10

AUGUST

Global Minnesota
Connect. Inform. Engage.

Climate Geopolitics

Pathways to Worldwide Ecological Integrity

Joseph Robertson
Global Strategy Director, Citizens Climate Lobby

2016

Climate disruption is geopolitical insecurity.

As Earths life-support systems are disrupted, along with food and water supplies,
destabilization of the climate system is already a global peace and security issue.

Market Failure
Climate change disrupts the natural systems on which all
human value-building activity depends. Crop failures, chronic
persistent drought of unprecedented severity, region-wide
resource scarcity these are costs that stem from market
dynamics that ensure climate-forcing fuels are underpriced.

This map shows water stress across Syria and the region. The
dark red areas indicate extremely high water resource stress.

Note that the green, food-growing areas of Syria correspond

almost exactly to the extremely high water-stressed areas.

System Failure
Agriculture accounts for 25% of Syrias economy, and for 25%
of employment. In 2007-2008 alone, Syria lost 1/3 of its annual
rainfall. Overstressed, in drought, and with accelerating climate
disruption, Syrias agricultural sector went into collapse. Now,
five years into the war, its economy has shrunk by half.

A Cycle of Collapse & Conflict

When what you do and how you live comes apart, when there is
no way to keep living where you live, survival mandates migration.
For millions of people, there is no choice. Conflict makes finding
safe conditions and reliable sustenance still harder. This vicious
cycle means entire cities and regions become refugees.

bit.ly/syria-stats

Across Syria, a generation of children are now going

without school, while those who can attend classes in
schools hit by airstrikes and heavy artillery.

Syria is not the only place where disruption and

displacement are putting extreme pressure on people

Displaced by Depletion
In Bangladesh, millions of people have been forced to flee
coastal regions where catastrophic storm damage, sea-level
rise, saltwater intrusion and other drivers of ecosystem collapse
have made conditions unlivable. The capital, Dhaka, is now
experiencing a population shock from internal migration.

Nepal Glacial melt makes landslides more common

Pakistan Region-wide flash-flooding + drought
Nigeria Desertification (worse than Syria?)
Yemen Zero fresh water + water war
St. Vincent 15% of GDP washed away in 3 hours
Louisiana Losing 1 football field of land per hour
Siberia Permafrost melt releasing Methane & Anthrax

The Worlds Commitment

At the Rio Summit in 1992, the world agreed to work
to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate system. U.S. President George H.W. Bush
called on all industrialized nations to immediately
activate their climate change mitigation strategies.

The Worlds Commitment

At the Rio Summit in 1992, the world agreed to work
to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate system. U.S. President George H.W. Bush
called on all industrialized nations to immediately
activate their climate change mitigation strategies.

UNDER ARTICLE 6 OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION,

THIS RATIFIED TREATY IS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND

Negotiations regarding the text of the Paris Agreement were like a global
literary workshop, in which negotiators worked together to unpack
meaning and put concepts into metaphorical baskets, while representing
the interests of their nations, the human world, and natural systems.

Civil society organizations, UN agencies, and governments met with the

leadership of the negotiating process, in an eort to ensure the Paris Agreement
would be capable of genuine long-term mitigation of climate disruption.

The Paris Agreement was agreed by consensus among the 196 parties to the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, on December 12, 2015. It is an
implementation agreement for enforcement of the 1992 Convention and for the
first time ensures all 196 parties will collaborate in combatting climate change.

from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at NOAA

1.5C to Stay Alive

It is estimated that small island nations will start to disappear
when we reach a level of global warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. In Paris, 1.5C was adopted as a new upper
limit for global average temperature rise. A recent report found
we may reach 1.3C by the end of 2016.

Svalbardhytta
7810'60" N 1548'0" E

Svalbardhytta
7810'60" N 1548'0" E
JANUARY 24, 2016

37F

5:41 PM

High: 39F

The historic average high temperature in

Svalbard at this time of year is 8.6F. This
January, temperatures in Svalbard were
an average of 30F above normal.

Winter Ice Melt

In January and February of 2016, temperature anomalies in the
Arctic reached alarming extremes. Ice was observed melting in the
Arctic Ocean in February. Parts of the Arctic were 11C warmer than
the historic norm, 35 years earlier than previous predictions.

A Planetary Design Challenge

The global eort to decarbonize and to eliminate the pervasive hidden
costs brought on by the burning of climate-forcing fuels necessitates
a re-design of the human industrial environment across the world.
Knowledge, innovation, locally-rooted enterprise and climate-smart
policy are all part of this design challenge.

The human brain

is natures most powerful
anti-entropy
Buckminster Fuller

Mapping Knowledge
Climate disruption is relational; climate solutions
must also be relational. There are many eorts now
underway to map relational dynamics, knowledge
sharing, and reservoirs of capability. Mobilizing for
action will mean building human capacity.

Knowledge moves through relationships, networks, and action platforms.

By tracking how information is shared, and which institutions appear together,

we can improve flows of information, for application to lived experience.

We can now create individuated maps that show how a given individual,
institution, nation, or climate dynamic connects to others.

Sustainability is Security
Harnessing the planet-wide integrity of Earths life-support
systems now means identifying and sharing capabilities,
learning and innovating together, exploring an entirely new
kind of global economic paradigm, where competition is
collaboration and lightness is strength.

Entropy vs. Anti-entropy

By necessity, global policy-making is redefining security as
the resilience of natural systems. There is no inherent conflict
between human wellbeing and the thriving of Earths lifesupport systems, but the collective impact of a flawed design
means human activity is degrading vital life-supports.

Ratcheting Up Ambition
Each nations commitment projects a course of action for others
to follow. The need for global cooperation means total policy
ambition will start low and rise, step by step. A crucial element
to the success of the global decarbonization is the deliberate
ratcheting up of policy ambition the Ratchet Mechanism.

Around the world, citizens are working together

to urge awmakers to act on climate.

Citizen participation in the design and implementation

of climate policy can be the ratchet mechanism.

By expanding the global civic space

we can motivate more ambitious climate policy.

Building strong working relationships

between citizens and their representatives.

Citizens joining the policy process recognize that

smart, efficient climate solutions build prosperity.

Fee

Starting at $15/ton,
rising $10/ton/year

Dividend
Border

100% returned to every

household, every month

Fee on goods from

nations with no fee

REGIONAL ECONOMIC MODELS INC. (REMI)

FOUND CF&D WOULD, OVER 20 YEARS...
REDUCE TOTAL US CO2 EMISSIONS BY 52%

PREVENT 227,000 PREMATURE DEATHS

INCREASE REAL DISPOSABLE INCOME

INCREASE LABOR SHARE OF INCOME

STEADILY BOOST MAIN STREET ECONOMY

ADD 2.8 MILLION NEW JOBS (NOT JUST GREEN)

EXPAND GDP BY AN ADDITIONAL $1.375 TRILLION

citizensclimatelobby.org/remi-report

geoversiv.net/cplc
The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition is bringing
together governments, intergovernmental organizations,
non-profits, and businesses, including some of the worlds
largest oil companies, to price carbon everywhere.

The Sustainable Development Goals recognize the

interconnected interest of people and planet.

Goal 13 is Climate Action. It calls for protecting the planet

and supports the global climate policy process.

But Goals 7, 11, 12, 14, and 15, all relate to

climate impacts, solutions, and investments.

And these

And

Sustainable Development Goal 17 calls for multilateral multilevel

partnerships, in which governments collaborate with local leadership,
non-governmental organizations, citizens and businesses, to ensure
public policy and commercial practices line up with and advance all
of the Goals. ACCESS to GOOD is one of these partnerships: aiming
to empower people everywhere to be actors, innovators, trackers,
and practicioners, making our world smarter and more sustainable.

access2good.info

engage4climate.org/ace
Citizen action to design and deploy solutions is
anchored in the 1992 Climate Convention.

Citizen volunteers report on climate impacts and solutions.

All Hands on Deck

The greatest scientific or poetic or peacebuilding mind of this
century may belong to a 3-year-old girl living in a village with zero
access to clean water, surrounded by armed militants, in a remote area
of Yemen. If she is forced to remain in obscurity by circumstance or by
cruelty, we will all have less ready access to truth and discovery.

We will all be poorer for that loss, and we do not know by how much.

Climate Geopolitics

Pathways to Worldwide Ecological Integrity