Trade and Naomi Klein

This week Naomi Klein issued her "climate agenda" as a response to the Tea Party deniers to climate change. The six "arenas" for change include one on international trade, in which production is "relocalized". A few thoughts on this:

Production and trade has always involved large distances, or least since man worked out animals could carry things and that ships with sails can go long distances. Economists show that trade brings about an efficient use of resources because of the theory of comparative advantage, whereby two countries trade with oneanother the things that they are respectively better at producing more of.

"Re-localizing" food production as Klein advocates would make food more expensive, which would be a bad thing for people on low incomes (who spend proportionally more of their budget on food than the rich). It would also be bad for the climate in some cases - certain foods are imported from warmer regions not just because it is cheaper to produce there but the emissions (even when you include transport) can be considerably lower, for example for fruits imported in the winter.

Freakonomics sums it up nicely today with this post.

Links for the weekend

Just in time for the weekend, here are some of the links that fascinated, entertained and depressed me this week (in no particular order):

1. Richard Muller, climate "skeptic", concludes the world is warming,
2. The Daily Show's take on the Muller story and science skepticism in general (the second segment is particularly funny though the whole show is worth watching),
3. Mitt Romey on Global Warming (not to be confused with America Warming),
4. News that 2010 levels of GHG are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago and China's emissions now exceed US emissions by 50%,
5. Mark Halle of IISD and his Rio+20 perspective,
6. And lastly, Tim Haab of Environmental Economics nicely summarizes why "Blaming economists for our current economic situation is like blaming psychologists because people are crazy". His post is in reaction to an "Occupy Walkout" of Greg Mankiw's Ec10 class this week.

Happy Reading!

More on coffee and cocoa

More on challenges facing the coffee and cocoa sectors.

From CIAT on impact of climate change on cocoa

By 2050, a rise of 2.3 degrees Celsius will drastically affect production in lowland regions, including the major cocoa-producing areas of Moyen-Comoe, Sud-Chttpand Agneby in Cote d'Ivoire, and Western and Brong Ahafo in Ghana. Farmers in these areas are particularly vulnerable since cocoa production is often their primary source of income.

"Many of these farmers use their cocoa trees like ATM machines," said CIAT's Dr. Peter Laderach, the report's lead author. "They pick some pods and sell them to quickly raise cash for school fees or medical expenses. The trees play an absolutely critical role in rural life."

And

Example from CIAT of Climate Smart Agriculture from a smallholder in Kenya

Film on its impact on coffee in Colombia

Taxing fat

Dave Pannell posts on the Danish fat tax - he argues that it is ineffective, regressive and potentially with high transaction costs. On the plus side, the revenue raised could be used to make it less regressive.
Are there parallels with a carbon tax?

Greg Mankiw argues that a carbon tax is not regressive as the poor use less on carbon than the rich (who own more cars for example). Although presumably proportionally more of their income is spent on meeting basic needs which are carbon related expenditures (like food and heating).

Mankiw and Hansen both argue the regressive element of carbon can be reduced through paying dividends to the poor from the revenue raised.

Coffee and Climate Change

Last week I attended a conference in Lausanne organized on the topic of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Kenyan Coffee Sector. Attending the conference were representatives from all parts of the coffee supply chain, from producers to traders to brands as well as standard setters, NGOs, governments, international organizations, and academics. Having all of these players in the same room was enough to convince me of the severity of climate change for the coffee sector.

The context for such a conference is straight forward: coffee yields per hectare have been shrinking in the past years in the face of more variable climate. (For instance, variation in rainfall is directly related to variability in production). Incomes have been falling, coffee quality has become less reliable, and producers are going out of business. Because falling coffee yields and quality affect actors all along the value chain, the coffee sector as a whole has an interest in addressing climate change and helping producers adapt to its impacts. Producers need to adapt to changing climatic conditions. Industry needs to secure long-term quantity and quality of their product, as well as respond to national, regional and international climate legislation. And standards organizations need to incorporate climate change into the sustainability aspects of their work. While the impacts for each actor may be different, they all agree that intervention is necessary.

In this regard, a number of cooperative projects have been carried out in the past few years including the Development Partnership (PPP) between Sangana Commodities Ltd. and the German International Cooperation (GIZ) to support Kenyan coffee smallholders in adapting to climate change and incorporating climate change mitigation where possible. The project worked to support coffee producers to adapt their production to the changing climate, namely through the development of an additional component to the existing 4C Code of Conduct taking into account climate aspects. Coffee is a very versatile plant and with adequate support, producers can learn to adapt their production systems.

In addition to the 4C climate module, other standards systems such as Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified have also been actively involved in helping producers adapt to and mitigate climate change impacts. For instance, UTZ Certified is piloting a project where waste water from coffee production is converted into biogas through the use of bio-digesters. The biogas is either used for electricity or heat , or in large scale operations generates CO2 credits to offset emissions downstream in the value chain. Other projects have focused on the use of the Cool Farm Tool, developed by the University of Aberdeen with financial support from Unilever. This online, open source tool uses the PAS 2050 methodology and assists farmers in calculating the carbon footprint of their production. All farmers have to do is enter the data into the tool which then calculates their carbon footprint for them.

Overall, some interesting conclusions came out of the conference:

• In the coffee sector, adaptation of climate change impacts should have a higher priority than mitigation. The coffee sector is responsible for less than 0.1% of global GHG emissions while climate change is already having serious negative impacts on the livelihoods of coffee producers in developing countries.



• Coffee brands and consumers tend to view mitigation more favourably than adaptation since mitigation projects sell, while adaptation requires investment. However, through partnerships with other actors along the supply chain, modest investment in adaptation for coffee producers has been possible.



• Much more investment will be needed to scale up adaptation projects to the necessary level. The supply chain will need to continue to work together and with local government authorities to come up with innovative solution and more importantly, agree on exactly where the needed funding will come from.



• Finally, regarding mitigation in the coffee sector, it will be difficult to engage coffee producers when there is no clear benefit for them to measure and reduce their carbon footprint. Explaining the technical terminology, improving the ease and reducing the cost of data collection (for example through use of the Cool Farm Tool) can all prove beneficial. Above all though, mitigation projects need to be made inclusive of producers (e.g. generation of carbon credits that could be sold to fund adaptation projects).

Steve Jobs

From his Stanford Commencement Speech - three lesson for life

1. You have to believe the dots will connect in the future

2. You got to find what you love...the only way to do great work is to love what you do...keep looking don't settle

3. Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of being afraid of what you do...death is life's change agent...Don't follow dogma, it is other people's thinking...don't live other people's lives...stay hungry, stay foolish

Rearranging chairs on the Titanic

Part of my job is to coordinate a UN agency's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Strategy. This is part of a UN wide initiative. At the annual meeting of all the Environmental Focal Points of the UN recently at FAO in Rome, I had the chance to share some ideas and hear what other UN organizations are doing to reduce emissions. The Greening the Blue website presents some of these.

Giving up business class

Here is a non official, voluntary idea - instead of the business class we are entitled to in the UN, we will forego the privilege to travel business and head to the back of the plane instead.

Like international chef David Chang, I really LOVE travelling business class but travelling business has around twice the carbon footprint than economy because of the extra space taken up in the plane.

Today, I will blog about the environmental case for going economy and why you shouldn’t worry too much about how much paper you print…

Why is climate change a serious issue?

On current projections, the Earth will be around 9C warmer in places by the end of the century. This means mass extinctions of species (50%+) are likely. For humans it also means billions of people living (and dying) in misery through destroyed agriculture, coastal flooding, lack of water, increased spread of tropical diseases.

The very scary thing though is feedback effects (already being observed) when increasing temperatures unleash further emissions of gases such the release of methane from the tundra of Siberia which further speeds up the warming effect and melts more tundra…(a vicious cycle).

So on current projections of economic growth, there is, as like to say, a nonnegliable risk of catastrophe….or put another way, it is possible that Plant Earth will not be somewhere worth living in the life of our children and grandchildren.

Why bother being a climate altruist?

Taking voluntary actions like flying less or taking the bus to work are seen as futile acts to many. Paul Krugman argues that climate altruism is pointless because you are simply freeing up space for someone to emit carbon. This is partially true and a strong argument for why we need carbon taxes to make markets work in favour of the environment not against it.

But change isn’t happening fast enough - bottom up initiatives are needed to signal to those in power that we will vote for them if they introduce strong green measures.

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

How do we know what is the best action to take to reduce emissions? Everyone is telling us what is best. Supermarkets label food for its carbon to reduce our shopping basket’s carbon footprint. At work we are reminded to reduce printing and turn off lights. But are these actions really that effective or do they just make us feel like we have done something useful?

Simple calculations reveal where we should concentrate our efforts where we work:

In one UN organization (fairly representative of many), emissions per staff member per year are coming from
Lighting an office - around 0.1t CO2 eq
Paper - around 0.2t CO2eq
Travel - one business class to South Africa from Europe equals 3.0t CO2 eq (the per staff average is 9t CO2eq from travel in many UN agencies)

If just one flight to Africa emits 50 times more carbon than a year’s worth of printing, doesn't it makes sense to think more about alternatives to flying than fretting about lights and paper?