Add another big voice to those calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to talk about climate change at the Group of 20 summit in Toronto next month.
Nicholas Stern, the British economist who authored a seminal 700-page study on the economics of global warming in 2006, says the G20 has a role in achieving the “political agreement” that he believes is necessary to advance on the commitments made at the United Nations’ climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
Among those commitments is a pledge to raise $30-billion (U.S.) over three years to help developing countries adapt “low-carbon” economic policies. Leaders promised to increase that sum to $100-billion a year by 2020, but without working out how the money will be raised or where it might come from.
The G20, which includes the world’s major economies, should play a role in answering those questions, Lord Stern said after a speech at the International Monetary Fund in Washington Wednesday evening.
“You can’t really discuss the finance on the scale that we are talking about unless the G20 is involved and involved this year,” Lord Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics and a former advisory to the British government, said in response to my question. “It is very important that [the G20] looks at it and looks at it in a welcoming way.”
I put the question to Lord Stern after reading that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an audience in Ottawa Wednesday that Mr. Harper should add climate change to the summit agenda.
The argument against doing so is that the G20 is not ready for such a divisive topic. Some Canadian officials would rather keep things simple and give the G20 time to evolve as an institution. Making progress on tightening financial regulation and co-ordinating economic policies will be difficult enough. Adding an agenda item that many G20 members don’t want to touch only risks creating tensions that would limit progress elsewhere.
(Now, it must be said that Canada has proven itself to be among those nations that would rather avoid a fulsome discussion on climate change.)
Lord Stern, who sits on a 19-member committee that will advise Mr. Ban on how to raise all those billions to finance a low-carbon economy in developing countries, has some sympathy for Mr. Harper’s position as G20 chairman. The sensitivities around the forum where climate change should be discussed are “immense,” he said. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is “very territorial about who discusses what and where” and developing countries are equally sensitive about where those talks take place, Lord Stern said.
Still, the leaders of the world’s dominant countries are going to have to work out a position on climate change eventually, so why not start at the G20 summit?
The thrust of Lord Stern’s speech at the IMF Wednesday was to make the case for a political compact at the next UN climate change talks in Mexico this December. Rather than getting bogged down trying to come up with a treaty, Lord Stern says it would be better to heal the wounds created in Copenhagen by reaching an explicit political agreement on overarching topics. For example, how the $30-billion promised for poorer countries will be provided and how carbon emissions will be monitored. That done, officials can hammer out the details and agree on a treaty at the following UN climate change meeting in South Africa in December 2011, Lord Stern said.
“I do hope that it is going to be discussed, but it has to be discussed with great care, which recognizes the primacy that many countries put to the (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change),” Lord Stern said. The G20 should ensure that it “doesn’t try to prejudge. Doesn’t try to shoot down everything for proposals get on the table,” Lord Stern said. “If it’s done in that spirit, I think it would be very valuable.”
