On Tuesday Third Planet submitted input to the Rio+20 Secretariat organizing next year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. While the UN’s invitation was for contributions for inclusion in a “compilation document to serve as basis for the preparation of zero draft of the outcome document”, we felt it necessary to advocate the need for a formal Adaptation to Climatic Changes outcome as a necessary part of the Earth Summit process.
The UN posted our comments on its website here. We’ll expand on these thoughts after COP17 in Durban, South Africa, where work to formalize the Cancun Adaptation Framework is on the agenda.
November 1, 2011
The following brief observations are offered for consideration by Third Planet a non-governmental organization accredited as an observer organization to the UNFCCC (2000) and accredited to the WSSD (2002).
While both the Green Economy and an Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development are very necessary, Third Planet’s primary concerns today are driven by solutions for adaptation and building resiliency to climate change.
The document for the Green Economy should certainly state its overarching goal of mitigating greenhouse gases, among its many other benefits and the document on an Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development could present a vehicle for setting the agenda on capacity-building for adaptation to climate change.
The Issues Brief 3 “IFSD: Issues related to an intergovernmental body on SD”, in its only reference to climate change, states that “CSD, or a similar body, can provide useful policy guidance and contribute towards setting the intergovernmental SD agenda on selected issues”.
Our view however is that neither of these documents can contribute the strong voice now needed on adaptation to climate change. There is high level cooperation within the UNFCCC on this issue and certainly the role of the UN’s Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) should not be understated. In fact CEB’s role should be a flag for the importance attributed to the issue.
Our view is that the need for capacity-building for adaptation and resiliency, in both the north and south, now goes far beyond the objectives of the Nairobi Work Programme and needs to be the purview of a high visibility organization responsible exclusively for Adaptation to Climate Change. Certainly IPCC should continue to provide the scientific assessments and assert their role as the experts and SBSTA needs to be intimately involved but currently Adaptation, per se, is ‘lost’ to the world outside the United Nations. Adaptation must be elevated into the public consciousness. We can begin that process with a separate Adaptation-specific outcome at Rio+20 that draws attention to the fact that sustainable development cannot exist without both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Adaptation to Global Climate Change is so important now that Rio+20 should include the high-level adaptation elements of the conventions and conferences on desertification, biological diversity, migratory species, wetlands, oceans, disaster reduction and sustainable development. How we best present their findings and undertakings to our communities, whether in a separate convention or not, might be worthy of consideration and development.
In Florida, 41% of all carbon dioxide emissions are produced in the transportation sector and 51% from electricity production. That’s a whopping 92% of all emissions from only 2 sectors.
Their carbon footprint is 2,760 pounds per month, about 17 tons per year.