The private world of carbon reporting. Five years ago, we really didn’t have a clue what an organisation’s carbon impact might look like, and few firms had any sort of carbon-oriented business plan. Now, the trend is to fill this gap by producing carbon reports. But within this story of emerging carbon reporting practice lies another story that has received little attention - how corporate elites have worked together to design their own self-regulations.
Before we get to that, it’s important we map out the story so far. A brand new idea Going back a few years now, there was a general feeling that organisations should tell us more about their carbon footprint, so that both insiders and outsiders could start to move towards more carbon sensitive decisions. This was a kind of mobilisation phase – getting people on board with a new idea. Carbon reporting soon became the focus of discussion, and we saw a rapid growth in the production and reporting of carbon-related data. Who designs the standard? This has been frustrating. A Closer Look at China’s Overseas Investment. When it comes to overseas development finance, China is definitely a country to watch. Due to the country’s unprecedented economic growth, China’s overseas investments have increased exponentially in recent years.
Between 2009 and 2010, two Chinese state-owned banks lent more money to other developing nations than the World Bank did. In fact, between 2002 and 2011, China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) stock grew from $29 billion to more than $424 billion. But what factors are driving all of this growth? What areas of the world are on the receiving end of China’s OFDI flows? And what sorts of social and environmental standards are in place for banks’ and enterprises’ investments?
WRI seeks to answer these questions and provide additional background information in its recently updated slide deck, “Emerging Actors in Development Finance: A Closer Look at China’s Overseas Investment.” WRI’s OFDI Work in China The landscape of development finance is changing rapidly. Reflections on COP 18 in Doha: Negotiators Made Only Incremental Progress.
This piece was written with analysis from Athena Ballesteros, Edward Cameron, Yamide Dagnet, Florence Daviet, Aarjan Dixit, Heather McGray, and Clifford Polycarp. Expectations were low for this year’s UNFCCC climate negotiations in Doha, Qatar (COP 18), which concluded last week. It was scheduled to be a “finalize-the-rules” type of COP, rather than one focused on large, political deals that went into the early hours of the morning. Key issues on the table included finalizing the rules for the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period; concluding a series of decisions on transparency, finance, adaptation, and forests (REDD+); and agreeing on a work plan to negotiate a new legally binding international climate agreement by 2015. The emissions gap was also front-and-center, as the new UNEP Gap Report showed that countries are further away than even a year ago from the goal of keeping global average temperature rise below two degrees C. 1) Durban Platform COP 18 continued with these issues.
Reduce emissions before trying climate engineering. With so little being done politically on climate change, Dana Milbank ["Plan B on climate change," op-ed, Oct. 17] noted that scientists want to research additional measures, often called geoengineering or, better, climate engineering. Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential, but it will have a significant effect only with sharp emissions reductions. Reducing warming by interfering with incoming solar radiation appears possible but is likely to have unintended side effects and involves difficult governance issues. Climate engineering thus makes sense as a strategy only after making commitments to limit emissions. The United States needs to take the lead and demonstrate the technical ingenuity to show that a modern economy can prosper with low greenhouse gas emissions, and Congress needs to enact incentives for this to happen. Michael MacCracken, Washington The writer is chief scientist for climate-change programs at the Climate Institute.
Dear President Obama, Protect Our Homes. ClimatePolicy. Economic Scene - Climate Proposal That Looks Beyond Cap and Trade. ClimatePolicy.