Chinese walker

A new comprehensive programme for cooperation between the United States and China that focuses on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and thus mitigating the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, is both necessary and possible. Indeed, as this report suggests, if human beings hope to avoid the worst consequences of global climate change, the United States and China%26mdash;respectively the world`s largest developed and developing nations, the two largest energy consumers, and the two largest producers of greenhouse gases%26mdash;have no alternative but to become far more active partners in developing low-carbon economies.

To prevail in such a common effort, both countries will need not only bold leadership and a new set of national policies, but also a path-breaking cooperative agenda that can be sustained over the long run. The advent of a new US presidential administration in Washington, D.C., coupled with a central leadership in Beijing that is increasingly aware of the destructive impact and long-term dangers of climate change, presents an unparalleled opportunity for this new strategic partnership.

While the current global economic crisis could make joint action between the United States and China more difficult, it could also provide an unexpected impetus. If wisely allocated, funds invested by both governments in economic recovery can help address climate change while also advancing the “green technologies” and industries that will lead to a new wave of economic growth.

Stronger bilateral collaboration on energy and climate change has at the same time the real prospect of helping to build a new, more stable and constructive foundation under Sino-American relations, the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century world.

This report%26mdash;which was produced in partnership between Asia Society`s Center on U.S.-China Relations and Pew Center on Global Climate Change, in collaboration with The Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations, National Committee on U.S.- China Relations, and Environmental Defense Fund%26mdash;presents both a vision and a concrete roadmap for such Sino-U.S. collaboration. With input from scores of experts and other stakeholders from the worlds of science, business, civil society, policy, and politics in both China and the United States, the report, or “roadmap,” explores the climate and energy challenges facing both nations and recommends a concrete program for sustained, high-level, bilateral engagement and on-the-ground action. The Report and its recommendations are based on the following understandings:

* That because there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human-induced climate change is well underway and poses grave economic and environmental risks to the world, the United States and China need to immediately begin acting in concert, without awaiting new domestic legislation or multilateral agreements, to jointly seek remedies for their emissions of greenhouse gases.

* That because climate change is largely a consequence of soaring global use of fossil fuels, addressing the problem will require a fundamental transformation of energy systems in both countries, as well as worldwide, through the development and deployment of new technologies and the widespread introduction of new energy sources capable of enhancing the diversity, reliability, independence, and “greenness” of national energy supplies.

* That even during a time of global economic upheaval, a strong bilateral effort to address the twin challenges of climate change and energy security can succeed while also contributing to economic recovery and laying the foundation for a prosperous, new, low carbon economy in each country.

* That a meaningful U.S.-China partnership on climate change issues can be forged on the basis of equity, taking into account the respective stages of development, capacities, and responsibilities of each country.

* That while enhanced U.S.-China cooperation must begin with collaboration between the two national governments, success will ultimately hinge on each nation`s ability to catalyse action and investment in the marketplace.

* That if fashioned carefully, closer collaboration on energy and climate can address the problem of climate change and enhance the economic prospects of both nations while conferring on neither an unfair competitive advantage.

* That by demonstrating global leadership and making significant new progress toward closer bilateral cooperation, the world`s two largest economies will help achieve stronger multilateral agreement and action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The report recommends that, as a first step in forging this new partnership, the leaders of the two countries should convene a leaders summit as soon as practically possible following the inauguration of Barack Obama to launch a “US-China Partnership on Energy and Climate Change.” This presidential summit should outline a major plan of joint-action and empower relevant officials in each country to take the necessary actions to ensure its implementation.

The report recommends that the partnership be directed by two parallel groups. A US-China high-level council would be established to draw up overall plans for the collaboration.

The Commission would include high-ranking environment, energy, and finance officials from both countries. It would meet regularly to establish and review the strategic direction of the new partnership as well as to discuss other issues of common concern, including those relating to ongoing multilateral negotiations.

In addition, each of the highlighted concrete priority areas proposed below would be guided by a second tier of bilateral task forces. These would be composed of senior government officials and independent experts in science, technology, business, finance, civil society, and policy from each country. Their responsibilities would involve establishing goals, designating joint-research areas, developing collaborative programs within each of the designated areas, organizing concrete joint projects in each area of cooperation, and overseeing the implementation of these projects.

Areas where direct collaboration is expected to yield the quickest and most substantial results on reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been given highest priority. They are listed below in shortened form, but discussed in greater detail in Section IV of the report.

Priority areas of collaboration include:

* Deploying low-emissions coal technologies

The likelihood that both the United States and China will continue to rely heavily on coal for many years to come necessitates immediate and large-scale investments in the research, development, and deployment of new technologies for the capture and sequestration of carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

* Improving energy efficiency and conservation

Both the United States and China have significant potential to lower their carbon emissions through low-cost, and even no-cost, energy efficiency and conservation measures that would have considerable impact on each country`s “carbon footprint” and energy security.

* Developing an advanced electric grid

Both the United States and China rely on outdated, decentralized, and inefficient electrical transmission systems. Both countries could profit from research, development, and adoption of new “smart grid” technologies capable of enabling these systems to handle larger quotients of low-carbon energy from episodic, but renewable sources of power more cheaply and efficiently.

* Promoting renewable energy

There is an obvious need for both countries to develop a far broader deployment of solar, wind, and other renewable sources of energy in order to de-carbonize their respective electricity systems, expand their low-carbon economies, and thereby diminish their carbon emissions per unit of GDP.

* Quantifying emissions and financing low-carbon technologies

To help facilitate cooperation in the above areas, it will be important to continue to jointly address the cross-cutting issues of quantifying and projecting emissions, and financing technology development and deployment. That our planet is now approaching a point of no return on the question of global warming is increasingly self-evident. Recognition of the daunting challenges that such moments pose can be unsettling, even paralysing. However, with bold leadership, they can also be galvanising.

It is unclear as yet whether the growing awareness of our tipping point moment will intersect in a timely manner with the new leadership that is now assuming office in Washington and the increasingly well-informed central leadership in Beijing to catalyse both countries toward mustering the necessary clarity of vision, intellectual resources, funding, technology and international cooperation. What is clear, however, is that we are in uncharted waters that will beg an unprecedented effort from both the world at large and the United States and China in particular. For whether we choose to recognize it or not, these two countries are both crucial in the effort to address climate change. Simply put, if these two countries cannot find ways to bridge the long-standing divide on this issue, there will literally be no solution.

Fortunately, it is the firm conviction of those who have worked on this Report over the past year that the United States and China will both benefit from the kind of collaboration outlined herein. Moreover, not only would such a collaboration allow the world to take a giant step forward in confronting the global climate change challenge, but both the United States and China would indirectly stand to profit immeasurably from it. If their leaders jointly play their cards astutely, the two countries could find themselves in the forefront of a new greentech economy, and in a stronger, more strategic partnership, better able to help lead the world to meet other twenty-first century challenges.

The full report can be downloaded in both languages here.

Homepage photo by jeffory.zhang

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World)

Given its potential to cause a serious decline in the liveability of different regions around the world, policymakers and others are beginning to identify climate change as a security threat. Although there is no consensus that this drives violent conflict, security concerns arise from its indirect impacts on local institutions in areas challenged by environmental degradation.

Particularly in Europe, climate change is increasingly prominent in national security strategies and military policies, a reflection of the global reach of socioeconomic and political consequences. The fact that traditional security actors are involved in discussions on this issue confirms that state stability and security are no longer confined to the realms of territoriality and weapons-based threats. A broader understanding is needed of the threats to security posed by the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.

The direct impacts of climate change on human welfare are multiple and interlinked. The likely increase in the volatility of the water supply will threaten health and sanitation for the most vulnerable societies, for example. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1.3 billion people today do not have adequate access to drinking water and 2 billion people lack access to sanitation.

In Africa, anywhere from 75 million to 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change by 2020. Yields from rain-fed agriculture could be cut in half, adversely affecting the food supply and exacerbating malnutrition. Increased temperatures also have a direct effect on the spread of disease, adding to the potential for the disruption of social stability. The IPCC predicts more frequent temperature extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events as well as more intense tropical cyclones, threatening the physical safety of people living in areas with limited capacity to adapt to these changes

The indirect impacts on states and communities are equally important. Migration, the collective impacts on human welfare, and the threat to livelihoods undermine political institutions in vulnerable states. They challenge the maintenance or establishment of political and socioeconomic stability%26mdash;a worrying consequence since cooperative and legitimate governance is considered the key determinant in the peaceful management of scarce resources. The negative effect on governance structures is particularly relevant when an economy depends heavily on its resource base, which is the case in most developing countries.

As centers of production shift to areas that remain viable during climate change, state and local institutions may be incapacitated. Loss of revenue, combined with the direct threats of climate change, bode ill for institutions struggling to ease conflict, regardless of whether the tensions emerge over the division of scarce goods or other social, political or economic divisions. The direct impacts and indirect institutional challenges linked to climate change can reinforce each other as security effects emerge at the state and transnational levels.

Recognising these complex linkages, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the national security implications of climate change [in May 2007]. In his opening statement, Senator Richard Lugar acknowledged that “the problem is real and is exacerbated by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. In the long run this could bring drought, famine, disease, and mass migration, all of which could lead to conflict.”

The military board of the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit research organisation for public-policy decision-makers, notes that the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy of the United States should directly address the threat of climate change and prepare the military to respond to the consequences. So far, this advice has not been implemented in security policy planning at the national level: the most recent National Security Policy of the United States did not mention anthropogenic climate change as an issue area of concern. In contrast, climate change is mentioned specifically as a security interest within the first few pages of the European Security Strategy

Researchers remain divided on the direct links between climate change and violent conflict. The models have been based on one of two scenarios: conflict over increasingly scarce resources such as water or arable land or migration as a trigger of conflict. Research in the early 1990s by Thomas Homer-Dixon on the resource scarcity-conflict relationship found limited evidence supporting a connection, but it did identify a causal link when resource competition was combined with other socioeconomic factors, such as poor institutional capacity to govern the resource.

One challenge in examining the relationship across a large number of cases was that both degradation and conflict data were only available at the national level, producing mixed results and masking the incidences of conflict within and between communities. A recent study by Clionadh Raleigh and Henrik Urdal used geo-referenced data to look at the relationship of conflict occurrence to geographical boundaries rather than political ones. Although their analysis provided only moderate support for the effect of demographic and environmental variables on conflict, the authors called for further investigation into the links between physical processes and the political processes of rebellion.

Migration is identified as the second primary climate-induced driver of conflict. In 2007 the [British government`s] Stern Review warned that “by the middle of the century, 200 million more people may become permanently displaced due to rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts.” Weak states are particularly vulnerable to climate-induced migration, since environmental impacts can be addressed by adaptation and mitigation or by leaving an affected area, but weak institutions are less capable of successfully implementing the former strategies.

Resource competition can emerge when local and resettled populations are forced to share subsistence resources, which can serve to worsen pre-existing ethnic or social tensions. Adrian Martin notes that in communities with resettled populations, “there is a growing concern that scarcity-induced insecurities can contribute to an amplification of the perceived significance of ethnic differences and inequalities, creating the conditions for unproductive conflict. %26hellip; In such cases, perceptions of resource use conflict and perceptions of inequity are mutually reinforcing.”

Nonetheless, some scholars emphasise that conflict in these cases is better explained by the migration of feuding parties or the weak institutional capacity of the receiving community.

What the academic debate is unable to account for, based on historical incidences of conflict, is the threat to security and state stability posed by unprecedented levels of climate change due to human activities. The evidence from several areas indicates that climate change can act as a “risk multiplier”, revealing a potential for unprecedented violent outcomes as climate conditions worsen.

In Sudan, for example, climate change is an additional stress in an area already unable to meet its resource demands. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that “desertification is clearly linked to conflict, as there are strong indications that the hardship caused to pastoralist societies by desertification is one of the causes of the current war in Darfur.”

The pastoralists were forced to move south to find arable land as the boundaries of the desert shifted southward due to declines in precipitation. In northern Darfur, the annual amount of rainfall has dropped by 30% over 80 years. As demand increases, in line with projected growth rates in the human and livestock populations, climate change is expected to aggravate conflicts in an area with an extensive history of local clashes over agricultural and grazing land.

In one case reported by UNEP, the camel-herding Shanabla tribe had migrated southward into the Nuba mountains as a result of northern rangeland degradation, and the Nuba population “expressed concern over the widespread mutilation of trees due to heavy logging by the Shanabla to feed their camels, and warned of %26lsquo;restarting the war` if this did not cease.” While the primary drivers of the Darfur crisis include a range of social, political and economic issues, episodes like this one demonstrate how declining resources can fuel an environment of competition and mistrust in regions plagued by conflict.”

Bangladesh is considered to be among the countries at highest risk from the effects of climate change, as floods, monsoons, tropical cyclones that increase in intensity, and sea level rise from melting glaciers threaten the population, particularly in coastal areas. Abnormally high destruction was already witnessed in the flood of 1998, when two-thirds of the country was inundated. The flood led to more than 1,000 deaths, the loss of 10% of the country`s rice crop, and 30,000 people being left homeless.

Continued climate change may prevent future recovery in Bangladesh, since small islands in the Bay of Bengal are home to approximately four million people, many of whom will need to be relocated as the islands are rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels. Conflict over territorial borders already plagues the region, and the resettlement of vulnerable populations threatens to add to these conflicts.

The deteriorating socioeconomic and political situation in Bangladesh is already a security concern for other nations: following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and Islamic extremists relocated to Bangladesh. Increasing extremism threatens to further destabilise the country as environmental stress combines with socioeconomic factors to weaken the government`s ability to cope with multiple sources of instability.

As the Darfur and Bangladesh cases demonstrate, the threat posed to security and stability at the global, state and individual levels from environmental degradation is increasingly evident, despite academic criticism about the lack of precise evidence linking climate change to violent outcomes. Yet academic research suffers from improperly scaled national aggregate data, the challenge of capturing complex causal models, and the difficulty of accounting for the time-lagged effects of climate change. These constraints should not excuse policymakers who fail to address increasingly visible security challenges.

While preparing for the effects of climate change is receiving more attention through strategies of mitigation and adaptation, the developing world remains most a risk from the consequences of temperature rise – and it has the least access to financial, technical and human resources to implement preventative measures. As threats to stability and security are increasingly seen to transcend political borders, climate change presents clear security challenges for industrial nations as well as for the most volatile or vulnerable regions of the world.

Jennifer Wallace is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland.

Copyright 2009 Worldwatch Institute

(Republished with permission from the Worldwatch Institute`s 2009 “State of the World” report, Into a Warming World.)

SPECIAL OFFER: Chinadialogue readers may buy the book at a 20% discount from Earthscan, using the voucher code CHINA DIALOGUE

Homepage photo by uncultured

In a new report released by the Asia Society`s Center on US-China Relations and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group of more than 50 experts on China, politics and business aim to provide Barack Obama`s new US administration with a policy roadmap for cooperation with China. Common Challenge, Collaborative Response: A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change was produced by the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Task Force, co-chaired by John L Thornton, professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and by Steven Chu, prior to his nomination as US secretary of energy. Here, Banning Garrett and Jonathan Adams introduce the report. The full document can be downloaded in both languages here.

Nearly four decades ago, the 1971-72 US-China rapprochement led to the most far-reaching strategic transformation of the international economic, political and security order since the extraordinary set of relationships and institutions that had been established in the aftermath of World War II. Today, the United States and China have a historic opportunity to once again catalyse a strategic transformation, this time to a global low-carbon, sustainable economy to effectively mitigate the chances of catastrophic climate change while increasing global prosperity. American and Chinese leadership is critical since the two countries are the biggest developed and developing countries, the biggest consumers of energy and the biggest producers of greenhouse-gas emissions. If the US and China do not lead this generations-long effort, it is unlikely that it will occur at all – or at least not on a timetable that will achieve the global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions necessary to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

This challenge for the US, China and the rest of the world comes at a time not only of increasing threats from global warming, but also the most severe global economic crisis since the Great Depression. The economic meltdown has an immediate and daily-worsening impact while the climate-change crisis is more invisible and slow-developing – although with potentially more disastrous and long-lasting consequences. Political leaders are under great pressure to focus their attention on halting and reversing the economic death spiral that began with the global financial crisis last autumn. Failure to address global warming as part of the economic recovery effort, however, could greatly increase the long-term costs of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and the impacts of climate change. The planned stimulus packages by the United States and China promise vast increases in government resources and directed investment, which offer great potential – if properly directed – to accelerate transition to a global low-carbon economy while pulling the world out of recession.

To establish their new strategic relationship in the early 1970s, China and the United States overcame more than 20 years of mutual isolation, ideological rivalry, and intense hostility, including fighting a hot war in Korea from 1950 to 1953, a near-conflict over Taiwan in the late 1950s, and a proxy war in Vietnam in the 1960s. While the shared objective of the US-China rapprochement was the containment and strategic isolation of the Soviet Union, the ultimate, long-term effect was to spur the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union and its eastern European empire, thereby ending the Cold War and creating one integrated world economy. The US-China rapprochement also created the international conditions for China`s successful opening to the outside and its economic reform, leading to the extraordinary reemergence of China – and the acceleration of the process of globalisation.

The US-China rapprochement of the early 1970s was based on strategic calculations and decisions by the top leaders in both countries to deal with the common strategic challenge posed by the Soviet Union. These decisions set in motion a process that led to far more massive international change than a reconfiguration of big-power relations to counterbalance rising Soviet power. The decisions at the top in the two countries unleashed a largely bottom-up process that involved daily decisions and actions of hundreds of millions of people in China and around the world, which transformed the global strategic fabric and created the increasingly interconnected, globalised world we have today.

Now, a shared strategic threat is posed by not by an external enemy but by our own efforts to achieve economic development and prosperity. The climate-change threat is more slow-moving and diffuse than the nuclear threat hanging over the Cold War, but the long-term danger to civilization may be no less existential. The response to this new strategic threat must begin like the US-China rapprochement in the 1970s, with initial decisions by the top leadership of the two nations that set in motion a long-term process that would prove to be even more transformative perhaps than initially envisioned. Similarly, key strategic decisions and concerted efforts to establish the necessary conditions for a transformation of the US and Chinese economies could unleash the creativity, resourcefulness, competitiveness and determination of millions of people and businesses to speed the world`s transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy.

A new opportunity has emerged in both countries. US president Barack Obama has stated that mitigating climate change will be a high priority for his administration, which is committed to 80% reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. His stimulus plan includes commitment of massive resources for building a new clean energy infrastructure, greater efforts to enhance energy efficiency, and new steps to move away from dependence on fossil fuels. Although China is not yet willing to commit to emissions reduction targets, Chinese leaders have a similar perspective on the climate-change threat and the need for transition to a low-carbon economy. They are also planning to devote stimulus resources to energy efficiency, green technologies and other efforts to build a low-carbon energy infrastructure.

It is essential that both the Obama administration and the Chinese leadership engage at the highest levels to begin a new programme of significantly scaled-up cooperation on energy and climate change as soon as possible. Successful US-China cooperation on energy and climate security will substantially enhance prospects for a new international climate agreement as well as bolstering political support in each country for climate change mitigation policies. It will also build mutual trust between the United States and China, strengthen the US-China partnership for tackling a wide range of common strategic challenges in the twenty-first century, and be a constructive force in US-China relations at a point in time when the American public is increasingly sceptical of the benefits of bilateral economic integration.

Banning Garrett is director of the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate

Jonathan Adams is assistant director of the Initiative for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate

Homepage photo from White House Photo Office/ Richard Nixon Library.

President Richard Nixon at the Great Wall, February 24, 1972.

After the cold room, the three Arctic explorers have more chilling work to do at the Institute of Naval Medicine in Portsmouth, England. As well as walking on their Arctic research trip, the team expects to swim for up to 100 hours, dragging their specially designed sleds over “leads” – stretches of water that can open up between ice pans, or small floes. While swimming, they will wear bright-orange immersion suits, which they now put on, lowering themselves into the pool of icy water.

Pen Hadow, the team leader, says it`s like being “shrink-wrapped”. I tried it for myself and it was how I imagined it would feel to swim in mercury. The pool temperature is much warmer than the cold room, 4%26ordm; Celsius, but because water conducts heat 26 times better than air, it “rips” the heat away from the explorers. The final test is to get back into the water in only their walking clothes to simulate what would happen if they fell through the ice. If they do, the water is likely to be even colder, probably below zero Celsius — salt water freezes at -1.8%26deg; Celsius.

Early polar explorations left a trail of graves — men killed by hypothermia, scurvy, gangrene and even poisoning after eating the livers of polar bears. Modern science has alerted those who have followed to many of these dangers, and provided remedies. But for all the advances in modern technology, many risks still remain, almost all of them bound up in the landscape over which the team will have to walk and swim.

“Your brain is so used to visual information pouring in that when you go there the instant impression is: there isn`t anything up here – it`s all white,” says Hadow. In the first few days, the brain “retunes”, and as the other senses are dulled by the cold and the heavy layers of clothing, the eyes become more alert.

“Some people talk about the Arctic as a monotonous wilderness of white, but if you open your eyes and look at the landscape, especially in spring, you realise that there are no whites whatsoever,” writes Hadow in his autobiography, Solo. “Everything is in shades and tones of pastel colours — cream, grey, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink — and only in the stark bright light at the height of the polar summer, when the sun is high in the sky, do you begin to see true whites among the other colours.”

Nor is the Arctic a great flat glass to glide over. Before each trip, Hadow spends hours on Dartmoor – an area of moorland in south-western England — pulling strings of tyres around tors – rocky peaks — getting caught on and under rocks, untangling, pulling, shoving and scrabbling over cold wet granite to prepare for the huge pressure ridges he will have to clamber over: steep walls of frozen, slippery ice rubble that test both his physical strength and patience. Even on the “flat” pans, the ice is “rough, cracked, pitted and pocked with holes, lumps, bumps, projections and cracks where your burden becomes wedged or threatens to topple over, spilling its load,” he writes.

Then there are the wind and currents, which constantly work on the great floating, constantly changing landscape — grinding ice together, pulling pans apart, sometimes so “rapid as to equal a ship running before the wind”, to cite the evocative description of the ancient, unknown Norse writer of Kongespeilet. Not infrequently, travellers have to make huge detours or backtrack over a ridge or rubble field because of an impassable lead; occasionally they wake to find they have drifted south of the point they began walking the previous day. And the sounds of all this movement are amplified by the otherwise silent emptiness. The landscape is so empty that in 2003 Hadow recorded that the only life he encountered were three seals, one snow bunting and the tracks of a single polar bear.

By day, the whooshing of skis and scratching of poles and the roar of wind past their ears dominate the explorers` world. At night, however, after the cooker is turned off, they lie with their heads on the ice and listen to it. “You wouldn`t conceive such random movements could produce such metronomic sounds: you get this der-der-der-der-der-errrr, der-der-der-der-der-errrr,” says Hadow. “It`s disconcerting because it tends to be the ice breaking up around your tent, often literally around you. This happens three or four times in an expedition. You have to take a view: will this open up and will we be falling in in the morning, or will it be little hairline cracks rather than major fractures?” Sometimes the wind also beats against the tent like a drum.

Today, the biggest threats Arctic explorers face are those things that happen quickly, before help can be summoned from a few hours` away, or possibly days if the weather is bad. There is the moment-to-moment threat of falling through the ice — a risk that rises with every year the ice recedes. There are the constant dangers of being crushed by sleds, a sudden serious illness and always the fear of a polar-bear attack. Then there`s the nightly gamble with carbon-monoxide poisoning from burning stoves inside tents.

And all the time, of course, there is the ever-present, grinding cold. In temperatures as low as -50%26ordm; Celsius, with wind chill that can sink to -90%26deg; Celsius, cold remains a constant danger. Travellers cannot stop for more than 10 minutes to mend equipment or they start to freeze — mucus dries like gravel in the nose, contact lenses would freeze to eyeballs, unprotected parts of the body can be frostbitten before you have noticed, fillings in teeth expand and contract, sweat freezes under clothes and, as the temperature drops, the human brain begins to slow, making people less responsive to problems — in extreme cases causing them to make the problem worse by acting in exactly the wrong way, such as undressing.

The constant struggle over the ice, the stress and cold are compounded by exhaustion. To keep their sled weight down, the explorers calculate they can survive on a “deficit” of about 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day, but after two weeks their bodies start to consume muscle to keep going. And, despite their exertions, sleep is often hard.

“For the first month you`re cold every night, shivering,” says Hadow`s colleague, Martin Hartley, “then you worry about polar bears sniffing around looking for a canap%26eacute; in a sleeping bag.”

To cope with such conditions, Hadow adopts an almost obsessive regime of walking, eating from his “nosebag” of chocolate and nut rations, and checking his condition and his kit regularly. In a team, some risks are mitigated by having other people to help. But this time they will carry much more weight because of the measuring work and Hartley`s cameras and video equipment, and the trio also has taken advice from a psychologist about how to cope with personality problems that might arise.

Despite all these reasons, getting to the North Pole is still “85% in your head”, says Hadow. “Over the 70-odd days I was there last time [on his solo trip], I would only think there was less than half a day when all things were good.”

“It messes with your mind,” he says in another conversation. “The Arctic is a dynamic surface, and there are all sorts of things that can go against you. It feels like you`re against a mightier force, which is a disastrous way to reach your goal. It`s like a white crucible. You put yourself or your team in and apply a Bunsen burner to the crucible, and all the fluff and juices are evaporated off and you`re just left with the essence of those people.”

For these reasons and the added difficulties of dragging extra weight, having additional tasks, raising many times the usual cost of a polar expedition, and — ironically — the worsening ice conditions, Hadow admits they cannot guarantee success. His own training also has been interrupted by one of the many viruses which gripped the United Kingdom this winter. “We cannot know whether we can do it,” he says. “But we`re not just giving it a go – we`re very locked on to going the distance, to 90 degrees [north].”

All being well, on February 24 or 25, the Catlin survey team will leave the base at Resolute Bay in northern Canada, be flown up to 80%26deg;N 140%26deg;W, where the multi-year ice begins, and start walking north-east along the line of 140%26deg; longitude. There can be no maps of ephemeral sea ice, and Hadow believes that the route has not been taken for 40 years, since the journey of Sir Wally Herbert, after whose wife, Marie, Hadow has named his sled.

As they travel across the ice pans, a radar device specially designed for the conditions, weighing just four kilogrammes, will take a measurement every 10 centimetres. The team also will stop regularly to drill cores of snow and ice and take measurements of the ocean temperatures and currents below. As they travel, Hadow will dictate notes into a special voice recorder about the regularity and make-up of ridges and other features. And Hartley, an award-winning photographer of difficult environments, will capture their progress and the landscape.

The data will be fed back via satellites to the scientists every night, and they hope that early results will be available before a United Nations meeting (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark. There, in December, the world`s governments will be asked to agree an ambitious treaty to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and so, it is hoped, reduce global warming and the resulting climate change.

“Once they have a figure for how long the Arctic sea ice will be there for, they will have to act,” says Hartley.

Scientists already believe that melting ice is responsible for average air temperatures warming twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the planet. So far they believe the melting of the floating ice has an undetectable effect on global sea levels and the expansion of the warming water contributes less than 1% of the annual average rise. But if the ice melts further, or disappears, that cycle of melting and warming will add noticeably to sea levels.

There are emerging concerns that the warming water temperatures are speeding up the melting of the Greenland ice cap, which could add metres to sea levels. Less certainly, the influx of fresh and warmer water could start to alter the planetary circulation of ocean currents and winds that dictate weather patterns.

At the extreme, this could trigger one of the more catastrophic “tipping points” of climate change — the switching-off of the “thermohaline circulation” that brings warm water from the Tropics to the northern Atlantic and sends cooler Arctic waters south. In the impeccably bureaucratic language required to achieve consensus among hundreds of scientists and governments, the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report described such an abrupt transition as a “low-confidence” event — that is, a two in 10 chance.

At best, the Arctic survey team`s science adviser, Wieslaw Maslowski, does not believe the results will give them more than a decade beyond his 2013 projection of the end of all Arctic summer ice. What then? Is it not too late?

“Even if it`s too late to do anything about sea ice, what other wildernesses are we going to let go?” adds Hadow.

Follow the expedition team — with regular updates on the explorers` progress, physical condition and more — at www.catlinarcticsurvey.com

www.guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Homepage photo by Catlin Arctic Survey

On a cold Monday in December, one of Britain`s most experienced polar explorers is sitting in an even colder room in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, explaining his latest mission. The temperature has been turned down to a mere -20%26deg; Celsius, tropical by comparison to the almost inconceivable conditions he will have to endure during his next expedition to the Arctic.

There, temperatures can drop as low as -90%26deg; Celsius; it is dark all day or the sun can blind people in minutes. The explorers will wake up, their eyelashes frozen together, in sleeping bags full of shards of ice. The ground beneath the trekkers` feet will be only inches of frozen water that can open at any moment into icy rivers that will kill almost instantly. And, apart from the odd grey seal, the only life they are likely to meet is a hungry polar bear.

Meeting Pen Hadow for the first time is something of a shock. He is the first man in history to have managed one of the ultimate feats of human endurance — to trek solo and unaided to the North Pole. But instead of the great strapping giant of a man you might expect, the 46-year-old explorer is slightly built, and his hand, when he shakes mine hello, is almost the hand of a woman.

As Hadow talks, his breath frosts the air in front of his face, but he looks unperturbed while sitting still in this giant concrete freezer. Such small extremities, along with his brown eyes, olive skin and naturally low heart rate, make him ideally suited to a life of spending months at a time alone or responsible for teams of amateurs in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth.

Now, though, Hadow is about to embark on a very different expedition. Later this month, he is to leave northern Canada to trek more than 1,000 kilometres to the North Pole; what`s different this time is that he is travelling with two fellow polar explorers, his friends Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley, and they will be dragging with them not just food and repair kits but 100-kilogramme sleds each, laden with equipment to take up to 12 million readings of the depth and density of snow and ice beneath their feet.

The readings that Hadow and his team are taking will feed into our understanding of the Arctic`s relationship with climate change. Based on occasional submarine journeys and more recently satellite data, charts of the total area of Arctic sea ice have shown a gradual decline over the past 40 years. Then, in 2007, the line on the chart appeared to drop off a cliff, plunging below 5,000,000 square kilometres a full three decades ahead of forecasts.

The dramatic events of two northern summers ago, when a Russian submarine rushed to plant a flag under the pole and Canadian and European governments tersely laid rival claims to sovereignty, led many scientists to warn that the Arctic sea ice could disappear entirely during the summer months much sooner than had been feared.

Most experts agree on the impact this will have on five million Arctic inhabitants and the rest of the world — from the loss of the unique habitat that exists under the ice to rising global sea levels and possible changes to the ocean circulation and the weather patterns of the whole planet. Yet forecasts for when this will happen range from just four years to the end of the century. The reason is that very little is understood about the depth and density of the sea ice, and therefore the total volume of water frozen at the top of the world.

This is what Hadow`s Catlin Arctic Survey — appropriately sponsored by an insurance company — hopes to put right by providing the much-needed data about how much ice is left, and so help work out how much time we have to prepare for what probably is the most immediate, truly global threat of climate change. The survey is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Prince Charles and the conservation charity WWF.

“If you want to understand climate, we should invest more in making observations of climate change, and as the Arctic Ocean is the amplifier of global warming, we should concentrate on the Arctic region to understand how fast the warming is taking place,” says Wieslaw Maslowski, a research associate professor in oceanography at the United States Naval Postgraduate School and science adviser to the Catlin survey.

Hadow puts it more chivalrously: “I see the Arctic as a maiden newly discovered on the social scene, and we`re melting away her petticoats, and there are some avaricious types peering underneath, and someone needs to defend her honour.”

Hadow`s defining 75-day trek to the North Pole in 2003, alone and with no airplanes to resupply him, began with a spur-of-the-moment promise to his father on his deathbed, a promise that was to haunt him for 10 years through two earlier failed attempts and financial and health problems. So obsessed did he become that in his autobiography, Solo, Hadow wrote: “Above all other things, even the birth of my son, it seemed to be absolutely central to my being.”

The roots of that trip and Hadow`s long love affair with the Arctic lie deeper, though. His parents, Nigel and Anne, hired a nanny named Enid Wigley who had looked after the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott`s son Peter, and her routine involved teaching the young Pen to endure the cold by leaving him outside. She also spent years telling him stories of Antarctic explorers.

Years later, drifting in an unhappy job with a sports management group, Hadow found a book in the library of the Royal Geographical Society in London that was to bring back those memories, lead him to both poles, and now set him on his mission to alert the world to the imminent threat to the Arctic. The book was the translated diaries of an obscure 19th-century German ornithologist called Bernhard Adolph Hantzsch who, after being shipwrecked, died trying to trek across the far north of Canada to find a ship home. Hadow was captivated and decided to finish the German`s journey.

“I remember walking back to the office, thinking: %26lsquo;Of all the books I have, 90% of them are written by adventurers and explorers and scientists: Francis Chichester, Jacques Cousteau, Chris Bonington, Ranulph Fiennes, [Robin] Hanbury-Tenison,`” recalls Hadow. “It never occurred to me until that moment that I could ever lead a life approximate to those. In that moment I thought: %26lsquo;I’m going to start this journey.`”

The official history records that, thanks to “Nanny” Wigley and Hantzsch, Hadow advertised for a companion, made his first journey and was hooked on exploring. Reading between the lines of his biography, though, there appears to be another crucial factor in his career choice: an extraordinarily strong need to prove himself, from hanging upside-down from trees as a child to taking up competitive gardening and school sports.

“There were lots of reasons why I did it [the solo trek] which were based around this vow I made, the main reason being that at the time it was regarded as the ultimate feat to be done,” Hadow admits in conversation.

If anything, the latest expedition comes even closer to fulfilling this need. After the solo feat, Hadow was researching his book; while in bed one night, he read a report by the US navy that discussed design changes to its ships, undertaken to cope with changing sea ice because of global warming.

“I thought: %26lsquo;Even I don`t really know about this and I`m in the almost unique situation of having this relationship with the Arctic,`” he says. “I thought: %26lsquo;I could be the amplifier or explainer; I might be the person to reach out to as wide an audience as possible, globally, to tell them what’s going on.` That`s what explorers do, classically. They discover information and then have the potential to engage audiences.”

With a new reason to return to the Arctic, Hadow asked climate scientists how he could help. He discovered that measurements of sea ice began in the 1960s, but for three decades there were only annual submarine voyages, providing too little data to be sure what was happening more broadly. Since the 1990s, satellite maps have been used to calculate the height of snow and ice above the waterline, but experts have to make assumptions about the roughly five-sixths of mass underneath, and there is a “hole” in the data over the North Pole that is 1,600 kilometres across.

The satellites show that in 2007 alone, the Arctic sea ice lost an area nearly the size of Alaska, reaching an all-time low of 4,130,000 square kilometres on 16 September. Following this and another poor year in 2008, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) now calculates the permanent sea ice — measured in September at its nadir — is receding by 11.7% a decade, or an average area the size of Scotland every year.

Little is known about thickness, nor about the density of different layers of snow and compacted ice. Submarine data suggests a 40% thinning between the 1960s and 1990s. Last year the journal Geophysical Research Letters published a paper by three experts at University College London (UCL) that calculated that the ice in the winter of 2007-08 was thinner than the previous five-year average by 26 centimetres, plus or minus 5 centimetres. The margin of error reflects the lack of long-term and wide-ranging data.

Last September, despite a cooler summer, the sea ice only recovered to its second-lowest recorded extent, possibly because there was more thin first-year ice than usual. And some scientists think the total volume last year was even lower than 2007, says Maslowski.

Part of the wide range in estimates for when summer sea ice will disappear is due to uncertainty about how quickly the exposed darker sea will warm, triggering a cycle of more melting and warming. The models also differ in their varying assumptions about ice thickness. Maslowski, whose team has projected the most aggressive date — between 2010 and 2016, based on current trends — argues, for example, that too little is known about increasingly warmer water brought by ocean currents from the Pacific and Atlantic, and its contribution to melting sea ice.

A few scientists do venture to the far north, usually by boat or plane, to drill cores or take radar measurements, but in an area that in winter can cover up to 4% of the globe, there are only about six such locations, says Seymour Laxon, one of UCL`s experts. The problem is that few scientists have the inclination, physical endurance, time and money to do the training necessary to spend months in such harsh conditions, says Hadow, who has raised almost US$4.4 million and spent years planning the trip, including an extra delay after funding fell through for 2008.

“What captivated me more than anything was that I could do this,” says Hadow. “For once in my life I was in the right place at the right time.”

NEXT: Into the cold

Food prices have fallen significantly from their peak last year, but that doesn`t mean that policymakers can start to heave a sigh of relief. For one thing, prices remain acutely problematic for poor people and poor countries at current levels. Moreover, prices are poised to resume their upwards climb when the world emerges from the downturn. Accordingly, policymakers need to treat the current easing in prices as a window of opportunity in which to agree the comprehensive, long-term collective action needed to ensure food security for all in the twenty-first century.

This is the central argument of The Feeding of the Nine Billion [pdf], a new report on food prices and scarcity issues published by Chatham House. The report argues that long term demand drivers – a population set to reach over 9 billion by mid-century, and the rising affluence and expectations of a growing “global middle class” – are half the story: the World Bank forecasts 50% higher demand for food by 2030.

At the same time, scarcity issues will present increasing challenges on the supply side. Oil prices are set to rise again after the downturn, given that investment in new production has collapsed as oil prices have fallen, setting the stage for a future supply crunch. Food prices are likely to follow them, as biofuels, fertiliser prices and transport costs play their part. Climate change, water scarcity and competition for land will all also push prices upwards over the longer term.

So what needs to be done? Four main areas stand out.

First, we need to get a twenty-first century Green Revolution underway, and fast. Spending on agriculture by aid donors and developing country governments has collapsed over the last 25 years. A similar story applies on research and development. The core task here is to move from today`s unsustainable, input-intensive model of agriculture to one that`s instead knowledge-intensive. Genetically-modified crops could have a part to play, but more ecologically integrated approaches (like integrated soil fertility management) often score higher on equitability and social resilience, given that they diffuse power among farmers rather than concentrating it with seed companies.

Second, we need to scale up social protection systems in developing countries. Today, nearly a billion people don`t have enough to eat. But as can be seen from the fact that another billion are overweight or obese, the problem is not that there is insufficient food to go around. Instead, it is simply that poor people find food prices beyond their reach. Social protection systems, such as food safety nets, unemployment benefits or school feeding programmes, are a better bet for developing countries than price controls or economy-wide subsidies. They target help where it is needed, and they don`t break the bank. As yet, however, only 20% of the world`s people have access to social protection systems.

Third, there is much to do in the trade context. One option for policymakers to consider is a globally coordinated system of food stocks, similar to the International Energy Agency`s system for managing oil reserves in an emergency, which would be a way of building resilience to the kind of volatility seen last summer when panic over food prices set in. They also need to think about ways that trade rules can help manage the risk of export suspensions, given that WTO trade rules were built to resolve disputes over market access, not to ensure security of supply. And it remains imperative for developed economies – above all the EU and US – to reform their farm support policies, which have the effect of structurally undermining developing country agriculture.

Finally, there remains the observation that – as Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi once put it – there is “enough for everyone`s need, but not for everyone`s greed”. The global consumer class has barely begun to recognise that its “western diet”, rich in meat and dairy products, is far more resource-intensive than everyone else`s, whether in terms of grain intensity, water use, energy consumption or greenhouse-gas emissions. That doesn`t mean everyone has to be vegetarian, but consumers do need to face up to the issues of fair shares involved. A similar point applies on biofuels: not all of them are problematic, but grossly inefficient options like corn-based ethanol have no place in a sustainable or equitable agriculture system.

Inevitably, the question arises of whether the credit crunch and global downturn have concentrated policymakers` minds on short term economic concerns. There are worrying signals that aid spending is already starting to fall. On the other hand, it is encouraging that the multilateral system remains strongly focused on the triple crisis of food, energy and climate change (as an official from the International Monetary Fund told me, “the last thing we can afford now is another crisis creeping up on us”).

Another reason for optimism is the astonishing tale of innovation that is the history of agriculture – and the prospects for more of it in the future. At the same time, innovation on its own is clearly not enough. The twentieth-century Green Revolution achieved huge improvements in yield, for instance, but also put huge numbers of agricultural labourers out of work, benefitted larger farmers first and small farmers later (if at all), and largely bypassed Africa. Technical innovation must be matched by political sophistication – and real commitment to social justice.

Above all, there is the hopeful fact that while agriculture has taken 10,000 years to get to where it is today, we could – with hard commitment, but not much sacrifice – reach the more productive, more sustainable, more resilient and more equitable food system that we need within a decade. Storm clouds – economic and otherwise – are gathering. But the prospect of concluding a quest that has lasted the whole duration of human history now lies within reach: ensuring that each of us can live each day of our lives secure in the knowledge that we`ll have enough to eat at the end of it.

Alex Evans is a non-resident fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and editor of the foreign policy blog, www.GlobalDashboard.org.

Homepage photo by antkriz

Since his election victory, US president Barack Obama has made decisive steps to deliver campaign promises on environment and energy. The nomination of the environment team, with Nobel Prize laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary and Harvard professor John Holdren as science advisor, signals his determination to tackle climate change and develop alternative energy sources. In the first week of his presidency, Obama wasted no time in issuing two memoranda: one ordering the Transportation Department to work out rules for automakers to improve fuel efficiency by 2010; and the other allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to let California set tougher tailpipe standards than are applied nationally. Moreover, the US$787 billion stimulus package includes a tax break for renewable energy development, billions of dollars to modernise the power transmission grid to support renewable power and money to retrofit public housing.

The US financial system has been battered by the fallout from the sub-prime crisis, Iraq continues to stretch the military and national budget beyond capacity and the US image in the world is in tatters. One might think the environment would represent the least of the new president`s worries. But now is a critical time to put energy and environment at the centre of the US national agenda. By prioritizing green, the Obama administration can add a new engine to the economy and redeem the country`s image as a responsible global leader. This also presents a great opportunity for China and the United States to jointly explore solutions to environmental problems, bringing the two countries` economies and governments into a closer partnership.

The Obama campaign`s platform on energy and environment is the cornerstone of his strategy to free America from its dependence on fossil fuels. His plan calls for the United States to invest US$150 billion over 10 years in renewable energy technology, implement an economy wide cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases and re-engage in United Nations-led climate talks. Although the new energy plan`s US$150 billion price tag has caused critics to question whether Obama can maintain his commitment to such a costly program in the midst of a worsening financial crisis, it incorporates income-generating mechanisms that would offset most, if not all, of the costs associated with making America green.

As a starting point, the Obama plan calls for an economy wide cap-and-trade scheme that will encourage enterprises to find innovative and efficient ways to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The new administration will push Congress to pass the bill at the earliest date possible. The revenue generated through auctioning greenhouse-gas emission permits will fund US$150 billion investment in green technology over 10 years and thus would be self-sustaining.

A greater challenge for Obama will be ensuring that climate protection and energy-efficiency initiatives at home will proceed in tandem with substantial commitments from developing countries, most importantly China. Obama said as much when he declared that climate change was a “common challenge” that had seen little progress. “For too long [the United States and China] have pointed a finger at the other`s attitudes as an excuse for not itself doing more,” he wrote in September 2008 in an essay for the American Chamber for Commerce in China. Indeed, the US rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the failure of the UN-sponsored 2007 Bali climate-change conference can be partially blamed on the inability of the United States and China to come to an agreement on each country`s responsibilities towards addressing climate change. As the new US administration renews its leadership in tackling climate change, the world will also expect China, though a developing country, to adopt stronger policies as well.

Energy and climate change will likely be the defining issues of Sino-US relations for years to come. As the United States and China account for almost half of the world`s energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions, both countries must push forward an energy revolution to address energy security and climate change. In the area of greenhouse-gas emissions, both countries must reduce their reliance on coal, which accounts for 78% of electricity production in China and 50% in the United States. Similarly, both countries face enormous challenges in the transportation sector as the US accounts for 25% of world oil consumption, more than 60% of which is used for transportation. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency predicts that car ownership in China will rise from the current 50 million to 270 million by 2030. A February 2008 Science policy brief cautioned that by 2030, China`s carbon emissions will reach eight gigatonnes a year, given current rates of growth.

Although China has clearly been reticent in addressing climate change, it has also made strides to improve. Chinese officials have, in recent years, been acting like climate-change converts. Facing constant energy shortages and environmental degradation, the government has set an ambitious efficiency target to cut energy use per unit of GDP by 20% from 2006 to 2010. China will raise the share of renewable energy from 7.5% to 15% by 2020, and local government officials will be held accountable if the energy-efficiency targets are not met. As a result of these policies, hundreds of small, inefficient coal-fired power plants in China were shut down last year. The shift towards clean energy has encouraged the growth of China`s renewable energy technologies: the country`s solar photovoltaic cells topped world production last year and a slew of new wind farm projects led Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Commission at the National Development and Reform Commission, to predict that China could soon be the world`s largest wind power producer.

The progress of energy and environmental policies on China`s end is an effective antidote to the accusation – often made by US politicians – that the country is holding up global action on climate change. In fact, a study compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch found last year that China performed better on climate protection than the United States. The study, which ranked 56 of the world`s top carbon dioxide emitters based on a combined index that evaluated emissions trends, levels and the efficacy of its climate policies, placed the United States at fifty-fifth, second only to Saudi Arabia. Both the US and China have made recent strides in tackling climate change, yet it remains a daunting task for both countries. The key, as Obama argued during the campaign, is to recognise that the challenges posed by climate change are global in scope and use this as an opportunity to establish a stronger bilateral partnership.

Niu Jitao is a Master of Public Administration student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He previously worked for China`s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace.

This article appeared in an earlier form in China Security (Autumn 2008).

Homepage photo by Pete Souza/White House photo

Reflecting on the events of 2008 can spur China to re-examine its strategies for political and economic development. The lessons of the past year can also inform its climate-change strategy. This year will be crucial for climate-change negotiations, and a number of events of the past year are of particular significance to consider at this time:

Energy security

First, fluctuations in the price of oil, piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the freezing weather that struck southern China in early 2008 threw into sharp relief the fragility of China`s energy fundamentals. International speculators, maritime hijackers and the weather can easily threaten the country`s energy and economic security. And there will not be any significant change in this situation for the foreseeable future.

Variations in the price of oil will continue to affect the global economy. A small group of international speculators control the markets, and governments are powerless. At the same time, the world relies on the United States to protect shipping lanes. No other navy has the ability to carry out extended long-distance patrols or operations, and it is unclear if China has the will to do so. On December 18, after the attack on the Chinese vessel Zhenhua 4, Liu Jianchao, then spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that he was “sure the Chinese crew dealt with pirates tactfully to ensure safety of their own and the ship while waiting for assistance.” According to reports, “tactfully” meant the crew locking themselves in their cabins to shut out the pirates, although at one point the crew used petrol bombs to hold them off. On December 20, China announced a naval task force would go to the Gulf of Aden. However, the mission will last only three months. So what happens when it ends? Last year, 1,300 Chinese vessels travelled through these seas, three or four every day. OPEC says that 80% of China`s overseas oil supply comes through the Gulf of Aden, compared to only 6% of Russia`s supply.

The lesson is clear. Besides taking advantage the protection offered by the United States and strengthening its own navy, China needs to learn lessons from Germany and Japan in producing maximum wealth from minimum input. A nation that has to rely on its sailors locking themselves into their cabins needs another path. China has been on a new path since the State Council issued the Comprehensive Working Program on Energy Saving and Emission Elimination in May 2007. The pirates provided a vivid demonstration of why it is necessary.

Financial crisis

Last year saw an entire country go bankrupt, yet the economic slump will worsen yet. The major economies have launched rescue packages, with the Chinese government`s 4-trillion-yuan (US$585 billion) stimulus plan earning widespread praise. But economic problems always end; the important thing is to learn from them and strengthen the economy to weather future storms.

The Chinese stimulus is no small figure. But if the country does not establish mechanisms to provide sustained economic growth – and simply reacts to short-term circumstances – only the symptoms will be cured, at best. China has allowed its people to subsidise production, achieving rapid growth but allowing macroeconomic risks and an imbalance between internal and external markets. Capital, labour and land costs have been kept low, resulting in over-investment and excessive export growth. The role of technological advances in economic growth lags far behind that of developed countries – and even some emerging economies. This model of economic growth, which damages resources and environmental capacity, is akin to killing chickens to obtain their eggs. Feeble welfare safeguards and a bias toward (mostly state-owned) businesses and government in the distribution of income means that little wealth ends up in the hands of the people – and domestic demand remains weak. Foreign reserves, hard-earned through the people`s labour, are lent to the United States and spent there. (Before Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke turn round and criticise China.) If China continues on this route, it will become a rich country with a poor population – and find itself in the situation of Latin American nations. The Far Eastern Economic Review predicts the crisis has sounded the death knell for the coexistence of the Chinese and American economic models.

Without new sources of economic growth, China will struggle to escape its predicament. Without new industries, the wonder of the last three decades will not be repeated. The government announced in December that new policies would aim to maintain growth, expand domestic demand and readjust national structures. This showed that transforming the country`s model of growth is now a key government aim. Addressing the external/internal imbalance and ensuring the nation is strong – and the people are wealthy – is of strategic import for the long-term political and economic governance of the country. It is not just a question of deciding how to spend 4 trillion yuan.

Which international mechanisms could help China to achieve its aims? The global trade system is not a likely candidate, but climate-change mechanisms have some potential. Climate-change negotiations stand at a crossroads: if they can lead the world towards a low-carbon economy, with high-technology energy sources and new employment opportunities, they could help with China`s economic transformation.

Media conflict

During the Olympic Torch Relay, war broke out between the western media and Chinese netizens. This showed that China no longer suffers starvation or attacks, but it still suffers abuse. China is now the world`s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and this added one more reason to criticise the country. However, the official media lacks credibility – its public relations efforts leave it looking strangely feeble. China needs to innovate and improve its public relations strategies.

In 2007 China became the first developing nation to announce a national climate-change programme. The next year the country issued a white paper on energy-saving and emissions reductions, which showed the initial achievements of that process. The country`s climate-change efforts are earning greater international understanding and approval, but using public relations to support these actions is a long-term challenge for China.

The financial crisis demonstrates that the world cannot simply rely on American consumption to drive economic growth. But what can replace it? Many said at the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos that the crisis must not delay action on climate change. In fact, it presents an important opportunity. There has been a major change in the way the world views global warming: if the right policies are adopted, there is an opportunity to meet the future and its challenges. The world needs to shift its reliance on high-carbon energy sources and create low-carbon economies. The future of China and the world economy lies in innovation – in concepts, systems and models of growth. Climate-change negotiations provide a context for this, and we must hope they are successful.

Gao Feng is director of the legal department at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat.

Homepage photo by randomix

Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads [in eastern England] and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defences.

“It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe,” said Dr David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey. “Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises.”

The issue is set to dominate the opening sessions of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen this week, when scientists will outline their latest findings on a host of issues concerning global warming. The meeting has been organised to set the agenda for COP15, this December`s international climate talks (also to be held in Copenhagen), which will draw up a treaty to replace the current Kyoto protocol for limiting carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions.

And key to these deliberations will be the issue of ice-sheet melting. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — when it presented its most up-to-date report on the likely impact of global warming in 2007 — concluded that sea-level rises of between 20 and 60 centimetres would occur by 2100. These figures were derived from estimates of how much the sea will increase in volume as it heats up, a process called thermal expansion, and from projected increases in run-off water from melting glaciers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges.

But the report contained an important caveat: that its sea-level rise estimate contained very little input from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The IPCC forecast, therefore, tended to underestimate forthcoming changes.

“The IPCC felt the whole dynamics of polar ice-sheet melting were too poorly understood,” added Vaughan. “However, we are now getting a much better idea of what is going on in Greenland and Antarctica and can make much more accurate forecasts about ice-sheet melting and its contribution to sea-level rises.”

From studying satellite images, scientists have watched the sea ice that hugs the Greenland and Antarctic shores dwindle and disappear. Sea-ice melting on its own does not cause ocean levels to rise, but its disappearance has a major impact on land ice sheets. Without sea ice to prop them up, the land sheets tip into the water and disintegrate at increasing rates, a phenomenon that is now being studied in detail by researchers.

“It is becoming increasingly apparent from our studies of Greenland and Antarctica that changes to sea ice are being transmitted into the hearts of the land-ice sheets in a remarkably short time,” added Vaughan. As a result, those land sheets are breaking up faster and far more melt water is being added to the oceans than was previously expected.

These revisions suggest sea-level rises could easily top one metre by 2100 — a figure that is backed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which this year warned that they could reach as much as 1.5 metres.

In addition, in September, a team led by Dr Tad Pfeffer at the University of Colorado at Boulder published calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea-level rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world`s smaller glaciers and ice caps. They concluded that the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea-level rise of one to two metres by 2100.

Similarly, a commission of 20 international experts, called on by the Dutch government to help plan its coastal defences, recently gave a range of 55 centimetres to 1.1 metres for sea-level rises by 2100. “Equally important, this commission has highlighted the fact that sea-level rise will not stop in the year 2100,” said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “By 2200, they estimate a rise of 1.5- to 3.5-metre unless we stop the warming. This would spell the end of many of our coastal cities.”

This point was backed by Dr Jason Lowe of the Hadley Centre, the United Kingdom`s foremost climate-change research centre. “It is still not clear exactly how much the sea will rise by the end of this century, but it is certain that rises will continue for hundreds of years beyond that — even if we do manage to stabilise carbon-dioxide emissions and halt the rise in atmospheric temperature,” he said. “The sea will continue to heat up and expand. In addition, the Greenland ice sheets will continue to melt.”

This latter effect could, ultimately, have a particularly destructive impact. Scientists have calculated that if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases eventually produce a global temperature increase of around 4%26deg; Celsius, there is a risk that Greenland`s ice covering could melt completely. This could take several hundred years or it might require a couple of thousand. The end result is not in doubt, however. It would add around seven metres to the planet`s sea levels. The consequence would be utter devastation.

Such a scenario is distant, but real, scientists insist. However, at present, the most important issue, they argue, is that of short-term sea-level rises: probably around one metre by 2100. When that occurs, the Maldives will be submerged, along with islands like the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, and Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific. The United States — which has roughly 20,000 kilometres of coastline and more than 50,000 square kilometres of coastal wetlands — would face a bill of around US$156 billion to protect this land. Cities such as London would require massive investments to provide defences against the rising waters. Others, such as Alexandria, in Egypt, would simply be inundated.

Rising oceans also will contaminate both surface and underground fresh water supplies, worsening the world`s existing fresh-water shortage. Underground water sources in Thailand, Israel, China and Vietnam already are experiencing salt-water contamination.

Coastal farmland will be wiped out, triggering massive displacements of men, women and children. It is estimated that a one-metre sea-level rise could flood 17% of Bangladesh, one of the world`s poorest countries, reducing its rice-farming land by 50% and leaving tens of millions without homes.

Such destruction would not be caused merely by rising sea levels, however. Other effects of global warming also will worsen the mayhem that lies ahead: in particular, the increase in major storms. “When we talk about the dangers of future sea-level rises, we are not talking about a problem akin to pouring water into a bath,” added Colin Brown, director of engineering at Britain`s Institution of Mechanical Engineers. “Climate-change research shows there will be significant increases in storms as global temperatures rise. These will produce more intense gales and hurricanes and these, in turn, will produce massive storm surges as they pass over the sea.”

The result will be the appearance of the super-surge, a climatic double whammy that will savage low-lying regions that include Britain`s south-eastern coastline, in particular East Anglia and the Thames estuary, along with cities such as London, Portsmouth and Hull, which are rated as being particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise.

In addition to these hotspots, the country will also face massive disruption to its transport and energy systems unless it acts swiftly, according to a report — Climate Change, Adapting to the Inevitable — published last month by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Many rail lines run along river valleys that will be flooded with increased regularity while bridges carrying trains and trucks often cross shipping lanes and may have to be redesigned to accommodate rising water levels.

“Power supplies will also be affected,” added Brown. “The Sizewell B nuclear plant has been built on the Suffolk coast, a site that has been earmarked for the construction of several more nuclear plants. However, Sizewell will certainly be affected by rising sea levels. Engineers say they can build concrete walls that will keep out the water throughout the working lives of these new plants. But that is not enough. Nuclear plants may operate for 50 years, but it could take hundreds of years to decommission them. By that time, who knows what sea-level rises and what kinds of inundations the country will be experiencing?”

Most scientists believe Britain remains relatively well placed to combat sea-level rises. “The government has been fairly far-sighted over this issue, with projects such as Thames Estuary 2100 being set up to prepare flooding defence projects,” said Professor Robert Nicholls, of the University of Southampton.

This does not stop the controversy, however. In its report, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers warned that many areas would have to be abandoned because they are simply too expensive to protect. In particular, large areas of the Norfolk coastline would be left to be inundated — a massive loss of human habitat.

But this approach represents an abrogation of national duty to many people — particularly those whose homes will be destroyed, individuals such as Martin George, former chairman of the Broads Society. “A country that has the technological know-how to extract oil and coal from below the North Sea should surely be capable of finding a way to protect a concrete sea wall against the effects of climate change. We should do our damnedest to safeguard our heritage,” he said.

Why the sea is rising

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%26bull; Thermal expansion. All bodies expand when they are heated, and that is true for the water that covers 70% of the planet. The oceans are expanding — upwards. It is estimated this increase in volume will raise levels by 10 to 40 centimetres

%26bull; Melting glaciers and mountain ice caps — outside Greenland and Antarctica — are also adding water to rivers that flow to the oceans. However, these remain a modest source of sea-level rise. Possibly around 10 centimetres.

%26bull; The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets represent vast reserves of frozen fresh water. The former would add seven metres to sea levels if melted completely; the latter would bring a further 60-metre rise to the levels of the world`s oceans.

Additional research by Lisa Kjellsson

www.guardian.co.uk

This is arguably the most important year in human history. The grandiose invites suspicion, so the previous sentence was written reluctantly. But ideas do not seek permission before they enter your mind, nor are they always the most welcome of guests.

The idea that this might be the most important year in human history was prompted by the headlines that greeted the New Year. War and recession, tragically familiar sources of human misery, dominated. Yet it was what was missing from them that provoked my unwelcome thought.

In December, a meeting on an issue far more important than war or recession to the future prosperity and security of literally everyone on earth will take place in Copenhagen. Yet, nowhere did its prospects make the front pages. Terrible though they are, we know that consequences of war and recession pass. Climate change is forever.

The punctuation of history is marked by the names of the places where order was restored after chaos had prevailed – Westphalia, Versailles, San Francisco. It is not an exaggeration to say that what happens – or does not – in Copenhagen in December will shape human destiny more deeply, and for longer, than any of them.

The reason for this is the unique nature of the climate problem. We know that dangerous climate change is a threat to the fragile film of order we humans have built around the chaos of events and call “civilisation”. We know, because Europe`s political leaders told us, that a rise in global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius is dangerous. We know from our scientists that greenhouse gas emissions must be moving downwards globally by 2015 if we are to have any chance at all of staying within that limit.

Once a given concentration of carbon is in the atmosphere the climate it drives is inexorable, even if it takes decades or more to fully express itself. In the most literal sense, the sins of the fathers will indeed be visited on their sons and daughters and well beyond the third and fourth generation.

Climate change does not suit us. We have little experience with the irrevocable and dislike exacting time limits. The nature of the climate is such that the future cannot redeem today`s mistakes. We have one chance, and only one chance, to reach a political agreement to reduce global carbon emissions in time to stay safe. This is the year in which we take that chance.

Compared to the diplomatic effort needed to achieve success in Copenhagen, that required for a final settlement in the Middle East is small. But there is no sign that an effort on the required scale is yet being made. Compare the amount of media coverage, and intensity of political effort, given to the Middle East to that accorded to climate change.

This is not to diminish in any way the magnitude of that tragedy, nor to argue that less should be done to address it. It is rather to point out the classic human error of allowing the more immediate to obscure the more urgent. History does not have an agenda on which items can be prioritised. Either you deal with the events it throws at you or they deal with you.

We humans do not learn easily. We try and fail and try again. Our progress is incremental. We are prone to repeating our mistakes. Too often, we are content to let the future redeem the mistakes of the present.

No leader will want to come away from Copenhagen saying they failed to solve a problem they have recognised as the most serious facing humanity. But the appearance of success will be easier to achieve than the substance. It will consist of words and the less the success the more interpretable the words.

To get emissions on a downward path by 2015, 200 nations must agree to so coordinate their energy policies as to build a carbon neutral global energy system by 2050. This will require the greatest cooperative endeavour in history. Agreement in Copenhagen is the key to the lock on the door to that 40-year endeavour. The political conditions needed to turn that key are not yet there. We have this year to build them.

Deeds rather than words will play the biggest part in building those political conditions. US president Barack Obama has pointed the way with a stimulus package aimed to deliver economic, energy and climate security together. If the European Union and Chinese stimulus packages are also well designed then US$1.5 trillion dollars will be spent in ways which really will begin the transition to a low-carbon energy system.

Most of the world has played a far smaller part than the OECD countries in creating the problem. Their reluctance to act is understandable, if unwise. Without significant financial help from rich countries to meet the cost of adapting to the climate change to which they have been committed by others, and to help with building their own low-carbon economies, they will be unable to support the necessary agreement. We are talking tens of billions, not millions.

Words will matter too. But the words that will count most are those of political leaders, not official negotiators. Count the number of times a month presidents and foreign ministers are in the media talking about climate change. Note the number of times they hold press conferences on the issue. If they are not going up month by month, we are failing.

Climate change is a bad problem that is getting worse. For the moment it remains manageable. Pretty soon it will become unmanageable. We already have both the technology and the capital to solve this problem. What is uncertain, and will be determined this year, is whether we have the political will to do so.

I grew up in a world engaged in another long-term, large-scale cooperative endeavour. It spent billions of dollars on building weapons it hoped never to use. When they became obsolete it threw them away and built even more sophisticated and expensive weapons which it hoped never to use.

We did that for 50 years. Eventually the world really did become a safer place. The threat of climate change to the prosperity, security and well-being of everyone on the planet, especially anyone under 40, is far more certain than was the threat of the Cold War going hot. Maintaining climate security in the twenty-first century will require at least as big an effort as maintaining peace did in the last century.

Tom Burke is a founding director of E3G, an environmental policy adviser to Rio Tinto plc and a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London.

Homepage photo by Oxfam International