We all have a role to play in reducing carbon emissions. Smart management of our economy is needed to achieve this goal, writes Prof Frank J Convery
The new National Climate Change Strategy is a welcome roadmap for compliance with the global targets set by the Kyoto Protocol. Largely, the strategy is tied into Kyoto's first commitment period of 2008-12. It's a short-term plan to deal with short-term obligations.
But the Kyoto Protocol is just a first step in addressing climate change. Our national policy on climate change must take two dimensions: reducing the emissions that cause the problem so that catastrophic change does not happen; and adapting to the change already happening. In both cases, the focus must be on the long term.
We must reduce the pressures we put on the planet by reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to keep in check our ever-increasing emissions if we are to play our role in meeting this global challenge. Regardless of how we reduce our emissions, we will experience changes like more intense weather events, coastal erosion and rising sea levels. These are irreversible changes to which we will have to adapt.
The key to meeting the challenges of climate change lies in smarter management of our economy: to adapt to climate change we will need to improve our management of land and water resources. To reduce our emissions, we can learn from best practices of businesses like BP that have reduced their emissions while continuing to increase profits. Ultimately, however, our efforts will come at some cost.
The Stern review of the economics of climate change estimated that reducing emissions to the necessary level could cost up to 1 per cent of global gross domestic product per year, but emphasised this was a worthwhile investment against the potentially catastrophic costs of climate change.
A sustainable climate strategy for Ireland must focus on the long term. First, Ireland should commit itself to an ambitious but realisable long-term target. This target must be "owned" by all relevant stakeholders. Once the target is agreed, national debate should focus on ways to get there.
Second, we need to "carbon-proof" private and public investments so that they are planned with their impact on greenhouse-gas emissions in mind. This applies in particular to the portfolio of investments in the National Development Plan. The screening procedures used by the Department of Finance and its National Development Finance Agency need to reflect the prospective greenhouse gas emissions of projects, using the 2008-12 price for CO2 in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme as an indicator. For all our recent economic growth, we may have locked in unsustainable practices. For instance, patterns of dispersed settlement have forced people to commute long distances in private cars, which partly accounts for the 160 per cent rise in transport-related emissions since 1990.
Third, tackling climate change is a task that involves everyone, and a national communications strategy is needed to make it a part of everyone's life. We need information to make good decisions, but we also need it to build public support for change.
We need to know that every time we reduce emissions, we will be rewarded, and every time we increase them, we will have to pay. We also need to help people contribute their ideas and experiences to national policy. Abraham Lincoln's observation applies with particular force in Ireland: "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed."
Fourth, some climate change is unavoidable regardless of how we reduce our emissions. Our planning across a range of infrastructures should be based on the assumption that the future will not be the same as the past. We will have to get smarter at how we manage our resources: through smart farming based on new crops and farming systems; smart planning to ensure that development in flood-prone zones only takes place - if at all - entirely at the cost and risk of the property owner; smart insurance that offers low premiums to climate-proofed activities; smart towns that cluster transport, water supply and treatment; and smart businesses that develop products and services which seize the opportunities offered by the shift to a low-carbon economy.
Fifth, there will always be a role for buying credits from abroad. The National Climate Change Strategy foresees the purchase of emission credits worth €270 million under the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms. However, we must be sure this money goes to worthwhile projects with real emission reductions.
It is encouraging how climate change has moved up the agenda for virtually every country over the past six months, including our own. Through Sustainable Energy Ireland and other stakeholders, we have engaged in a wide range of carefully monitored pilot schemes, so we now know what it takes to improve performance dramatically. Implementation of both the White Paper on Energy (and especially the Energy Efficiency Action Plan that is soon to follow) and the Climate Change Strategy will begin to change our emissions trajectory. Let's get on with it.
• Prof Frank J Convery is chairman of Comhar (Sustainable Development Council), and Heritage Trust professor of environmental policy at UCD