Responding to climate change has become more urgent than ever.

Cooperation within communities is a precondition for urban resilience, as recurring heatwaves and hurricanes cannot be put down to chance any more. Lou del Bello argues that part of the response to disaster risks lies in digital communications, which will help build preparedness from the bottom up.

Among the planning measures a city needs to survive and thrive, climate change response is now more important than ever. Analysis shows how the developing world is at greater risk from climate change, but the threat is global. Over 90% of the world’s cities are located in coastal areas, where sea level rise already threatens the most vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Climate-driven disasters are increasingly becoming the order of the day and policy makers will have to take cognisance of this. It is past the time when responding to climate change just involved pre and post disaster measures, mostly revolving around funding distribution. The idea of preparedness now encompasses a much broader set of issues, such as cooperation within communities, public understanding of environmental risks and the way politicians use science to shape their policies, for good or bad.

Understanding Vulnerability Ahead of Time

Chad Briggs, a strategy director with the risk assessment consultancy Global Interconnections, cites the example of the infrastructure breakdown in Puerto Rico after the recent hurricanes: "With Irma having affected the electric grid so badly, people should have known that a second hurricane arriving so soon [Maria] would have wiped out the rest of the grid." While weather forecasts are now able to predict when a storm will hit, the entire urban landscape will have to be reprogrammed knowing that similar emergencies will happen more often.

"These things come in combination," adds Briggs, "For example, a hurricane hits and shortly after there is a disease outbreak. Most disasters are created by multiple things happening at once, and when communities are vulnerable, they can be overwhelmed by such disasters." Using risk scenarios, he says, can help understand where the vulnerabilities are ahead of time.

When Public Offices Fall Short, Communities Step In

"One thing that cities are criticized for is what we call 'administrative fragmentation'," says Vivek Shandas, an urban planning expert at Portland State University in the US and founder of the Sustainable Urban Places Research Lab, which works to connect environmental impacts and human behaviour to improve decision making.

"Each city department has its mission and agenda and those goals rarely interact or coordinate," he explains. "This becomes painfully evident when an extreme event comes upon a city". While weather forecasts enable better short term planning, allowing for example to plan evacuations, attribution science identifies long term vulnerabilities, informing how to plan for decades ahead.

Particularly in the fast-growing developing world, the path towards building resilient communities is rich in opportunities but at the same time rife with hurdles

Shandas says that "even simple things like coordination among local communities, with neighbours, knowing which is the key household to be able to go to during the event, neighbourhood response teams helping people find shelter and knowing what to do," should become part of a vulnerable city's culture.

Improving Communication and Coordination

In fact, Shandas observes, coordination is part of what makes us resilient as a species. "Traditional communities have always seen the need for heightened coordination during these events, and have always found ways to communicate effectively."

How to communicate? Who has access to digital information? “And what about older adults and children, those who don't have cars?” There are as many solutions as there are cities, but the core questions, says Shandas, are transferable to any urban centre in the world, and a good starting point to build preparedness from the bottom up.

Particularly in the fast-growing developing world, the path towards building resilient communities is rich in opportunities but at the same time rife with hurdles. As cities in Africa and Asia are expanding very rapidly, any new measure implemented will have an impact on a higher number of people. Where roads, energy grid and housing are in their infancy, there is greater potential for any intervention to be revolutionary and make a long lasting change. But each mistake will have grave repercussions.

70% of cities are already dealing with the impacts of climate change, whether it's lack of water or exposure to extreme events. As attribution science gets better by the year and our understanding of climate change impacts thus improves, leaders need to rethink the future of our communities, invest in digital infrastructure and facilitate cooperation among citizens.

This guest post was originally published on the Climate Diplomacy website.

To read about IISD's work on climate-resilient cities, click here.

At a time of year when many mull over ambitious New Year’s resolutions, Ministers of the Environment met at the third UN Environment Assembly (UNEA 3) to negotiate resolutions to tackle a global problem that, according to recent estimates in The Lancet, kills 9 million people annually: pollution.

But in the plenary hall there was a more immediate, if more inconsequential, problem: the Internet wasn’t working.

Although Internet connectivity at the UN Complex in Nairobi is excellent, heavy demand slowed it to a crawl. The problem was that too many people were using it simultaneously, often connecting via multiple devices.

Slow internet is, of course, a small problem in the grander scheme—but at a conference on one of the most serious global problems, this very minor issue was illustrative of the larger challenge at hand. How do you reduce overconsumption of limited resources, especially when so many of us are complicit in that overconsumption to some degree? What’s the incentive for taking an individual altruistic action to use less? (Full disclosure: in characteristic North American fashion, I was consuming more than my fair share of Internet connectivity during the meeting, connected as I was via two devices).

Though the UNEA’s high ambition of a pollution-free planet may seem quixotic at a glance, I found that the opportunities for countries to have significant impact through focused regulatory action seem eminently achievable when the spotlight is cast on specific pollutants.

The UN describes UNEA as the world’s “highest-level decision-making body on the environment.” The meeting sought to have governments agree on resolutions to curb all forms of pollution, resulting in 13 non-binding resolutions and a ministerial declaration on pollution of air, land and soil, fresh water and oceans.

In setting the meeting’s context, UN Environment’s Executive Director Erik Solheim pointed to one of the happiest moments in international environmental diplomacy—the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer—as a model for an agreement on pollution. He emphasized that the Montreal Protocol was achieved through the combined efforts of multiple actors: civil society activism, supportive governments and businesses at the table cooperating in the phase-out of ozone-depleting substances.

But while a harmonious relationship between civil society, governments and businesses is a laudable ideal, negotiating this in reality remains far from easy. As numerous civil society groups emphasized during UNEA 3, the starkest metric of the work yet to be done is the number of extrajudicial killings of activists. The Guardian and Global Witness estimate that 185 environmental defenders have been killed in 2017 (as of December 19, 2017) while protecting their community’s land or natural resources. 

Though the UNEA’s high ambition of a pollution-free planet may seem quixotic at a glance, I found that the opportunities for countries to have significant impact through focused regulatory action seem eminently achievable when the spotlight is cast on specific pollutants.

Banning Lead Paint

Lead is a pervasive and toxic pollutant that, UN Environment writes, causes “permanent brain and nervous system damage, problems with kidney function, and blood and reproductive damage.” Exposure to lead can cause “sensory, motor, cognitive and behavioral impacts, including learning disabilities; attention deficits; disorders in a child’s coordination, visual, spatial and language skills, and anemia.”

To put a fine point on it, New York University’s Dr. Leonardo Trasande told attendees at a side event: “No amount of lead exposure is safe.”

While lead in all kinds of consumer goods can be harmful, its persistence as an additive in paint is an area that is especially ripe for regulation, as only 34.7 per cent of countries have legally binding controls to limit the production, import and sale of lead paints.

In Canada, where the use of lead paint is regulated, producing lead paint for export is not adequately regulated.

The World Health Organization, United States Environmental Protection Agency and other partners have developed a model law regulating lead paint that countries can adapt to their national context, and a which number of countries are exploring

Encouragingly, one of the draft resolutions to emerge from UNEA 3 was on “Eliminating Exposure to Lead Paint and Promoting Environmentally Sound Management of Waste Lead-Acid Batteries.”

Single-Use Plastics

Each year, human activity leads to 8 million tonnes of plastic in the oceans, resulting in environmental calamities like the Great Pacific garbage patch, the Texas-sized mess of plastic fragments swirling around an ocean vortex and contaminating the food chain. By one estimate, there will actually be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. Even though that report, from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and World Economic Forum, has raised questions about how to measure the plastics and how to count the fish, there is clearly room to do better.

Forty countries have now committed to UN Environment’s Cleanseas campaign, and during UNEA 3, Sri Lanka promised to implement a ban on single-use plastic products beginning in January 2018.

Short-Lived Climate Pollutants

Air pollution remains the most significant impact on health internationally and is a form of pollution that is all the more difficult to control given that it travels easily across borders (issues of transboundary regulation were hotly debated during the UNEA negotiations).

Canada sponsored a resolution on short-lived climate pollutants including black carbon, methane, ground-level ozone and hydrofluorocarbons. Reducing these pollutants not only has immediate benefits for health but will also contribute to countries’ efforts to fulfill their Paris Agreement commitments.

"With the promises made here, we are sending a powerful message that we will listen to the science [and] change the way we consume and produce.”

Dr. Edgar Gutiérrez-Espeleta, Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica and President of the 2017 UNEA

This language that short-lived climate pollutants “are responsible for a significant portion of air pollution-related deaths, as well as impacts on crops and hence food security, and their reduction has co-benefits for the climate” survived negotiations to be included in one of the draft resolutions.

At a consultation ahead of UNEA 3, North American civil society groups called for a global agreement on limiting air pollution, a call that was shared as part of the statement made by Regional Major Groups and Stakeholder Representatives to UNEP.

Regulation or Individual Action?

Looking at just three pollutants covered under discussion at UNEA 3 shows just how far we have to go.

Following the conference wrap-up, Edgar Gutiérrez-Espeleta—Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica and President of the 2017 UNEA—said, “The science we have seen at this assembly shows we have been so bad at looking after our planet that we have very little room to make more mistakes. With the promises made here, we are sending a powerful message that we will listen to the science [and] change the way we consume and produce.”

Given the scale of the problem, it is easy to fault our (often very fallible) political leadership for the slow pace at which much-needed regulation becomes reality. And while action to regulate is an absolute necessity, in reading up on the pollution-related statistics on death and morbidity (on whichever of our multiple wifi-enabled devices is closest at hand), it is also worth considering the individual actions that might be taken to chip away at the larger-than-Texas-sized problems of pollution.

Over the past few years, you may have noticed the phrase “phosphorus free” on the labels of many products in stores. If so, you may wonder why it is so important to eliminate phosphorus from dish soaps, detergents, lawn fertilizers and shampoos.

Phosphorous occurs naturally and in the right amounts is not necessarily a bad thing. But important work at IISD Experimental Lakes Area proved that too much phosphorus in our water leads to environmental trouble such as algal blooms.

The policy changes that led to phosphorus being taken out of many of the products on grocery store shelves were strongly informed by that work.

The list of lakes that are suffering from algal blooms in North America is lengthy and growing. Algal blooms can affect environmental and human health, as well as have an impact on economies that depend on fishing and tourism.

So what are algal blooms? How are they caused and what can help clear our lakes of them?

Here, we look at the science behind those thick layers of green sludge and explore where we need to go from here.

First things first. What are algal blooms?

Algal blooms are dense layers of tiny green plants that occur on the surface of lakes and other bodies of water when there is an overabundance of nutrients (primarily phosphorus) on which algae depend.

This effect is called eutrophication. These high levels of nutrients are often caused by human pollution, such wastewater, sewage, manure and fertilizer runoff from agriculture.

Lake eutrophication can, however, be a natural process resulting from the gradual accumulation of nutrients, sediments, silt and organic matter from the watershed. IISD recently published a study on Pelican Lake in Manitoba—a lake that suffers from eutrophication—that explores the natural and human sources from which phosphorus is originating and ultimately entering the lake.

Should we be concerned about algal blooms?

Yes.

The green scum formed by dense algal blooms is unsightly, smells bad and can make water toxic to humans and fish, causing illness and—in some cases—death. When algae die, they are decomposed by bacteria, which can remove oxygen from the water, occasionally killing fish.

Algal blooms can also make water unfit for even recreational use. These tiny organisms can therefore have a huge impact on health, wildlife and economies that depend on fishing and tourism.

How widespread a problem are algal blooms?

Algal blooms plague many bodies of water across North America due to excess amounts of phosphorus.

In Canada, Lake Winnipeg has been experiencing a steady increase in algal coverage over the last 30 years, threatening wildlife, tourism and the fishing industry. In fact, in 2013 Lake Winnipeg was given the dubious honour of being named the World’s Most Threatened Lake by the Global Nature Fund, mainly due to its algal bloom problem.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that every coastal and Great Lakes state in the United States is affected. Recent examples show algal blooms affecting Lake Erie, Lake Utah and even the Pacific Ocean. Lake Erie was recently covered with a bright green layer of algae and has been dealing with eutrophication issues for decades, while Lake Utah was recently closed due to health concerns from a large algal bloom.

What is IISD Experimental Lakes Area doing about algal blooms?

Algal blooms are IISD Experimental Lakes Area’s reason for being—the site was originally set up in 1968 to determine what was causing them. By adding different nutrients to isolated sections of a lake, researchers at the research station determined that phosphorous is the most important limiting nutrient for algal blooms.

This groundbreaking discovery helped changed water policy around the world. It is thanks to this research that we have better sewage treatment plants, better water quality guidelines, and mandated phosphate-free laundry detergents and dish soaps. These policy changes resulted in fewer algal blooms due to "point source pollution" (where nutrients are released directly into a body of water—in this case from wastewater plants) in lakes such as Lake Erie.

The problem of algal blooms is not going away, especially with phosphorus emanating from non-point sources (entry points far from where the nutrient ends up), and so we are continuing to explore the issue and potential solutions.

IISD is researching how we can clean up, or remediate, algal blooms. Just last year, we published a review of the current literature on the most effective methods of "in-lake" remediation of lakes that suffer from eutrophication.

Our continuing work adding nutrients into Lake 227 has revealed that cutting off artificial nitrogen entering lakes does not have an effect on algal blooms, suggesting that jurisdictions should focus their limited resources on removing phosphorus from water.

IISD Experimental Lakes Area’s work on phosphorus now examines the role of this nutrient on algal blooms, food web dynamics, greenhouse gas emissions and the generation of harmful algal blooms (e.g., blue–green algae that produce harmful toxins). For example, since 2017 we have been researching what impact iron may have on harmful algal blooms in Lake 227.

IISD Experimental Lakes Area’s research on phosphorus and algal blooms is done in collaboration with multiple researchers across Canada, including the universities of Waterloo, York Wilfred Laurier, Toronto and New Brunswick.

On the sidelines of the UN climate conference in Bonn last month, Canada and the Unted Kingdom spearheaded the launch of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA).

In a marked opposition to the Trump administration’s climate denial, the PPCA unites 19 countries, including France, and eight subnational governments. The alliance’s goal is “to accelerate clean growth and climate protection through the phase-out of… existing traditional coal power” and place “a moratorium on any new traditional coal power stations.”

PPCA is aiming to double its membership within a year, with more coal phase-out announcements expected at the One Planet Summit in Paris on December 12.

Critics have pointed out that the PPCA unites mainly the countries that have little or no coal use, while large coal producers and consumers such as Germany, Poland, the United States federal government, Australia and many Asian nations are conspicuous by their absence.

Taking the world “beyond coal” will require more than the PPCA in its present form. Fortunately, international governance has a useful precedent: coal phase-out champions should learn from the global action against tobacco.

Public Health

Indeed, coal is the tobacco of our time: a deathly addiction. Coal kills about the same number of people as passive smoking: 800,000 per year. (Active smoking annually takes another 6 million lives.)

It was in the mid-1990s that, in the face of the alarming evidence of the global tobacco epidemic, civil society pushed for “an international instrument… to be adopted by the United Nations.” The outcome was the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which came into force in 2005.

Coal is the tobacco of our time: a deathly addiction. Coal kills about the same number of people as passive smoking: 800,000 per year.

The tide of smoking in developing countries has not yet been reversed, but the successes in the developed world offer insights for coal phase-outs. On average, smoking rates across 126 countries (both developed and developing) fell from 24.7 per cent of the population in 2005 to 22.2 per cent in 2015. Global cigarette consumption peaked at 5.95 trillion sticks in 2012 and declined by 8 per cent to 5.5 trillion in 2016.

Trade and Investment

Time will show whether the PPCA members can negotiate something similar to the WHO FCTC—a global treaty that sets the bar against which countries can design and implement their restrictions on coal. But while negotiating a new agreement within the United Nations system or a coalition of the willing takes a lot of effort, other international forums are already available.

Take international trade and investment law, which has been a battlefield between tobacco opponents and proponents for years, and where recent lawsuits resulted in decisive defeats of the tobacco industry.

It is also only a matter of time before the first lawsuit over subsidies to fossil fuels is put before the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organization (WTO). For example, a potential case within its competence can involve one of the world’s largest and climate-harmful coal mines, the Adani mine in Australia.

The Adani mine is a classic example of a zombie energy project, the economic viability of which depends on government support. The mine developers are seeking an AUS 900 million (USD 690 million) loan from the Australian federal government to construct a railway from the mine to a port of export. If provided, the loan would constitute what appears to be an illegal subsidy under the WTO rules. Challenging such fossil fuel subsidies is an international opportunity for climate leadership.

A Just Transition

In 2015, the Paris Agreement included “the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs” for people and countries that heavily depend on fossil fuels. The same year, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) published just transition guidelines.

The experience of diversification in the tobacco-growing industry offers positive stories and evidence of manageable economic impacts, with a possibility of transition support being funded out of increased taxes on tobacco consumption.

Coal workers and coal-dependent countries need to see a future for themselves in climate action. A just transition for them can be supported by carbon taxes and savings from fossil fuel subsidy reform.

At and beyond the One Planet Summit, it is high time that climate leaders start thinking of an international treaty on coal control and urgently use such forums as the WHO, WTO, talks on the reform of international investment agreements and the ILO as well as the climate talks.

This article originally appeared on Climate Home News.

As the year draws to a close, prepare for the inevitable onslaught of top ten lists and looks at the high and low points of 2017.

For the trade community, top of the list of fails has to be the Argentinian government’s recent move to revoke the credentials of civil society participants from over 20 organizations to attend the WTO’s 11th Ministerial Conference. Argentina, which is hosting the conference in Buenos Aires from December 10–13, cited security concerns.

Most of the more than 60 banned participants are associated with the Our World Is Not for Sale network, which opposes globalization. Environmental non-governmental organizations like Friends of the Earth International are also banned, as are two international union organizations and some business groups, both foreign and Argentinian.

This is unprecedented, and it’s a big deal. It’s hard to pick out the most problematic aspect of this mess, but let’s start with the fact that the ban addresses a non-existent problem. The barred participants have participated in many previous Ministerials and had already been accredited to attend the event by the WTO itself—the WTO not having a problem with dissenting voices. The last time dissent gave rise to problems was fully 18 years ago at the second WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999, with battles in the street. We have seen nothing like that since, and there is no reason to believe Buenos Aires would have been any different.

It’s worth remembering a bit of history. In the 1990s, the WTO was an obsessively closed organization, terrified of the activist barbarians at the gates demanding social and environmental justice. When the WTO finally opened up in 2001 and let them in, activists discovered a realm much more boring and less sinister than what they had imagined. The WTO discovered a bunch of intelligent, earnest critics. Sharp differences remain, but openness was a powerful cure for mistrust and conflict. That dynamic also works in reverse—barring dissenting voices from an event is a great way to ensure lively protest.

The WTO is caught in the middle. Already under heavy siege from some nationalistic governments, weathering a crisis of multilateralism, the last thing it needs is this kind of bad press. By all accounts, the secretariat lobbied furiously to avert the banning of participants to what is, after all, its event, but to no avail.

For the trade community, one of 2017's biggest fails has to be the Argentinian government’s decision to revoke credentials for more than 60 civil society participants to attend the WTO’s 11th Ministerial Conference.

In a previous case of this type, at the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial, a single individual was blocked by the host, and the WTO’s director-general intervened to have the decision reversed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the current director-general has made similar efforts. A credible threat to relocate or postpone the meeting would have undoubtedly made a difference.

The news broke on the same day that Argentina inherited the G20 presidency from Germany. Germany had been a model president from the perspective of openness, heavily engaging with the research, business, trade union, civil society and other communities to supplement the governmental policy process. They did that because they understood that the final result of inclusiveness is better policy.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this mess is that, in the year 2017, the government of Argentina doesn’t get that basic truth.

Tomorrow marks two years since governments met to adopt the Paris Agreement, an ambitious global plan to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, France continues to spearhead climate diplomacy by convening the One Planet Summit. The difference this time is that the goal is not to have all countries at the table, only climate leaders. 

But what does climate (and broader sustainability) leadership mean today, as we close out a year of ever-increasing emissions and one of the top three hottest years on record? Part of the answer lies with the call in Article 2 of the Paris Agreement for countries to make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”

Wanted: Public signals, private capital

Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global temperature increase “well below 2 degrees” above pre-industrial levels will require private and public leadership to shift financial flows. Neither government nor the private sector can achieve these ambitious targets without each other, and without relentless pressure from civil society.

In particular, markets need proof and consistent government signals that investing in clean technologies, production methods, products and services will make more money than investing in dirty sectors. That is why countries such as the United Kingdom and France prioritize promoting the recommendations from the high-level Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. And that is why investors also need sustainable asset valuation tools.

Promoting the green

As part of the signalling toolkit, governments can help shape, focus and leverage market action through a new generation of green industrial policy. This so-called renaissance in green industrial policy can, for instance, use government funds to act like venture capital to help kick-start innovative clean technologies and markets.

Mobility is a vivid example in this respect: on the one hand, with the right signals from governments, electric cars have been quickly and firmly claiming ground, not only in the West but also in many developing countries. On the other, Volvo, the formerly Swedish auto manufacturer now owned by Chinese investors, announced that it will sunset all internal combustion engines by 2019.  

Electricity generation is another area where markets have seen a dramatic change, prompted by government policies. The cheapest electricity is now from renewable sources, such as wind power at 1.77¢/kWh in Mexico and solar at 3.4¢/kWh in India.

However, a key challenge is aligning public sector leadership with private sector innovation and financing to scale. The October 2017 release of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) High Level Communiqué, including Blending Finance Principles for Unlocking Commercial Finance for the SDGs, is a helpful step in setting out the normative principles to blend or de-risk private sector financing to attract larger pools of private capital. The draft Green Finance Catalyzing Facility of the Asia Development Bank also sets out some operational elements to identify, pool and de-risk low-carbon investments. 

China is uniquely placed to demonstrate how to integrate public sector finance with private market innovation in building a systematic approach to scale up green finance. Today, green bonds have reached an estimated USD 95 billion, with China being the largest issuer. While this is a tiny fraction of total bond market liquidity, green bonds in China represent one part of an ambitious systematic approach to building a green financial system that includes banking regulations, insurance, the stock market and other key actors. The potential to align China’s leadership in green finance within the G20 Green Finance Study Group to the Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to amplify green development.

Demoting the brown

The One Planet Summit is expected to yield more announcements on phasing out coal, supporting the wave of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), which launched on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Bonn last month. Spearheaded by Canada and the United Kingdom, PPCA unites 25 founding governments, France among them. The goal is “to accelerate clean growth and climate protection through the phase-out of… existing traditional coal power” and place “a moratorium on any new traditional coal power stations.” With the PPCA launch seen as a “political watershed,” the emerging sense in the markets is that coal is on the wrong side of history, and even though it is clear in countries such as China and India, the transition away from coal will take much longer than in Canada or the United Kingdom.

But the jury is still out on whether oil and gas will be sun-setting in the same way as coal anytime soon. Norway is an interesting litmus text in this respect. The Norwegian Sovereign Fund, which, at USD 1 trillion, is the largest in the world, started divesting from coal in 2015. Divestment from coal has improved the fund’s financial performance, its managers say. In the same vein, in November 2017, the Norwegian Central Bank announced its recommendation for the fund’s divestment from oil and gas. The recommendation, which has already sent a strong signal to financial markets, relies on the similar—purely economic—assessment that the value of oil and gas assets would experience a permanent decline in coming years.

However, even Norway faces a dilemma about its future energy choices. Statoil, its government-owned company, still continues massive investments in oil and gas exploration and production and the government itself directly subsidizes coal extraction in Svalbard.

By contrast, an integral climate leadership example in this respect comes from France, which has announced a plan to stop granting new exploration permits next year as it seeks to end all oil and gas production by 2040. Although France does not have significant hydrocarbon extraction at present, its new legislation would not only put an end to its domestic debate on shale gas development, but it would also set an important precedent—a G7 country acting on the recognition that carbon pricing and other demand-side policies alone are not enough to respond to the climate challenge.

 Instead of requiring financing, like many other sustainable development policies, fossil fuel subsidy reform could free up hundreds of billions of dollars.

For governments, giving the right signals to markets is also not only about regulating them, but also about removing subsidies to fossil fuel production (around USD 100 billion per year) and consumption (around USD 260 billion in 2016) as well as stopping public finance to oil, gas and coal projects domestically and overseas. These subsidies artificially lower the cost of fossil fuel energy, leading to its wasteful consumption and, as a result, more emissions. Phase-out and reallocation of fossil fuel subsidies is a low-hanging fruit for financing climate action and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. Instead of requiring financing, like many other sustainable development policies, fossil fuel subsidy reform could free up hundreds of billions of dollars for supporting health, education, renewable energy and a just transition of workers from brown to green jobs.

The One Planet Summit in Paris will undoubtedly set a new precedent of leadership on climate action and sustainable development. But for the Earth to remain a safe place for us to live, the leadership bar has to rise much faster than the global temperature. 

With an estimated third of the world’s mineral resources located in Africa, integrating mining with sustainable development to achieve social and economic benefits has never been more crucial.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a complex and diversified sector, ranging from informal individual miners seeking a subsistence livelihood to small-scale commercial mining entities.

Women miners can face a variety of barriers, but with the right tools, ASM can contribute to their increased economic empowerment

Global estimates suggest about 100 million individuals, including people who work in the sector and their families, depend on ASM in approximately 80 countries around the world. The work is a valuable source of livelihood for many people, including millions of women. However, there is a pressing need to enhance the quality of life for these women miners, and to integrate gender equity and equality principles into the sector as a whole.

There is also a need for policies aimed at legalizing and regularizing ASM. However, if this happens without reliable data on women’s economic activities in ASM, regulations may not adequately address their perspective because of a lack of sufficient analysis of their current conditions, their economic roles in the sector and the barriers and discrimination they so often face.

Research suggests that there are a number of ways to address these challenges while minimizing the gendered impacts of ASM and promoting economic independence for women artisanal miners. Here are just a few:

1. Boost the skills of women artisanal miners

The ability for women to participate effectively and consistently in the artisanal mining sector is often limited by traditional gender roles and a lack of available technical training. Providing such training in conjunction with legal mining knowledge and the skills to identify entrepreneurial opportunities can economically benefit women miners in the artisanal sector.

By enhancing gender equity and equality within ASM, the sector can spur social transformations to achieve poverty reduction, inclusive growth and sustainable development. 

2. Create women-focused services

Women miners can face a variety of barriers, but with the right tools, ASM can contribute to their increased economic empowerment. Mobile mentoring and counselling services focused on women’s issues is one path. Another solution is to establish childcare centres or other family-related services at mine sites to alleviate some of the barriers that otherwise hinder women’s participation in the artisanal mining sector.

3. Encourage education and sector involvement

Recent research among women miners in Uganda found that more than 70 per cent of the women had little to no schooling. Establishing women-focused training and encouraging women miners in the artisanal sector to join or create associations can provide opportunities for knowledge sharing and access to information, and increase their ability to foster new initiatives.  

4. Challenge unfair norms

Women often face gender discrimination at excavation and mine sites, which prevents them from taking on more lucrative activities. Due to these issues, women tend to work alone rather than in teams with men. By encouraging women miners to work collaboratively with each other, and by encouraging the artisanal mining sector as a whole to challenge gender norms holding women back, they can prosper and take on roles that could earn them a higher income.

As women continue to make up a large share of the ASM workforce, there is a pressing need to ensure their quality of life, particularly for women miners working outside of formal legal systems. By enhancing gender equity and equality within ASM, the sector can spur social transformations to achieve poverty reduction, inclusive growth and sustainable development. 

Progress at the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP 23), the United Nations climate change conference that recently wrapped up in Bonn, Germany, has been likened by the Earth Negotiation Bulletin to that of a caterpillar weaving a cocoon with the hope of revealing a butterfly in the end.

The metaphor is a symbolic representation of the process to develop a set of rules that will guide countries in the implementation of the Paris Agreement. At the last conference, held in Marrakesh in 2016, countries agreed to give themselves two years to negotiate these rules, with a view of adopting them as a “package deal” in 2018.

The image also brings to mind The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a popular children’s book by Eric Carle. In that story, a caterpillar with an insatiable appetite overeats and gets sick before weaving a cocoon to emerge as a beautiful butterfly.

The current state of negotiations is a bit like the caterpillar after eating cake, cheese, ice cream, pickles, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausages, cupcakes and watermelon. After COP 23, the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA) informal note that forms the basis of negotiations had ballooned to 266 pages covering five main items (mitigation, adaptation communication, transparency framework, global stocktaking and compliance). This included 180 pages on the topic of mitigation alone. Much like the caterpillar, the text has left some negotiators feeling bloated.

The good news is that, after some rest and recovery, it all worked out for the caterpillar, and there is certainly much hope for the negotiations ahead as well.

Starting the Metamorphosis

Overall, this COP was very technical, but no technical issue is apolitical. The first conference following the United States’ announcement of its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement saw a new geopolitical dynamic at play. In the lead up to Paris, the United States and China had become balancing forces. While the United States is still at the negotiating table, their much-reduced legitimacy allows China greater ability to drive negotiations in their preferred direction.

This has led to a re-emergence of the much fraught binary interpretation of the principle of “Common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances,” found throughout the Paris Agreement. This interpretation, defended with most conviction by China, but also by India and Saudi Arabia, calls for a clear division between developed and developing countries’ responsibilities across most topics. Efforts by the European Union, Canada and others to offer a counterweight is much needed to keep a more nuanced differentiation between countries, in line with the spirit of the Paris Agreement.

Canada’s Presence: Coal and collaboration

The highest profile event for Canada was the launch of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, spearheaded by Canada and the United Kingdom with the goal of building momentum on phasing out coal power internationally. Members who sign on agree to phase out existing coal and place a moratorium on new coal power plants without carbon capture. The group has 27 members currently, including four provinces and the City of Vancouver. The hope is that this group will grow to 50 members by COP 24.  The involvement of cities and provinces in this alliance is also representative of Canada’s presence at COP 23, characterized by the engagement of provincial and territorial governments. Beyond the federal delegation, Canada’s subnational delegations again prominently showcased their actions and called for greater ambition, bringing their support to a large delegation of U.S. subnational leaders past (former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) and present (Governors Jerry Brown, Kate Brown, Terry McAuliffe and Jay Inslee, and multiple mayors).

Overall, this COP was very technical, but no technical issue is apolitical.

From a negotiations standpoint, Canada had a lower profile but continued to support the negotiations, offering supportive statements to scale up climate finance to the USD 100 billion dollar 2020 goal, facilitating discussions on the adaptation communications component of the APA, pro-actively speaking on markets issues, as well as facilitating discussion on the Warsaw International Mechanism on loss and damage.

Canada also played a key role in the adoption of a Gender Action Plan and the operationalization of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, both of which it supported with events in Ottawa earlier this year. Canada’s more public presence, like many countries, was in the events-focused “Bonn zone” rather than the much lower-key (but just as impactful) negotiations-focused “Bula zone.”

Looking Ahead

As negotiations on the rules to guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement continue, 2018 will also be marked by stocktaking exercises. One key achievement of COP 23 is to have landed on the design of a year-long assessment of progress, to start in early 2018. The Talanoa Dialogue—named after a Pacific storytelling tradition that fosters openness and trust and that was the trademark of COP 23—aims to take stock of progress in view of the latest scientific findings and inspire countries to achieve their targets and design their next mitigation pledges.

Fiji, the first small island developing state to preside over a COP, infused the talks with a strong sense of urgency to act. This may have led to an important win for developing countries: making countries that have made pledges for 2020 more accountable, a long-time ask of developing countries. Countries that made 2020 mitigation pledges in Cancún in 2010 will be asked to present on progress made in achieving these at COP 24 and COP 25. Similarly, developed countries are asked to provide more information on how they intend to achieve the goal of mobilizing USD 100 billion per year by 2020. After all, these are the very pledges and goals that instilled the trust between countries that was necessary to reach an agreement in Paris.

The Butterfly Emerges

The solution for the Very Hungry Caterpillar when he overate was to rest, eat a sensible single green leaf and spin his cocoon. Negotiators will also have to adopt a more sensible, restrained diet if they are to avoid the problems of the past, when texts became overfed. Much division remains, and the lack of clarity on where these divisions are most prominent is reflected in the pages of options on all issues. 

Transitional COPs like the one that just ended in Bonn are typified by the usual positioning and posturing that occurs before a deadline. COP 23, however, gave parties a chance to have a more informed discussion, to better detail their positions and to start clarifying the possible structure of a decision text. The stage is now set and the real negotiation and bargaining must start.

The good news is that, after some rest and recovery, it all worked out for the caterpillar, and there is certainly much hope for the negotiations ahead as well.

As Poland takes over to preside over COP 24, the challenge will be to create a constructive atmosphere that allows countries to negotiate in good faith and on the basis of the precarious balance achieved in Paris, so that compromises can be reached across all issues. Time is short and the option of adding a negotiation session before COP 24 is on the table so that convergence can be achieved in Poland.

That said, the shadows of the protracted past still do create unease and uncertainty, despite hope for progress. Will the butterfly emerge in time for the 2018 deadline?

Transparify—an initiative that provides a global rating of the financial transparency of major think tanks and policy-relevant non-profit organizations—has just released its latest assessment.

And there is some great news for us!

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has earned the maximum rating of five stars for the third year in a row, meaning we are deemed “highly transparent” about our funding sources.

A five-star rating from Transparify means we list all our donors and clearly identify funding amounts and sources of funding for particular projects.

For IISD, this news could not come at a better time. Like other non-profit organizations, we are feeling the effects of the current, strained funding climate—with fewer potential sources of funding in our sphere of work (namely sustainable development) and much more intense competition for it.

Think tanks play an important role in shaping public policy and public opinion in many countries. The research and evidence generated by organizations like IISD is unbiased, independent-minded and rigorous. Our goal is to provide knowledge that can impact decisions that affect us all. However, if some think tanks are less transparent than others about their motives and funding sources, a shadow of doubt is cast over the entire sector.

Transparent donor recognition can be a crucial criterion for a funder to consider when determining which non-profit to fund. It can really set an organization apart.

As Transparify notes on its website: “…there are concerns that some policy advice provided by some think tanks may be driven more by the vested interests of their funders than by truly independent research and analysis.”

Given this backdrop, a five-star transparency rating matters more than ever—indeed our financial sustainability rests on it. Transparent donor recognition, along with overall financial reporting, can be a crucial criterion for a funder to consider when determining which non-profit to fund. It can really set an organization apart.

Existing and potential funders need to have quick and easy access to financial reporting, to see who else is funding our work, where their money is going, and what it is being spent on. Moreover, funders need to see how their support for our work leads to impact. They want to be able to attribute changes for the better to the dollars they have contributed.

Openly listing all who choose to fund our work is, for us, a source of great pride. These organizations and individuals have selected us over other organizations and have placed their faith in us to use their funds wisely and responsibly. We are grateful for this and afford our funders due respect and recognition, whether in an annual report, or an easily accessible listing on our website.

It is gratifying to receive this positive news as the calendar year draws to a close. We thank everyone who supported our work this year, as well as all our staff, and look forward to another five-star year in 2018. 

Keystone Pipeline. The Dakota Access Pipeline. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. North America has the largest network of energy pipelines in the world, and unfortunately periodic oil spills from pipelines do occur.

Even so, you may be surprised to learn that we actually know very little about what happens to freshwater systems when an oil spill occurs. Moreover, we know very little about how best to clean up those oil spills. A new large project, taking place at IISD Experimental Lakes Area in three stages, is setting out to answer those very questions.

Before we get into the research, let’s take a look at why oil spills could be a problem, how they could affect the surrounding environment and where we need to go from here.

What exactly is an oil spill?

Oil spills occur when oil being transported by truck, rail or pipeline unintentionally spills into the surrounding environment. In some cases, oil may end up in freshwater systems.

There are many types of oil. In North America, bitumen extracted from the Alberta oil sands is one of the most commonly transported types (by volume). Bitumen is too thick to be transported in pipelines, so it is diluted with other, lighter oils to allow it to flow more easily. The diluted bitumen is called “dilbit” and flows through many pipelines in North America.

Don’t we already know happens when oil enters fresh water?

Surprisingly, no.

Most existing research concentrates on the impact of oil spills on marine environments. In fact, leading and authoritative sources, such as the Royal Society of Canada and the National Academy of Sciences, have identified gaps in our knowledge regarding the impacts of oil spills on freshwater systems.

The implications of potential spills for freshwater systems and their surrounding environments remains uncertain.

And this is all the more surprising given the number of existing or proposed inland pipelines adjacent to freshwater systems. There are already approximately 840,000 km of oil and gas pipelines in Canada and 3.9 million km in the USA.

The implications of potential spills for freshwater systems and their surrounding environments remain uncertain. Because many methods for cleaning up oil spills were developed for the ocean, we also do not know which are most effective in freshwater systems.

We just don’t know enough.

What is happening at IISD Experimental Lakes Area to find out what oil spills do to fresh water?

Given the significant knowledge gaps, a groundbreaking project is taking place at IISD-ELA that will answer pressing questions about what happens when oil enters freshwater systems.

There are three stages of this research.

First, a pilot study using three small (2-m diameter) land-based microcosms has already been completed to examine the chemical and physical behaviour of dilbit in fresh water.

Oil is a complex mixture of chemicals whose nature changes with time in the environment. These changes can affect how easily it can be cleaned up (for example, does the oil remain floating or sink?) and its potential toxicity to freshwater wildlife. This early-stage study provided important preliminary information regarding these changes in fresh water that will help to guide the later phases of the research, which will begin in 2018.

The second stage is a field study. Researchers will use large enclosures (10-m diameter) placed in a lake to examine how diluted bitumen reacts in fresh water over longer periods of time. Researchers will also be directly testing changes in the oil’s toxicity to freshwater bugs, fish and amphibians.

The information from these first two studies will guide a third study, where researchers will examine the most effective methods of cleaning spilled oil from shorelines. Again, only small, contained model spills in an IISD-ELA lake will be used. This study will focus on the shoreline, which is most sensitive to oil and presents the biggest difficulty in terms of cleanup efforts.

Is it safe to study oil in an IISD-ELA lake?

IISD-ELA never embarks on any experiment without rigorous measures to protect the long-term health of the lakes. This includes a comprehensive contingency plan and a scientifically reviewed process to return the lake to the condition it was in before we started the research.

This oil research project is no exception and is going through a rigorous review process. All of the proposed model oil spills will be limited in volume and will be added into contained areas that are isolated from the rest of the lake. We will also install a series of absorbent booms around the isolated areas and at the lake outflow to double and triple protect against any leakages from the isolated areas.

As always, we are committed to removing leftover oil from the lake once the research is complete. A detailed plan to do that is an integral part of the study design as well.

IISD-ELA never embarks on any experiment without rigorous measures to protect the long-term health of the lakes.

What is IISD-ELA doing to ensure that our results are as useful as possible?

As scientists, we strive to approach our research objectively.

Our interest is in providing reliable results that can be used to inform better decision making around pipeline development and to develop more effective methods for cleaning up lakes after oil spills.

Throughout the project development stages, we have made every attempt to collaborate with those who might be affected by the research. IISD-ELA has sought input from First Nations and government departments, the oil production and transportation industries, regulators, universities and local community members.

For example, in September we held an Open House in Kenora (a small town in Ontario close to the research site) to discuss the project with citizens, explain the finer details and answer any questions.

Several studies are currently being pursued at the IISD-ELA to address public and regulatory concerns regarding potential environmental effects of oil spills and uncertainty regarding the best clean-up methods following a spill, especially for freshwater environments. One study, led by Drs. Jules Blais (University of Ottawa), Mark Hanson (University of Manitoba) and Diane Orihel (Queen’s University) will examine the ecological impacts of contained diluted bitumen model spills in a freshwater boreal lake. A companion study, led by Dr. Vince Palace (IISD-ELA) will compare the effectiveness of different methods for cleaning spilled oil form shorelines. Both studies are part of a large multidisciplinary program that includes participation from governments (ECCC, DFO, NRCan, OMECC, OMNRF),  regulators (NEB), academic partners (Universities of Manitoba, Ottawa, Queen’s, INRS, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Mcgill)  and industry (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canadian Energy Pipelines Association (CEPA)). For more information, please contact Sumeep Bath at sbath@iisd.ca.