The year we have all
been anticipating and waiting for is finally upon us. It is the year when the
world will choose whether or not to make fundamental changes in the way it currently
does business differently from any other period in known human history. For pro-climate
change action advocates, the year holds the promise of validation of their
efforts after many years of hard work, yet the politics associated with
international decision making processes may once again exacerbate the difficulties
associated with tackling this subject.
Such reasons (among
others) include the fact that climate change is a politically charged subject (i.e.
involves Big Oil); it affects long-standing way of doing things; it deals with
science (are you surprised?); it involves uncertainty (doesn’t everything?); it
involves potentially expensive changes (Big Finance); it also involves potentially
scary changes; for some, it confronts religious beliefs; and some believe that
supporting the climate action movement is equivalent to supporting the broader
agenda of “the left”. These complex webs of factors play out especially in the
US ultimately spilling over to the rest of the world.
Due a myriad of factors
which have been interpreted by contradictory explanations, the world has
witnessed a sharp decline in crude oil prices since June 2014. The IMF has
posited that while the drop will boost the overall growth of the world’s
economy, it has the real potential of devastating efforts to combat climate
change in the energy sector. Consistently declining oil prices will hurt
renewable energy sources current competitiveness and impede their future competitiveness
by discouraging research and investment on the supply side. On the demand side,
governments, companies and consumers will not be motivated to pursue more
energy-efficient practices.
The world also continues
to depend on non-binding commitments to tackle climate change which obviously
puts us on a dangerous climate trajectory. A recent example of this is last
year’s ‘historic’ China-US Climate Change Agreement. Whereas the world cannot
afford a slowdown in efforts to combat climate change, perhaps this year offers
new opportunities to contribute to climate safety rather than climate ruin at
the July inter-governmental meeting to hammer out a new framework for global
finance in Addis Ababa and in December at the 21st meeting of the
COP to sign a new global agreement to control human-induced climate change.
All these efforts will
be capped by the adoption of the new
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have a broader scope and build on
and supersede the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which focused on
development assistance and the relationship between donor and developing
countries. The major differences in scope between SDGs and MDGs are that former
are goals for all countries as none in the planet has achieved sustainable development.
Secondly, SDGs are about the environmental, social and economic aspects of
development, whereas the MDGs focused predominantly on social development. And third,
SDGs are being developed through a more inclusive process than the MDGs,
involving not just all countries, but also a wide range of stakeholders.
2015 is thus a year when Big Oil and Big Finance (and
the world at large) can start to put development objectives in the right
direction, for we do not have much time left.
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