Revenge of the Nerds: Climate Change and Water at the World Water Forum
21/03/12 14:05
Three years ago, I attended my first World Water Forum in Istanbul. These meetings occur every three years, with each Forum in a different country. For me, Istanbul marked the beginning of several key alliances and initiatives. It was the Forum that happened before the Copenhagen COP in particular, and climate change discussions were already at a fever pitch by March and contained a strongly optimistic view of what might happen that year on mitigation policy. This was also the first period when we saw the extended water community begin to discuss adaptation in a more serious, sustained way.
The Danes, as the host for the UNFCCC COP that December, were all over Istanbul. They had initiated a series of meetings that they called a global dialogue on land and water management for adaptation (what would now be called ecosystem-based adaptation; http://landwaterdialogue.um.dk/), which culminated in May of 2009 in a meeting at the UN compound in Nairobi that created what were then called the Nairobi principles. The Dutch in the form of the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate (CPWC) supported this work very strongly as well. Sweden and SIWI in August made climate change a core part of World Water Week, and released the Stockholm Statement, explicitly echoing the organizational efforts and statements of the Danes and Dutch.
The Istanbul World Water Forum felt like a launchpad that year — an accelerant for a process that was going to lead us to much stronger national and global commitments on sound adaptation, recognizing the strong role that water plays in both mitigation and adaptation. Of course, Copenhagen was a bust on mitigation, and adaptation was scarcely mentioned there. The Danes and Dutch changed governing parties that provided much less support on adaptation, much less around water. And the CPWC was dissolved about a year ago. The Danish and Dutch dialogues exist mostly as dry, unused corners of the internet at the moment. Many of those individuals are embittered and unhappy with their efforts.
Three years after Istanbul, climate change was scarcely mentioned in the opening talks of the Marseille World Water Forum. Almost no press attention was visible on the topic. And the theme of sessions focused on climate change were mostly very poorly attended though large meeting rooms had been reserved.
Perhaps the most discouraging moment in Marseille was seeing Connie Hedegaard, the former Danish environment minister who I had last seen in Copenhagen speaking to many thousands of people (and now the current EU commissioner for climate change; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Hedegaard), holding forth in a room 35 m long but with only about 30 people there, including the other five speakers.
What happened?
I think the best clue comes from where most of the action was actually occurring and what was being discussed.
A lot of high-level policy work that Hedegaard has represented has faded. The UN has little influence on climate right now, a climate mitigation agreement is years away from enactment, and the adaptation funds at a global level are not very much money for only a handful of countries. The UN is relevant but not important (or very much relevant). Copenhagen marked both a very high and a very low point globally. I’m not sure that many people can even imagine a Copenhagen-like event on climate change at this point.
Instead, in Marseille the sessions with more people were focused on emerging new programs and syntheses of science, finance, and resource management. The discussions are at much lower levels in organizations, and in different kinds of organizations as well. What does a resilient economy look like? How do you make best use of climate information? Is adaptation something extra, like icing on a cake, or is it the main dish: the roast turkey at Christmas? Adaptation and water are, in effect, moving from the CEOs and ministers to the technocrats who are actually charged with doing the work. Two sessions — one on AGWA, and one for a UNESCO-IHP, INBO, and French Water Academy initiative — were well attended, and they discussed the obstacles and potential for developing simple guidelines and recommendations for connecting local and regional water professionals with new models of day to day management. The closed-door high-level policy session on adaptation too featured talks by Portugal, Mexico, and the European Investment Bank that could have been delivered by many development or environmental NGOs in the past three years with pride. The discussions around mainstreaming, linking ecosystems with poverty alleviation, and creating a new model of development are sophisticated and practical and leading to major operational and policy changes.
But most of these changes are not sexy or even comprehensible at high levels within most organizations and ministries. They represent significant commitments to making real changes in behavior. They are substantive, often technical changes. Even the UN is now struggling to keep itself relevant by staying abreast of how adaptation is becoming more mainstream, as I saw the week before Marseille in meetings with the Nairobi Work Programme.
Copenhagen was a product of slick marketing — a vision that elementary age students and normal citizens could lead to a global transformation in policy and practice. The epic failure of Copenhagen on so many levels really hurt climate change as a shift in daily behavior and as something aspirational. Looking back, I’m not even really sure what could have been a positive outcome (and I still remember meeting a unhappy man in the 600-strong Brazilian delegation who said, I’m the only person from Brazil talking about water here). The people who need to make better decisions that take climate change into account are working to that end, and we’re making good progress. Slower than we want, yes. But good progress.
We do need good global governance on climate change, and we need international agreements. But they won’t by themselves save us. At best, they will make saving ourselves much easier.
Call it revenge of the nerds, but I prefer Marseille to Istanbul, pastis over raki. At least in this narrow regard. And it makes me curious about how far along we will be in Korea in 2015, for the next World Water Forum.
The Istanbul World Water Forum felt like a launchpad that year — an accelerant for a process that was going to lead us to much stronger national and global commitments on sound adaptation, recognizing the strong role that water plays in both mitigation and adaptation. Of course, Copenhagen was a bust on mitigation, and adaptation was scarcely mentioned there. The Danes and Dutch changed governing parties that provided much less support on adaptation, much less around water. And the CPWC was dissolved about a year ago. The Danish and Dutch dialogues exist mostly as dry, unused corners of the internet at the moment. Many of those individuals are embittered and unhappy with their efforts.
Three years after Istanbul, climate change was scarcely mentioned in the opening talks of the Marseille World Water Forum. Almost no press attention was visible on the topic. And the theme of sessions focused on climate change were mostly very poorly attended though large meeting rooms had been reserved.
Perhaps the most discouraging moment in Marseille was seeing Connie Hedegaard, the former Danish environment minister who I had last seen in Copenhagen speaking to many thousands of people (and now the current EU commissioner for climate change; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Hedegaard), holding forth in a room 35 m long but with only about 30 people there, including the other five speakers.
What happened?
I think the best clue comes from where most of the action was actually occurring and what was being discussed.
A lot of high-level policy work that Hedegaard has represented has faded. The UN has little influence on climate right now, a climate mitigation agreement is years away from enactment, and the adaptation funds at a global level are not very much money for only a handful of countries. The UN is relevant but not important (or very much relevant). Copenhagen marked both a very high and a very low point globally. I’m not sure that many people can even imagine a Copenhagen-like event on climate change at this point.
Instead, in Marseille the sessions with more people were focused on emerging new programs and syntheses of science, finance, and resource management. The discussions are at much lower levels in organizations, and in different kinds of organizations as well. What does a resilient economy look like? How do you make best use of climate information? Is adaptation something extra, like icing on a cake, or is it the main dish: the roast turkey at Christmas? Adaptation and water are, in effect, moving from the CEOs and ministers to the technocrats who are actually charged with doing the work. Two sessions — one on AGWA, and one for a UNESCO-IHP, INBO, and French Water Academy initiative — were well attended, and they discussed the obstacles and potential for developing simple guidelines and recommendations for connecting local and regional water professionals with new models of day to day management. The closed-door high-level policy session on adaptation too featured talks by Portugal, Mexico, and the European Investment Bank that could have been delivered by many development or environmental NGOs in the past three years with pride. The discussions around mainstreaming, linking ecosystems with poverty alleviation, and creating a new model of development are sophisticated and practical and leading to major operational and policy changes.
But most of these changes are not sexy or even comprehensible at high levels within most organizations and ministries. They represent significant commitments to making real changes in behavior. They are substantive, often technical changes. Even the UN is now struggling to keep itself relevant by staying abreast of how adaptation is becoming more mainstream, as I saw the week before Marseille in meetings with the Nairobi Work Programme.
Copenhagen was a product of slick marketing — a vision that elementary age students and normal citizens could lead to a global transformation in policy and practice. The epic failure of Copenhagen on so many levels really hurt climate change as a shift in daily behavior and as something aspirational. Looking back, I’m not even really sure what could have been a positive outcome (and I still remember meeting a unhappy man in the 600-strong Brazilian delegation who said, I’m the only person from Brazil talking about water here). The people who need to make better decisions that take climate change into account are working to that end, and we’re making good progress. Slower than we want, yes. But good progress.
We do need good global governance on climate change, and we need international agreements. But they won’t by themselves save us. At best, they will make saving ourselves much easier.
Call it revenge of the nerds, but I prefer Marseille to Istanbul, pastis over raki. At least in this narrow regard. And it makes me curious about how far along we will be in Korea in 2015, for the next World Water Forum.
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