Green Transition

By René Taudal Poulsen

Although the international shipping industry accounts for nearly three per cent of global Greenhouse Gas emissions and is a major emitter of air pollutants, it was left out of the Paris Agreement in 2015. Due to the peculiarities of global ship operations and the high mobility of ships, the question of how to reduce international shipping emissions has been referred to the United Nations’ dedicated maritime agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London. The IMO has adopted several global maritime conventions for environmental protection and maritime safety, the oldest of which came into existence after the sinking of the “Titanic” in 1912.27Today the IMO’s MARPOL Convention is the main international vehicle for maritime environmental protection. 

In response to the signing of the Paris Agreement, the IMO adopted an initial strategy for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping in 2018. The strategy expressed the goal of halving emissions by 2050 relative to 2008, but this goal has proven to misalign with the Paris’ Agreements 1.5 Degrees Celsius objective, and international shipping emissions continue to rise. The IMO members have therefore started negotiating a revision of the strategy, which could potentially strengthen the levels of ambition and pave the way for new types of global, maritime climate regulation. In these negotiations, much is at stake for the 175 IMO member countries members, and some of the classical divides between developed and developing countries about burden sharing and emissions reduction, known from the global climate negotiations in the UNFCCC, also surface in the IMO. Nevertheless, negotiations also differ from UNFCCC because the global emissions from mobile ships are difficult to allocate to national emissions inventories. The IMO has also prided itself as the first international organization to set global “mandatory energy efficiency measures for any transport sector” in 2011, signaling to the world that it sees itself as having sufficient capacity to address the difficult regulatory discussions.

For developing countries, climate change mitigation and the IMO negotiations are highly important for many reasons. The countries suffer from climate change and have a high dependence on cheap seaborne transportation for their imports and exports. Many of them have large ports, and some register a large part of the world fleet. Stricter environmental regulation would benefit developing countries in the form of climate change mitigation as well as improvements of local air quality in port cities, but could potentially affect trade through rising freight rates. Another important matter to keep in mind is the ongoing IMO discussions concerning the possible introduction of a global market-based measure, such as a global tax on marine fuel. Such a mechanism could potentially generate very large funds while facilitating the uptake of low-emission fuels. It is expected that the IMO member states will discuss such measures in the coming three years, and discussions on how to use funding are likely to be intense and difficult. For some developing countries, not least in Africa, new business and job opportunities could also come from the production of low-emission marine fuels from wind and solar energy.  

Despite the obvious high stakes, the maritime GHG discussions have not attracted so much attention in many African countries. Research on environmental governance and global environmental politics has also neglected the engagement of developing countries in maritime emission abatement efforts, focusing only on their presence in the UNFCCC context.   

The low profile of African countries in the IMO contrasts with many developed countries, which often have vested interests in maritime trade, ship-owning, marine equipment manufacturing, or shipbuilding. They send large delegations to IMO meetings, with representatives both from their environmental protection and transportation agencies, and they frequently make submissions to the IMO and set the agenda for the meetings. In contrast, some African countries rarely or never go to IMO meetings. Some send small delegations to London, but change delegation membership very frequently. Most African countries very rarely make submissions to the IMO, if ever. The relatively low African profile in the IMO also contrasts with the same countries’ strong engagement in the global climate negotiations in the UNFCCC. Previous research has shown that developing countries in the Pacific Ocean, which are suffering from climate change and depend on seaborne transportation, gained substantial influence on IMO’s initial GHG strategy in 2018. These countries engaged effectively in discussions in London and gained a strong voice despite the small sizes of their economies and populations. Influence does not appear to be proportional to GDP per capita or the size of the national merchant fleet, but it is clear that a stronger African participation in the IMO and the development of more inclusive maritime governance will be critical in the reduction of maritime emissions. 

In our new research project Environmental Maritime Governance in Kenya (EMG-K), we study Kenya’s engagement in the IMO’s negotiations. Kenya has a special position in the IMO, being a member of the IMO’s Council, which is the IMO’s executive organ. The country is home to the gateway port of Mombasa, which serves an extensive hinterland in South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Having historically focused on land-based resources, over the last decade Kenya has paid increasing attention to its ocean economy, viewing it as a key enabler of its national development blueprint and Mombasa port is a crucial infrastructure for the entire East African region. However, Kenya has very rarely made submissions to the IMO. Like many developing countries, the country faces the challenge of facilitating economic development via its growing maritime trades while protecting the global climate and local air quality. Kenya’s maritime engagement encapsulates one of the major dilemmas relating to international trade and environmental governance: facilitating economic development while protecting the global climate and local air quality. 

The EMG-K project, established by a Kenyan-Danish research consortium, studies how Kenya engages in the IMO and will suggest ways to make maritime governance mechanisms more inclusive and enable Kenya and other African countries to participate more effectively in the IMO negotiations and maritime emission reduction efforts. We will employ ethnographic research methods, with observation studies during meetings in London and Kenya. We will also study the IMO’s archives and interview key stakeholders involved in these processes. We will suggest ways to strengthen Kenya’s maritime governance capacity and support Kenya’s efforts to mitigate climate change and improve local air quality. In doing so, we will drive forward the literature on environmental governance and global environmental politics from a developing country perspective and shed new light on international shipping. 

The Kenyan-Danish research consortium behind the project consists of the Centre for Business and Development Studies (CBDS) at Copenhagen Business School, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law & Policy (CASELAP) at the University of Nairobi, and the Institute for Environmental Law and Governance (ILEG) in Nairobi. More than ten staff members from the three partner institutions are involved in the project, and the Danida Fellowship Centre has kindly provided funding for the project, which runs over three years. 

To read more, please click here: http://drp.dfcentre.com/project/environmental-maritime-governance-in-kenya-emg-k-policy-practice-and-prospects-for-the-abatement-of-shipping-air-emissions/

by Johanna Järvelä & Lotta Aho

What happens when a country moves from purely voluntary regulation towards binding laws? In our research paper we examine how the changes in Chilean environmental regulation affected the mining conflicts in the country.

In Chile, neoliberal policies were implemented to a great extent during 1970’s and 80’s and the legacy of these policies was an almost absent environmental regulation until 2010. Given this background, Chile represented an interesting case to study what were the outcomes of the absence of environmental regulation and ensuing privatized regulation to the environment and society in Chile. And why, especially in time when global tendency was more towards deregulation, Chile was taking the path of re-regulation. 

The first environmental institutions were founded in 1995,  but it was not until 2010 that true change in environmental sector happened because new environmental regulation was introduced and actually enforced for the first time. Even though many of the bigger mining companies were following international voluntary standards, they started to get fines from the Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente (SMA) and the amount of the fines given out by SMA grew each year. It was not because companies were becoming more irresponsible but rather that their ‘business as usual’ was not tolerated anymore and the international voluntary standards proved to be inadequate for environmental protection.

The cowboy practices of past, known for example as ‘senor con el maletin’, the man with the (money) briefcase, were not only condoned no more but also started to cause problems for the companies engaging in these practices. There was a momentum in Chile when simultaneously environmental regulation and institutions were strengthened, and environmental awareness and the number of mining conflicts were increasing. The root cause of the conflicts was environmental breaches that had been happening long before the environmental authorities started to fine companies for them. However, the new environmental laws and growing civil society movements offered the people a stronger position in making the claims and opportunities to seek environmental justice through courts along with bringing the claims more publicity. This in turn forced the companies to not just launch new corporate sustainability programs but also improve their communication with the communities.

The main takeaway from this study is that regulation in itself – be it voluntary or public – is a dead letter without proper implementation and enforcement. To achieve any real change the states need to ensure there is a separate institution to monitor that the laws are abided and sanction those who breach the laws. From private-public interactions perspective, it was the international private regulation together with civil society campaigns and need to align with OECD country standards that in the end instigated the change in Chilean regulation. As more diverse actors and interests became part of the powerplay deciding the regulatory outcome, it helped to de-capture of the political system of environmental regulation from purely industry interest.

To read more about this institutional change and it’s impacts read the recent working paper by Johanna and Lotta: Going Against the Tide : Towards Binding Environmental Regulation of Mining in Chile. 

By Andrew Crabtree

The 2020 Human Development Report is entitled The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene. Whilst previous reports have related to sustainability, the 2020 Report moves beyond this and places human development within Earth Systems science. Thus, it goes beyond the common assertion that humans and the environment are “interconnected” or “interlinked” as Earth Systems science explains and provides ample scientific evidence on how humans are part of the non-human environment. It is not without significance that the director of the report, Pedro Conceiçao, first earned a degree in physics before going on to study economics. It is refreshing to see the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences supplementing one another.

The Report is ambitious. Part I examines human development in the Anthropocene, Part II considers how changes can be made and includes an investigation of social norms, structures and power. Part III explores new metrics and introduces a planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index. In this short blog, I will concentrate on two aspects, namely the introduction of a new concept – that of nature-based human development – and the new Index.

Nature-based human development examines the relationship between humans and the planet at all scales from the local to the global and over different time scales. On the one hand the Report emphasizes the importance of regulation and taxation policies, and on the other it explores the advantages of nature-based solutions: from constructed wetlands, to regenerative agriculture, to marine protection areas and the importance of sea grass. In this connection, it also stresses more traditional human development-related concerns such as indigenous peoples, local communities and their rights, while recognizing potential clashes. These ideas are very close to those being propounded by the United Nations Environmental Program and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as well as the UN’s decade of Ecosystem Restoration.

Equally interesting is the introduction of the planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index. The Human Development Index has been the flagship of the Human Development Reports. In academic terms, no-one has been particularly fond of it including its inventor Amartya Sen. For one thing, as it is a composite indicator made up of three indexes covering Gross National Income, life expectancy and education, the HDI implicitly places a price on people’s lives. However, the index did have the desired political effect as attention was moved away from growth.

The human development approach has not been anti-growth, rather it has seen growth as instrumental to achieving other ends. The new index changes this by introducing the material footprint index which measures the extraction of biomass, fossil fuels and ores. Doing this goes some way to measuring the impact of GNI growth (the measure is also used as an indicator for SDG 12 – responsible production and consumption). Production based carbon emissions are also taken into the overall equation. The consequence of this is that there are only nine countries that are classified as “very high human development”. Norway drops to 16th and is replaced by Ireland at the top (Denmark is 4th). Although the new measurer has received attention in the international press, its deeper impact remains to be seen.

By Diego Angelino Velázquez

In the context of the climate crisis and the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the decarbonisation of production and energy models has been identified as a major goal for societies around the world. This transformative goal should be made a priority in order to respond to the climate crisis and its economic and humanitarian-related effects.

Major investments in Renewable Energy (RE) sources, such as solar photovoltaic, wind (onshore and offshore), geothermal, biomass (waste from urban centres communities, local markets), appear attractive and are increasingly pursued by countries. However, energy transition goes beyond good intentions and “green dreams”. Apart from the tremendous work required to undertake the drastic transformations of economies based on oil, gas, and large-scale hydropower; the energy transition goal faces resource scarcity of minerals; a threat to the entire functioning of the sector.

This phenomenon occurs because RE is sustained by a select group of raw materials and minerals with unique properties for energy production. Lithium, for example, is a key mineral for building batteries. Rare Earth Elements (REEs) provide special conditions for energy conductivity. These minerals, along with having unique characteristics, are also scarce and highly concentrated in a small number of countries. This resource scarcity is further influenced by economic and geopolitical variables, suggesting that the management of raw materials and minerals related to the energy transition is subject to complex, strategic decision-making. Furthermore, they are key to the possibility of an effective energy transition, which is a priority for the fulfilment of the goals related to climate response and sustainable development.

This can be illustrated with a number of examples. In the case of wind energy, the turbine generator requires REEs such as Neodymium (ND), Praseodymium (Pr) and Dysprosium (Dy). The solar photovoltaic requires crystalline silicon, made of Silicon and Silver, and the panels and other related technologies require important quantities of Silicon, Iridium (In), Copper (Cu), Gallium (Ga), Selenium (Se), Cadmium and Tellurium. The electric vehicle industry requires Lithium, Cobalt and Graphite for the batteries, and, for the electric traction motor, large quantities of rare earths such as Praseodymium and Dysprosium are required. Most of these materials are highly concentrated. China, for example, has control over 65-70% of the reserves of the total of Rare Earth Elements and Graphite.

It is necessary for the public sector, private sector and academia, as well as civil society, to reflect upon the potential implications of resource scarcity in the development of the energy sector. Especially for academia, it is important to increase the production of studies and articles that suggest practical solutions for the escalation and rapid development of capacities within topics such as circular economy, resource efficiency and others related to energy transition. Such insights provide us with sufficient time to develop potential substitutes and new engineered solutions that can help humanity navigate and advance within the scarcity paradigm.