World’s richest nations ‘failing’ to address climate change

Paul Brown in Responding to Climate Change:  The world’s richest countries have made some progress since the 1990s in limiting environmental damage. But they have not done enough to prevent catastrophic climate change, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Scientists say that carbon dioxide emissions need to start going down in the next decade to prevent global temperatures reaching dangerous levels. But the OECD predicts they will continue to rise and by 2050 will be 50% higher than they are today. The 34 OECD countries in the survey are mainly the older mature economies which in the 1970s produced well over half the world’s CO2 emissions from their factories and transport.

Now the OECD share of total world emissions has dropped to 30%, but only because of the vast increase in the energy use of China and other high-growth countries like Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and South Africa.  These now account for 40% of global emissions on their own.

There is some good news in the report. Some OECD countries have both increased production and reduced CO2 emissions by introducing renewables and energy efficiency. The problem for those that fail to do so appears to be political, with countries like Australia and Canada, which have repudiated the Kyoto Protocol, apparently also abandoning most policies to combat climate change...

Gabriel Metsu's 17th century painting, "The Triumph of Justice"

Europe threatened by greater water risks: OECD report

EurActiv: In Europe, the outlook for water-related disasters over the coming decades is bleak due to stress on water systems, increased demand and pollution, says a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The report coincides with World Water Week, a yearly event by the Stockholm International Water Institute to highlight the global challenges linked to water. The 167-page publication, Water Security for Better Lives, calls on governments to speed up their efforts to enhance the effectiveness of water management systems and curb the fallout from increased global demand, and shortages and floods caused by climate change.

The OECD said that by 2050 40% of the world's population will live in areas of severe water stress. The global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, putting ever-greater pressure on supply chains that could lead to shortages. Nearly 20% of people could be exposed to floods, the influential Paris-based think tank added. Globally, the OECD puts the value of the property at risk from floods at some €35 trillion by 2050.

In Europe, water risks came to the fore in the summer of 2013 as much of the continent suffered severe flooding. The overflowing Elbe, Danube and Vltava rivers caused an estimated €3 billion of damage in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria. Hungary, Poland and Slovakia were also affected.

Following the floods, the European Environmental Agency (EEA) predicted a rise in extreme weather events due to increased population, land-use change and climate change, among other factors. To the OECD, governments need to take action now....

High water in Dresden on June 5, 2013, shot by X-Weinzar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

OECD-FAO expect slower global agricultural production growth

A press release from the OECD: Global agricultural production is expected to grow 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO today.

Limited expansion of agricultural land, rising production costs, growing resource constraints and increasing environmental pressures are the main factors behind the trend. But the report argues that farm commodity supply should keep pace with global demand.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013-2022 expects prices to remain above historical averages over the medium term for both crop and livestock products due to a combination of slower production growth and stronger demand, including for biofuels,

The report says agriculture has been turned into an increasingly market-driven sector, as opposed to policy-driven as it was in the past, thus offering developing countries important investment opportunities and economic benefits, given their growing food demand, potential for production expansion and comparative advantages in many global markets.

However, production shortfalls, price volatility and trade disruption remain a threat to global food security. The OECD/FAO Outlook warns: “As long as food stocks in major producing and consuming countries remain low, the risk of price volatility is amplified. A wide-spread drought such as the one experienced in 2012, on top of low food stocks, could raise world prices by 15-40 percent.”

China, with one-fifth of the world’s population, high income growth and a rapidly expanding agri-food sector, will have a major influence on world markets, and is the special focus of the report. China is projected to remain self-sufficient in the main food crops, although output is anticipated to slow in the next decade due to land, water and rural labour constraints....

View from Bukowica hill, Nowotaniec, farmland, parish and main market, Lipiec. Poland, shot by Marek Silarski, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The failures of Rio

EurActiv: World leaders attending the recent Rio+20 conference agreed to promote sustainable consumption and production, but analysts say getting businesses and buyers to do just that will require far more than words on paper. To the immense disappointment of environmental groups and even some multinational corporations, Rio+20 failed to produce binding commitments or a plan on how to strike a balance between consumer demand and the availability of natural resource.

“The current deal on the Rio table is really scraping the barrel – with woolly definitions, old ideas and missing deadlines,” said Craig Bennett, Friends of the Earth’s director of policy and campaigns. “It doesn’t come close to solving the planetary emergency we’re facing.”

The stakes are high without some action. Consumers International, a London-based group, says humans are already consuming 50% more than the planet can replenish. The most sober projections from the United Nations suggest there could be shortages of freshwater, food and essential industrial minerals within two generations as the world population lurches towards 9 billion or more from 7 billion today, and as people in today’s emerging markets become wealthier and more eager consumers.

Dutch MEP Bas Ecikhout (Greens) says firm actions are needed to address the challenges ahead. “We really have to think about pricing, how we deal with our taxation, what kind of products maybe [should not be] allowed anymore,” he told EurActiv. “We really have to have that discussion, and we need to go further than just labelling.”

At the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio, there was no commitment to remove fossil fuel subsidies – which environmentalists see as one of the world’s most glaring impediments to sustainable consumption. The Rio concluding documents signed by more than 100 global leaders promoted sustainable use of natural resources without setting any binding commitments...

OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction

From the OECD: Humanity has witnessed unprecedented growth and prosperity in the past decades, with the size of the world economy more than tripling and population increasing by over 3 billion people since 1970. This growth, however, has been accompanied by environmental pollution and natural resource depletion. The current growth model and the mismanagement of natural assets could ultimately undermine human development.

The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050 asks “What will the next four decades bring?” Based on joint modelling by the OECD and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), it looks forward to the year 2050 to find out what demographic and economic trends might mean for the environment if the world does not adopt more ambitious green policies. It also looks at what policies could change that picture for the better.

This Outlook focuses on four areas: climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and health impacts of pollution. These four key environmental challenges were identified by the previous Environmental Outlook to 2030 (OECD, 2008) as “Red Light” issues requiring urgent attention. Based on model projections, this edition of the Environmental Outlook paints a possible picture of what the environment might look like in 2050. It focuses on four areas which were identified by the previous edition of the Outlook as needing urgent attention: climate change, biodiversity, water, and health and environment....

Water shortage a global threat without urgent reform

Terra Daily via AFP: Urgent reforms to raise efficiency in the way water is used around the world are needed to avert serious shortages in the next decades, and markets in water can help, the OECD said on Wednesday. In about 40 years' time more than four out of 10 people in the world may be living in river areas in the grip of severe shortage, it warned.

"Efficient use of water is essential, and pricing it properly can discourage waste," the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said. "Economic instruments such as water markets can help to achieve this in a flexible way."

The OECD, a forum and source of advice on policy in many fields for governments in advanced countries, was commenting on the release of a study it published called Meeting the Water Reform Challenge ahead of a world water forum in Marseille, southern France, on Tuesday.

The organisation warned that reform was needed urgently "if the world is to head off serious deterioration in the quality and quantity of water available."...

Photo by Bernd in Japan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license