CASE STUDY CASE STUDY

Climate Change and Climate Change and Sustainable DevelopmentSustainable Development

EXERCISE EXERCISE

• Examine the position of your country in the Human Development Index and discuss the changes during the last 2 decades

• Basic bibliography:• Dresner, S. (2008) The Principles of Sustainability. London: Earthscan.• UNDP, Human Development Report, 1990-2012. URL,

http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/• United Nations (1987) Report of the World Commission on

Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Official Records of the General Assembly, A/42/427

•

• Climate change is now a scientifically established fact. The exact impact of greenhouse gas emission is not easy to forecast and there is a lot of uncertainty in the science when it comes to predictive capability. But we now know enough to recognize that there are large risks, potentially catastrophic ones, including the melting of ice-sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic (which would place many countries under water) and changes in the course of the Gulf Stream that would bring about drastic climatic changes.

• The early warning signs are already visible. Today, we are witnessing at first hand what could be the onset of major human development reversal in our lifetime. Across developing countries, millions of the world’s poorest people are already being forced to cope with the impacts of climate change. These impacts do not register as apocalyptic events in the full glare of world media attention. They go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world GDP. But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world’s poor to build a better life for themselves and their children.

• Stocks of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are accumulating at an unprecedented rate.

• Current concentrations have reached 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) compared to about 280 ppm a century ago.

• Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are on a sharply rising trend. They are increasing at around 1.9 ppm each year.

• Global average temperature is increasing by about 0.2 degrees C per decade and has gone up by about 0.8 degrees C since late 19th century.

56.6%

2.8%

17.3%

14.3%

7.9% 1.1%

CO2 (fossil fuel use) CO2 (other) CO2 (deforestation) CH4 N20 F gasses

• Behind the numbers and the measurement is a simple overwhelming fact. We are recklessly mismanaging our ecological interdependence. In effect, our generation is running up an unsustainable ecological debt that future generations will inherit.

• Even if we stabilize emissions at current levels CLIMATE CHANGE IS UNAVOIDABLE

• The IPCC has developed a family of six scenarios identifying plausible emissions pathways for the 21st century. These scenarios are differentiated by assumptions about population change, economic growth, energy use patterns and mitigation.

• None of the IPCC scenarios point to a future below the 2°C threshold for dangerous climate change.

Estimated temperature rise at the end of 21ου century

ScenarioRelative to 1850-1899

average temperature (0C)Concentrations CO2 –eq.

in 2100

Β1 2,3 (1,6-3,4) 600 ppm

Α1Τ 2,9 (1,9-4,3) 700 ppm

Β2 2,9 (1,9-4,3) 800 ppm

Α1Β 3,3 (2,2-4,9) 850 ppm

Α2 3,9 (2,5-5,9) 1250 ppm

Α1FI 4,5 (2,9-6,9) 1550 ppm

WE CANNOT CONTINUE IN WE CANNOT CONTINUE IN THE SAME PATH. WE HAVE THE SAME PATH. WE HAVE

TO CHANGE OUR PATTERNS TO CHANGE OUR PATTERNS OF CONSUMPTION AND OUR OF CONSUMPTION AND OUR

IDEAS ABOUT WHAT IDEAS ABOUT WHAT CONSTITUTES CONSTITUTES DEVELOPMENTDEVELOPMENT

UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE MOVING IN THE WRONG MOVING IN THE WRONG

DIRECTIONDIRECTION

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

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1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2008

Year

Tota

l em

issi

ons

CO

2 (m

illio

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etric

to

ns)

• Three distinctive features of the problem. • The first feature is the combined force of inertia and

cumulative outcomes of climate change. Once emitted, carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time.

• Urgency is the second feature of the climate change challenge—and a corollary of inertia.

• The third important dimension of the climate change challenge is its global scale. The Earth’s atmosphere does not differentiate greenhouse gases by country of origin. One tonne of greenhouse gases from China carries the same weight as one tonne of greenhouse gases from the United States—and one country’s emissions are another country’s climate change problem. It follows that no one country can win the battle against climate change acting alone. Collective action is not an option but an imperative.

• The most difficult policy challenges will relate to distribution. While there is potential catastrophic risk for everyone, the short and medium-term distribution of the costs and benefits will be far from uniform. The distributional challenge is made particularly difficult because those who have largely caused the problem—the rich countries—are not going to be those who suffer the most in the short term. It is the poorest who did not and still are not contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions that are the most vulnerable. In between, many middle income countries are becoming significant emitters in aggregate terms—but they do not have the carbon debt to the world that the rich countries have accumulated and they are still low emitters in per capita terms. We must find an ethically and politically acceptable path that allows us to start—to move forward even if there remains much disagreement on the long term sharing of the burdens and benefits. We should not allow distributional disagreements to block the way forward just as we cannot afford to wait for full certainty on the exact path climate change is likely to take before we start acting.

Countries with the highest emissions of CO2 in 2008 (in thousand metric tonnes)

2008 2000 1990

China1 1.922.687 928.868 658.554

USA 1.547.460 1.565.925 1.326.725

India 479.039 323.647 188.344

Russia 435.126 393.729 -----

Japan 357.534 343.695 319.704

Germany 210.480 225.605 276.425

Canada 153.659 146.556 122.739

Britain 148.818 149.578 156.481

South Korea 142.230 122.071 65.901

Iran 133.961 92.512 61.954

Italy 125.015 122.079 115.925

Mexico 124.450 104.704 104.907

South Africa 120.520 100.537 90.963

Saudi Arabia 119.374 81.197 58.646

Brazil 110.833 90.028 56.966

France 103.845 100.126 108.576

Indonesia 99.648 67.068 41.032

Australia 96.168 89.744 79.943

Spain 94.468 80.722 62.497

Poland 90.072 82.139 94.876

1 Hong Kong is not included

13.46

9.35

5.18

2.99 2.8 2.671.27

0.51 0.41 0.37 0.19 0.11 0.090

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Per capita emissions CO2 (in metric tons)

• While governments may recognize the realities of global warming, political action continues to fall far short of the minimum needed to resolve the climate change problem. The gap between scientific evidence and political response remains large.

• The deeper problem is that the world lacks a clear, credible and long-term multilateral framework that charts a course for avoiding dangerous climate change—a course that spans the divide between political cycles and carbon cycles.

• Therefore, the role of citizens is crucial. Only political pressure/cost can force governments to move more decisively.

• Climate change is a threat that comes with an opportunity. Above all, it provides an opportunity for the world to come together in forging a collective response to a crisis that threatens to halt progress.

SUSTAINABLE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTDEVELOPMENT

Corporate Social ResponsibilityCorporate Social Responsibility

• The triple bottom line:

• Financial responsibility

• Social responsibility

• Environmental responsibility

Management commitment and Management commitment and governancegovernance

• Environmental management and social development commitment and capacity

• Corporate governance

• Accountability and transparency

At the core of S.D. is the need At the core of S.D. is the need to consider three pillars to consider three pillars

together:together:

• Society

• Economy

• The environment

• The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of Human Development

• The HDI combines three dimensions:• Life expectancy at birth, as an index of

population health and longevity • Knowledge and education, as measured by the

adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).

• Standard of living, as indicated by the natural logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity.

Four essential components in Four essential components in the new paradigm:the new paradigm:

• Equity in opportunities

• Social, economic and environmental sustainability

• Productivity

• Empowerment

• A holistic and human-centered approach

• People are the real wealth of a nation. The basic objective ofdevelopment is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. This may appear to be a simple truth. But it is often forgotten in the immediate concern with the accumulation of commodities and financial wealth.

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPRHYBASIC BIBLIOGRAPRHY

• IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. URL, http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm

• Strange, T. and Bayley, A. (2008) Sustainable Development. Linking Economy, Society, Environment. Paris: OECD

• UNDP (2011) Human Development Report 2011. Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All. New York: UNDP

• United Nations (1987) Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Official Records of the General Assembly, A/42/427