, led by China, have increased their emissions by 11 billion tons or nearly three times of their emissions in 1990. This swamps the marginal reduction in developed countries.

With world population set to increase from 7.1 billion today to 9.2 billion by 2050 dampening energy use per capita is not a problem which can be ignored. Why then have countries been so casual about solving it?

The limits of “collective action”

First, the science of climate change and the precise links between global warming and the adverse impacts on rainfall (reduced and erratic); sea level rise and the loss of species are insufficiently etched out. It is unclear, who exactly will be adversely affected; where and to what extent, if temperature increases beyond the “safe” limit of 2⁰ celsius. Not defining the “losers” from climate change specifically results in complacency.

Second, “collective action” to save the “global commons” is easier when everyone has to do the same thing, though the more capable may do more. In the two decade old climate negotiations this principle has never been accepted. In a peculiar alignment of the rich versus the poor, the dominant theme has been that the rich should “pay” for using up three fourths of the carbon space available to the world. This “payment” has been in cash via contributions to climate mitigation and adaptation funds and to physically roll back their emissions to specified targets.

To expect all “rich” country to accept constraints, even whilst China grew at double digits since the 1990s and tripled its per capita carbon emissions, was unrealistic. Rich countries see a queue of emerging economies – in South Asia and Africa, following China, in an endless parade of high carbon growth, while they themselves remain saddled with the burden of the past.

This approach has expectedly failed. The United States, Canada and Russia and its satellite states have opted out of the Kyoto Protocol, 1997 which provides the legal framework for the agreement on emissions. Prospects of a better agreements at Paris are uncertain.

In this context the SDGs which are expected to guide developmental action till 2030 are a fall back measure. Four (25%) of the seventeen goals specifically target environmental preservation.

Sustainable metrics make sustainable economies

Goal 12 targets reduction in consumption and an end to resource intensive production. Goal 13 specifically targets managing climate change. Goals 14 and 15 target the sustainable development of the marine environment and land based ecological systems, respectively. Even more significantly, Goal 16 targets world peace, justice and inclusion, as drivers of sustainability. This relies on a vast trove of literature which indicates that if social capital erodes, as in conflict affected, extractive and paternalistic societies, the brunt is felt by the environment. People who can only live in the present do not have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow.

“League tables” as drivers of change

How significant can this effort ever be- to mend the world using better metrics? Changing behavior is far more difficult than measuring it.

A UNDP sponsored study (2014) of the impact of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the predecessors of the SDGs which end this year- concluded that the effect of prescribing the metrics was marginal.

Mostly countries pick and choose their priorities strategically from amongst the plethora of international indicators which measure a country’s performance. The SDGs have over 160 targets and possibly even more indicators- to be formulated by March 2016- to measure progress against these targets.

But “league tables”- international metrics which compare performance across countries, have been used to assess the responsiveness and intent of a country to reform. The “Doing Business” indicators are possibly the most successful, in providing pointers as to what countries need to do to attract private investment and improve competitiveness.

Participative decision making at work

One difference between the MDGs and the SDGs is that unlike the former, the latter are the outcome of a three years long process of consultation which should enhance the “buy in” of countries-particularly developing countries.

The SDGs are well placed to take up the slack, should the Climate Change annual meetings, held since 1992, dry up post December in Paris. That would be no bad thing. We need to change the conversation if we are to improve the outcomes.

A fair bargain

Average carbon emission was around 11 tons per capita in 2011 in high income countries, though Europe was significantly lower at around 7 tpc. Not surprisingly, China which was at around 6 tpc is possibly aiming at similar levels by 2020 when it peaks. India was at a low level of 1.7 tpc.

This opens a door for India to walk through and propose an agreement- binding on all except the Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries- which limits carbon emissions to 5 tons per capita (tpc) by 2030.

This would imply the death of coal- an energy resource dominated by the US, Russia, China, Australia, India, South Africa and Indonesia but it is a key domestic resource only for China, India and South Africa.

If the rich want to breathe; water their gardens and retain their seashore vacation villas, they should not mind paying US$ 300 billion (just $ 300 per capita per year) or 0.7% of their GDP into a multilaterally managed Sustainable Development Challenge Fund. This could incentivize clean energy solutions from private innovators and developers and put it into the public domain for adoption, adaptation and diffusion- much of the action would happen in rich countries so this grant is really to boost their own economies. There could be no better targeted, sustainable, “adrenaline rush” for a limping world economy.