Queensland Climate Movement

Philip Sutton from the Greenleap Strategic Institute and Green Innovations presented a proposal for a Global Safe Climate Covenant at the Summit. The proposal is presented here for consideration and debate, courtesy of Philip. Philip can be contacted at philip.sutton{at}green-innovations.asn.au

This is the fourth version of this proposal, as at 4th October, 2008. More recent versions, along with Philip’s other work on Climate Code Red, may be available here.

Proposal for a Global Safe Climate Covenant

Ross Garnaut and the government have let Australians down on climate change. Disheartened by the failure at home, many people are likely to put their hopes in being saved by international action.

But I’ve got a feeling that even if we get a ‘good’ result at the Copenhagen climate negotiations next year it will still be a suicide pact eg. a 25% reduction of emissions by 2020 will be about ¼ of what is needed by that time to avoid dangerous climate change and to get back to a safe climate. I think an inadequate result will lead to the more aware activists being depressed and we may end up with less action at a time when more action is needed.

I think that consensus treaties and politics are giving us lowest common denominator results when what we need are the strongest possible commitments.

I’ve been trying to work out how to break out of this dilemma. An idea is starting to take form and I’d love to get your feedback.

The genesis of the idea was to get beyond the disappointment of a most-likely failed agreement between governments at Copenhagen and to aspire instead to a ‘treaty’ signed by community groups or non-state parties to commit to a ten year transition to a safe climate economy - building on Al Gore’s 10 year challenge to the US.

A community ‘treaty’ is something that community climate and environment groups have more control over and so we might be able to get a good result.

I was imagining that this non-state party ‘treaty’ would be a real treaty rather than just a pious declaration of principles with no follow through and no consequences - instead the parties would be bound by agreement to actions and outcomes and there would be a secretariat to encourage action and a compliance regime. Like government signatories to a traditional treaty, the non-state parties to the community treaty would agree to take action in areas/aspects of life and society that they control.

But a weakness of this idea is that such a community treaty would not engage governments and they of course need to play a major role in creating a safe climate future. And the world public might eventually be discouraged by this lack of government engagement.

Having identified this weakness, I then thought, why not invite local governments to be signatories, because many of them are doing fabulous practical work based on zero emissions and safe climate goals? And once I thought that the dam burst……

Why not create a Global Safe Climate Covenant for any party that is prepared to sign on - whether non-state or state party, where the parties agree to commit to the very rapid achievement of a safe climate future?

This could be a real Covenant with parties agreeing to a highest common denominator outcome, coming together to start creating a new world in a way where they are not held back by laggards.

So how might it work?

We could start with community groups, like for example the grass roots climate action groups in Australia. Quite possibly the February 2009 Australian conference could lead to Australian grass roots climate action groups signing on in large numbers. But to make the project really work well internationally it would probably be essential for Al Gore and his ‘We’ campaign to share in active leadership. But that could be possible. Also with its new climate policy Greenpeace could well sign on too and take a leadership role.

Then there would be hundreds of local councils around the world that could sign on.

And then I started to think about some whole countries eg. Pacific Island States that might want to sign on.

And there could be some larger state parties eg. Cost Rica and progressive provinces/sub-national states that might be fired up enough to be a signatory eg. Oregon or California.

And so on.

My feeling is that with such a treaty in place the morale of the climate movement around the world would be lifted so much that a huge tide of change could be unleashed so that in due course most or even all nations of the world might join in (eventually!).

What could the core of the treaty be?

I would imagine it would involve amongst other things:

• some sort of ethical commitment to consideration for the protection of all people, all generation and all species.
• a recognition that we face a global climate emergency.
• a commitment that society should live within the biophysical limits of the earth.
• a commitment to the very rapid achievement of a safe climate.
• a commitment to stopping sea rise, to restoring the summer Arctic sea ice reflectivity, restoring the extent of the Himalayan ice fields, to refreezing the Arctic ocean floor carbon sinks and the circumpolar land based permafrost lands, to halting the melting of Greenland, and to protecting the West Antarctic ice sheet from disintegration and melting, etc.
• a commitment to contribute effectively to the necessary and rapid cooling of the earth.
• a commitment to drawing down fair shares of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
• a commitment to making evidence-based policy using the latest climate and earth system science and to applying a precautionary approach to risk management in the face of uncertainty.
• a commitment to undertake an intense decade of transformation of the economy.
• a committing to prepare, implement and periodically update a strategy for driving the implementation of the signatory’s commitments make as a result of signing onto the treaty and as a result of unilateral and voluntary commitments going beyond the minimum requirements of the treaty.
• a commitment to fully solving the climate crisis in ways that are complementary to the solutions to other major sustainability issues (eg. peak oil); and
• a commitment to provide some resources for shared activities in support of the objectives of the treaty.

The Covenant could have schedules of actions that the parties could sign up to (or they could commit to their own via their own registered Covenant Strategy). Clearly most of the signatories won’t have the power to achieve the Covenants major goals by themselves. Actions could range from individual ones (writing letters to local MPs, joining online campaigns) to organisational ones to eliminate emissions, replace fossil-fuelled power stations etc. Actions would fall into two categories: those under the signatories’ direct control and those where they can reach out to influence others.

The Covenant could provide for regional or specialist collaboration of parties. For example all (or most of) the parties lying within the borders of a national state or a sub-national state could formally enter into a collaborative program.

Since our understanding of what is needed to achieve a safe climate is developing rapidly, the Covenant would need probably need to have an effective process for rapid evolution and revision.

The concept of the Global Safe Climate Covenant could be followed up establishing a working group that could prepare a very rough mock up of what it might look like (a concept draft) and then the working group could be expanded/augmented (in all sorts of ways) to provide the capacity to negotiate with potential signatories around the world.

Getting to Implementation

Implementation might involve 4 streams of work to:

1. work on the drafting of the Covenant
2. manage consultation and feedback into the drafting process
3. gather support around the world for the Covenant
4. feed the goals of the Covenant into the UN Copenhagen process and nation state processes.