WB Hopes for a Global Consensus on Ways to Address Climate Change

Anchor: In the end, could you please say something about your expectations on Durban Climate Change Conference?

Andrew Steer: Well, of course, we would love to see a global deal on the climate. That would be very nice if all the countries in the world could agree. No. 1, we want to limit temperature increases to one and a half or two degrees. No. 2, this is how much we will have to reduce our carbon missions. No. 3, we can arrange certain finances go from rich countries to poor countries. We all agree on a common, but differentiated response to climate change. That would nice if we had a global deal. It’s not likely that we are going to manage to get a global deal in Durban, quite frankly. The politics internationally, I mean economics internationally right now doesn’t suggest we are going to get, but can make an important progress.

Other some big political issues, such as what happens to the Kyoto Protocol when it expires and answers for the negotiators to really negotiate. We hope that some way, or figuring out a way, when the end of 2012 comes, we don’t just end any kind of, sort of, formal regime, but we don’t know about that, quite frankly.

Second, there’s the issue of money. Now, what we hope is that the green fund that was agreed last year in Cancun and during this last year’s been designed. We hope that in Durban, that fund would be lodged. It doesn’t mean it has able to get money yet, but what it does mean is that it would become an entity and would have a board of directors, and could, over the next two or three years, really be designed in detail and then get money that goes in so we can help the developing countries. That’s the second thing.

There are numbers of other things, actually, would be very useful, or we think possible. So for example, we think that the system of technology centers worldwide would be agreed and will be financed. And that would be very good because we will help bring technology to countries and to businesses in the developing world, such one thing.

Other thing we hope is the agriculture will be cooperated under the convention. Agriculture is the sector which is most threatened by climate change. It looks like agriculture yields in Africa, for example, put forward by 25 percent because of the climate change. So agriculture is the most affected sector but also agriculture is one of the causes of some climate change, so probably almost 20 percent of greenhouse gases originate from activities in agricultural sector. So it’s threatened by climate change and it has opportunity to help address the climate change. That’s why we would like agriculture to cope with it. We are not sure we will lessen the case, but certainly it would be good.

Then there are several other things: carbon markets, one thing is important. Adaptation is another issue. We hope to set up adaptation committee that actually will do something that’s really useful, will help countries get advice on their national adaptation plans, get financing in for adaptation.

There’s progress on forests that could be made. There’s an agreement that forests can now be financed by climate finance at the national level, but there’s quite a lot of things to be negotiated on what we call “Baselines”.

So there’s a number of sort of fairly tactical things, but each one of these actually can make quite a bit of a contribution. So we’re hopeful that it would add some value, what’s really important is the trust in the process between developing countries, developed countries, rich and poor countries should be sustained as the process moves on, because we really do need a global deal and we need it soon.