Local governments recognized as key actors against climate change in Cancun

The international climate negotiations held in Cancun on 29th November - 10th December ended up with an agreement that gives hope to reaching a global post-Kyoto agreement in the next negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

What was agreed on was forest protection and the establishment of a Green Fund to deliver funding to developing countries. The agreement also officially recognises that the goal should be to halt global climate change to 2°C. Although there was still no agreement on emission cuts, the result can still be considered as a milestone for the negotiations.

Local governments have been struggling to get their voice heard in the global climate negotiations. After all, it's them that implement the agreed mitigation or adaptation measures in practice. As the press release by ICLEI puts it, "Local governments have to deal with the problem as it’s on their door step – whether there is a global agreement between national governments or not". In Cancun, local governments were finally recognized by states as governmental stakeholders and got observer status which nine other groups such as farmers, youth or women's organisations have earlier obtained.

Photo: Jan Golinski, UNFCCC

Cities Climate Registry - carbonn

At World Mayors Summit on Climate, the role of local action in the climate change mitigation and adaptation was again stressed. The potential of cities should be taken into account in the international climate negotiations like it was done at the Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya a couple of weeks ago.

There, a plan of action on cities and biodiversity was adopted by the Nagoya Biodiversity City summit. Also in other ways, Nagoya was a success we only wish to see in the international climate negotiations: the COP16 meeting in Cancun started yesterday without any hope of a binding climate agreement.

At World Mayors Summit, cities from all over the world signed the Mexico city Pact on 21 November and thus committed to the reduction of urban greenhouse gas emissions. One way to facilitate local climate action and help cities make climate commitments that the world can count on is the recently published carbonn Cities Climate Registry carbonn (cCCR) developed by ICLEI and UNEP .

The cCCR supports the global credibility of local climate action by allowing transparency, accountability and comparability of climate actions, performance and commitments. Amongst other things, the cCCR integrates the climate commitments of cities into its database, allows cities to register their greenhouse gas reduction commitments and report their performance and actions.

See how your city could benefit from Cities Climate Registry!

Combatting Climate Change in 30 Ways, in 30 Days

As the UN Climate Convention meeting in Cancun approaches, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) wants to highlight that finding solutions to climate change is possible for communities, enterprises and countries in many ways.

UNEP wants to inspire action on climate change by presenting 30 ways to tackle the challenge in 30 days. It releases online case studies to show that solutions to climate change are available and could be copied and scaled up around the world if only governments, enterprises and communities were interested in moving towards low-emission climate-resilient growth.


Read more about the case studies that include Indian solar loans programme, The Green Passport Campaign and improved stoves in Haiti and Nigeria.

More information: UNEP 30 Ways in 30 Days
Picture: UNEP / Indian Solar Programme

Roadmap for Zero Carbon Britain

A recently published report by the UK Centre for Alternative Technology suggests that the UK could become carbon-free by 2030. This means that in 20 years, the UK could reduce its carbon emissions by 90 % and offset the remaining 10 % of the emissions.

The report provides a road map for achieving the goal of a carbon-free society. To this end, adopting environmental technologies, reducing fossil fuel use, increasing resource efficiency and significant societal behaviour changes are all necessary. The report offers a variety of actions that make zero carbon society seem possible, at the same time creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs and addressing environmental challenges.

Individuals and communities must play their part in decreasing carbon emissions. Here, the key is to promote new technologies, eco-design and foster new environmentally friendly social norms. Most importantly, however, the report states a international climate agreement is needed.

More information: Environmental Technologies Action Plan.
Read the Zero Carbon Britain report.

European Green Capitals for 2012, 2013 awarded

The environmental issues in Europe will be most likely solved in cities, if they are to be solved at all. Some cities are definitely greener than others. This time, the cities of Vitoria-Gasteiz and Nantes have been announced to be the European Green Capitals for 2012 and 2013 in the ceremony organised in the present Green Capital Stockholm.

From the winning cities, Nantes in France has a climate action plan with the aim of decreasing CO2 emissions by 25% by year 2020 (ref. 1990). The climate action plan was approved by the city council already in 2007 and since, the aim has been to integrate all public policies in the climate work and to quantify CO2 emission in all projects in the city.

Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain excels especially in the high proportion of green public areas in the city, ensuring its entire population live within 300 metres of an open green space.

More information: European Green Capital

Mapping global ecological footprint

A recently published Living Planet 2010 report by WWF shows that the Earth's population is using the equivalent of 1.5 planets' worth of natural resources and that biodiversity has fallen nearly 60% in low-income countries in less than 40 years. The report also states that carbon now accounts for over half the global ecological footprint. This somewhat depressing information should encourage us to find solutions and tools to halt the biodiversity loss and diminish our carbon footprint.

Luckily there are some good news, too. In non-tropical parts of the world, there’s actually been an increase in species numbers, by around 30% on average. This is due to greater conservation efforts and pollution control.

In this Ecological Footprint Index below you are able to search footprints by country.


The global average of the ecological footprint is three hectares, meaning the area required to provide the resources consumed by the population or average person in a year. The consumption of natural resources in the rich countries is on average five times higher than in the poorest countries.

More information: WWF Living Planet Report 2010

Solutions local, together

On 31 January - 2 February 2011, the conference Solutions local, together will fill the city of Turku, Finland with enthusiastic people in search of sustainable local solutions. The Conference will concentrate on introducing practical solutions and inspiring participants to use them locally, together with other stakeholders.

The preliminary programme for the conference is out now and registration is open. During three days, the conference introduces high-profile speakers, interesting parallel sessions as well as a variety of praxis visits and sustainable side events.

What makes Solutions local, together extremely interesting is the fact that sustainability is a top priority in organising the conference and the conference aims to set a model example of a sustainable conference and develops new practices for sustainable way of event organisation. As part of the process, menus with 80% of locally produced food will be launched in several local restaurants during the conference. Also in CHAMP project we aim at managing the project in a sustainable way, concentrating especially on our carbon footprint. In low carbon project management, greening the way of organising events is crucial.

Register quickly, as places are limited and early-bird rate applies until the end of October! Take a closer look on the website: www.solutions2011.fi
Read more about low carbon project management in CHAMP here.

European cities acting for more sustainable transport

Sustainable transport is a question of fighting atmospheric pollution and noise but it also has a major role in improving the quality of life in urban areas.

European Mobility Week is an awareness raising campaign that aims to encourage public awareness of the need to act against pollution caused by the increase in motorised traffic in the urban environment. The campaign is encouraging European cities to promote public transport, cycling and walking and to invest in the new necessary infrastructures.

From 16 to 22 September 2010 the Mobility Week is the opportunity for European cities and towns to participate to the most widespread event on sustainable mobility. On 22 September, the Mobility Week is brought to a head by the Carfree day when everybody is encouraged to leave their car home for a day and use public transport, cycle or walk.

Almost 2000 cities and towns participate in the European Mobility Week. See what's happening in your city on the campaign website!

Picture by European Mobility Week. The Mobility Week in Requena, Spain, 2008.

On Saturday, we exceeded nature's budget

On August 21, it is Earth Overshoot Day: the day of the year in which human demand on the biosphere exceeds what it can regenerate. By last Saturday, humanity has demanded all the ecological services that nature can regenerate this year. For the rest of the year, we will be financing our consumption on credit.

"We know we are far from living within the means of one planet. The good news is, much of the technology we have to begin to address this problem is available and it is open source: things like compact urban design, energy-efficient housing, ecological tax reform, removal of resource subsidies, safe and affordable family planning, bicycles, low-meat diets, and life-cycle costing", said Global Footprint Network President Mathis Wackernagel.

Last year, the Overshoot Day occurred almost a month later on September 25th, and we also wrote about it here in this blog. See the entry here. At the time, we promised more information on how we plan to minimize the ecological footprint of the CHAMP project. Since, we have drafted guidelines on Low-carbon project management to our project stakeholders.

Creating a carbon neutral district in Copenhagen

Copenhagen has set a goal of becoming the first CO2 neutral city in 2025. To be able to achieve this, the city is planning to create a CO2 neutral city district as a model area.

Last year, as a part of the many projects developed in the municipality of Copenhagen in relation to the UN Climate Change Conference COP15, the city council carried out a case study to show how it would be possible to create a CO2 neutral neighbourhood. At the moment, the project is at the draft stage but it is being planned enthusiastically.

According to the plan, in the Amager Faelled city district, all buildings will be using less than 50 percent of the energy of standard buildings. A major percentage of the energy will come from wind turbines and buildings will also be equipped with solar cells and panels. In 2020, a resident of Amager Faelled Bykvarter will use 65 percent less energy than a Copenhagener consumed in 2008.

See the video introducing this interesting project!

Year 2010 is the warmest on record

Extreme weather conditions, such as the past cold and snowy winter, easily make people say that climate change is nonsense and not really happening. Still, even with the current heat wave (that we at least in Finland are partly enjoying and partly suffering) it would be wrong to assume that any single weather event, whether it is a blizzard or a heat wave, offers evidence of climate change - for this, statistics have to be collected for a long period of time.

According to the recently published NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) report, last month was the warmest June on record and the warmest on record averaged for any January-June period for the combined global land and surface temperatures. The NOAA analysis is based on records going back to 1880. The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C while the 20th century average was 15.5°C.

This also backs up NASA's findings. In their report, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies notes that this is all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect”.

Sources:
Climate Progress articles here and here.

Carbon toe-prints or carbon footprints?

Nowadays, there's a lot of discussion about carbon footprints. One can choose the most climate-friendly diet, car or holiday destination by comparing the carbon footprints of various products and services. The term carbon footprint can be defined as "shorthand to describe the best estimate that we can get of the full climate change impact of something." It is possible to estimate the carbon footprint for anything: a service or a product, an item or an activity, a country or a municipality. Or for example for the 2010 World Cup: 2.8 million tonnes of CO2.

In CHAMP we are also trying to promote low carbon footprint project management. In the project most of the carbon emissions are produced by travelling. For this reason, we are aiming at reducing our carbon footprint mainly by using e-communication instead of having to travel. As we were calculating our emissions caused by travelling, it was quite interesting to see how far from each other the results of different carbon calculators were.

There are great differences between the many carbon footprint calculators one finds online, and sometimes it is hard to evaluate which calculator gives the most truthful answer. The results some of the calculators could even be called carbon toe-prints since many of them don't take into account all emissions or even miss out most of the emissions. If we take for example flying, a lot more information than just the distance to destination is needed. An accurate calculation is only possible if the type of the plane, number of the stops etc. are known. The same goes with direct and indirect emissions - they must both be noticed to calculate the true carbon footprint of something.

Many online carbon calculators are only rough estimates but can anyway give a conception of the total climate impact a certain activity or item has. It is almost impossible to measure a carbon footprint accurately, but at the same time it is an essential part of understanding the whole picture of climate change response.

Source: The Guardian
Picture: Footprint Designs

Who's your World Environment Day hero?

Tomorrow, on June 5th, we are celebrating World Environment Day (WED) 2010. WED has been organized by UNEP since 1972 and is aimed to be the biggest, most widely celebrated, global day for positive, environmental action. As part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, this year’s event will celebrate the incredible diversity of life on Earth under the theme Many Species. One Planet. One Future.

Last year, the topic of World Environment Day was climate change and the highlight of the celebrations was to launch the Climate Heroes. This year the Climate Heroes initiative has been broadened beyond just climate change-related advocates to include exceptional individuals advocating solutions for all environmental issues.

WED Heroes are individuals who inspire and motivate people to environmental actions by undertaking exceptional personal feats, high-profile expeditions, and other acts of environmental activism to demonstrate their commitment to the planet.

In the end, the WED heroes is a call for each of us to do what we can: from adopting the simplest habits like turning off running water when we are brushing our teeth, to organizing a public or workplace event for World Environment Day or even rowing across the Pacific Ocean, like a WED Hero Roz Savage did in 2009, and later walked 600 miles from London to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference.

See the World Wide WED here and find activities near you.

Pictures: UNEP

Dunkerque makes me think

Last week the 6th Conference on European Sustainable Cities and Towns took place in Dunkerque, France. It resulted in a common Local Sustainability Declaration that stresses the need to create innovative, sustainable and inclusive communities.
At the same time a Call on Climate Action was released, which aimed at stressing the key role of local and regional governments in the international negotiations. Find more info here

In three days the over 1500 participants were offered panel discussions, parallel sessions to all kind of sustainability related topics and of course organistaions, regions, cities and companies presented themselves and their work for a more sustainable future.

The city of Dunkerque was the host - and they did great. The conference participants were well taken care of with volunteers and cocktail parties and shuttle busses. We got the impression that the whole city IS a conference venue and all citizens are happy to be part!

But it wasn´t. On the last morning the shuttle bus to the conference venue was escorted by a honking crowd of cars (which most of us mistook as a wedding/football game - reaction), just to see people unrolling banners in front of the Kursaal as well as on the beach, right at the lunch venue to demonstrate for "Solidarité" with them.
Those were people from the local chemical industry and oil plant, fearing to loose their jobs. So they were demonstrating against all the people at the conference, who want a sustainable, carbon(oil-free) world!

I have to say, that this end of the conference made me think.
Not that this was the most important that happened in Dunkerque and not that it "destroyed" the spirit that we had. But nevertheless it made me think, how people can demonstrate "against sustainable development" in which they mainly see a thread?

How do we actually communicate our vision of a sustainable future?And how holistic do we actually think? How much do we, who work with this everyday, actually really take into account the social aspect, the fear of people?
No doubt that the "unsustainable" industries employ loads of people...what alternatives do they have when (if!) industries are shut down?

A sustainable future is carried by people - not by political decisions and strategies or the economy. It´s about the people, who can influence with their everyday life, behaviours and choices.

But what if many see this sustainable future as something to be afraid of?
Isn´t it our task to take care of that, to improve our communication skills and messages that we give out? No doubt that a greener economy will also create loads of jobs, but this message seems not to have reached the people...

And isn´t a development only sustainable if all have the chance to get something out of it, live a good life and not fear?

No solutions from my side (yet), but this really makes me think.
Perhaps it makes you think, too.

You are welcome to leave your opinion here!

American cities acting for climate

The USA is the 2nd largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. It is also a major player in international climate change negotiations but has been lacking the political will to commit to climate protection. This hasn't stopped cities of tackling the issue of climate change locally: many local governments have climate action plans and ambitious targets for cutting their GHG emissions.

The State of California at the head is adopting statewide climate policies and regulations. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is expected to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Moreover, a law to redesign communities to reduce greenhouse gases connects land use with carbon reduction goals. By offering carrots, the regulations encourage cities to adopt a Sustainable Communities Strategy that requires new development to be near transit or clustered with existing development. Many Californian local governments, Santa Monica, Pasadena and Los Angeles, for example, have already implemented green building standards and resource GHG emissions programs.

At the same time, Austin, Texas is the first city in the US committing to going carbon neutral. Interestingly, Austin is the Capitol of a conservative state that is the national leader in greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007, Austin resolved to make city facilities, vehicles and operations carbon-neutral by 2020 and move the city-owned energy utility toward this goal over time. To this end, a Climate Action Plan targeting four areas: municipal operations, utility, homes and buildings, and community, is to be developed and implemented. In Austin, an integrated approach to climate work has been adopted: An inventory of greenhouse gas emissions has been completed for all city departments and a Climate Action Team composed of representatives from all city departments is working on department-specific plans to attain the municipal goal, as well as greenhouse gas-reduction strategies specific to their roles across all four areas.

Source:
SolveClimate.com / Patricia Kirk
Pictures: Cities of Los Angeles and Austin

Read more:
California Climate Change Portal
CoolCalifornia: Local Government Case Studies
Austin Climate Protection Program: CoolAustin.org

Cities are key to fight climate change

With more than 50 % of the world' s population is living in cities, we are an urban species. Cities account for about 80 % of the world-wide pollution. According to Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, this clearly shows, that human species is putting the world in danger and cities are key in addressing this challenge. At the same time, cities are leading the world-wide process to fight climate change both in mitigation and adaptation. Adaptation strategies in developing countries are by nature survival strategies. Global climate governance should therefore include those managing the habitats. This discussion has been recorded as part of the series 'Time for Real Questions' during COP15 in Copenhagen.

Lights off on Saturday: It's Earth Hour!

Earth Hour 2010 is taking place on Saturday the 27th of March, 8:30 PM (local time) and switching off the lights around the world for an hour. The idea is not to save electricity but to take a stand against climate change. Individuals, businesses and communities all over the world are called to action: to take responsibility and get involved in the fight against climate change.

In 2009, over 4 000 cities in 88 countries took part in Earth Hour making it the largest climate change initiative in the world. This year, many global landmarks such as the Eiffel tower in Paris, Big Ben in London, Empire State Building in New York City and Sydney Opera House are going to stand in darkness.

Earth Hour has been visible in social media such as Facebook and Twitter and there's a lot of enthusiasm around the event.One could ask if Earth Hour is really making a change. Turning off your lights for an hour per year is a great way to seem green to the public without really committing to mitigate climate change in everyday actions. But at the same time it is an easy way to show that you care.

One of the aims of Earth Hour is to show politicians the concern of the general public. Especially after the failure in the Copenhagen Summit, this kind of global campaign and enthusiasm is hopefully a way of giving world leaders the mandate they need to make the right climate deal.



More information on the campaign: Earth Hour website
Earth Hour is organized by WWF.

"Adaptigation"

There are different views when it comes to administrations and climate change response. The opinion of many is that climate change mitigation is most important while others believe that adaptation to the effects of a changing climate is more critical. Most, however, admit that both perspectives have to be taken into account.

Recently there has been a dramatic change in the perspective of how administrations act in response to climate change. After focusing almost solely on climate change mitigation for years, different administrations are now concentrating more on climate change adaptation. According to a Senior Research Fellow in Nordregio, Richard Langlais, good planning integrates both perspectives: adaptation and mitigation. He argues that separating the two perspectives in planning is becoming obsolete and can also lead to contradictory measures.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change adoption is defined as "initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects". Climate change mitigation, on the other hand, means "implementing policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance sinks".

Langlais uses a simple example of a municipality planting a new forest along a local river. As he argues, this measure should be seen as both adaptation and mitigation, that is: "adaptigation", by which he means a response to climate change that integrates a focus on adaptation with a focus on mitigation, to avoid conflicts and create synergies. "Seeing this newly planted forest as both adaptation (it buffers the impacts of flooding) and mitigation (it absorbs carbon) is good planning", writes Langlais. The most important thing is to keep "adaptigation" in mind: adaptation and mitigation can be outcomes of the same measures.

Source: Richard Langlais, Journal of Nordregio 9:4, 2009.