Global Social Policy Forum

GSP FORUM

Global Social Policy Forum

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Climate Change and Social Policy Discussion Forum: An Introduction

ZAHIR SADEQUE UNDESA Division of Social Policy and Development, USA

The world has been experiencing major climatic variability and unpredictable weather in recent times. Extreme weather events like persistent droughts, increasing frequency and severity of storms, floods and retreat of glacial in high mountains as well as Polar Regions are pointing to the changes in global climate and natural environment. The climatic variability as demonstrated by these events and patterns pose grave danger to the overall well-being of ever increasing global human population and hence impinges upon the social policy issues confronting all nation states as well as the global dimension of managing social policy responses. Climatic variability and changes have been charted by the scientific community over last several decades, although only recently are their findings receiving due attention of decision makers as the cause-effect relationship of increased green house emission (GHG) and global warming is becoming clearer. Of course by now it is well known that global warming is likely to cause higher sea levels which will force millions of people to migrate from low lying areas, decrease fresh water flows, change rainfall patterns, intensify storms and floods; all of these are even now contributing to serious deleterious effects on our food production, habitat, and capability to deal with disasters. Ecologists and environmental scientists have warned us about the ecological destruction and loss of carrying capacity of the earth even before climate change studies came out with their grim findings. Together with the climate change process, planet earth faces an uncertain future, the only certainty being the dangers that lurk ahead. While scientific socio-economic research regarding the impact and consequences climate change is being undertaken more intensively, global consensus on the strategies to combat the ill effects of climate change are still far away. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was the first

Global Social Policy Copyright © The Author(s), 2010. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav 1468-0181 vol. XX(X): pp 1–24; 355176; DOI:10.1177/1468018109355176 http://gsp.sagepub.com

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major step in negotiating a global agreement on GHG emission reduction, though had few results to show for it due the inflexibility of major players. The Bali Road Map of 2007 accelerated the process of negotiation in view of the Kyoto Protocol’s expiry in 2012. The intense activity of the UN, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists and activists all over the world preceding the 7–18 December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen will hopefully result in some binding agreement by major GHG emitters and other supporting decisions by the world community. By the time this publication is printed the Copenhagen meeting will be over and we can only hope some meaningful agreement is reached there. There is no other option. Negative impacts will hit the poor and vulnerable zones (mostly in the poorer region of the world) with greater severity. The 2009 World Social Situation Report of the United Nations (UN, 2009a) notes few improvements in global poverty reduction (1.9bn people living on less than US$1.25 a day in 1981 declined only slightly to 1.4bn in 2005). The onset of climate change process may even reverse the small gains and throw many more into extreme poverty in the coming decades as the current economic crisis has already done. It is therefore extremely timely and appropriate that this issue of Global Social Policy Forum aims to invigorate interest among the social policy community to discuss new directions for the discipline and to stimulate debate about appropriate policies and strategies to deal with the ill effects of climate change on the world’s population with particular reference to those most at risk. Climate change is a reality and irrespective of global collective actions it will continue; the only question is what we must do collectively to slow the process (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007) and minimize the impacts. Actions required to forestall serious climate change include strong commitments to reduce emissions through practicing a low carbon life, using energy efficiently, technology development and transfer and above all robust policy incentives and disincentives. All these actions call for a mix of policy options and support on the part of public and private bodies with a clear aim of energy efficiency, increasing renewable energy options, clean development mechanisms and emphasis on the reduction, re-use and recycling of resources. The hitherto main concern of dithering parties and skeptics is the impact on emission reduction of economic growth and in the current global environment of economic recession it is difficult to find sufficient support for it. That again is an issue of not thinking ‘outside the box’ as it is possible to combine economic growth with lower emissions; collective sacrifices for both the developed and developing countries are needed to save the planet from the perils of climate change (UN, 2009b). Markets have not been responsive to cleaner production methods and renewable energy for a variety of reasons including but not limited to the availability of technologies, fiscal and financial incentives, disincentives and to some extent lack of sufficient public awareness and interest in preferring eco-friendly products and

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services together with a desire for conservation. R & D and support of new technologies can create millions of new ‘Green Jobs’ to offset the losses elsewhere; these jobs will promote ‘Decent Work’ principles of global labor standards, providing well paid, non-hazardous employment and long-term job security. Global negotiations for climate change therefore require serious commitment by major GHG emitters to reduce and limit their emissions, global support for investments on cleaner technologies and access of poorer nations to those technologies so that their economic growth is not hampered. A new international economic order and global cooperation are essential to successful climate change negotiations. Contributions in this Forum provide insights into the complex global debates on climate change and social policy. While it is outside the scope of Forum to cover all aspects of the climate change process and the necessary negotiations, each of the contributions brings out the social policy imperatives of climate change as it impacts upon global human well-being. Syed Zahir Sadeque sets the context of Forum, arguing the importance of rethinking the scope and approach of social policy in view of the climate change process that has been set in motion. Sadeque goes on to argue that the social policy community needs to take up the challenge of global mega events and processes like climate change in defining a new framework for the discipline necessary in this century and beyond. Larry Lohmann and Sarah Sexton’s piece on market systems that hide pollution through ‘Cap and Trade’ system points to the flawed policy of allowing large polluters get hide behind market mechanisms rather than addressing the causes of climate change. This criticism of market solutions to climate change is further discussed by the UN (2009b). The Lohmann and Sexton piece goes on to argue that unless emphasis is given to instituting serious disincentives to pollution, the structural changes and innovations necessary for reducing emissions cannot be expected. Such a flawed approach would simply continue to ignore pollution caused by large industries and developed countries. Adil Khan’s contribution on climate change vulnerabilities in South Asia similarly takes up equity dimensions of climate change. Since the industrial revolution countries over the millennia now threatens the existence of large low lying areas of South Asia where hundreds of millions of people and entire nations (Maldives) are facing dire consequences and even extinction. The global governance of climate change mitigation and adaptation needs to take these global equity issues seriously and determine the collective actions necessary for averting this catastrophe. Finally Khan draws our attention to an important but often neglected issue of lifestyle that is critical for future climatic stability: less consumerism and more reduction, conservation and reuse of resources. Adele Anna Sasvari’s article extends the focus on gender equality issues in climate negotiation. Sasvari argues that climate negotiations must look beyond technical, regional and economic issues in general terms and consider the inherent gender equity issues in all aspects of the negotiations, like adaptation,

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mitigation, technology and finance. Women, she argues, are a ‘particularly vulnerable group’ and important ‘stakeholder’ if appropriate measures are to be taken in all these areas. Nazrul Islam’s article continues the debate of capabilities versus responsibilities in climate change mitigation measures and points to an interesting but often overlooked dimension of intra-country equity issues and their implications on climate change adaptations and responses. Marginal groups in poorer countries face the double bind of misery as they are pushed to the marginal terrains (both in terms of location and livelihoods) and thus face imminent dangers from climate change and social policy needs to take cognizance of this fine detail. While inequities remain within the sufferers, ‘we are all in this together’ is an appropriate maxim as no country will escape the impacts of climate change; thus the hope of global social cohesion holds the best promise of not only saving the planet but also protecting human well-being in the long run. Ramana Acaharyulu focuses on broader aspects of climate change impacts and initiatives by a focus on human rights and livelihoods issues. Climate change processes will negatively affect four basic areas of human rights: Right to Life, Right to Food, Right to Subsistence and Right to Health. The negotiations for climate change he insists must ensure core minimum standards for the affected people and enabling them to realize their rights. Abdel-Bari Hassan Nasr brings a new perspective to an old and festering debate on Darfur in Sudan. Bari argues in the Sahel region, notably Darfur, climate change processes have been set in motion for sometime and the increasing aridity of the region has pitted local agriculturists against the nomadic herders in conflict over dwindling pasture and water resources. He suggests more focused country and region specific research for adaptations management and highlights the role of conflict and local institutional mechanisms as key aspects of this research. references Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007) Assessment Report 4 (AR4). Geneva: IPCC. United Nations (2009a) Report on the World Social Situation 2009. New York: United Nations. United Nations (2009b) World Economic and Social Survey 2009. New York: United Nations.

Social Policy in the 21st Century: How Climate Change will Shape Social Policy Framework ZAHIR SADEQUE UNDESA Division for Social Policy and Development, USA

Social policy as an applied field of study is always facing new challenges as national, regional and global changes and events are shaping human life

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everywhere. This is particularly important because as an academic discipline its boundaries are neither very tightly defined nor jealously guarded, and rightly so because of the interconnected nature of the issues it studies. The global financial crisis and climate change are two major event and process that will surely change the way we articulate the boundaries of social policy. Here I am raising few issues on how climate change will affect social policy in this century and beyond. The earth’s climate is changing and is projected to continue to change under a variety of emissions scenarios. Average temperatures will continue to increase, rainfall patterns will change, polar ice will melt at a faster rate and sea levels will rise. Extreme weather events (hurricanes, storms, flooding, drought, heat waves) are likely to become more common and more widespread, causing frequent and greater damage. Melting glaciers will increase flood risk during the wet season and reduce dry season water supply. These changes will affect food production, increase human mortality and morbidity and cause numerous other negative impacts for habitats. Such profound changes mean that the vulnerability of people globally will increase. A third of the world’s population lives in areas that are at the front line of climate change induced vulnerability in near future, and many of them are resource and income poor and are not prepared to deal with the changes that will affect their lives and livelihoods. Rural small holder farmers, farm laborers, fisher folk communities, pastoralists, urban poor and low lying coastal populations are most at risk. The impacts of climate change that will affect the lives of people (in this century and beyond) are a key issue for social policy, nationally and globally. A major challenge is to articulate the social impacts of climate change and enact appropriate policy and institutional responses. Climate change adaptations require attention in almost all sectors, from agriculture and food production to infrastructure, health to industrial and energy production, to economic and social policy. Such adaptations should be multi-sectoral and strive for a balance between meeting immediate needs and providing long-term institutional and policy support for sustaining those adaptations. Among the major social policy related adaptations that demand urgent attention is first national food security, particularly for those countries and vulnerable who are most at risk. This is critical because many of the climate change affected countries are food insecure and have large segment of population with limited income. Second is public health preparedness to face new diseases and possible increases in the incidence and severity of existing diseases like malaria, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. A third interrelated policy area is expanded social protection for climate change-affected people. Cash transfers, targeted employment creation and incentives for supporting new carbon neutral production methods in addition to expansion of social protection measures will be important components of the new social protection policy. A fourth new area of social policy is managing displacement and conflict

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through measures such as orderly migration, increasing the asset base in vulnerable areas (education, skills upgrading, new production options), and the development of policies and institutions to support conflict resolution. A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR POLICY PLANNERS A N D A D M I N I S T R AT O R S

Climate change induced vulnerability requires coordinated responses and adaptation strategies. How prepared are the global community of social policy planners and administrators to face these challenges? Are we going to remain stuck in the welfare and protection framework when we pursue global social policy objectives or will we move beyond this to incorporate fresh thinking on the rights and livelihood issues of hundreds of millions of affected people? Social policy is intricately linked with economic progress and designed to support the ability of society to rebound in the face of adversity. A new framework for social policy in view of the challenges of the 21st century, particularly as driven by the profound impact of climate change, would need to incorporate several components, including: •

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Conceptual reorientation to include rights, entitlements and concerted public interventions to support an adaptation strategy with focus on disadvantaged sections and social groups. Particularly important are the rights to employment, livelihoods, safe shelter and voice of affected people in new land use and social service planning. Governments need to consider seriously changes in food production and distribution mechanisms to ensure that food insecurity does not severely undermine the well-being of their most vulnerable populations. Climate change will trigger scarcity and thus rises in food prices will affect millions of households worldwide and multi-pronged efforts need to be in place to increase production from limited land and devise better nutritional fortification for children, mothers and older persons. Targeted food availability, distribution and fortification must be among the key elements. Targeted employment schemes for climate change vulnerable groups, many of who may lose their livelihoods due to climate change (coastal fisherfolks, rain-fed small holder farmers, farm labor in coastal areas, pastoralists in increasingly arid Africa and South West Asia, etc.). Cash transfers, incentives for supporting new carbon neutral production methods in addition to expanding social protection measures will be important components of the new social protection interventions under the new social policy. Refocusing on preventive aspects of primary health care to deal with changed climate-induced vector borne diseases. Internal displacement and involuntary migration management. Global warming and sea level rise, reduced flow of freshwater from melting glacial, increasing aridity of Sahel and Asian grasslands will force millions of people to migrate. We need changes in migration and immigration policies, decriminalization of migration process and conflict mitigation capacity for internally displaced people.

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Multi-sectoral coordination with effective and integrated authority for comprehensive adaptation implementation. Advocacy for realignment of planning and budgeting by incorporating the concerns of vulnerable people and their livelihoods. Community and citizen engagement in highlighting vulnerability and adaptation. Identifying special needs of social groups and immediately affected people.

Climate change is already being felt, while the severity of future impacts will depend on global mitigation actions and other aspects of climate that is perhaps not yet fully understood. Given the negative impacts already underway considerable adaptation will be necessary to sustain the current level of human well being, which in itself is not the desired long-term goal. Along with physical planning, technological changes supporting low carbon life, expansion of carbon sinks and economic restructuring, the world needs to reorient social policy responses as well to ensure human well-being is not sacrificed. biographical note (SYED) ZAHIR SADEQUE is a Development Sociologist. He has taught at Universities and subsequently moved to international development management. He has worked with bilateral donors and UN agencies in Asia and Africa. Currently he is an Interregional Adviser on Social Policy and Development with United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in New York, USA. Please address correspondence to: Zahir Sadeque, UN-DESA, 2 UN Plaza, DC2–1314, New York, NY 10017, USA. [email: [email protected]]

Carbon Markets: The Policy Reality L A R RY L O H M A N N A N D S A R A H S E X T O N The Corner House, UK

The burning of fossil fuels is by far the major contributor to human-caused climate change. Once taken out of the ground and burned, coal, oil and gas add to the amount of carbon cycling between the atmosphere and the oceans, soil, rock and vegetation. On human time scales, this transfer is irrevocable: once mined and burned, fossil carbon cannot be locked away safely underground again in the form of new deposits of coal, oil or gas, or in the form of carbonate rock, for millions of years. The transfer is also unsustainable: there is simply not enough ‘space’ in above-ground biological and geological systems to park safely the huge mass of carbon coming out of the ground without carbon dioxide building up catastrophically in both the air and the oceans. At the most fundamental level, therefore, the climate solution revolves around initiating a new pathway away from fossil fuel dependence. Industrialized societies locked into fossil fuels need to turn to structurally different, non-fossil energy, transport, agricultural and consumption regimes within a few decades

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to minimize future dangers and costs. Infrastructure, trade, even community structure will have to be reorganized, and state support shifted from fossilfuelled development toward popular movements constructing or defending low-carbon means of livelihood and social life. But the main official approach to the climate crisis worldwide – building a single, liquid global carbon market worth trillions of dollars – is likely to make climate change worse, not only exacerbating its social impacts but also generating negative impacts of its own. The two basic instruments of carbon markets are ‘cap and trade’ and offsets. A country’s emissions ‘cap’ is imposed by government regulation. Each industrial installation is assigned the right to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas. It is then allowed to buy additional pollution rights if it needs them to meet its emissions target – or to sell any rights that it does not need. Cap and trade thus gives incentives to those polluting industries most locked into fossil fuel use, where most change must occur, to delay structural change. Instead of embarking on a lower-carbon historical pathway, such industries can instead buy bankable pollution permits. Further slowing down the shifts needed, all cap and trade systems instituted to date have awarded large numbers of free pollution rights to the worst polluters in order to gain their support for the system, making cap and trade a ‘polluter earns’ system. Adding the market price of these free assets to customers’ electricity bills, many electricity generators receiving such government donations have then gone on to invest their windfall profits in more fossil fuel capacity. In many cases, fossil-fuelled corporations have also managed to get their government to hand over more pollution rights than they actually need to meet their legally-mandated targets. In the European Union, the main winners from carbon trading have been, in addition to energy traders and hedge funds, electricity generators fuelled by coal and nuclear fission, while the biggest losers have been consumers. At the same time that it undermines effective climate policy, cap and trade has also given rise to distribution problems that could flare into destructive international political conflict. The reason is that cap and trade, like other market systems, requires that the commodity being bought and sold come with ownership rights. In order to work, therefore, cap and trade needs to privatize the earth’s carbon-cycling capacity – its physical, chemical and biological ability to regulate its own climate and keep it stable. By awarding its worst-polluting companies huge blocks of transferable pollution permits, Northern governments have unilaterally decided to give them transferable property rights to a disproportionate chunk of this global capacity – which, under a more equitable system, would be made available to everyone equally. Further undermining both the climatic efficacy and the political sustainability of carbon markets are carbon offsets – the other pillar of carbon trading. Offsets provide the industrialized North with a flow of additional emissions licenses originating from projects designed to ‘compensate’ for its fossil

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fuel emissions. Examples include forestry schemes, hydroelectric dams or pollution-reducing fuel-switches. Such projects – located mainly in the global South (particularly China, India, Korea and Brazil within the Kyoto Protocol market) – must show that the carbon savings they achieve are a result of the finance they derive by selling emissions permits to big polluters. Under the Kyoto Protocol, such offset projects were devised partly as a compromise between the desire of wealthier industries and states to delay reducing their own emissions and the desire of Southern state negotiators for some financial benefit from the international climate regime. Unfortunately, it cannot be either proved or disproved that offsets are distinct from business as usual, or climatically equivalent to reducing emissions at source. As a result, no means exist for preventing skilful and well-paid carbon accountants from fabricating huge numbers of pollution rights for sale to Northern fossil fuel polluters by claiming that various conventional industrial projects are ‘saving carbon’. Carbon offsets thus wind up on the whole increasing fossil fuel emissions rather than compensating for them. Even worse, accounting procedures for offset projects set up perverse incentives for credit seekers (including host governments, credit buyers and consultant validators) to bring about ‘business as usual’ scenarios that are the highest-emitting possible, since the greater the emissions without the project, the higher the supposed carbon savings that can be achieved with it, and thus the higher payoffs that can be demanded. These obstacles to verifiable offset accounting may in the end spell as much trouble for economic stability as they do for efforts to curb climate change. If the carbon market grows into the world’s largest market, as often predicted, with massive participation on the part of hedge funds, energy traders, private equity funds and large global investment banks, the collapse of a sub-prime carbon bubble could have consequences comparable to those of the current financial crisis. Despite having been defended as a way of financing ‘green’ development, most carbon offset credits are, in addition, generated by projects that in fact reinforce fossil fuel dependence in the South. If Northern industrial buyers of offset credits tend to be large-scale corporate greenhouse gas producers such as Shell, BHP-Billiton, EDF, Endesa, Mitsubishi, Cargill, Nippon Steel, ABN Amro and Chevron, so, too, carbon credit sellers tend to be corporations strongly committed to continued use of fossil fuels, such as South Africa’s Sasol, India’s Tata Group, ITC, Birla, Reliance and Jindal, and Korea’s Hu-Chems Fine Chemical. It is such well-financed companies – and not green innovators or local communities developing low-carbon ways of life – that are best able to navigate the financial and bureaucratic requirements involved in registering offsets for the Kyoto Protocol carbon market. These firms are thus able to use carbon trading not as a way of propelling their countries away from fossil dependence, but, typically, as a means for topping up finance for environmentally- and sociallydamaging projects to which they are already committed and which are more often than not in sunset industry sectors. The principal economic incentives offset

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trading provides are not for technological or social innovators to seek transitions to low-carbon futures, but rather for carbon consultants and policymakers to find or invent new ‘emissions reduction equivalents’ that can be used to manufacture substantial blocks of cheap carbon credits for sale to conventional industries or financial speculators. In shoring up business as usual in this way, carbon trading thus works to the disadvantage of many Southern communities whose land, water and air are usurped by the private sector for ‘climate reasons’ as well as for corporate profit. Further reading: http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate. biographical note LARRY LOHMANN and SARAH SEXTON work at The Corner House, a research and solidarity organization based in the UK. Please address correspondence to: The Corner House, Station Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset DT10 1YJ, UK. [email: cornerhouse@ gn.apc.org]

Climate Change Vulnerabilities of South Asia and Future options: A Governance Perspective M. ADIL KHAN University of Queensland, Australia

Until recently, lobbied by the multinationals and led by the USA, especially by the Bush administration, the vulnerabilities of climate change have either been ignored or paid lip service to. This is because those who pollute are the rich and stand to suffer profit losses, reduction of standard of living (reduction of a superfluous lifestyle, that is) if climate change initiatives are put in place and thus resist change and indeed, get away with it. At the other end of the spectrum are the sufferers who are poor and thus voiceless and little or no power to effect change. However, with the change of guard in the US administration climate change debates seem to have gained new momentum. Many now agree to work through the United National Framework of Climate Change (UNFCC) to tackle the sources as well as the outcomes of climate change. This augurs well for the future. However, the question may also be asked whether the institutions and the processes, the overall governance arrangements (both social and economic) that contribute to climate change in the first place and/or hinder progress have undergone any radical changes. This contribution deals with the issues of climate change (CC) and vulnerabilities within the context of South Asia and views the multifaceted dimensions of vulnerabilities and their amelioration strategies from a multi-layered governance perspective. It also conceptualizes the climate change governance initiatives at four levels: global, regional (South Asian) and national (this includes local government and community) as well as lifestyle governance.

GSP Forum SOUTH ASIAN VULNERABILITIES AND THE ISSUES

South Asian CC vulnerabilities include: food security, water scarcity, flooding/ inundations, health hazards, and migration. Vulnerable communities include fishing communities, landless labour, the marginal farmers, people living in LECZs (Low Elevation Coastal Zones) are the most vulnerable and these constitute roughly 130m people. South Asia, particularly Bangladesh, pollutes the least and yet the region faces the worst risks and CC induced vulnerabilities. Indeed, most South Asian countries are increasingly becoming aware of these CC threats and have either developed (at least on paper), or are in the process of developing, in-country CC strategies. In partnership with the international agencies most have also developed effective preparedness measures (i.e. early warning systems, pre- and post-disaster shelters, etc.). But measures relating to adaptations and mitigation are proving to be the hardest to pursue. This is because: (1) impacts of CC are yet to be fully understood, mapped and internalized within the long-term development strategies of these countries; (2) low internal capacity and inadequate resources affect implementation of a comprehensive preparedness, adaptation and mitigation (PAM) strategy; and (3) absence of meaningful intra-regional cooperation – geo-politics and the political mind-set, a throw back from the past – continue to stall progress in tackling CC vulnerabilities, especially those that have cross-border implications, in a holistic manner. Furthermore, the combined damaging effects of climate change and river development activities in some of the upper riparian countries undertaken without due consideration of their negative effects on the lower riparian countries also run the risk of exacerbating the situation of environmental migration even more, potentially spilling over beyond political borders. It is surmised that driven to destitution by CC and intrusive and harmful (to the lower riparian countries) ecological changes, the prospect of illegal cross-border migrations of mammoth proportions (some put the figure at 70m) is a real possibility. The answer to this looming catastrophe may not lie within the narrow realm of national boundaries, but in a planning framework that sees the entire region as one entity and its people as one people. G O V E R N A N C E F O R C L I M AT E C H A N G E

Climate change is an issue that has global, regional and in-country implications and therefore, all future preparedness, adaptation and mitigation strategies must be sought within the mutually beneficial frameworks of cooperation, both within and across nations. At the global level, several new governance initiatives are already underway to address the twin and sometimes the inter-linking objectives of financial crisis and climate change. Lately, a decision has been made to supersede G8 and vest in G20 the tasks of finding joint solutions to these common challenges. Indeed, from the point of view of management of global financial crisis, this grouping is a welcome development, though its utility in resolving the CC challenges in a transparent and accountable way is somewhat doubtful. In fact the opposite may happen.

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From the CC perspective G20 is nothing but an expansion of the club of the polluters – the old polluters (the advanced developed economies) and the emerging polluters (the developing emerging economies). By tying and binding the interests of these two groups of countries together, G20 might have succeeded, maybe inadvertently, in creating conditions that at one end are likely to be self-preserving and, due to conflicts of interests on several matters, promote an environment of tension that may perpetually stall progress. Either way, such a grouping may have also marginalized somewhat the voices of the disaffected parties even more. By co-opting the polluting developing countries into the grouping of the developed polluting countries, interests of the vulnerable developing countries may have been bargained off and have been isolated even more. What may be needed is to create a governance nexus between the polluters and the sufferers. To get the G20 behave more responsibly and sensitively on CC issues there may be a need to establish a compact of the G20 and the CC affected (the worst and the most vulnerable) countries so that the polluters (old and the new) and the sufferers share the same platform and discuss issues and find solutions that are both accountable and adequately responsive. Linked to the above is also the issue of resources. For poorer countries to adopt suitable preparedness, adaptation and mitigation strategies they would require massive doses of external funding from the richer countries and this is in addition to the funding required of and committed to (but not fully realized yet) supporting the achievement of the millennium development goals (MDGs). Questions therefore must be asked, where would this additional funding come from? Are the richer countries, who are also the worst polluters, ready to provide additional resources? True that the financial crunch and the economic downturn currently experienced by the richer nations make the prospect of committing additional resources somewhat less likely at this stage. The budget deficit of the USA is projected at 13.6% of GDP in 2009 and an annualized contraction of Japanese economy is estimated at 14.2%. In these conditions of economic doldrums are there options that can generate income? How about generating income by savings, especially by cutting wasteful expenditure such as wars? Are there less costly and more feasible ways of resolving conflicts, save money and commit the money saved to more noble causes such as the against fight poverty and CC vulnerabilities? These questions that affect global governance must be raised boldly, discussed objectively and resolved pragmatically as well as morally. At the regional level, South Asia must seek a cooperation framework that promotes equitable sharing of common resources and develops a borderless planning framework that is strategic and visionary. At the national level, there is an urgent need to leverage government, civil society organizations, scientists, donors and indeed community groups together to find solutions that are knowledge based, accountable and transparent, an engaging governance

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arrangement that pursues CC vulnerabilities at three levels: (1) national level vulnerabilities in terms of planning capacities and resourcing options; (2) geophysical mapping of affected areas; and (3) identification of affected people by demography and by vocation. Finally, there is lifestyle governance. The world as a whole must also learn to address the CC challenges more from the demand or lifestyle perspective. In this regard, efforts must be made at two levels: (1) a conceptual shift from a consumerist to a conserving growth model; (2) organizing lifestyle governance by fixing emission caps on the polluting wealthy, the real polluters, and not on polluting countries, a formula that seems to prolong debate and confuse issues. biographical note M. ADIL KHAN is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He is also the former, Chief, Socio-economic Governance and Management Branch, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York. Please address correspondence to: M. Adil Khan, School of Social Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia Qld 4072, Brisbane, Australia. [email: [email protected]]

Changes in Climate Negotiations: Gender Equality towards Copenhagen A D E L E A N N A S A S VA R I International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Switzerland

Perceiving climate change as purely scientific or technical issue has created for many years obstacles to acknowledging its linkages to human development. However, the world has progressively recognized that inequalities of various natures that might be based on gender, age, ethnicity, or class have an impact also on how people experience climate change, their capacities to cope with its impacts and their potential to influence decision-making at all local, national and international levels. It has also been acknowledged that women are holders of significant knowledge and skills related to mitigation, adaptation, and the reduction of risks, making them crucial actors in this area. A D A P TAT I O N : V U L N E R A B I L I T I E S A N D C A PA C I T I E S

According to the Human Development Report 2007–2008, the historic disadvantages of women, with limited access to resources, restricted rights and no voice in decision-making make them extremely vulnerable climate change (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2007). When vulnerability is understood in the context of accessible assets, the available data on the gender gap is alarming with regard to the limited coping capacity of women compared to men. Indeed, Neumayer and Plümper, analysing the disasters occurred over

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the period 1981–2002 in 141 countries, found that where women’s economic and social rights are not ensured more women than men die from disasters (Neumayer and Plümper, 2007). The empowerment of rural women is of critical importance as the agricultural sector and food security are highly exposed to the impacts of climate change. On the other hand, women’s caring abilities, extensive knowledge of their communities, knowledge about natural resources, and high level of risk awareness are essential to effective disaster risk reduction and other adaptation related efforts (Aguilar et al., 2009). M I T I G AT I O N

There are certain areas of mitigation, proposed or undertaken, where women have proven over the years to be critical actors. Indeed, what has been lacking from proposed mitigation interventions is awareness, recognition, and acknowledgement of the role and input that rural and urban women from developed and developing countries have had and are having. As women are traditionally responsible for biomass energy supply at the household level, they can also become key players in the adoption of new energy technologies that reduce green house gas emissions (Aguilar et al., 2009). According to the studies conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2008a,b) gender has significant influence on sustainable consumption patterns: in some OECD countries, women make over 80% of consumer decisions and they are more likely to be sustainable consumers by tending to buy eco-labelled food, recycle, and paying more attention to efficient energy use. Proposed interventions should also build on the extensive knowledge that women have on forests. Policies on REDD (Reducing of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) should be designed with awareness of gender inequalities and include innovative solutions that enable both women and men to enjoy the benefits. Technology The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change positioned clean technologies at the centre of global responses to climate change. Technology in the traditional sense of tools has been considered a ‘male domain’ (Aguilar et al., 2009). However, in order to contribute to the goal of climate change mitigation and adaptation, technologies must be embedded in broader activities related to capacity building for users of the technologies and for decision makers who have to create the institutional environment. This is particularly important regarding women’s technological means. Additionally, technologies should be properly adapted to women’s needs (Women for Climate Justice, 2007). Finance Women’s ability to adapt to climate change and to participate in mitigation activities depends also on the depth of their control of social and economic resources, as well as their access to financial tools. Yet, under the current climate

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change financing regime women do not have sufficient and easy access to funds to obtain adaptation and mitigation technologies. Many activities normally undertaken by women that could count as adaptation and mitigation activities are not recognized by the global carbon market or by various groups of funders. Further, given the complexity of climate change funds and their application processes, women’s and community groups might have difficulties accessing funds that are designed to large-scale and well-capitalized projects. Also, the delivery mechanisms of climate change financing may not be very conducive to the existing level and scope of operations run by women either in the farming, business or household sector. Women’s voices, priorities and concerns, therefore, can be no longer marginalized in the discussions shaping the new climate change financing mechanisms (Aguilar et al., 2009). G E N D E R I N T H E C U R R E N T C L I M AT E C H A N G E N E G O T I AT I O N

‘Nine months ago, there was absolutely no gender language in climate change negotiations. Now (UNFCCC negotiations, 28 September–9 October, 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand), we are entering the negotiations with 23 paragraphs (citing) women and gender equality and equity’, said Cate Owren, programme coordinator for sustainable development of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), in a press conference (Corporal, 2009). The Global Gender and Climate Alliance has been conducting groundbreaking work on the links between gender and climate change, strikingly absent from climate talks up to now. It has been instrumental in ensuring that 25 references to gender or women are contained within the current negotiation text being considered by governments. Indeed, the negotiations are being undertaken by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) where the 25 crucial references to gender are being discussed for inclusion and consolidation into the negotiating text, the final draft of which will be presented in Copenhagen. The references to women or gender are mainly related to the recognition of women as ‘particularly vulnerable group’ under shared vision and adaptation. Another group of references underlines the importance of women as ‘stakeholders’ in the implementation of adaptation at all levels, and calls for ‘gender-balance’ within the institutions of the Parties in charge of adaptation and mitigation. The negotiating text also recognizes the need for ‘enhancing women’s capacity’ to act and contribute to adaptation actions. Considering the ECOSOC resolution ‘Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective into all Policies and Programmes in the United Nations System’ adopted in 2005, and taking into account that out of the 195 Parties and Observer States to the UNFCCC, only eight have not signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, gender mainstreaming into the new climate regime is not an issue of voluntary action, but legal obligation. Oxfam’s senior climate change policy advisor Heather Coleman stressed the importance of vigilance in ‘ensuring that the gender language stays’ in the negotiating text. ‘We need to ensure that all parties will continue to advocate on

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behalf of gender. The final document is just going to be about 30 pages long, from a 180-page document we have now’, she said. ‘We need to make sure that there will be references to gender as we reach a treaty’ (Corporal, 2009). The inclusion of gender is not only a question of social justice and human rights, but is necessary to ensure equitable and sustainable human development within the framework of the climate change regime by the most effective and efficient means. references Aguilar, L., Duer, E., Anderson, C., Sasvari, A., Pearl, R., Meesters, H., Wanijru, L., Dentler, A., Meyreles, L., Karlsson, G., Rathgeber, E., Williams, M., Conze, Y., Zuniga, P., Lambrou, Y., Enarson, E. and Morrow, H.B. (2009) Training Manual on Gender and Climate Change. Costa Rica: IUCN, UNDP and GGCA. Corporal, L.L. (2009) Development: Gender Advocates Keep a Close Eye on Climate Talks, accessed 26 November 2009, http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48633 Neumayer, E. and Plümper, T. (2007) The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002, accessed 26 November 2009, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=874965 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2008a) Promoting Sustainable Consumption: Good Practices in OECD Countries. France: OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2008b) Environmental Policy and Household Behaviour: Evidence in the Areas of Energy, Food, Transport, Waste and Water. France: OECD. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2007) Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World. USA: UNDP. Women for Climate Justice (2007) Press release, 7 December, COP13-Bali, Indonesia. biographical note ADELE ANNA SASVARI is Project Officer with the Office of the Senior Gender Advisor, International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Beyond her law degree she holds a MA in Gender and Peace Building from the UN mandated University for Peace. Her research mainly focuses on gender perspectives of biological diversity and climate change. She is currently working on the mainstreaming of gender within the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Please address correspondence to Adele Anna Sasvari, IUCN, Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland. [Email: [email protected]]

Climate Change and the Challenge to Social Policies NAZRUL ISLAM Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, USA

Climate change poses quite a challenge for social protection policies, as these are conventionally conceived. The distinction between development and social issues and policies is, in a sense, artificial and has often done more harm than good. In reality, economic and social facets of life are so closely interrelated

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that one cannot be dealt with without reference to the other. Social policies, in isolation from economic and development policies, are generally inadequate for solving most pressing problems of interest. This inadequacy is however proving more glaring in the context of the climate change challenge, which is overwhelming issues of both development and social protection. T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L D I M E N S I O N

The first thing of note is that climate represents a double injustice for the vast majority of the world’s population, living mainly in developing countries. First, they did not have much of a role in causing climate change, and yet they are and will be its worst victims. Thousands of extra deaths are already occurring in these countries as a result of various climate change related stresses. Second, colonial rule and exploitation have left most of these countries undeveloped and without adequate financial, technological, human, and institutional resources, so that they are the least capable of taking on the additional (to development) challenge posed by climate change. No climate change related policy, be it economic or social, can be discussed without keeping this double injustice in perspective. Furthermore, to millions, climate change is not only a development and social challenge combined, it is a challenge to their very physical existence. One of the consequences of climate change is sea level rise that is likely to submerge many parts of the world. While many tend to think of this as a threat to some remote islands with several thousand people, and hence easily manageable (through migration, etc.), this is actually a problem that will destabilize the world economically, socially, and politically. For example, Bangladesh alone currently has a population of 150m, which is projected to increase to 220m by the middle of the century. It is also projected that anticipated increase in the sea level will lead to submergence of about 15% of this low-lying deltaic country, rendering about 40m people bereft of homestead and livelihood. Another about 60m will suffer severely due to increased salinity and loss of river flow in winter and increased flooding in summer. Where will these 100m people go? Clearly, no social policy of the conventional type can protect such a vast population from ruin. What is necessary is an all out effort at the international level encompassing politics, economics, and social spheres. The effort will have to confront such issues as recognition of ‘climate refugees’, the right of climate refugees to immigrate to more safely located countries, the international arrangement (including both finance and logistics) under which such relocation of climate refugees can take place, mobilization of financial and technological assistance for climate change frontier countries so that fewer people are rendered as climate refugees, etc. THE DOMESTIC DIMENSION

While the divide between the developed and developing countries has justifiably received attention in the international climate change discourse and negotiation,

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leading to the UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, the divide between capable and not-so-capable within each country has received relatively less attention. People who are generally at the margin of the society also tend to be physically located at the territorial margin of a country. The dominant groups tend push the weak and vulnerable ones to the marginal, precarious spots of both the body of the society and the physical terrain of the land and the effects of climate change begin to appear and prove to be the most severe at these marginal parts. Thus, social policies that have been geared so far towards protection of the marginal and disadvantaged groups of the society will prove to be woefully inadequate in face of the grave danger posed by climate change. Here again, a huge national effort, encompassing economic, political, and social spheres, will be required to protect the ones who are more vulnerable to and affected by the effects of climate change. The conventional, narrowly defined social policies will not be able to do the job. FROM SOCIAL POLICY TO SOCIAL COHESION?

Consideration of both the international and domestic dimensions above demonstrates the challenge faced by social policies in the context of climate change. However, as every cloud is expected to have a silver lining, climate change is a challenge that brings sharply to fore the fact that, ‘We are all in this together!’. There may some differences in the timing and extent to which different countries are affected, but climate change is the quintessential global threat from which no country can escape, no matter how rich it is or how removed from the equator it is. Similarly, with a country, no matter how rich or how removed a person is from the coastal area, it is impossible for him of her to escape the impact of climate change ravaging the country. The universality of the climate change impact may therefore create a more receptive context for (re)asserting the truth that ‘social cohesion may be the best social policy’. On the one hand, social cohesion may prompt the type of economic, political, and social effort that is necessary for protection of those affected by climate change. On the other hand, it is only effort of the above type that can prevent the society from coming asunder and descending into chaos, both inside a country and at larger level of the world as a whole, under the impact of climate change. biographical note has taught economics at Harvard, Emory, Dhaka, and Kyushu universities before joining the United Nations as a Senior Economist. He has authored and edited four books and has published numerous journal articles in various areas of economics, including international growth, development, transition, and environment. He served as a member of the team that produced the UN flagship report, World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) of 2009 devoted to the issue of climate change and titled Promoting Development, Saving the Planet. Please address correspondence to Nazrul Islam, UNDESA, 2 UN Plaza, DC2–2042, New York, NY 10017, USA. [email: [email protected]] NAZRUL ISLAM

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Impact of Climate Change: Social Policy Initiatives A . V. R A M A N A C H A R Y U L U KIIT University, India C L I M AT E C H A N G E : I T S I M PA C T O N B A S I C H U M A N R I G H T S AND LIVELIHOODS

Climate change has impacted organic and inorganic processes on earth and all life forms were and are threatened. Significant among these impacts are those related to the rights of people to live and sustain life with dignity and respect, irrespective of their economic or social or cultural or political status across the globe. Livelihoods and human rights are affected because of the critical impact climate has on agriculture and the natural resources that offer livelihood options to people. Livelihoods of people are impacted by climate change, as it impedes the access to and changes the status of both private and common property resources for the local communities who eke out a living from them. The effect on agriculture and natural resources has led to loss of occupations, production systems, health and mortality at unprecedented levels in the last few decades and the magnitude and range of suffering of people is expected to increase in coming periods. Climate change related research and assessment documentation show four basic human rights being affected directly. 1. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 3. 3.1. 3.1.1.

3.2. 3.2.1.

Right to life: deaths, disease, and injury resulting from heat waves, floods, storms, fires and droughts; risk of death and injury by drowning due to changes in rivers and other water bodies due to sea level rise; increased deaths among the elderly or chronically sick people, young children, and the socially isolated during extreme heat waves; Right to food: increased failure of crops, leaving close to 50m more people at risk of hunger by 2020, and an additional 132m by 2050; shrinking arable land, shorter growing seasons, and lesser crop yields will not only add to hunger but also increase malnutrition; water shortages and rising temperatures to result in fall in crop yields up to 30% in parts of Asia, and food security will be threatened by 2050. Right to subsistence: Water: By 2020, between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa are likely to face greater water stress due to climate change. Reduced water flow from mountain glaciers could affect up to one billion people in Asia by the 2050s. Natural resources: Approximately 20–30 % of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction due to rise in global

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3.3. 3.3.1.

4. 4.1. 4.2.

temperatures by more than 1.5–2.5 C. Coral bleaching and coastal erosion will affect fish stocks – currently the primary source of animal protein for more than one billion people. Property and shelter: Millions more people risk facing annual floods due to sea level rise by the 2080s, mostly in the mega-deltas of Asia and Africa. Rising sea levels would lead to inundation and erosion, threatening vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support livelihoods. Right to health: Child malnutrition will increase, damaging growth and development prospects for millions of children; Increasing floods and droughts will lead to more cases of diarrhea and cholera. Over 150,000 people are currently estimated to die each year from diarrhea, malaria, and malnutrition caused by climate change It is estimated that 220–400m more people will be at risk of malaria. The risk of dengue fever is estimated to reach 3.5bn people by 2085 due to climate change.

Policy so far addressing climate change has been to stress pursuing a mitigation and adaptation strategy; the former will ensure reducing green house gas emissions as essential to respect and protect human rights and the latter will help build resilience to unavoidable impacts as an essential remedy for failing to respect and protect human rights. Such an approach is best built on the premise of: • • • • •

guaranteeing a core minimum – a basic standard of life; addressing the vulnerability levels of people; ensuring participation of people in policy making and local interventions; accountability and social governance; and approaches that enable the realization of rights by people.

S O C I A L P O L I C Y: F O C U S O F I N I T I AT I V E S

Challenge to these policies arises from the diversity, complexity and interrelatedness of issues in meeting the rights based objectives mentioned above. Not only do countries need to have a common understanding, but within each country too a concerted and synergistic effort among state and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is necessary. While corporate houses had taken a lead in climate change mitigation strategies, they focus on developing and offering technology and commerce based solutions in the marketplace. Co-opting communities and building their participation in a rights based approach would give a thrust hitherto not possible as it will help in last mile delivery of solutions and first mile feed-forward mechanism for people-centric policy creation. Most of the climate change policies are currently initiated and imposed from research and development bodies that work on diverse sciences and technologies. While it is accepted in developmental initiatives that the local communities and people have traditional knowledge and wisdom that works

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better in many livelihoods, involving solutions from local communities with regard to climate change mitigation and/or adaptation issues has not yet been built into the policy as yet. If there is an organic link created and developed to build a socially acceptable framework for addressing climate change from a micro ecosystem of a local community, it will hasten the process of mitigating the ill-effects of climate change. A role definition for state, NGOs, Corporate Houses and Communities would help pursue climate change meaningfully: State and international bodies may deal with policy formulation and strategic planning. They spear-head climate change initiatives with adaptation and mitigation strategies, work towards empowerment of society in building capacity to handle the strategies and be a watch-dog for the local governance and help develop institutional mechanisms.

The Corporate houses pursue commercially viable business models that contribute to minimal climate change. Their focus should be on energy technologies, and human capital endowment. NGO interventions are in promoting non-business models of reducing GHG emissions and focused towards disaster risk minimization and redressal. They prepare people in creating institutions that enable access to and exercise of rights. Individual interventions are not enlisted separately so far though it is worthwhile to focus on individual initiated pre-emption of climate change, protection of existing eco systems and derivation of appropriate and traditional technologies to mitigate the effects of climate change. The local communities and NGOs working on social causes need to relate the macro with micro and adopt strategies to involve people and communities that offer both short term and long term relief to livelihood challenges and firewall them from vulnerability situation. Such a scenario would help create opportunities for resilience and empowered communities. biographical note A.V. RAMANACHARYULU is Dean (Academics) at the

School of Rural Management at KIIT University. Please address correspondence to: Dr. A.V. Ramanacharyulu, Campus 7, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, India, PIN 751024. [email: [email protected]]

Climate Change and Social Policy: Implications for Nomads and the Subsistence Economy in Darfur ABDEL-BARI HASSAN NASR Social Policy, Planning, M&E Section UNICEF, Sudan ENVIRONMENT AND LIVELIHOOD

Pastoralism in Sudan came about precisely as an adaptation to climate variability and long-term climate change around late 1970s. It may, indeed, have arisen earlier and clearly predated agriculture by several millennia and coexisted

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with hunting and foraging. More than any other region in Africa, Sudan has a history of long-term extreme climate variability. Darfur nomads are the most at risk due the climatic change if compared to pastoralists in others in Sahel region of Africa and elsewhere, who face equivalent challenges due to their social, economic, and political marginalization. The Darfur case must be viewed in the context of current discourses on pastoralism, climate adaptation, land tenure security, and rights of pastoralists. In turn, lessons learned from Darfur have much wider regional and international policy implications. Intensive farming and traditional methods have exhausted the soil and brought a decline in soil fertility. Overgrazing and the irrational range management by livestock herders is another factor considered a main man-made reason for desertification. Rainfall is increasingly erratic and unreliable, so that people cannot rely on the amount of rain coming, and where it will fall. Over the last two decades the mean annual rainfall has dropped by 64%, resulting in increased aridity and vulnerability for nomadic population. Farmers have to adapt themselves to the reality of their current conditions. Improvements in traditional farming systems are necessary to update coping strategies and increase production. Farmers lacked knowledge, technology and tools to help them get the best from the fertile land. Most were building traditional terraces that do not make the most of the rain when it comes, and cannot withstand the strength of a storm, therefore wasting crops and water when they are washed away. Structural adjustment in the living condition of the nomads were due to the depletion of the water sources, thus affecting livestock ownership. D R O U G H T, D E S E RT I F I C AT I O N A N D V U L N E R A B I L I T Y

Much of our research has aimed to understand the causes of vulnerability, which are often deeply rooted in history, and embedded in complex interactions between people, the environment, and institutional and policy processes. It is therefore important to promote understanding and raise awareness in Sudan and similar Sahel region in Africa of the livelihood challenges facing specific pastoralist groups there, and to promote their inclusion as stakeholders in relevant national and international processes to meet humanitarian need and promote sustainable development. The droughts and famines of the early 1970s and 1980s in Darfur were widely reported but longer-term perspectives over a century or more on climate variability are rarely considered in long-term planning. Certainly this prolonged period of aridity and reduction in rainfall extending over 30 years was dramatic and caused devastating loss of lives and livelihoods of all groups. Climatologists generally agree this long-term desiccation was ‘a product of long-term climate variability driven by changes in patterns of global surface temperature … rather than being a consequence of the abuse of the land by humans and animals’ (Brooks, 2006: 2). In Sudan desertification is strongly linked to poverty, since poor people have little choice but to over-exploit the land. Extensive agriculture in the

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drylands of Sudan and the heavy dependence of rural people on natural resources for subsistence has largely contributed to land degradation and desertification. This situation could be further aggravated by the impacts of expected climatic changes (a decrease in precipitation and an increase in temperatures). Projected climate change by the year 2025, associated with a rise in mean temperature, will exacerbate the losses already experienced due to drought. The link between desertification and climate change is an important issue that needs to be better explored. SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL POLICIES IN THE CONTEXT O F C L I M AT E C H A N G E

Policies and practices in the past have undermined all institutions related to pastoralism, and this undermining in turn has affected development policies and claims for development that is adapted to pastoralism. Government responsibilities are split between multiple departments, each of which pursues its own agenda, which deprives the nomads of an integrated set of pro-pastoralist policies. This partly stems from the government’s complete failure to acknowledge the social, cultural, and economic importance of pastoralism. In so doing, the government has failed to develop coherent policies to address the long-term marginalization of pastoralists. Few services are adapted to the specific needs of mobile communities. The appointment of the Nomad Council is long overdue and a landmark opportunity to seriously review and address these issues. Previous history would suggest the Council may lack capacity in terms of infrastructure and technical and organizational skills, and therefore will require support. Representation of the Arab nomadic groups in local government, civil society, and among international agencies tends to be very limited. This limited representation is largely due to the nomads’ lack of education (and low literacy rates), but also because of discrimination and domination by other tribes. Many country reports have also highlighted specific constraints and data needs to build capacity related to the vulnerability and adaptation components of National Communications. In particular, such constraints include: • •

•

the lack of country-specific socio-economic scenarios; the deficiencies in data collection, quality control, archiving, retrieval, preparation and analysis of data; and, the lack of comprehensive studies on possible adaptation measures and cost-benefit analysis of adaptation options.

At the institutional level, Sudan has stressed the critical role that local government agencies play in the development and implementation of policies and measures to address climate change. Actions required to address these gaps include training programmes for local government officials, dedicated research activities and postgraduate courses and the initiation of specific institutional frameworks for climate change. Some parties have established training

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programs for local government officials. For example, Ghana assisted its district and metropolitan assemblies to draw up local environmental action plans that contain climate change programs and projects. The way for improving the living conditions of nomads is to promote the education of children in mobile communities by providing mobile and boarding schools as required, using the indigenous or local languages, and respecting the dignity of mobile communities by incorporating in the teaching curricula elements of local culture and indigenous knowledge. Despite positive commitments to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education for All (EFA), rigid state control over education can be a barrier to social change. Formal education systems promoting a national curriculum, standardized pedagogy and inflexible scheduling can lead to conflict between the traditional values of nomadic and pastoralist peoples and state policies as promulgated through the educational system, threatening the very sense of collective unity such policies are often intended to promote. If, in part, the situation of pastoralists and nomadic groups is just an extreme example of the problem that marginalized groups encounter, it is also a reminder that no learning process is context-free. In conclusion, does this mean that should education programs for the nomadic youth be adopted, and lead to skilled workforce ready for employment in cities that a way of life will be lost? Not altogether likely. Similar projects in other regions of the world, or even natural migratory cycles based on pure economics often prove that in the long run, people choose to return to their roots. However this in itself is another topic for discussion. reference Brooks, N. (2006) Climate Change, Drought and Pastoralists in the Sahel. Discussion Note for World Initiative on Sustainable Pastoralism, WISP/IUCN, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ ~e118/publications/WISP_CCAP_final_en_v2.pdf biographical note ABDEL-BARI HASSAN NASR

is Monitoring and Evaluation Officer with UNICEF – Social Policy, Planning, M&E Section, Sudan Country Office. He has a BSc Hon in agriculture economics and an MA in development planning. He has worked with government, UN agencies and private institutions in planning, monitoring and evaluation in developing countries. Please address correspondence to: Adbel-Bari Hassan Nasr, Social Policy, Planning, M&E Section UNICEF, Sudan Country Office, House 74, Street 47, Khartoum-2, Sudan. [email: [email protected]]