More than 50 heads of states, international organisations and business leaders are meeting in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos this week for the 2023 meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Cooperation in a fragmented world”, a reference to the multiple crises and geopolitical tensions currently shaking the globe as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its second year.

Discussions on the programme are heavily linked to climate change, but activists fear greenwashing will take centre stage as CEOs of oil and gas companies rub shoulders with global leaders.

“Davos is of course dominated by a wealthy group of people,” said Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate who spoke to journalists on January 11.

“Oil and gas CEOs are invited into the forum to greenwash their businesses. It’s not hard to be cynical about the prospects for climate justice after spending a week there,” she added.

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According to research published last week in the journal Science, US oil major ExxonMobil publicly downplayed climate change for decades, despite evidence from its own scientists who had made accurate predictions about global warming already since the late 1970s.

Campaigners including Nakate and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg will travel to Switzerland in the coming days to bring a “cease and desist” letter to oil and gas CEOs, demanding they stop any new oil and gas project.

“If you fail to act immediately, be advised that citizens around the world will consider taking any and all legal action to hold you accountable. And we will keep protesting in the streets in huge numbers,” says the letter, addressed to fossil fuel CEOs.

‘Double talk’

Activists will also ramp up pressure on rich nations to increase climate finance to developing countries. The past year has seen a “historic” agreement to establish a loss and damage fund at the Cop27 climate summit as well as the Bridgetown initiative which aims at reforming the global financial infrastructure to tackle climate change.

“These decisions show there is acceptance for the need for major financial support to vulnerable countries as the climate crisis worsens,” Nakate remarked, adding that, while the good intentions are there, the gap in climate finance is still major.

In the European Union, the commitment to decarbonise has been challenged by the energy crisis, leading to a greater reliance on fossil fuels to replace Russian gas.

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For this reason, the upcoming Davos meeting will feature “double talking” and “mixed messages” by corporate executives, said Desiree Fixler, chair of the non-profit initiative VentureESG.

There will be “statements like: we’re still committed to net-zero but we have to manage this transition and take into account the accelerating cost of living, so we have to stay invested in fossil fuels,” Fixler said.

“I just don’t buy it,” she added, underlining that it is not possible to reconcile the commitment to net zero while at the same time investing in new fossil fuel projects.

The blame doesn’t lie only with corporate leaders though, according to Rachel Kyte, a British academic and dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

“I just get the feeling that corporate leaders are feeling the pressure from all sides,” Kyte stated, adding that well-intentioned corporate leaders are frustrated because government action is slow in giving regulatory certainty, forcing to “voluntarily make up the rules as we go along”.

Overall, Kyte said she wasn’t expecting anything meaningful to come out of Davos.

WEF global risk report focuses on climate change

Climate change is the main long-term challenge facing the global economy but governments aren’t prepared to tackle it, the World Economic Forum said in its annual Global Risks Report published on January 11.

In the next two years, the ranking of global risks is dominated by the cost of living crisis. But looking at the next decade, climate action failure takes the top spot, with six environmental risks featuring in the top 10.

Among them, the more pressing is the failure to mitigate climate change, the failure to implement an effective climate change adaptation strategy, and the increasing occurrence of natural disasters caused by global warming.

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The lack of progress on climate action has exposed the divergence between what is scientifically necessary to achieve net-zero emissions and what is politically feasible, the study said.

The current cost-of-living crisis will cause resources from the public and private sectors to be diverted from climate efforts over the next two years, with a still undervalued role of natural ecosystems in the global economy.

“Nature loss and climate change are intrinsically interlinked – a failure in one sphere will cascade into the other,” the report reads. Without significant change, the interplay between global warming impacts, biodiversity loss, food security and natural resource consumption will accelerate, it warns.

The post In Davos, activists warn against climate inaction and greenwashing appeared first on Climate Home News.

His speech was a stark contrast to calls in Davos by Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg for drastic action by world leaders to shift to cleaner energies to avert a worsening climate crisis of more heatwaves, droughts and floods.

At a session titled “averting a climate apocalypse” by the Davos organisers, Thunberg, 17, said people were rightly outraged at Trump for withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris climate agreement and faulted other world leaders for failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Trump told the world´s political and business elite: “This is a time for optimism.”

“The US is in the midst of an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before,” he said.

He urged other nations to follow the US lead in promoting deregulation of energy to ensure cheaper gasoline and electricity that he said saved American families on average $2,500 a year. He added that, by contrast, European consumers suffered “crippling” energy costs.

“To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” Trump said.

Trump said that modern “alarmists” were heirs of those who wrongly predicted an over-population crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 1970s and that oil would run out in the 1990s.

Thunberg says only ‘eight years left’ to avert 1.5°C warming

Trump, who did not mention the words “climate change” or “global warming” in his speech, is the only world leader pulling his nation out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Extreme weather, climate action failure, natural disasters, biodiversity loss and human-made environmental disasters top most likely long-terms risks to the global economy in 2020, according to the survey for the World Economic Forum among business leaders, investors and policy-makers.

Last year was the second warmest on record and average global temperatures are about 1.1°C above pre-industrial times, according to the UN.

Thunberg called for immediate action.

“The fact that the USA is leaving the Paris accord seems to outrage and worry everyone and it should. But the fact that we are all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least,” she said.

Thunberg warned business and political leaders the tougher 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement risked slipping out of reach with the world rapidly consuming the remaining carbon budget identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to remain within the 1.5C temperature goal by the end of the century.

She warned the world had only eight years left to limit warming to 1.5C at the current rate of greenhouse emissions.

“Let’s be clear,” she said, “we don’t need a low-carbon economy, we don’t need to lower emissions, our emissions have to stop if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5C target.” “Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emissions cuts at the source starting today is completely inefficient” to meet the Paris goals, she added.

Trump said his policies to promote energy – including “clean coal, next generation nuclear power and gas hydrate technologies” – meant the US “no longer needs to import energy from hostile nations” and that US exports could also help its allies ensure energy security.

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On the environment, Trump said US air and water were cleaner than at any time on record. He also said that the US would join a one trillion tree planting project being launched at Davos.

Trump, visiting Switzerland on the day his impeachment trial begins in earnest in the US Senate, said that Americans were thriving with low unemployment, high growth and investment.

Before the start of the Davos meeting, Thunberg and a number of young climate activists called on banks, investors, companies, institutions and governments to immediately halt all investments in fossil fuels exploration and extraction, end all fossil fuel subsidies and completely divest from fossil fuels.

“So either you do this or you’re going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5C goal – giving up without even trying,” she said. “People will not give up. You are the ones who are giving up.”

The post Trump criticises ‘prophets of doom’ in Davos and touts fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

Business leaders, investors and policy-makers have ranked climate and environmental risks the top five most likely long-term threats to the global economy.

The findings published in the World Economic Forum’s global risks perception survey come as the rich and powerful are due to gather in the Swiss resort of Davos next week.

Climate action is high on the summit’s agenda and Greta Thunberg is one of a number of youth activists travelling to Switzerland for the occasion. Watch out for a possible showdown on climate change with Donald Trump, who is also due to attend.

Business and political leaders will need to have more than ‘saying-the-right-thing’ speeches if their climate concerns are to be taken seriously.

Some of the world’s most influential companies have already taken the jump.

BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, named climate change a key factor in affecting economic growth and financial markets and pledged to put sustainability at the centre of its investment strategy.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has promised to be “carbon negative” by 2030 and hopes to remove enough carbon to account for all the direct emissions the company has ever made by 2050.

The pledges speak to the growing pressure investors and employees are putting on companies to take meaningful climate action. Will the Davos circus bring new commitments to action? Let’s see.

Biodiversity goals

Can countries agree to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030 to halt the destruction of biodiversity?

That’s the goal outlined by the Convention for Biological Diversity in a draft global framework to protect the planet’s plants and wildlife. A biodiversity summit in China in October will decide what goals to adopt for 2030.

Biodiversity talks are not immune from political positioning. Expect tough negotiations ahead.

Bridging climate polarisation

Australia’s bushfire crisis has exposed the difficulty of battling environmental hazards when politicians are split about how much to blame climate change.

Bushfire experts are calling for a nation-wide conversation about building resilience to anticipated prolonged and more intense fire seasons.

“We need to re-invent and re-think the management of our landscape,” Peter Kanowski, professor of forestry at the Australian National University told CHN. “In the face of climate change, land management will require more intervention not less.”

Australia’s scientific community is not short of propositions to mitigate the impacts of future bushfires. But can that conversation overcome the political divide?

Blame-game

Cop25 president Carolina Schmidt has accused Brazil, Australia, China and the US for the low-ambition outcome of the climate talks.

During a grilling at Chile’s Congress, environment minister Schmidt said she was not satisfied by the final Cop decision but “did not feel shame”.

Opposition lawmakers accused Schmidt of having personally bungled the negotiations – a sentiment echoed by some climate campaigners who accused Chile of “weak leadership”. Francisco Parra reports.

Cash to switch

The EU Commission has put money where its mouth is and unveiled a €100bn plan to put flesh on the bone of its Green Deal.

The money, which includes a €7.5bn Just Transition Mechanism fund, is designed to help communities across Europe move away from fossil-fuel intensive industries.

Poland is on track to be the fund’s largest recipient, with an allocated €2bn – a large carrot for Warsaw to back the union’s carbon neutrality goal by 2050.

Under the plans, Germany would receive the second biggest trunk of cash as Angela Merkel’s government agreed a €40bn coal phase-out deal with the country’s coal-producing regions.

Costly coal

China’s growing role as the source of coal projects in the Balkans could impede Bosnia and Serbia’s efforts to join the EU.

Documents obtained by Unearthed show the costs of two Chinese-backed coal power plants have been hugely under-estimated, potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook to pay for future carbon costs, Eleanor Rose reports for CHN.

Quick hits

• Australia’s climate change polarisation hampers long-term bushfire fixes
• Climate change tops risks for world in 2020 – Davos report
• Cop25 president Carolina Schmidt blames big emitters for low-ambition climate talks
• Germany agrees pay-out to states and companies in coal phase-out deal
• EU reveals climate fund details as critics worry cash won’t be enough
• China-backed coal plants on EU’s doorstep hide huge carbon costs
• UN outlines 2030 goals to save planet’s biodiversity

The post The Davos effect – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

For the first time, environmental concerns dominated the top five long-term global risks for business leaders, investors and policy-makers surveyed in the WEF’s annual report, published on Wednesday.

In its 50^th edition, the WEF in Davos will focus on preventing the erosion of international solidarity – a principle that underpinned the WEF’s  foundation – and seek ways to build political and societal cohesion that can drive a global response to issues such as climate change.

US President Donald Trump, who is pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg are among those due to attend the 21-24 January event.

The 750 respondents to the WEF’s 2020 Global Risks Perception Survey ranked extreme weather events, climate action failure, natural disasters, biodiversity loss and human-made environmental disasters the top five most likely risks for the global economy this year – ahead of data fraud, cyberattacks, water crisis, global governance failure and assets bubbles.

UN outlines 2030 goals to save planet’s biodiversity

The world’s elite also identified climate action failure as the risk with the greatest impact on the global economy. In the short-term extreme heatwaves and the destruction of natural ecosystems were ranked third and fourth as the risks most likely to rise in 2020.

“The horizon has shortened for preventing— or even mitigating—some of the direst consequences of global risks,” wrote Børge Brende, WEF president. “It is sobering that in the face of this development, when the challenges before us demand immediate collective action, fractures within the global community appear to only be widening.”

The United States is the only nation quitting the Paris Agreement with Trump doubting that man-made emissions are the main cause of worsening climate change. He wants instead to bolster jobs in the US coal industry.

Policy fractures also appeared strongly at the UN climate talks in Madrid, Spain, in December when large emitters blocked progress despite a growing alliance of vanguards among small, vulnerable and progressive European countries calling for ambition.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister of the ecological transition, warned countries that while “the rule-based multilateral order is being challenged,” the world needed “global cooperation to face the global challenge of climate change”.

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“The good news is that the window for action is still open, if not for much longer,” Brende wrote in the report’s preface, citing growing commitments from businesses to “look beyond their balance sheets”.

And indeed, concerns of climate and environmental risks’ negative impact on the global economy are on the rise.

In the last year, a growing number of businesses and investors have committed to more ambitious climate action and the decarbonisation of their operations and investments.

On Tuesday, BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager with $7tn in assets, revealed changes to the fund’s investment in a letter to clients, naming climate change a key factor in affecting economic growth, asset values, and financial markets.

The fund said it will end direct investments in companies generating more than a quarter of their revenues from thermal coal production. However, it will remain one of the largest investors in fossil-fuel companies.

“Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” wrote Larry Fink, BlackRock chairman and CEO. “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”

China-backed coal plants on EU’s doorstep hide huge carbon costs

BlackRock has previously come under fire from climate campaigners for backing fossil fuel investments and failing to shift its investment strategy in the face of mounting climate emergency. Now, the decision could push other fund managers and companies across the world to consider climate risks in decision-making.

“Climate change is almost invariably the top issue that clients around the world raise with BlackRock,” Fink added.

But for climate activists, commitments and promises alone won’t do. While the Davos elite is seeking solutions on ways to mitigate global warming’s negative impacts on the world’s economy, campaigners are demanding governments and the private sector stop profiting from the fossil-fuel economy.

Writing in the Guardian, Thunberg and 21 other young climate activists demanded all companies, banks, institutions and governments attended the Davos summit “immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels”.

They wrote: “Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present to put pressure on these leaders.”

The post Climate change tops risks for world in 2020 – Davos report appeared first on Climate Home News.

After it dominated the forum’s annual ranking of the most pressing risks to global prosperity, climate change has been the theme of many a worthy panel.

US president Donald Trump, who rails against the Paris climate deal and the globalism that begat it, will address this conference on Friday afternoon. His attendance has been presented as an anomaly – the protectionist troll who crept under the Davos bridge. French president Emmanuel Macron joked that it was good no climate sceptics had been invited to the meeting.

Yet Trump belongs firmly among the billionaires and the powerful of Davos. As John Cassidy writes in the New Yorker: “The Trump Administration – with its tax cuts for corporations and the rich, its eagerness to strip away regulations in many sectors of the economy, and its aura of crony capitalism – is basically a plutocratic government in a populist overcoat.”

The plutocrat and the populist. The past month has shown just how dangerous that mix can be for the climate. Just as the meeting started in Davos, Trump fed his voters in the rust belt by stamping an import duty on solar panels, sparking reports of a trade war with China. Earlier in January, his administration lifted bans along the US seaboard on drilling for oil and gas, which he wants to ship to China.

Davos 2018: climate change rhetoric and reality

Trump’s “America First” rhetoric and his promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement are politically useful for him. But if his first year in office tells us anything, it is that Trump’s priority is regulation stripping in order to benefit US and multinational corporations.

Trump is not alone. The EU has watered down electric car legislation at the behest of carmakers. Canada’s Justin Trudeau announced in Davos that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, along with its tribunals that can challenge domestic environmental regulations, had been revived. India allows its coal plants to continue harmful levels of pollution. In Australia, where the coal lobby runs the show, the treasurer brought a lump of coal onto the floor of parliament.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), one of the institutions that protects the Davos elite, may well end up reprimanding Trump for his solar tariff. Not because it’s bad for the climate, but because it challenges the primacy of the open market.

Even the UN climate convention is subjugated to the open market and the interests of those who benefit from it. 

“Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade,” says Article 3.5.

Just 100 coal, oil and gas companies have been responsible for 71% of global emissions since 1988. Yet they continue to enjoy billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars in subsidies from governments around the world. The WTO could apply its rules to these, according to international law professor Joel Trachtman, but does not. The compact between corporations and political elites remains one of the major stumbling blocks for climate action.

Blackrock: ‘We have to change capitalism’ to beat climate change

It’s true that many in the corporate world are aware, even alarmed, about the dangers of climate change. Earlier in the week, Philipp Hildebrand, the vice-president of Blackrock, which manages around $6 trillion in assets, said capitalism needed to change in order for the world to avoid catastrophic warming.

How to do that? Perhaps the most interesting panel in Davos will take place on Friday afternoon, when Bank of England governor Mark Carney will further his highly influential discussion of climate risk disclosure. Carney believes that incorporating the threat of warming into business assessments could create a more farsighted capitalist system.

On Thursday, the chair of the $19bn Indian conglomerate Mahindra committed all of its subsidiaries to adhering to carbon cuts dictated by scientific assessment. Anand Mahindra called on others to join the science-based target club, aiming for 500 by September.

Yet capital remains dovish. Hildebrand caveated: “We have to be realistic, we also have an enterprise to run, we have shareholders, this is a complicated story. Nobody is served by reducing this to very simple, fast things that we have to do immediately.”

Much has been made of Trump’s “withdrawal” from the Paris deal, which is in reality just a threat to do so in 2020. But Trump has made clear that if the deal were made better for the US (in what way he has not defined) then he would be willing to rejoin.

Both Trump and the economic powers in Davos are clear that climate action is going to proceed on their terms.

On Thursday night, Trump hosted a dinner for 15 European business leaders (the only woman invited was Trump’s secretary of homeland security Kirstjen Nielson). Three of the companies whose CEOs attended – Nestlé, Statoil, Total – are in the top hundred most carbon polluting on the planet. The former CEO of Exxon, another of the top 100, Rex Tillerson, was also at the dinner, now as Trump’s secretary of state. Total and Statoil are part of the coalition of oil companies that lobbied Trump to open up US offshore drilling.

According to CNBC, the 15 executives took turns to introduce their companies and almost universally congratulated Trump on his tax reform agenda that will slash corporate taxes.

Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of French oil company Total, tweeted later that the meeting had been “very interesting and casual. That’s what Davos is for: share ideas, exchange views, work on issues and make things go forward.” Far from being a pariah, Trump, the billionaire, has returned to his true base.

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The post Why climate pariah Trump is welcome at the World Economic Forum appeared first on Climate Home News.

At night, while the rest of the world is illuminated with street lights, Africa is dark (Pic: NASA/Flickr)

By Ed King

African countries are being asked to stump up billions for a vast network of power plants across the continent which could bring light to 645 million people lacking electricity.

Under plans outlined by the African Development Bank, the continent’s 54 nations will be asked to boost investment in energy from 0.4% of GDP to 3.4%, and slash subsidies for kerosene and diesel.

The bank’s ‘New Deal’ initiative was launched on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, aiming to add 160 gigawatts of capacity by 2025.

It will invest US$12 billion and leverage a further $50bn under a plan to address the continent’s chronic energy shortages.

“What we take for granted in developed countries is a luxury in Africa. Africa has no power and it is tired of being in the dark,” said the bank’s president, Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina.

“This will be the equivalent of adding 800 new 200MW power plants – the ambition is high but is has been done in China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. It is doable.”

KILLER POWER
Power shortages are estimated to cost Africa 2-4% of GDP every year. According to the ADB, companies in Ghana and Tanzania are losing 15% of sales as a result of power outages. Hospitals lack the ability to provide effective 24 hour care, while 90% of schools lack electricity. Widespread use of wood and dung to heat homes and cook also poses severe health risks. An estimated 600,000 die every year due to indoor air pollution. Renewable energy agency IRENA says 250GW needs to be added by 2030 to meet demand.

An estimated 130 million grid connections will need to be completed in the next decade to hit that target, while a further 75 million off-grid consumers can benefit benefit from solar systems.

But there’s likely to be an investment shortfall of up to $30 billion, which the ADB hopes will come from other intergovernmental organisations and the private sector.

Under an agreement devised by the UN’s climate body last December, developed countries are expected to help fund green energy and climate adaptation projects in Africa and deliver at least $100 billion a year in funds to all developing nations by 2020.

Report: Aid slump for world’s poorest is bad news for climate fight

Despite a recent OECD report estimating $62 billion a year was flowing, poorer nations say they are not seeing the levels of investment needed to raise people out of poverty and cope with future extreme weather impacts.

Adesina said initial plans would be “technology neutral”, pointing to South Africa’s large coal reserves and West Africa’s gas stocks alongside solar, wind and hydro.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan described the news as an “exciting moment”- but urged countries to take advantage of the plans to invest in climate-friendly energy systems.

“Eventually the idea is to go green and I think Africa has the possibility of being the first continent to be a green continent,” he said.

US aid agency chief Gayle Smith said this was “an idea whose time has come”, offering Washington DC’s support in raising funds.

The post Africans asked to raise billions for energy access plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

The annual World Economic Forum takes place in the small Swiss town of Davos (Pic: Flickr/moonstar909)

By Megan Darby

Fossil fuel companies are coming under increased pressure to disclose how global climate goals could hit their business.

At the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Michael Bloomberg unveiled his line-up for a climate risk disclosure task force. The former New York mayor was chosen last month to head the Financial Stability Board (FSB) initiative.

Top executives from Brazilian bank Bradesco, commodities giant Unilever, French insurer Axa and the Singapore Exchange were named in Davos as vice chairs.

They brought an “essential” breadth of experience, said Bloomberg. “Managing climate-related risk is increasingly critical to financial stability, but it can’t be done without effective disclosure.

“The recommendations from the task force will increase transparency and help to make markets more efficient, and economies more stable and resilient.”

Report: Michael Bloomberg to lead FSB climate risk task force

The team is expected to set out high level objectives in March and detailed recommendations by the end of the year.

These could include requirements for major companies to publish their carbon footprints, for example. As climate policies tighten, polluting businesses will become vulnerable to increased costs – a material concern for shareholders.

For coal, oil and gas producers, the core issue is whether their supplies can be burned under the 2C global warming cap set by governments in Paris last month.

Jane Ambachtsheer of Mercer Investments, a member of the task force, said: “Understanding the investment impacts of climate change is a growing priority for our clients.”

At present, there is a mishmash of voluntary carbon reporting schemes. The recommendations of the task force will also be optional, but will carry weight coming from the FSB, as a top international regulator.

Terrifying math: How Carbon Tracker changed the climate debate

Ben Caldecott, environmental economics expert at Oxford University, listed some “significant failures” of the current system: only some companies disclose data each year; it is often inaccurate, irrelevant or out of date; and much time is spent form-filling and verifying data under a range of systems.

“The FSB has brought together an impressive collection of key people and organisations able to identify and push forward much-needed reforms,” he said.

In Davos on Friday, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and Carbon Disclosure Standards Board are set to launch their proposals for better reporting.

This will show up which companies are a good bet for investors as economies shift to cleaner sources of energy, said Carbon Tracker’s Mark Campanale. Recent upheavals in the oil and coal markets show the importance of an “orderly transition for investors”, he said.

“It will be important to understand which individual fossil fuel companies may be at risk, as well as management’s plans for addressing the looming issue. They also should allow for a system-wide overview of how the transition is progressing over time.”

The post Bloomberg unveils crack team to assess global climate risk appeared first on Climate Home News.

A logo of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is seen stuck on a window at the congress center in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos in 2012. The upcoming WEF will be held from January 20 to 23 (Flickr/ WEF)

By Alex Pashley

‘Mastering the fourth industrial revolution‘ is the umbrella theme for a series of discussions at the Swiss ski resort of Davos from Wednesday.

How leaps in technology are transforming society and economy will be a top talking point for the 40 heads of state and hundreds of business leaders slated to attend. So too the tumult of Chinese stock markets, the strength of America’s recovery and a destabilising Middle East.

But it’s climate change that will feature the most in years as delegates unpack a new global warming accord and its signal to fossil fuel producers.

A WEF survey of 750 economists last week picked a climate-induced catastrophe as the greatest threat to the world economy in 2016.

The UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, who will be in Davos, said the agreement struck in Paris last year was a watershed moment in realigning markets towards clean energy sources.

“There is no sector that is not interested in the impacts of climate – no sector that has not woken up to the fact we have a transformational moment,” she told Climate Home.

“I will be speaking to every sector – oil gas, mining, insurance… you name it – and I am sure all will be asking: what can we do?”

The Fourth Industrial Revolutions focuses on how expanding digital platforms, robotics, 3D printing, nanotechnology, are changing how we interact and work

Business leaders will come to Davos eager to talk through the low-carbon transition, said a senior source at the WEF. The forum was set up in 1971 by Klaus Schwab as a management conference. Today it describes itself an international institute for public-private cooperation.

“After the success of Paris, the question on the mind is what next? For some, it will be carbon pricing. For others it might be standards, or the speed of transition, or what technological costs will be acceptable,” the source said.

“The theme of the Fourth Industrial Revolution obviously has many different components, but some are very congruous with the evolution to a low carbon economy.”

Some 300 open discussions will be held, with about 100 webcast (see below), which is billed as the premier networking event. Closed-door discussions are equally big. Last year fossil fuel chiefs chewed over how a climate deal would affect their businesses at an exclusive dinner.

Report: Oil chiefs hold Davos meeting to debate climate strategy

How to shift the trillions of dollars needed into clean energy investment to avoid dangerous levels of global warming is one key point.

Making banks and pension funds declare their exposure to risks posed by a warmer planet is another. Michael Bloomberg was appointed chair of a Financial Stability Board task force at the Paris summit.

Delivering on the Paris agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals run through discussions. Goal number 7 is to ensure access to cheap and sustainable energy for all.

Announcements may be few, nor are leaders likely to make firm commitments. But the event offers a candid space to take on the opportunities and challenges of countering climate change.

Top events to watch:

Wednesday 20th

0800 (GMT)

The Transformation of Energy. What trends and uncertainties are shaping the future of energy value chains?

Who: IHS vice-chairman Daniel Yergin, Hitachi CEO Hiroaki Nakanishi, IEA chief Faith Birol, Iberdrola CEO Ignacio Sanchez Galan.

0930

A New Climate for Doing Business. What opportunities and responsibilities emerged from the Paris climate summit?

Who: HSBC group chief executive Stuart Gulliver, UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, Morocco prime minister Adbelilah Benkirane

Thursday 21st

1130

What can businesses do to support the SDGs?

Who: Unilever CEO Paul Polman, International Trade Union Confederation Sharan Burrow

1235

Africa’s New Deal on Energy. How to get to universal access to electricity by 2025

Who: Cote d’Ivoire prime minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, African Development Bank president, Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina

1345

The New Energy Equation. Where are oil prices headed, what’s next in renewable energy innovation?

Who: Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev, Saudi Aramco chairman Khalid A. Al-Falih, Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev

1545

Fossil Fuel Futures: Given regulatory and market changes, should energy companies and investors be planning for a post-fossil fuel future?

Who: UNFCCC Christiana Figueres, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne, South Africa energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, Financial Times associate editor Martin Wolf

1645

New Climate and Development Imperative: How will the foremost climate and sustainable development partnerships catalyse action in 2016?

Who: World Bank chief Jim Kim, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, Norway prime minister Erna Solberg

The post Climate change at Davos: What you need to know appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Toni Birrer/Flickr)

By John McGarrity

The world’s most powerful gather again this week for the World Economic Forum’s annual shindig in the Swiss ski resort Davos, and climate change has been placed higher up the agenda this year as the UN makes a renewed push for a global deal to slow carbon emissions.

Around 40 world leaders will be joined by heads of global institutions and 1,500 business leaders to debate and discuss the major risks facing the world in 2014.

Freak weather events and the failure of countries to cut emissions and prepare for the worst impacts of climate change are among the top ten risks the world faces this year, according to a report released ahead of the Davos meeting.

But former attendees said this week’s discussions are unlikely to unpick deadlocked UN climate talks. “Most of the discussions this week are on fairly technical issues, and meetings of this sort really need to try and resolve how the political obstacles to a climate deal are going to be addressed,” said Yvo de Boer, former UN climate chief who now works as an advisor to KPMG.

On my way to @davos. One third of #wef14 this year dedicated to #climatechange. Huge opportunity for #climateaction

— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) January 21, 2014

He added: “If we had the US, China and the EU in the same room talking about the key issues on climate that would be more beneficial, although Davos does manage to raise awareness among political leaders and chief executives about the need to cut emissions.”

Major emitting countries have so far been reluctant to propose specific targets on how much they will cut greenhouse gas emissions after 2020, but are required to do so by early next year. Glacial progress at climate talks so far has prompted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to hold high level climate talks in September to try and find consensus ahead of a ‘make-or-break’ summit in Paris at the end of 2015.

Ban and current UN climate chief Christiana Figueres will address delegates at Davos on Friday, designated as ‘climate day’ by the event’s organisers.

Around 23 events on the Davos programme are directly related to climate change and energy policy, and these issues will also be discussed in private meetings between tomorrow and Saturday.

The World Economic Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab and the UN’s Ban will urge politicians and business leaders to co-operate more closely in cutting emissions. Companies in sectors such as finance, retail, IT, and consumer goods now regularly report emissions and have carbon reduction targets in place.

But other corporations, particularly in the resources sector, say higher carbon prices and tougher targets imposed by government would be a major threat to remaining competitive with those economies that have little or no controls on emissions.

Senior policymakers in the EU are fighting among themselves on how much the bloc should consider cutting emissions by 2030, and lobbying by some energy-intensive industries may be behind a push for weak targets to be included in white paper tomorrow, green groups claim.

But even companies with the highest carbon footprints are waking up to the risk that fossil fuels assets may be written off as ‘stranded assets’ in later decades. Curbs on greenhouse gases could mean that more reserves of fuels such as coal are left in the ground, rendering them worthless, according to analysis.

“Action by companies could mean that governments are prepared to do more on climate change, but there’s a strong feeling that the UN talks process needs to do more to engage with the private sector,” said Paul Simpson, heads the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project and will be attending Davos this week.

Supertyphoon Haiyan, major floods and storms in Europe, a US drought and a blast of Polar weather across much of North America are just some of the events that in the past year have refocused attention on what climate change could look like in the coming decades.

The post Davos to discuss climate as UN makes new push for cuts appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fox Business has reported that governments are demanding a $14 trillion commitment to combat climate change during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The three presenters (I think the collective noun for Fox anchors is a coven) explain that the report recommends $700bn a year of spending until 2030 to fund low carbon energy and climate adaptation projects.

Fox have then multiplied that number by 17, the number of years left till 2030, and asked where the reports cumulative figure of $14 trillion has come from.

Fox, not known for its subtlety, waded in with a condescending mocked-up blackboard with the WEF’s sums chalked onto it under the heading “Davos Funny Math”.

Watch the maths in realtime on the Fox Business website

Had they read the report it was based on they would have seen that the cumulative figure was based on the period 2010-2030. As everyone who knows their 700bn times table will tell you, $700bn multiplied by 20 is indeed $14 trillion.

The news network has a history of climate scepticism, often joining forces with its fellow Murdoch-owned newspaper the Wall Street Journal in rubbishing climate science and policy.

With the maths settled, it’s time to look at the claim that world leaders are “demanding it”.

The report was written by the consultancy Accenture with input from the World Bank, the Climate Policy Initiative and the World Resources Institute among others.

The only political figure attached to the study is former Mexican President Felipe Calderon who formed the Green Growth Action Alliance, the arm of the World Economic Forum (itself an NGO) that commissioned the study.

Environmentalists would be delighted if the world’s government’s were looking to sow together a coherent fund of $700bn a year.

At present they have only committed to source $100bn a year by 2020 from public and private sources.

The post Davos 2013: Fox News climate analysis makes up the maths appeared first on Climate Home News.

The recession is making it harder to cope with climate change, increasing our vulnerability, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey.

The poll of 1000 experts, academics and industry leaders ahead of the annual meeting in Davos identifies the ongoing financial crunch, the potential for a global governance crisis, water scarcity and a failure to adapt to climate change among the key risks facing the world.

“These global risks are essentially a health warning regarding our most critical systems,” warned Lee Howell, the editor of the report and managing director at the WEF.

“National resilience to global risks needs to be a priority so that critical systems continue to function despite a major disturbance,” added Howell.

Continuing poor economic conditions are exacerbating environmental problems as governments struggle to find the money for necessary low carbon infrastructure and climate adaptation projects, both at home and abroad.

Bushfires, drought and tropical storms have challenged government’s ability to cope with the new normal. (Source: Flickr/Electricnerve)

A new system to address the financial burden of climate loss and damage was put on the table at the UN climate talks in Doha.

Rising greenhouse gases was the top concern in the environmental category last year – this year failed climate adaptation and urban planning strategies topped the bill, although the report does conclude that continued rises in greenhouse gases is the most likely of these threats to occur.

“With the growing cost of events like Superstorm Sandy, huge threats to island nations and coastal communities, and no resolution to greenhouse gas emissions, the writing is on the wall. It is time to act,” said Axel P. Lehmann, chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Group.

Munich Re estimated the cost of natural disasters in 2012 at $160bn, underlining the potential cost of inaction.

The top societal risk for 2013 is a water supply crisis which leapt ahead of population growth – severe droughts in 2012 reduced crop yields significantly.

The US alone generated $20bn of losses from agriculture as a result. Brazil is currently facing an energy shortage after a hot summer saw hydropower reservoirs drained by heavy air conditioning use and dry weather fail to replenish them.

The first WEF Global Risk survey in 2007 gave climate change middle billing with civil wars, the collapse of China’s economic growth and price shocks for oil and other commodities more of a concern.

WEF 2013 Top Environmental Risks

Failure of climate change adaptation 26.2%

Rising greenhouse gases 17.2%

Mismanaged urbanisation 14.9%

Persistant extreme weather 9.5%

Land use and waterway mismanagement 9.3%

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