# re: A long way to go on climate change: seven issues to consider from the World Development Report 2010 @ Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:08 PM

This is a summary of the points I made as discussant at ODI meeting to launch the WDR.

1. The 2010 World Development Report, Climate Change and Development, does well what the best World Development Reports always try to offer. It provides an authoritative, comprehensive and well-written overview of the issue, with interesting boxes and well-designed graphics. It must have been especially difficult to produce this report in the face of a rapidly changing agenda in the run-up to Copenhagen. Rosina Bierbaum and Marianne Fay, who jointly led the team, deserve congratulations. 
2. This is not the place to attempt a summary of a very long Report – see instead the summary of the launch meeting and the powerpoint presentation.  However, the Report reviews the science and the likely impacts of climate change on developing countries, and then turns to a policy agenda with three legs: acting now, acting together and acting differently. The Report covers all the topics one might expect, from the debate about the discount rate in climate calculations to the inertia of the climate system and the vulnerability of food and water supply. On the policy side, the Report covers such topics as the choice between cap and trade and tax regimes, financing levels and mechanisms, and approaches to behaviour change. It of course has material on the Copenhagen process.
3. There are many possible connections to ODI work on climate change – especially on deforestation, biofuels, financing, trade, green growth, and humanitarian impacts. There are also connections to discussion at the ODI parliamentary meetings series on climate change, which took place in the first half of 2009 – see the summary of key points by Natasha Grist.
4. It is worth remembering that the WDR is a World Bank product, and not one produced by Greenpeace, say, or the Gaia Foundation, or even the UK Sustainable  Development Commission. The Report is growth-friendly and market-friendly. It does not recommend that rich countries should reduce their material consumption. It does not advocate vegetarianism. It does not advocate imposing quantitative limits on individual carbon emissions. It does not suggest a carbon police. It recognises that rich countries import ‘virtual’ or ‘embodied’ carbon when they buy products from developing countries, and that really this should appear in their emissions total, but backs away from recommending as much.
5. No doubt, the relatively mainstream tenor of the report will make it more credible in policy circles, and sharpen the impact of some strong messages about the likely impact of climate change and the urgency of comprehensive action.
6. At the same time, the authors and their readers will be well aware that ‘mainstream’ thinking has been shaken by the global financial crisis and the world recession. The UN, in particular, has been at the forefront of heterodox thinking in recent months, with two outstanding examples being the Report of the Stiglitz Commission to the President of the General Assembly and the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report. These and other contributions (for example ODI’s own studies on the impact of the crisis on developing countries) emphasise the vulnerability of global welfare to co-variate shocks. They also stress, variously, the role of unequal distribution as a possible driver of instability, the impact of the crisis on real wages, the need for countries to be able to take measures to protect themselves from externally driven trade shocks – and, in terms of response, the need for stronger international monitoring, accountability and in some cases regulation, as well as for an active role by the state at country level.
7. It is not necessary to take a view on the intricacies of the new debate to realise that, in practical terms, countries are likely to emerge from the crisis rather more favourably disposed to the state, rather more concerned about preserving ‘policy space’ for themselves, and probably also rather better disposed to public expenditure. In the UK, at least, it seems clear that the risk of complete financial collapse, and of a very deep recession, were both avoided by an assertive Government response. Countries are also likely to be well-disposed to multilateral collaboration, for example in coordinating financial regulation – though a commitment to free trade may be harder to sustain.
8. This has some implications for the policy set that might be acceptable in dealing with climate change. Certainly, it will be important to emphasise how much countries need to do in order to adapt and mitigate. Even poor countries with low current carbon emissions are likely to face major challenges in terms of managing their insertion into a world economy where technological standards and input and output mixes are changing and where trade regimes have been adjusted, quite apart from the massive investments that will be needed to deal with adaptation.
9. In this respect, the numbers in the WDR are very large. The Report estimates that the financial flows needed for mitigation in developing countries will be about $400bn a year, with adaptation requiring a further $75 bn a year or so. This compares with the current GNI of all low income countries of about $750 bn and of sub-Sahran Africa of about the same level. In other words, if all the new money were to go to low income countries, which it probably will not, climate finance flows could amount to as much as two thirds of current GNI. If these were public flows, and if Government expenditure amounted to a third of GDP, then these flows would mean that Governments would have budgets three times the size of pre-climate finance levels. The supply-side problems, the potential for Dutch disease, the risk of inflation, all hardly bear thinking about – and will arise even if low income countries receive just a portion of the new funding.
10. The demands on developing country governments, including the poorest, will be astonishing. This in a world where forward planning is already extremely difficult. Remember, the UNIDO Industrial Development Report this year analysed the difficulty developing countries have in entering manufacturing, when clusters are already established and hard to replicate. Add the impact of urbanisation and population increase. The Growth Commission has identified forward-looking planning as a key ingredient of success. Indeed. One of the meetings in the ODI climate series discussed specifically the value of scenario planning.  It is not a minute too soon to start.
11. As thinking about the future takes place, it is important to think not only of risks, but also of opportunities, as I have argued before on the ODI blog. It is also important to be guided by values, especially as multiple choices have to be made as between individuals, classes, geographies and generations. The need for a focus on global social justice remains important, even if, as Anthony Giddens has argued, climate change needs a long-term political perspective. In this respect, climate change demands a new politics: not just mitigation and adaptation, but also transformation and ‘equalisation’.

Simon Maxwell

# Capacity Development and Increased Financing @ Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:58 PM

The WDR 2010 does an excellent job of laying out 4 critical pillars in their policy booklet.  Two of those pillars: investing in knowledge and capacity development and scaling up financing requires a commitment by local governments as well as the international community. Given the devastating effects of drought and inadequate adaptation measures that climate change will bring to Africa these points are critical. Any solution we have to climate change must account for adaptation in developing countries.

Live Climate

# re: A long way to go on climate change: seven issues to consider from the World Development Report 2010 @ Tuesday, October 06, 2009 2:39 AM

I would like to comment on the sixth message from the WDR 2010, that societies will have to double their existing rates of agricultural production, while minimizing their environmental damage in the process. Globalization has seen the steady transfer of arable third world lands from their original self-sustaining owners to the powerful and politically connected agro-business TNCs. Millions of third world poor have been forced off their farms and have had to abandon their lives of self-sustenance because of the expanding control by agro-businesses. These people's ability to provide food for themselves has been removed and now they must sustain themselves by purchasing whatever food they can by earning meager wages from scarce jobs in overcrowded city labor pools. So we must pin our hopes on the doubling of food production on agro-businesses that have already displaced millions of people and control more and more of the food produced. Once the demand for food goes through the roof after climate-induced destruction of food-producing land how can we trust that these agro-businesses will not put the bottom line ahead of the survival needs of millions?

Christopher Smith