Of hypocrites, high-level panels and … sherpas and silos

As Donna Laframboise noted in a post, yesterday, from Feb. 2-4, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chair, Rajendra K. Pachauri, will be donning yet another of his many hats, as he engineers a bridge from “climate change” to “sustainability” (en route to Rio+20).

TERI, another of Pachauri’s enterprises, will be hosting the “12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit”, the theme of which is “Protecting the Global Commons 20 Years Post Rio”. Will this Summit be a demonstration of Pachauri and his fellow summitteers practicising what they preach? Not a chance, as Donna’s post confirms. As Director General of TERI, Pachauri will have a starring role in the proceedings (he is listed as appearing, in one role or another, no less than five times – but always with his TERI hat, never with his IPCC hat).

The agenda for this Summit is, well, interesting! From a strictly Canadian perspective, there will be two participants, one, Stéphane Dion, is included in the list of “Government” speakers and the other, Dr. Yves Bolduc, is listed among the participating “Ministers”.

But here’s the thing … Dion is shown as being “M.P., House of Commons Canada”, which he is; however, given the current status of the political party he once led, he isn’t even a member of the Official Opposition – let alone of “government”. He may well have been invited due to his (disastrous, and resoundingly rejected) “Green Shift” (carbon tax) plan – or perhaps because he and his wife had decided to name their dog “Kyoto”.

Bolduc is listed as “Minister of Health & Social Services Quebec”, which he is; however, while all the other “Ministers” on this tab appear to be representatives of countries, last time I checked, Quebec was still a province, not a country! I also wonder how he got his invite as a speaker; he seems like a nice enough fellow, I suppose; and it could be “His desire to continually find ways to improve the lives of his fellow man [...]” that earned him such a prestigious invitation. Or perhaps it was his “degree in bioethics”. But enough about the small fry Canadian content …

The agenda is quite full. On the first day, following a 15 minute “Tea with the Prime Minister” (who will then conduct a 45 minute “Inauguration”) and a subsequent 45 minute “Leadership Panel I”, there will be a 50 minute session of “Keynote Addresses”, chaired by Yvo de Boer who, you may recall, jumped ship as Executive-Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) following the Copenhagen débacle in December 2009. de Boer has moved on to greener pastures, as the “Special Global Advisor, Climate Change and Sustainability, KPMG International, UK”. There will be three “Keynote Addresses”:

• Protecting Our Common Future through Multilateralism
• Asian Actions to Improve Prosperity while Protecting the Global Commons
• Thinking About Climate Change: What Can We All Do?

The last of these three will be delivered by “Nobel Laureate, Dr Elinor Ostrom“

Among other speakers/participants (as “Heads of State/Government”) is Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland “Former Prime Minister of Norway”. Brundlandt definitely has “form” (as the Brits would say) when it comes to matters sustainable:

Throughout her political career, Dr Brundtland has developed a growing concern for issues of global significance. In 1983 the then United Nations Secretary-General invited her to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment and Development. The Commission, which is best known for developing the broad political concept of sustainable development, published its report Our Common Future in April 1987.

The Commission’s recommendations led to the Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

And in case you’re wondering what this “broad political concept of sustainable development” might be, allow Ask Earth Trends (which seems to be a somewhat dormant offshoot of the World Resources Institute [WRI]) to enlighten you:

‘Sustainable Development’ is an official term, coined in a 1987 report produced by the World Commission on Environment and Development. Entitled Our Common Future or the Brundtland Report (after the Chairman of the commission, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland), the report defines ‘sustainable development’ as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”; this includes economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity [which, if I'm not mistaken, are known as the "three pillars" of sustainable development -hro].

After Lunch on Day 1, Brundtland will be one of four speakers at “Leadership Panel II” (these two “Leadership Panels” will both address the topic “Leading to Preserve the Global Commons”). Brundtland’s billing for this agenda item includes an additional detail: she is a “Member of the UN Secretary General’s Global Sustainability Panel, Norway”. And, by happy coincidence, a few hours later, there will be a 15 minute “Launch of the Report of UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability”.

It may (or may not) be reasonable to assume that the “UN Secretary General’s Global Sustainability Panel” is the same as the “UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability”. Whether they are the same or not, Brundtland is a member of the latter, and an “Overview” of this Panel’s (full) report contains 56 recommendations. Some excerpts from the Overview (all emphases are mine -hro):

United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability (2012). Resilient people, resilient planet: A future worth choosing, Overview. New York: United Nations.

[p. 2]:

The Report of the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, entitled Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing, contains six sections in its entirety: Section I – The Panel’s vision; Section II – Progress towards sustainable development; Section III – Empowering people to make sustainable choices, Section IV – Working towards a sustainable economy, Section V – Strengthening institutions; and Section VI – Conclusion: A call for action. This overview reproduces Section I from the Panel’s report. The Summary of Sections and the Call for Action are taken from the report’s Executive Summary. The Panel’s recommendations are reproduced in full.

Disclaimer: The members of the Panel endorse the report and generally agree with its findings. The members think that the message of this report is very important. The recommendations and the vision represent the consensus the Panel members reached, but not every view expressed in this report reflects the views of all individual Panel members. Panel members naturally have different perspectives on some issues. If each Panel member had individually attempted to write this report, she or he might have used different terms to express similar points. The Panel members look forward to the report stimulating wide public dialogue and strengthening the common endeavour to promote global sustainable development.

Hmmm … seems like it’s a “consensus”, but perhaps not quite!

[pp. 3-6 The Panel's Vision]:

5. The truth is that sustainable development is fundamentally a question of people’s opportunities to influence their future, claim their rights and voice their concerns. Democratic governance and full respect for human rights are key prerequisites for empowering people to make sustainable choices. The peoples of the world will simply not tolerate continued environmental devastation or the persistent inequality which offends deeply held universal principles of social justice. Citizens will no longer accept governments and corporations breaching their compact with them as custodians of a sustainable future for all. More generally, international, national and local governance across the world must fully embrace the requirements of a sustainable development future, as must civil society and the private sector. At the same time, local communities must be encouraged to participate actively and consistently in conceptualizing, planning and executing sustainability policies. Central to this is including young people in society, in politics and in the economy.

6. Therefore, the long-term vision of the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability is to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and make growth inclusive, and production and consumption more sustainable, while combating climate change and respecting a range of other planetary boundaries.

7. [...] We must recognize that the drivers of that challenge include unsustainable lifestyles, production and consumption patterns and the impact of population growth. As the global population grows from 7 billion to almost 9 billion by 2040, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. By 2030, the world will need at least 50 per cent more food, 45 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water — all at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply. This is true not least for climate change, which affects all aspects of human and planetary health.

Oh, my … that does sound scary, doesn’t it?! Well, you get the flavour of their “vision”. In case you were wondering “civil society” is UN-speak for Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Greenpeace, WWF etc. But I haven’t yet come across a definition for “planetary boundaries” or “environmental boundaries”. Perhaps they are the new, improved “tipping points”. Oh, wait … here they are:

17. b. It is time for bold global efforts, including launching a major global scientific initiative, to strengthen the interface between science and policy. We must define, through science, what scientists refer to as “planetary boundaries”, “environmental thresholds” and “tipping points”. Priority should be given to challenges now facing the marine environment and the “blue economy”;

c. Most goods and services sold today fail to bear the full environmental and social cost of production and consumption. Based on the science, we need to reach consensus, over time, on methodologies to price them properly. Costing environmental externalities could open new opportunities for green growth and green jobs;

Well, looks like they haven’t “defined” these terms yet, either; and they are looking to “science” to define that which “science” has named.

But, just a minute! The “blue economy”?! Will the “green growth and green jobs” take care of the “blue economy”?! Stay tuned, folks! And <sigh> it looks like we might be in for yet another “major global scientific initiative”.

[p. 9 Moving Towards a Sustainable Economy]:

Achieving sustainability requires us to transform the global economy. Tinkering on the margins will not do the job. The current global economic crisis, which has led many to question the performance of existing global economic governance, offers an opportunity for significant reforms. It gives us a chance to shift more decisively towards green growth — not just in the financial system, but in the real economy. Policy action is needed in a number of key areas, including:

• Incorporating social and environmental costs in regulating and pricing of goods and services, as well as addressing market failures
• Creating an incentive road map that increasingly values long-term sustainable development in investment and financial transactions
• Increasing finance for sustainable development, including public and private funding and partnerships to mobilize large volumes of new financing
• Expanding how we measure progress in sustainable development by creating a sustainable development index or set of indicators

I don’t know where they think this “large volume of new financing” is going to come from, but brace yourself for yet another call to “put nature on the balance sheet” [as per IPBES and the "new testament" of the climate bible, TEEB]

[p. 14-16 Recommendations for a Sustainable Economy]:

27. Governments should establish price signals that value sustainability to guide the consumption and investment decisions of households, businesses and the public sector. In particular, Governments could:

a. Establish natural resource and externality pricing instruments, including carbon pricing, through mechanisms such as taxation, regulation or emissions trading systems, by 2020;

37. Governments should seek to incentivize investment in sustainable development by shaping investor calculations about the future through, in particular, the greater use of risk-sharing mechanisms and the enhancement of certainty about the long-term regulatory and policy environment. Measures could include targets for renewable energy or conservation, waste reduction, water conservation, access to carbon markets through the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol or sustained prospects for public financing.

Didn’t anyone tell this Panel that “carbon pricing” and “carbon markets” (not to mention Kyoto) are kinda dead in the water?!

Ooops … I almost forgot the “silos” …

[p. 9 Strengthening Institutional Governance]:

To achieve sustainable development, we need to build an effective framework of institutions and decision-making processes at the local, national, regional and global levels. We must overcome the legacy of fragmented institutions established around single-issue “silos” [...]

This High-Level Panel evidently held six meetings between September 19, 2010 and January 12, 2012; although only the final reports and reports of the first three meetings appear to be publicly available – unless you happen to land on the right part of the new, improved Panel site which indicates that reports of the first four meetings are available. If your mouse should take you to the latter, you will see that the Panel appeared to have the assistance of (anonymous) Sherpas – who held eleven meetings of various lengths in various locations. But you’ll need to go back to the original site to find the reports of the Sherpa meetings, well, at least the first four such meetings.

And while you’re there, you might want to take a look at the “Related Documentation” – the first item of which is the “NGLS Summary Report: Civil Society Consultation Conducted for the Global Sustainability Panel”, because of course, no UN report would be complete without input from “civil society” aka NGOs. This “Summary Report” is a convenient 27 page “compilation” derived from 38 “submissions from a diverse array of organizations and networks. Many [...] were from international networks representing several hundred to over one thousand organizations each.” Should you choose to peruse the pages of this “compilation” (as I did), I doubt you will find many surprises!

Other “related” documents include a Background Paper (“Sustainable Development: From Brundtland to Rio” prepared for the first meeting of the Panel by two people from the International Institute on Sustainable Development (IISD) the good folks who produce the Earth Negotiations Bulletins (reports of the multitude of meetings pertaining thereto – including those of the IPCC). But I digress (although I did so for a reason!)

Recommendation 47 is interesting:

[p. 17]:

As international sustainable development policy is fragmented and, in particular, the environmental pillar is weak, [the United Nations Environmental Program, parent of the IPCC, IPBES, and a host of other acronymic offspring purveyor of increasingly scary stories since 1972 -hro] UNEP should be strengthened.

Seems to me, that – based on the inability of the Panel Secretariat to even get its web-act together (as noted in my above digression) – a way must be found to overcome the “fragmented institutions established around single-issue ‘silos’” of the UNEP. Perhaps the UNEP could benefit from the assistance of some … Sherpas.

On the road to Rio: Sustainability swamps climate change

Just in case you haven’t heard, there will yet another United Nations conference aimed at setting goals for “saving the planet”; this one is known as UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20 and sometimes called the “Earth Summit“) which is scheduled to take place June 20-22 of this year.

Not surprisingly, the UN Secretary-General announced today that he has a “5 year Action Plan” to ‘build the future we want’. And I’m sure that it’s purely coincidental that this “theme” just happens to echo the title of the “zero draft” of the outcome document for Rio+20. Dated January 10, 2012, this zero draft, is entitled “THE FUTURE WE WANT“. It was:

Submitted by the co-Chairs on behalf of the Bureau in accordance with the decision in Prepcom 2 to present the zero-draft of the outcome document for consideration by Member States and other stakeholders no later than early January 2012.

As part of their “open, transparent and inclusive process, led by member states”, the powers that be behind the UNCSD have made available not only the zero draft but also the 6,000 page “compilation document” which:

serve[s] as [the] basis for the preparation of a zero-draft of the outcome document, to be presented for consideration

For the record, these 6,000 pages appear to have been distilled into a 19 page, 128 paragraph document which constitutes the zero draft “outcome document” currently under review.

It is interesting to note that the UNCSD seems to have a somewhat different (albeit one that more closely approximates the common understanding of the English words used) definition of “open, transparent and inclusive” than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC also claims to conduct an “open, transparent and inclusive” process; yet, as Steve McIntyre has observed, maintaining secrecy of their zero-draft trumps openness and transparency at this stage of the climate change game. Perhaps this secrecy has been deemed necessary to keep under wraps the extent to which Pachauri’s July 2009 “vision” for the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (AR5) has (or has not) been realized:

Climate change needs to be assessed in the context of sustainable development, and this consideration should pervade the entire report across the three Working Groups. In past assessments sustainable development and its various linkages with climate change were seen largely as an add-on. Most governments who have commented on this issue have highlighted the need to treat sustainable development as an overarching framework in the context of both adaptation and mitigation. [emphasis added -hro]

But I digress …

There have been news reports to the effect that “climate change” is not on the agenda for Rio+20.

Needless to say, I have not had an opportunity to review the UNSCD’s 6,000 page “compilation”. But I have read the zero-draft, and such reports would appear to be borne out by the content. Here are some interesting, if not quite telling, word-counts from the 128 paragraphs that survived the distillation of the compilation:

emissions:	0
greenhouse:	0
global warming:	0
carbon:	2
climate change:	7
women:	7
scientific:	7
Agenda 21:	8
technology/technological:	16
poverty:	20
green economy:	24
sustainable/sustainability:	137

And in case you were wondering … there is no mention of either the IPCC or its “primary client”, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Nor was either of these (rapidly falling stars?!) mentioned** during the course of yesterday’s “Informal Discussions”, according to the quasi-official rapporteurs, the IISD, whose Earth Negotiations Bulletin report of the proceedings indicates that there may be some changes to this zero-draft between now and June.

**However, in the interest of truth in posting, I should note that the representative of the Russian Federation did propose:

creating an intergovernmental panel modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to improve cooperation

All of which suggests that, at this point, I may not have been too far off the mark when I had speculated “Move over IPCC … here comes IPBES” – nor when I more recently posed the question: Is the IPCC still relevant to the UNFCCC?. Indeed, in light of the conspicuous absences in this zero-draft of the “outcome document“, one might be forgiven for wondering … How relevant is the UNFCCC to the UNCSD?!

It will be interesting to see how … uh … sustainable … the paragraphs of this zero-draft might be when the final draft is made available for review. IOW, we are left with the really BIG question: how sustainable is sustainablity?!

(Image courtesy of xkcd.com and h/t Jane Coles via Bishop Hill)

Nature says: Face up to fraud

Interesting editorial in today’s issue of Nature. Some excerpts:

Face up to fraud

Many people in science would rather not talk about the problem of research misconduct, much less act on it. After all, who directly involved would benefit from a serious crackdown? Certainly not the institutions at which the misconduct takes place — they are nominally responsible, but can face legal repercussions, embarrassing headlines and a public-relations disaster if they expose cheating academics.
[...]
A big part of the problem is the lack of perceived risk associated with misconduct. Some fraudulent researchers might be sociopaths who don’t care about the rules, but many others simply believe that they can anticipate the outcome of a research project, and see no downside to fabricating the required results to save time, or tweaking results to achieve a stronger signal. Either way, stronger action and punishments are needed to discourage such misbehaviour.
[...]
Could publications such as this one do more to deter cheats? Unfortunately, we are often in no position to flag up even proven cases of misconduct, and thereby highlight the risks that miscreants run with their careers. Yes, it is a journal’s primary job to clean up the literature, but when papers are retracted owing to misconduct, the libel laws (again) often prevent our editors from saying so. We know that this leaves the affected communities frustrated and in the dark. It leaves us frustrated, too.
[...]

They don’t specifically mention “climate science” – but they don’t excuse it, either! And I’m not convinced that “publications such as [Nature]” could not do more to restore integrity to science.

Read the whole article.

U.K. or Canada: radical constitutional reform or war on green radicals?

My mouse and I happened to stumble across a press release from that noble institution, the University of East Anglia (UEA), home of the highly esteemed (well, at least in their eyes) Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

University of East Anglia academic calls for radical government measures to safeguard UK future

A University of East Anglia academic is launching a report proposing a ‘super jury’ of ordinary people to act as guardians for the country’s future. The report will be launched at the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon.

The ‘Guardians of the Future’ report by Dr Rupert Read [...] from the university’s School of Philosophy calls for radical constitutional reform to safeguard the basic needs of future generations.

He proposes that a council of randomly picked members of the public, like a jury, should be placed above the House of Lords to oversee all government decisions – with the power of veto to stop legislation which threatens the interests of future generations.

Dr Read’s ‘super-jury’ would also be charged with the power to force a review of existing legislation which is likely to have negative effects for society in future.

The report will be published by Green House – a think tank set up to lead the development of green thinking in the UK. It sets out proposals for how the guardians could be chosen, how many should sit on the council and how long they would serve for.

Dr Read believes his radical idea would stop us bequeathing a damaged and dangerous country to our descendants.

He said: “This report is meant to stimulate debate about how we can represent the interests of future generations within our existing parliamentary democracy.

[...]

“Obviously future generations can’t be given a vote, but I propose that we give them the closest equivalent by creating a council of Guardians of Future Generations – a third legislative house. They would have the power to scrutinise and if necessary veto proposals that they judge would impact negatively on future people’s basic rights.

“The members of this body would be selected by sortition, as is current practice for jury service, to ensure independence from present-day party political interests. They would be free from party pressure, and the pressures of short term electoral cycles, so they would represent a more genuine ‘us’.

[...]

“It sounds radical, but many radical ideas throughout history have come to be accepted as the norm, after at first seeming to be ‘too extreme’ to many people. A good example is recycling – when Greens first called for this, in the 70s and 80s, they were laughed at, but now we all take recycling for granted.”

I haven’t had a chance to read Read’s report, yet, but here’s an excerpt from the summary:

The Guardians would have a power of veto over legislation that were likely to have substantial negative effects for society in the future, the right to review major administrative decisions which substantially affected future people and the power to initiate legislation to preserve the basic needs and interests of future people.

Not to worry, though … it’s only a “discussion” paper. And considering Read’s credentials:

[He] works closely with environmental scientists, in eco-philosophy, at UEA. His publications include his popular book, Philosophy for Life: Applying Philosophy in Politics and Culture. He was a Green Party Councillor from 2004-2011, and helped write the first draft of the Green 2009 Euro-election manifesto. He blogs on environmental reframing at Green Words.

and the credentials of his Green House colleagues … What’s not to like, eh?!

I thank my lucky stars that there’s an ocean between us. Not to mention that here in Canada, at least, there are signs of more down-to-earth developments. As Terence Corcoran reported in today’s National Post:

A war on green ‘radicals’

Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language
[...]
It is a cliché in journalism to declare metaphorical wars at the drop of a news release. In this case, it looks like war is exactly what Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver launched Monday in an unprecedented open letter warning that Canada will not allow “environmental and other radical groups” to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

What a welcome war this is. Never before has a Canadian politician challenged the hitherto saintly protectors of the environment in such direct language. More importantly, Mr. Oliver took straight aim at a troubling trend in Canadian environmentalism — the foreign funding of Canadian green activist groups with the express purpose of shutting down Canadian resource development — first documented in the National Post by Vancouver investigative writer Vivian Krause.

“These groups,” said Mr. Oliver, “seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interests to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”
[...]

Seems that that the U.K.’s Read was inspired by developments in Hungary – while Canada’s Oliver was very uninspired by developments in Obama’s USA. Radical constitutional reform or war on green radicals? I know which horse I’m backing!

More news on success of The Delinquent Teenager …

Happy New Year, everyone! Mine didn’t start off too well as my computer suffered from an inability to find a crucial NTLDR file on reboot late afternoon on New Year’s eve! Long story short … I’ve been spending much of my time recovering and restoring from a Windows reinstall :-(

Fortunately, though, life does go on … Tallbloke’s computers have been returned to him … and the recognition and success of Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (TDT) continues to spread far and wide!

If you read German (sorry, I don’t) you can find a review of TDT by Steffen Heinrich of Okowatch. You might also be interested in an Okowatch interview with Donna (in English or German). One of the highlights of this interview:

Your book drew a lot of interest and praise among readers. What about your critics? Did they object much?

My book is less than three months old. To be honest, I have been so busy promoting it that I have had little opportunity to read firsthand much of the praise or the criticism.

It is noteworthy that the IPCC has not responded in any way. It appears to be pretending that my book doesn’t exist. The IPCC is very good at that. For many years it has pretended that eminent skeptical scientists such as Freeman Dyson don’t exist, either.

Blogging for me will be light (to non-existent) for the next week, as I get caught up (and redo some work I had neglected to back-up!) … but if you’re looking for some amusement, you might like this (somewhat lengthy) video [h/t Smokey via WUWT]:

 

Enjoy :-)