A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity
UK edition: A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity US edition: The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity Italian edition: Un piano per salvare il pianeta A Blueprint for a Safer Planet was published in the UK on 2 April. It can be purchased at all good bookshops and can be ordered here The author writes: " The argument that the dangers of climate change are great and that the world should act strongly and urgently is, or should be, over. We should now be working on the policy and strategic response. The main purpose of this book is to argue that what we now understand is sufficient to point us unequivocally to measured and structure policies that involve deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, in efficient and equitable ways, and that promote considered and careful adaptation to the effects of the climate change which will occur. I offer a blueprint of how to build a safer planet, or how to manage climate change while creating a new era of growth and prosperity. This is emphatically not a blueprint in the sense of a master plan of the kind that sued to emerge from planning commissions in centrally planned economics. It examines what we now need: strategies, international understandings and policies that will guide action, correct the biggest market failure the world has seen and provide a framework for the entrepreneurship and discovery across the whole of business and society, which can show us how to achieve a cleaner, safer, more sustainable pattern of growth and development ." – Nicholas Stern, April 2009 Reviews of the book Financial Times The Daily Telegraph The Sunday Times Nature Nature Reports Climate Change Progressive Book Club Interviews The Guardian La Repubblica Corriere Della Sera Le Monde Blogs The Guardian Environment Blog Nature Climate Feedback Nature Network Podcasts The Guardian London School of Economics and Political Science | | ...
Official launch of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy
The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy was officially launched on 27 January 2009. The launch featured a presentation introducing the Centre, presentations about the work of the Centre and its stakeholders and a keynote lecture by the chair, Lord Stern of Brentford. Media release PowerPoint presentation introducing the Centre (PDF) PowerPoint presentations about the work of the Centre and its stakeholders (PDF) PowerPoint presentation from Lord Stern’s keynote lecture (PDF) | | ...
Climate Models Symposium PR
20 JULY 2009 Decision-making by businesses and policy-makers needs to be better informed by an understanding of the strengths and limitations of models used to assess the future impacts, costs and benefits of climate change, leading researchers will tell representatives from the public and private sector at a symposium today. The symposium on ‘Interpreting models in a climate change context’, which is being held at the offices of Munich Re in London, is the first of a series that are being organised as part of a programme of research on evaluating the economics of climate risks and opportunities in the insurance sector at the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. The programme is funded by Munich Re. David Stainforth, the organiser of the symposium and Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, will tell the audience : “Substantial and increasing effort is currently being expended in preparing society for the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The identification of robust and relevant messages from current scientific understanding is therefore critical. Models, particularly computer-based models, are now widely used in these strategic, political and economic decisions. This symposium is bringing together experts from disciplines ranging from philosophy to physics to economics to insurance. By sharing experiences and engaging with the business participants, we aim to develop our ideas for producing and extracting valuable, relevant information from models, thus helping society prepare now for the consequences ahead, while guiding research to ensure that we have better information with which to make decisions in five years time.” Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London and Professor of Meteorology at the University of Reading, will draw attention to the challenges of modelling climate variability and change. He will say: “The development of global climate models that can simulate observed climate variability and change with considerable realism is a superb achievement. However, projections for local and regional climate derived from them will always reflect their large-scale errors. Despite this, careful use of them is an essential ingredient in decision-making.” Dr Simon Dietz, Deputy Director of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, will highlight progress in modelling the economics of climate change. Dr Dietz, who was a member of the team that produced the landmark report on ‘The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review’, will say: “Modelling the costs and benefits of reducing carbon emissions is a formidable challenge. It is important to be aware of the limitations of such models, and to realise that the results are subject to very large uncertainty. Nevertheless, these economic models are useful in illustrating the risks involved, and in understanding what assumptions can support strong action to reduce emissions. Years of research and vigorous debate in the economics profession has shown that strong action to reduce emissions depends not only on physical changes in the climate system and their impacts, but also on value judgments about the importance of reducing climate risks in different parts of the world, and in the far-off future. Important recent contributions from climate scientists and economists suggest that the benefits of reducing emissions are greater than previously thought.” Professor Leonard Smith, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series at the London School of Economics and Political Science, will say: “ Scientific models lie at the heart of our understanding of complicated systems like the climate, an economy or an insurance market. Models are extremely valuable for decision-makers, and prove most useful when interpreted in the context of our understanding of the system itself. We must distinguish between the diversity shown by our models and the uncertainty in our future. In particular, paying attention to climate science can warn us of surprises that our models cannot see or forewarn us of, and thus provide a valuable aid in decision-making.” Professor Arthur Petersen, of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, will focus on uncertainties in the models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He will tell the symposium delegates: “Climate modellers find it difficult to assess and discuss the reliability of climate model results. In their analysis of uncertainty, the methodological quality of the models is hardly addressed. When quantitative multi-model ensemble analysis is used as a substitute for a judgment call on the quality of the underlying models, the possibility that some crucial climate processes are not or poorly represented by all models is not taken seriously. The drafts of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report tended to downplay the judgmental aspect of science. This was corrected by country delegations at the plenary session where the Summary for Policymakers was discussed in Paris, January 2007, before its publication.” Dr Eberhard Faust, Head of Research: Climate Risks and Natural Hazards Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Centre at Munich Re, will discuss the use of climate models in the insurance industry. He will say: “Over the last decade, climate modelling has become increasingly relevant for the steering of insurance business, but still is in its early stages. Scientific facilities and insurers have been advancing knowledge about operational practices and scientific capabilities, respectively. Although there are fundamental challenges in terms of the choice of methodology and in dealing with uncertainties, the financial services industry can already make fruitful use of climate model information.” -ENDS- NOTES FOR EDITORS The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy ( http://www.cccep.ac.uk ) is hosted by the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was officially launched at the University of Leeds on 27 January 2009. The Centre is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and Munich Re. The Munich Re Group operates worldwide, turning risk into value. In the financial year 2007, it achieved a profit of €3,937 million, the highest since the company was founded in 1880, on premium income of approximately €37 billion. The Group operates in all lines of business, with around 43,000 employees at over 50 locations throughout the world and is characterised by particularly pronounced diversification, client focus and earnings stability. With premium income of around €21.5 billion from reinsurance alone, it is one of the world's leading reinsurers. Its primary insurance operations are mainly concentrated in the ERGO Insurance Group. With premium income of over €17 billion, ERGO is one of the largest insurance groups in Europe and Germany. It is the market leader in Europe in health and legal expenses insurance, and 34 million clients in over 30 countries place their trust in the services and security it provides. The global investments of the Munich Re Group amounting to €176 billion are managed by MEAG, which also makes its competence available to private and institutional investors outside the Group. More at: http://www.munichre.com . The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest funding agency for research, data resources and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It supports independent, high quality research which impacts on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s planned total expenditure in 2008-09 is £203 million. At any one time, the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and research policy institutes. More at: http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk . | | ...
Countdown to Copenhagen
In December, delegates from 192 countries and regions will be involved in two weeks of talks in Copenhagen, with the aim of establishing a new global treaty on climate change. The Copenhagen talks mark the end of a two-year period of negotiations. Technically known as the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP15 | for short, the talks take place within the framework of the UNFCCC | , which was established at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, and which is an international environmental treaty aimed at stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would ‘avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate.’ Updates have subsequently been made to the treaty – these have included setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations. The principal update so far has been the Kyoto Protocol, which was officially adopted in 1997, and came into force in 2005. The Kyoto Protocol commits 37 industrialised countries (plus the European Union, but not including the United States) to reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases by five per cent on average in relation to 1990 levels. The Kyoto Protocol’s targets are due to expire in 2012, however. Governments around the globe are therefore looking for a successor to the Kyoto agreement. A draft negotiating text for finalisation at Copenhagen has been publicly circulated, and it has been discussed at a series of meetings before Copenhagen. Members of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy have been involved in many different ways in the discussions leading up to the Copenhagen talks. By following the links on this page, you can read the contributions that a number of different researchers who are connected with the CCCEP are making to the pre-Copenhagen process. Nick Stern, media release, 1 December 2009, Copenhagen agreement could give us a ‘50-50 chance’ of avoiding global warming of more than 2˚C | Nick Stern, policy brief, 1 December 2009: Deciding our Future in Copenhagen: will the World Rise to the Challenge of Climate Change | Alex Bowen and Nicola Ranger, policy brief, 1 December 2009: Mitigating Climate Change through Reductions in Greenhouse Gas Emissions: the science and economics of future paths for global annual emissions | The Countdown to Copenhagen Debate | , Friday 13 November at the University of Leeds. Bob Ward. Presentation at the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative side event, ' Climate Risk Insurance and Institutional Options | ', at the Barcelona Climate Change Talks, 2 November 2009 Lord Stern. The World's Future is Being Decided this Weekend | . The Observer, 18 October 2009. Bob Ward. Briefing on ‘Brainstorming for Climate Change: Copenhagen (COP 15)’ | , 13 October 2009. Laurence Tubiana and Lord Stern. La conférence de Copenhague sur le climat, le pari de l'optimisme | . Le Monde, 6 October 2009. Lord Stern. China and India are Leading the Way | . The Guardian, 23 September 2009. Samuel Fankhauser. Working paper, 22 September 2009: The Costs of Adaptation. Lord Stern. Managing Climate Change and Overcoming Poverty | : facing the realities and building a global agreement. Paper presented at Columbia University, 21 September 2009. Bob Ward. People Power is Crucial to Making Copenhagen a Success | . The Guardian, 10 September 2009. Lord Stern. The Time is Approaching for India to Take a Lead on Climate Change | . The Independent, 20 July 2009. Lord Stern. Climate Change, Internationalism and India in the 21st Century | . Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, 15 July 2009. Sam Fankhauser and Cameron Hepburn. Working paper, 6 July 2009: Carbon Markets in Space and Time. Charlene Watson and Samuel Fankhauser. Working paper, 26 June 2009: The Clean Development Mechanism: too flexible to produce sustainable development benefits? Samuel Fankhauser, Nat Martin and Stephen Prichard. Working paper, 26 May 2009: The Economics of the CDM Levy: Revenue Potential, Tax Incidence and Distortionary Effects. Lord Stern. Pathways to a 'Green' Global Economic Recovery | : evidence to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 19 May 2009. Lord Stern. A Blueprint for a Safer Planet | . Evan Fraser. Working paper, 30 March 2009: Economic Crises, Land Use Vulnerabilities, Climate Variability, Food Security and Population Declines. Lord Stern. We Must Create a Level Playing Field for Carbon Emissions Trading | . The Independent, 10 March 2009. Alex Bowen and Lord Stern. Opportunities that are too Good to Miss | . The Guardian, 24 February 2009. Alex Bowen and Lord Stern. Opportunities that are too Good to Miss | . The Guardian, 24 February 2009. An Outline of the Case for a ‘Green’ Stimulus | , policy brief, 12 February 2009. Lord Stern. Thirty Reasons to Celebrate in 2009 – Climate Change | . New Statesman, 18 December 2008. Lord Stern (interview). Clarity is Crucial | . Financial Times, 2 December 2009. Lord Stern. Give the Rainforests our Word and Bond | . The Times, 14 November 2008. Lord Stern. Green Routes to Growth | : The Guardian, 23 October 2008. | | ...
Seminar, 29 September 2009: Professor Frank Biermann
Earth System Governance as a Crosscutting Theme of Global Change Research Part of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy’s 2009-2010 Seminar Series at the University of Leeds. Frank Biermann, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, presented the science plan and implementation strategy of the Earth System Governance Project, a new ten-year global research effort developed under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. The presentation elaborated upon the concept of earth system governance and on the central questions, methods and processes of a global research effort in this field. Earth system governance is defined as the interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental change and, in particular, earth system transformation. Based on this general notion, the science plan of the Earth System Governance Project is organised around five analytical problems that also stand at the centre of this presentation: The architecture of earth system governance; agency in earth system governance; the adaptiveness of earth system governance; problems of accountability and legitimacy of governance; and finally the question of access to goods and about their allocation. Frank Biermann specialises in global environmental governance, with emphasis on climate negotiations, UN reform, global adaptation governance, public-private governance mechanisms, the role of science, North-South relations, and trade and environment conflicts. Frank Biermann holds a number of research management positions, including head of the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit and director-general of the Netherlands Research School for the Socio-economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE), a national research network of nine research institutes with 150 scientists and 350 PhD students. Frank Biermann is also the founding chair of the annual series of Berlin Conferences on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change; the founding director of the Global Governance Project (glogov.org), a joint programme of twelve European research institutes; and the chair of the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year global research programme under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (earthsystemgovernance.org). His most recent publications are Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies (ed. with B. Siebenhüner, MIT Press, 2009); Global Climate Governance Beyond 2012: Architecture, Agency and Adaptation (ed. with P. Pattberg and F. Zelli, Cambridge UP, 2010); and International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance (ed. with B. Siebenhüner and A. Schreyögg, Routledge 2009). Frank Biermann email | | | ...
Centre Deputy Director Jouni Paavola speaks at a special screening for the Council of Europe's Environment Committee
The Centre's Deputy Director, Jouni Paavola, spoke to the Council of Europe's Environment Committee at a special meeting in the House of Commons on 11 June 2009. Council members were shown a new film, The Age of Stupid from McLibel director Franny Armstrong, in which Pete Postlethwaite plays a man living in a devastated world in 2055, reflecting on the reasons why climate change wasn't stopped when it could have been. A video of the event can be seen here | . | | ...
Clarity is Crucial
Lord Stern. Article in the Financial Times Climate Change magazine, 2 December 2008. Can business “save the planet”? The answer is unquestionably “no”, if one means by this “business, on its own”. Businesses respond to incentives. But climate change is what economists call an “externality”. Businesses will respond – or, in the technical jargon, “internalise” externalities – only if it is in their interests to do so. It is government's job to ensure that it is. It is not in the interest of profit-seeking businesses to internalise externalities, since they will then be unable to compete with competitors who do not. It is particularly hard to do so when internalising the relevant externality is costly and the externality is generated by the activities of a large number of producers. In the case of climate change, both conditions apply with extreme force. This, many would argue, is the ultimate externality. It will affect not only all human beings, but all life. Moreover, it will do so not just over centuries, but, given the possibility of mass extinction, forever. Not just every business, but every human being is part of the anthropogenic carbon cycle. Moreover, it will be costly for individual producers to lower emissions dramatically. Thus, effective action to “save the planet” from climate change requires political action. Only if the right global policies are in place will business play its part in delivering the desired outcomes. The question then is how such policies should be designed. Starting from this point is to ignore the still lively debate on whether man-made climate change is plausible or its dangers correctly assessed. I, at least, find persuasive the argument of Professor Martin Weitzman of Harvard University that it is worth paying a great deal to eliminate what seems to be an appreciable risk of what might prove, some decades hence, an irreversible journey towards catastrophe – a change in the climate system so drastic as to destabilise the biosphere. It should be stressed that use of conventional discounting collapses in the context of such widely divergent outcomes for the entire economy. The discount rate is not a constant, but depends on the path of future incomes (or, more broadly, of utility). On any path on which incomes collapse at some point in future, appropriate discount rates are likely to be negative, not positive. So what are the policy options? Lord Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics, author of the UK government's 2006 report on climate change, has analysed the issues in a recent paper. Lord Stern starts from a few simple propositions: first, the concentration of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere is now 430 parts per million and is rising at the rate of two parts per million a year; second, the aim should be to stabilise concentrations at between 450 and 500 parts per million; finally, to achieve this, global emissions of greenhouse gas equivalents must peak in the next 15 years and fall by at least 50 per cent, relative to 1990 levels (which are themselves about 90 per cent of 2005 levels), by 2050, when global average emissions per head must be as low as two tonnes per head. Historic trends and current emission levels indicate how big a change from “business as usual” these goals are: two tonnes per head is 10 per cent of recent US levels and half of China's. Yet, argues Lord Stern, this must happen if one takes the risks seriously. Worse, the longer the world waits, the bigger reductions must be, because the gases stay in the atmosphere for centuries. How is this to be achieved? Any set of policies has to be effective, efficient and equitable. Let us examine each of these criteria in turn. To be effective, the policy will need to reduce emissions sharply. The implication is that every activity and virtually every country will be affected. Developing countries, which will contain close to 90 per cent of the world's population and generate the bulk of the world's emissions by 2050, must make a substantial contribution. On this, US insistence is correct. The long-run world average of two tonnes of CO2 equivalent per head is so low that no country can go much above it. The challenge is huge. in order to achieve such objectives, emissions from high-income countries need to fall by a factor of five. But their economies are also expected to expand two or three fold. So emissions per unit of output need to fall by a factor of 10 to 15. These are extraordinarily demanding objectives that will demand a transformation in the carbon intensity of all economic activities and across the whole of business. The sectoral implications are also dramatic: big efforts will be needed to halt deforestation, for example, which currently contributes some 17 per cent of man-made emissions; electricity generation, the largest single emitter, will need to be carbon-free by 2050; and the global vehicle fleet, projected by the International Monetary Fund to increase by 2.3bn vehicles between now and 2050, must become largely carbon-free, as well. Efficiency is as easy to define as it is hard to accept: the marginal cost of reducing emissions should be the same in all activities everywhere. The price of carbon – whether set by a “cap-and-trade” scheme on emissions, a carbon tax or a hybrid – should also be the same everywhere. That China is now the world's single largest emitter shows how vital it is for emissions to be priced there, too. China's emissions per unit of gross domestic product (at purchasing power parity) are double those of the US and three times those of Japan. So far as possible, therefore, the best technology must be used everywhere. Yet the existing set of low-emitting technologies is not fully diffused across the globe. Achieving this could, argues Lord Stern, reduce emissions by between five and 10 gigatonnes per annum by 2030 (10-20 per cent of 2005 emissions). Big efforts must also be made to develop and scale up nearly commercial technologies and create new ones. The fact that all the needed technologies do not yet exist makes estimates of what it will cost to achieve the targets an educated guess. This includes Lord Stern's figure of 1 per cent of global gross output. It might turn out to cost considerably more. If such changes are to be achieved, policy will need to do substantially more than impose a price on carbon, important though that is. It will also have to use co-ordinated regulatory standards and subsidisation of the development and application of new technologies. Fortunately, many (though not all) of the relevant technologies will be energy saving and will, therefore, kill two birds – reducing use of increasingly scarce energy resources and lowering the risks of climate change – with one policy stone. Yet the most intractable challenge of all is equity. Emissions have to be reduced everywhere, but the cost of doing so need not be borne by everyone. There are three powerful arguments why costs should be borne mainly by high-income countries: first, they created the current problem; second, they still emit far more per head; and, third, they can afford it. Three-fifths of the stock of man-made greenhouse gases was emitted by the high-income countries. In 2005, US emissions per head were also five times those of China and 17 times those of India. So how is it possible to ensure the same price for carbon everywhere, while imposing the costs on rich countries? One answer is by paying for reductions in emissions in developing countries, while not penalising them for failure to meet targets. Such a scheme exists: the “clean development mechanism”. Its principle is reasonable. The difficulty is defining and measuring benchmarks, monitoring achievement and covering entire economies. Yet this, however difficult, is the way Lord Stern suggests the world should go up to 2020, when developing countries should also adopt limits. He suggests, specifically, that the current mechanism needs to move from a projects-based one to a “wholesale mechanism, perhaps based on sector-specific efficiency targets or on technology benchmarks”. Can this be made workable in China, India and other emerging economies? To be honest, it is not obvious. But it seems to be the only way forward. Moreover, persuading developing countries to accept binding limits even in 2020 is bound to be hard, given the gross inequity of the starting point. What does this mean for business? The most obvious answer is that business cannot be certain, because the policies government intends to adopt are themselves still uncertain. But, for far-sighted businesses, the plausible view is that both climate change and ever-tightening climate change policies are realities. Businesses should plan both their long-lived investments and their research and development in this light. This is much the most complex collective action problem in human history. Solving it requires concerted action among unequal participants over at least a century. But humanity will have to try and business will have to play its part. But first business must demand from government what it will most need: a clear and consistent global policy framework. Martin Wolf is the FT's chief economics commentator | | ...
Give the rainforests our word and bond
Lord Stern. Article in The Times, 14 November 2008. As The Prince of Wales Turns 60, He Plans To Unleash 'The Greatest Public-Private Partnership Yet' Faced with a global credit crunch, the governments of the world are coming together to act with urgency. But faced with a far more serious climate crunch, we have yet to show our mettle. If we are to prevent dangerous and unpredictable climate change, global greenhouse emissions must have peaked by 2015 and be cut by 50-80 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050. So how, in only seven years, can we reverse the gathering emissions momentum? A key part of the answer lies in the rainforests - and the Prince of Wales's Rainforest Project. Rainforests are critical because their destruction deals a double blow to our defence against climate change. Cutting them down damages the land's greatest carbon sink - trees are very efficient at sucking CO2 from the atmosphere. Not only that, deforestation releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all the world's cars, aircraft and ships combined. With so much at stake it is right for the Prince of Wales to call for an emergency package to pay rainforest nations for the services they provide - natural carbon storage and rainfall, as well as their extraordinary biodiversity. The rich part of the world must help to create incentives so the forests are worth more alive than dead. It will be for those nations to shape their own plans but the rest of the world, which will share the environmental benefits, has a duty to support them. It will cost billions to beat the forces of destruction. The funding gap between the present efforts to save the rainforests and the economic benefits of deforestation is around $30 billion a year. It may be more, it may be less, but we can find out only by the world acting together and planning carefully. How do we raise the money? This is where the Prince's Rainforests Project comes in. It might happen via surcharges on emission-generating products or through funds raised by the auction of emission permits in future carbon markets. Some public money will be important early on. But the project can help to unite investors and governments to harness what the Prince describes as "the truly awesome power of private sector capital". The project's report, available in the next two weeks, contains many ideas. The most intriguing is a "pension plan for the planet" in which an international agency raises funds by offering 15-year rainforest bonds with competitive returns. The bonds would be guaranteed by developed nations and the interest and principal could be repaid from a share of income from future carbon markets (which may include rainforests) by prior agreement with rainforest-nation governments. The Prince has been talking to pension funds and insurance companies, the most likely investors in such a scheme. He knows there is an appetite for quality, long-term investments that could secure our planet. But the role of government is critical. President-elect Obama proposes a "green new deal" of investment in clean energy to pull the US out of recession, and has said that America should now play a vital part in the international battle to halt global warming. Now is the time for the rich world to take a lead and to commit real resources. An international effort to halt deforestation must be part of such a new deal and governments can act to encourage the private sector to provide the funds. There are four things governments can do. First, they can ensure that rainforests are part of any new climate-change regime. The emissions caused by their destruction must be included in the market mechanism that will follow the Kyoto Agreement ending in 2012. This will provide a critical incentive to private investment in the global carbon market. Secondly, governments can introduce fiscal incentives or guarantees that help to make such investment less risky. Thirdly, just as the EU intervened in the car and energy markets to make low-emission products attractive to consumers, so it can build consumer demand for beef, soy and palm oil that is sustainably-produced. Fourthly they can provide funds to kick-start the process. The Prince has often referred to "the greatest public-private sector partnership" yet unleashed. If governments and business can work together they can create a virtuous circle in which it pays to invest in the environment. But there is one more thing that the Prince can and will achieve through his project: the determination among world leaders to act. His integrity in championing the environment over the decades, his longstanding commitment to sustainable development in every corner of the world and his public role gives him a powerful voice. His concern for the rainforests goes back many years but, as with many of us later arrived to the cause, it has evolved from fear for the survival of their delicate biodiversity and the fate of the communities who dwell in them towards recognition of a stark truth: that if we lose the battle for their survival we lose the battle against climate change. Lord Stern of Brentford serves on the steering group of the Prince's Rainforests Project www.princesrainforestsproject.org | | | ...
Munich Re Symposium II
2nd Climate Change Symposium: Insurance and Disaster Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate Date: 7th October 2009 Time: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Location: Munich, Germany: Literaturhaus Under the heading Insurance and Disaster Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate, we aim to explore the implications of climate change for Disaster Risk Management in both developed and developing countries, and the potential roles of risk transfer and disaster risk reduction in climate change adaptation. Coming ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009, the symposium offers an excellent opportunity for experts from the academic, insurance and policymaking communities to share knowledge and develop plans for meaningful action. The Copenhagen talks will, in turn, set the stage for the implementation of strategies in the context of a Post-Kyoto Protocol in 2012. The agenda of the symposium includes the following topics: Presentation of significant research findings on the quantification of economic and insured losses from climate change Exploration of economic and social considerations of disaster risk reduction, insurance and ex-post disaster response, and drawing lessons for climate change adaptation Assessment of available research on the implications of climate change for disaster risk management, the costs of adaptation and future insurability Exploration and discussion of opportunities for insurance mechanisms to support local and international climate change adaptation initiatives. Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (Chairman of the CCCEP) and Nikolaus von Bomhard (Chairman of Munich Re’s Board of Management) will give keynote addresses. The symposium will conclude with a discussion of concrete implications for business and policy action plans and research priorities. For further information and to register for the event, please contact Philipp Hasenmüller | - phasenmueller@munichre.com | , tel. +49 (89) 38 91 34 18 | | ...