Abstract
The politics of climate science refers to the interaction between politics and all disciplines that contribute to the creation of knowledge on climate change. Under the FCCC, Parties have ‘common but differentiated’ responsibilities. The GHG emissions of countries (and the potential impacts) are relevant for determining which countries need to take measures, when and in relation to which GHG; and how the burden is to be shared between countries. Hence, relevant research is of political importance in the formation and development of the regime. In general, policymakers and negotiators are influenced by the scientific input they receive. Negotiators take the available science as their starting point. As long as there is no doubt about the objectiveness of scientific methods, the political question is: How can the information be used by negotiators to determine the obligations of countries? However, when there is doubt about how science influences the policy process, the following questions become central: Is the information objective and relevant? Is the information used correctly by policymakers?
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References
Interviews 1994–95, 3, 10, 73, 77, 88, 91, 92, 93, 101, 104, 105, 106, 108, 111, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, 125, 126, 137, 140.
Parikh 1992 explains: In Table 3.4 of its report, IPCC states that IC emissions for 1985 are 3.83 Bt. This rises to 6.95 Bt in 2025. The per capita IC emissions increase from 3.12 to 4.65 tonnes. For all the four regions in the IC classification (North America, Western Europe, OECD Pacific and Centrally Planned Europe) there are substantial increases in total and per capita emissions of CO2. For DCs the total emissions are at 1.33 Bt in 1985 and increase to 5.48 Bt in 2025, with per capita emissions increasing from 0.36 to 0.84 tonnes. To stabilize global emissions at 1985 levels, a reduction of 59% is required in 2025 against the projected emission levels.
For North America, the per capita Carbon emissions are assumed to increase to 7.12 tonnes in 2025 compared to 5.08 tonnes in 1985 which is a 77% rise in total emissions and a 40% rise in per capita emissions. This result is considered inconsistent with falling Carbon emissions per unit of GDP, which is being experienced in many Western countries, i.e. the inverted U curve. The improvement of technologies is not taken into account for this region. On the other hand, for Centrally planned and South East Asia, emission growth rates are shown to decline by 30%; while that for North America is seen to increase by 1,200% when the emission growth rates in 1979–1985 are compared with the emission growth rates of 1985–2025 (Parikh 1992: 508).
Parikh (1992) states that in a research conducted by the Indira Gandhi Institute, where China and India were allowed to increase emissions at less than business as usual rates, the ICs would have to reduce their emissions by only 30% to offset the growth. Even in such a circumstance, the per capita emissions in India and China only grow to 0.6 tonnes in 2025 as opposed to the world average in 1986 of 1.1 tonnes. Prof. Mitra comes independently to a similar assessment. “Although this region [South Asia] is populated by more than 20% of people of the world, the greenhouse gas emissions are not proportionally high. In fact these are considerably lower: around 4% for CO2 (all sources) and 6% for CH4 (all sources). For fossil fuels alone, the emission from this region is 3% (of the order of 170 Tg/yr) and is expected to rise to 7% (690 Tg/year) in 2025 A.D. This is calculated on the basis of a near doubling of per capita emission rate for all the countries in this region. A point to note is that the per capita emission is much lower than the global average of 1.2tC/capita in all cases” (Mitra 1994: 1).
The FCCC defines emissions as follows: ‘“Emissions” means the release of greenhouse gases and/or their precursors into the atmosphere over a specified area and period of time’ (Art. 1.4). Since the focus is on release, one can interpret it as implying only current emissions. On the other hand it does not exclude cumulative emissions as it covers a specified period of time.
The IPCC Guidelines’ (1995) recommendation that the base year for DCs to be used in the national communications should be 1994 has been accepted by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice of the FCCC.
Interviews 1994–95, 10, 124, 140.
The natural debt has allowed nations to accumulate wealth. He argues that this is a better indicator of national emissions. He calculates that the natural debt per capita over the period 1950–1991 is 119.2 tonnes Carbon per capita for the USA, for Germany 86.7 and for most ICs above 14; while for Brazil 5.9, Indonesia 2.8, India 2.7, Kenya 1.1. (Smith 1995: Table 1).
This study calculates what the total global budget of emissions can be with a view to ensuring that global temperatures do not rise by more than 1 percent by the end of the next century. Krause et al. argue that this budget should be shared on the basis of the population and taking 1986 as a base year, state that ICs will exhaust their quota of 48 Bt by 1999, and DCs could continue to emit until 2169. If 1950 is taken as the base year, then ICs had exhausted their emissions in 1986.
Furthermore, the use of current emissions is straightforward and relatively simple as an indicator, and that weighs heavily in its favour. But this choice also implies that some countries are likely to benefit more than others. While in general most ICs would prefer a current index, and most DCs a cumulative index, clearly this will have different impacts on different countries. Smith (1995: 7) calculates that 17 nations with 3 billion people have a 40% or greater advantage as their emission levels will appear to be relatively lower if the emission methodology is changed to a cumulative emissions approach. However only 5 nations with 55 million people gain by less than 40% if there is a switch from a cumulative emission methodology to a current emissions methodology.
Interviews 1994–95, 7, 22, 111, 124.
Interviews 1994–95, 73, 74, 75, 77, 84, 101, 108, 123, 124, 125, 126. “Besides, the national climatic conditions determined that Brazil is a huge carbon sink: the ratio of carbon absorption from the Brazilian forest is the highest in the world, it is higher than the Malaysian. Brazil must receive its share according to its environmental credit” (Interview 1994–95, 84).
Another issue that has been controversial is the allocation of sinks. The WRI index divided the natural sinks among different nations according to the national distribution of emissions. Thus it allocates the largest sinks to the largest polluters on a country basis, thus encouraging and rewarding polluters (Agarwal and Narain 1992: 32). The IPCC does not apply this system.
Interview 1994–95, 89, 91, 92, 93.
Indian estimates for rice paddy emissions are 3Mt (Agarwal et al. 1992: 30) to 4Mt/year (Mitra 1992: 1) as against US EPA estimates of 37.8Tg/yr for 1991, IPCC estimates of 7–49 Mt and WRI at 18 Mt (cited in Agarwal and Narain 1992: 30). The errors crept in when data from experimental paddy field in Europe and America were extrapolated to the Indian region (1992: 35). Emissions from rice fields in India are ten times lower than previously estimated. In general, “rice paddies may emit anywhere between 25 to 170 Mt of methane per year. Data from various field studies show striking differences. Indian paddy is also grown in acid conditions, while it is alkaline soils that favour methane emissions. Furthermore, Indian measurements give much lower flux rates in irrigated and water logged areas” (Mitra 1992a: 3).
Emissions from animal ruminants in India are much lower than the estimates of US EPA. US EPA calculates it at 10.4 Tg (Mt) while domestic calculations are at 7 Tg (Mt) (Mitra 1992a: 1–4). This is because animal weights and energy intakes are lower than in western countries; the nature of the food intake is different, etc.
Contrary to the WRI statistic that India was destroying 1.5 million hectares of forests every year and that Brazil was destroying 8 million hectares of forests (which implies that one fourth of their forests would have been deforested in the 80’s), India’s estimates are 3% of the WRI estimate, and Brazil’s estimates are about 1/4 the WRI estimates. Agarwal and Narain argue (1991: 5) that WRI has used selective statistics in its estimates in relation to Myanmar and Indonesia.
This leads to speculation about whether information on Northern emissions is being suppressed. An interviewee (1994–94, 128) explained that “there is much talk of the methane emissions from paddy, but very little research on methane leakages from natural gas distribution systems. The EPA has been suppressing information on that. We do not have much data, but we think it is very important to be open on the issue”. Agarwal and Narain (1992: 4–5) also claim that no statistics are cited about forest loss in Europe because of acidification in the WRI 1990 report.
For example, as Jan Feenstra, a scientist involved in the IPCC Guidelines process explains, some countries use a “temperature correction” to reduce their calculated emissions in especially cold years, while others use a “rainfall correction” to reduce their calculated emissions in especially dry years, when they are unable to use/import hydro power and have to rely on fossil fuels! The Guidelines do not currently permit correction factors. Hence, these countries keep parallel records — one with correction factors and one without! Feenstra also explains that as and when DC scientists prepare their emission inventories, they prepare these with integrity and are frequently unconcerned with the political implications of their work.
Interview 1994–95, 113, 115.
There is also some dispute in the corridors about how the impacts are being described and defined in the climate change issue, to emphasize the lack of causality and uncertainty, as opposed to the potential risks to individual countries. For example, interviews reveal that despite the fact that three impact models in an IPCC document indicate that Central Africa, a region already facing water shortage, will suffer from decreased precipitation; no statement to that effect has been included in the Policymakers summary. Although there is increasing evidence of tropical weather events, here too the emphasis is on the uncertainty in the research (personal communication from Richard Klein).
In 1995, IPCC completed its Second Assessment Report. Working Group III of IPCC has been entrusted with the task of assessing the state of knowledge of the socio-economics of climate change mitigation and other cross cutting issues. Each chapter covers different socio-economic aspects. One of the chapters in this report focuses on “The Social Costs of Climate Change: Greenhouse Damage and the Benefits of Control”.
The social costs chapter states that there are two anthropocentric approaches to analyze decisions that affect unborn children, the sustainability approach and the cost-benefit approach. In the cost-benefit approach the benefits and costs are evaluated in terms of preferences which are expressed in the market as the willingness to pay for a benefit and willingness to accept compensation for a loss or a foregone benefit. The sustainability approach argues that given the seriousness of the climate change issue, the issue is: how should climate change be limited. The costs of preventing climate change are assumed to be worth incurring to avoid the risks to future generations. This approach is not further developed probably because there is limited literature on the issue (Pearce et al. 1996: 184).
Another Chapter in the Second Assessment Report covers the judgemental cost-benefit analysis and discusses only the method, but does not draw conclusions about outcomes.
For example, on forestry loss there are different figures and Fankhauser evaluates that global damage from forestry is about 2 billion $ of which 1.8 billion $ covers the loss for OECD countries using forest values of 200, 400 and 2000$ per sq km for low, middle and high income countries (p. 192). On water losses, although 3/4ths of the water losses will occur in DCs, the worldwide losses are estimated at $46.7 billion, with the bulk of monetized losses of 34.8 billion occurring in the OECD countries (citing Fankhauser 1995; p. 193). The health impacts (heat effects) are likely to be more serious for DCs. Fankhauser’s estimates that worldwide losses would be at 49 billion $ with a loss of 34 billion dollars for the OECD countries (for about 23,000 annual deaths) and 15 billion dollars in DCs for about 115,000 deaths.
The GCI concluded from a review of the first draft that the chapter propagated “the economics of genocide”, because it valued the lives that would be lost as a result of warming in poor countries at $100,000, just a fifteenth of the value of lives in wealthier ones. See Meyer/Cooper 1995.
In a prescriptive approach all lives could be valued equally, and the value could be a global average, or the OECD average. Using the prescriptive approach and OECD averages Hohmeyer and Gartner (1992) assess that accumulated damages by the year 2030 could be of the order of $900 trillion. There are two methods: (a) the human capital approach, which calculates the loss of productivity of an individual in monetary terms. This approach has to provide proxy values for those not ‘working’ such as housewives, and tends to undervalue those in lower income professions. This approach is used in Germany, Belgium, France, Holland and Portugal in relation to road accidents (Economist 1993: 76). (b) The other alternative is the willingness to pay approach which calculates what people are willing to pay to accept risk changes. This approach was used in the social costs chapter. The willingness to accept compensation is not as related to income, and is considered by some scientists to be conceptually better in relation to disbenefits. However, two of the authors of the chapter, Fankhauser and Tol (1995: 16–17) argue that “A rich person will require a higher monetary compensation than a poor person, because his marginal utility of income is lower”. They argue that this approach could not be used to justify uniform unit damages, because “in assessing local vulnerability it is regional value that counts”. On the other hand it is not inconceivable that poorer people will call for higher compensation when the party causing the damage is, for example, a rich Multinational Corporation or a foreign
On the value of statistical life, Fankhauser and Tol argue that they have no problems with using a global average value to assess damages, and that it would have no impact on the end result. The problem is that they did not do so!
Interview 1994–95, 137.
Interview 1994–95, 89; see also 69, 73.
“Most respondents agreed that IPCC had failed to address the socio-economic causes of climate change. Most believed that the social sciences should have played a larger part. Respondents were evenly split as to whether IPCC should have advocated specific response strategies. Almost everyone believed that tensions and disagreements had arisen during the preparation of the working group reports. Almost 80% believed that different views about appropriate responses to climate change had been a factor underlying these disagreements” (Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea 1994: iv). Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea (1994: ii-iii) : “the spread of experts involved within IPCC was judged by a considerable majority to have been adequate to ensure quality and the degree of consensus. However, a significant minority (about a third) believed that the spread of experts by country was not sufficient to ensure the credibility of the results as a basis for international treaty making”.
Interview 1994–95, 128.
Agarwal and Narain cite several international personages and media that have attempted to direct attention to the future, speculative emissions of DCs.
By comparing the proposed growth with the supposed reduction, the differences between the two are exaggerated. For example, “greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now are mainly due to developed nations. With projected population and economic growth in the developing world, however, the source of the greenhouse problem will shift rapidly over time, especially if India and China choose the least expensive development paths that rely on their vast coal resources” (Sebenius 1993: 194).
Interview 1994–95, 124.
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Gupta, J. (1997). The Politics of Climate Science. In: The Climate Change Convention and Developing Countries: From Conflict to Consensus?. Environment & Policy, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8925-3_8
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