The agenda of this evening's panel is to examine the recent developments and ways in which civil society pressures have affected climate change public policies. We will examine ways in which business is responding and positioning itself to take economic advantage of newly created market conditions that are driving private investment in low-carbon economy.

To frame the debate, let’s consider that the problem of finding an effective policy tool to combat climate change is still very much alive.

According to a new analysis by the Energy Information Administration, the proposed Lieberman-Warner Bill, designed to cap greenhouse gas emissions, would increase the cost of electricity and natural gas, as generating companies turn away from dirty coal. This is leading market participants to consider that new regulation would spark more reliance on nuclear power and renewable energy, as well as drive the use of new carbon capture and sequestration technology at fossil-fuel power plants.

While uncertain for 2008, the Bill will certainly set the stage for 2009 policy course.

Now weight all of that added cost to industry and consumers in US markets and back that against 1% year over year rise in carbon emissions in EU under a well developed cap and trade scheme.

Ask yourself, are we heading in the right direction?

While it seems apparent that we have reached catharsis in terms of public awareness of the magnitude of the danger that carbon emissions and global warming present for the planet, it is not apparent to me that we are anywhere near the required level of public policy determination and resource commitment needed to effectively deal with the problem.

Thus, this evening's panel is uniquely positioned to assess how far reaching, realistic and effective are the pressures of civil society on public policy mandates.

Consequently, we will examine what are the realized and expected effects of private investments that have been put in place in anticipation of such policy and market conditions.

The Four pillars of tonight’s panel are: 1.) Green Activism, 2) Changing Consumer Behavior, 3) Role of Private Investments, 4) Getting a Global Grip on the Problem

1.) Green Activism
It is clear that well endowed and sophisticated green activism continues to influence legislation that will ultimately provide trajectory for a more predictable and stable low-carbon economy. Insight to this aspect will be offered by Pincas Javetz, the Director of the sustainable development knowledge website, sustainabilitank.org. He will provide a global overview or major trends and the future of green activism.

2.) Changing Consumer Behavior
We will look to see how applying these ideas on the local and regional level are key to sustained behavioral change in consumption patterns. Jonas Rabinovitch, a Brazilian urban environmental planner and UN interregional adviser will discuss national and local governance for green cities and effects they have on local population. Among his many accomplishments Jonas was an adviser to the Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, an Award Winning City for Green Urban Design.

3.) Role of Private Investments
As mentioned earlier, the market driven carbon emissions cap and trade scheme well underway in Europe is now the subject of considerable debate in the US, Canada and Australia. A similar trading scheme to the one in the EU is now slowly making its presence on the regional level in North America and is expected to be introduced in Canada and Australia in the near term. The global carbon market is projected to reach $92 billion by the end of 2008, according to industry statistics. The average price of carbon is expected to rise steadily. This has direct implications on business and creates opportunities in a number of market and technology sectors such as fossil fuels, nuclear energy, renewable -- whether that is solar, wind, geothermal or other forms of new low-carbon technology. With this in mind, Mark Fulton, Deutsche Bank Asset Management’s Head of Climate Change Investment Strategy, will discuss trends and challenges in investing in climate change driven markets, as well as discuss the likely evolution of the carbon market post 2012.

Finally,
4.) Getting a Global Grip on the Problem:
Considering carbon pollution in its pure from as an economic externality for any given geography, it is critical to examine prospects of UN efforts in the context of Bali-to-Copenhagen climate change negotiations for creating a global governance framework tasked with reducing carbon emissions. This is critical given the fact that in 2007 China has surpassed US as the top emitter of CO2. That is double the size of EU emissions and 7 times the emissions of India and Japan by 2010. Answers to the questions of the pace of development, time of deployment, and likely enforcement capability of such global governance structure will be offered by Nikhil Chandavarkar, Chief of Communications and Information Management at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and a leader of the UNDESA Climate change knowledge portal.

Thank you!
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I was going to talk to you about global governance for an inclusive green economy. I think I’ll pick up a few of the themes that my proceeding speakers mentioned. First of all the tremendous need for governance at the local, the national, and the supranational level have the fundamental challenge that we live in a Westphalian system of nation states. That is what the UN is predicated on, but in terms of the environment we are one country. The world doesn’t care where the 28 billion tons of carbon that we spew out every year comes from, yet our governance is limited by the Westphalian system of nation states. This is the challenge, this is the challenge that we are right now in with private negotiations going from the Bali Conference to the Copenhagen Conference in 2009. We have to square the will of 192 member states which are organized into groups, but with very conflicting points of view and the challenge of finding a common denominator which would save the planet. This is some of the tension I wanted to share with you, the points of view of the major groups, and how we can square the circle so we have some form of a binding commitment in 2009.

The major landmark last year was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced its 4th report. There was a debate before hand, but the general consensus is it put an end to the debate, even the US Administration accepts global warming as a fact. What we have distilled out of this report is both intersecretarial discussions and intergovernmental discussions, both with 3 goals; emissions will have to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and we will have to cut emissions to 50% of the 1990 level by the year 2050. In 2005there were 28 billion tons of carbon per year, but in 1990 there were 22.7, so that would have to be reduced to 11.35 billion tons by the year 2050. It would need to massively transform our production and consumption patterns taking some inspiration on what was done in Curitiba and the tremendous investments that Mark has discussed. This is the scale of the challenge, and this is what would be required for the third goal of keeping the carbon concentration to 450 parts per million and the temperature rise to 2 degrees. This is what is called the danger point, beyond that tipping point we would have catastrophic climate change. So you see the presidential candidates are all talking about cutting emissions by 80% or by 50%, some of the European governments, like France, has actually started enacting legislation to that effect. What actually happened is from 1990 to 2005, emissions increased from 22.7 to 28.98 per billion tons for the world as a whole.

Let me tell you a little bit about the negotiation process. One of the good things about the process now, compared to the process leading up to Kyoto is the debate has become richer, the points of view of developing countries has come into the equation and we stick to 5 major dimensions. The overall vision doesn’t just look at the quantities of carbon, what we call mitigations, but it looks at people too. It’s not just about quantities of carbon, but it’s about livelihoods and the equal distribution of income. The five dimensions of the overall vision of 192 member state on climate change, mitigation, deals with actually reducing the amount of carbon being spewed out every year. Adaptation is adapting to rising sea levels, droughts, and disasters of various kinds. The technologies to do that are the fourth element and then there’s the finance to pay for it. It may look simple, but in fact there is a tremendous tension behind these issues. From last year at the 13th conference in December at Bali, UN parties met about framework on climate change to Copenhagen at the end of 2009, which will be the 15th meeting. There will be a series of meetings which I will tell you briefly about, there’s one in Bangkok, there will be one in June, in Bonn, one in Ghana, and finally one in Holland. What will they look at? If you look at what came out of Bali, the big gain was that the world has moved away from looking just at mitigation to looking at adaptation. There is greater acceptance that world wide countries, particularly poor countries, need the technology and finance to adapt to climate change. For countries like the Netherlands, who’s lived with rising sea levels, has the infrastructure to adapt, such as houses with foundations that will actually rise with rising sea level. The Maladies will probably disappear and in a decade or two a good part of Bangladesh will be under water, and they don’t have the resources to react to that.

These are the kinds of things that were brought into the equations, where as Kyoto was primarily about quantities of carbon and who cuts. Here we are looking at a much more complex set of issues. So these issues have been divided up, they will look at finance and technology in Bonn next month, in Ghana in August, they will look at deforestation which Mark has mentioned and the sacral issue that led to climate change. Finally, in Holland they will look at risk management and some of the risks of climate change. These meetings will continue through 2009 and finally in Copenhagen, we hope to have an agreement. Now these three goals I mentioned are plain to see, everyone knows what everyone agrees on, but they could not get onto the agenda in Bali. Many people, particularly in civil society were very disappointed about it, while many of us in the government sectors were very happy, because the richness of this agenda is a stark contrast to the Kyoto agenda. Civil society is very unhappy because they would like to see these three goals as part of the Bali roadmap and they are not, because countries feel the dividing up of the countries is what this is all about. There is a lot about China and India and they speak, unlike rich countries, in per capita emissions. If you take India for example, although they are the fourth largest emitter of carbon is absolute terms, the average Indian emits one ton of carbon per year, compared to the average American who emits almost 20 tons. They say that the anecdote of the Chinese, where as the average suburban American house wife rides in an SUV, the private negotiation are trying to deprive Chinese of a bus where 50 of them ride. It’s that kind of graphic contrast that you see in what is described as the dialogue of the death, there are developing countries speaking to large ones, but speaking in per capita emissions, whereas rich countries speaking in absolute emissions. We have some bridge building, Angela Merkel of Germany, was a first head of an industrial country to start speaking with per capita convergence. I think both sides realize they have to give, in the next year and a half that what will have to happen.

Some of the equity will cut the people aspects of climate change, which very often in the media when you see climate discussions about it, is focused on absolute qualities of carbon rather than the affect on people. The President of the General Assembly of the UN and the Secretary General have provided 5 parameters to guide member states. I will share those with you because I feel they give some of the sense of what will be needed to reach an agreement. They are calling for continued and enhanced leadership by industrial countries. I think there still is recognition that historically industrial countries still have a responsibility in terms of the cumulative emissions of the carbon debt. There are about 800,000 billion tons of carbon and that is more than the earth could have absorbed in the last 250 years, which has lead to the high concentrations of carbon now, about 385 part per million. Prior it was about 260 part per million in 1750 and that’s the level at which the earth can absorb. So there is a carbon debt and industrial countries are expected to make leap way cuts.

The second guiding principal is incentives for developing countries to act without sacrificing poverty reduction or economic growth, so there is some recognition here of their right to emit and in order for the 50 Chinese to ride on a bus when they had no access to transportation before. The third principal is new and it was not in the Kyoto protocol, which is an engagement by the larger faster developing countries like the Chinas, the Indians, and the Brazils, often referred to as industrializing or emerging countries. China has just surpassed the US in terms of absolute levels, so there’s recognition that they would need to come on board too. Finally the next principal which is the support for adaptation of developing countries particularly small islands and the least developed and low income countries. Strength in technological development and the dissemination of technologies, finally new approaches to financing including better use of market based approaches, like expanding the cap and trade system to cover the world as a whole, which are some of the ideas Mark was discussing. World leaders do want these three goals that come out of the IPPC report to find their way into the agreement. I’ll repeat them: peak in emissions in the next 15 years; a reduction of emissions as compared to 1990 by 50% by 2050; and limiting atmosphere carbon concentration to under 450 parts per million to keep the temperature rise at 2 degrees. It’s only by equally address these different aspects of mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance that we can really get there. It is only by that way can we bring all these countries on board. Finally—I think we have to remember that it’s all about people. Our goal needs to be not just a green economy, but an inclusive green economy; a green economy for all.

Haris Hromic

Haris Hromic works for Lehman Brothers Institutional Client Group, Global Fixed Income Sales in NY, covering range of fixed income and alternative investments platforms. Prior, Mr. Hromic served at the NYC Office of Management and Budget under Mayor Bloomberg administration with oversight responsibilities for $1.6bln capital program.

He served as Business Consultant at the NYC Office of the Comptroller and as a Research Associate at the Research Foundation of the City University of New York on a nation-wide study of executive leadership, municipal resource allocation, and pressure group politics. He is a Fellow of the RSA and a member of the NY Academy of Sciences and The Academy of Political Science. Following his appointment to the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs he now serves with Council's Development Committee where he helps advance Council's global development strategy.

He holds M.A. in Political Science from New York University specializing in International Political Economy, M.P.A. in Public Management and Policy Evaluation and Analysis from Baruch College Graduate School of Public Affairs, and a B.B.A in International Marketing from Zicklin School of Business. He has published works in the field of international relations, genocide and social reconstruction, and gender leadership politics.

Nikhil Chandavarkar

A national of India, Nikhil Chandavarkar holds a Ph.D in economics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., where he taught from 1976-1979 and published his dissertation on “The Balance of Payments and Inflation in Brazil.” He joined the United Nations in 1979, serving in Paraguay, Colombia and twice in Brazil, where he was Deputy Resident Representative and then interim UNDP Resident Representative/UN Resident Coordinator. He was directly involved in the preparations for and follow-up to
the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.

He was Chief of training and learning in UNDP and later Director of External Relations, where he helped strengthen inter-agency coordination and interaction with member states, including on UNDP’s strategies for sustainable human development. He later advised policy-makers and policy shapers in various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America on human development and sustainable development as principal inter-regional adviser in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

He is presently Chief of Communications and Information Management, UNDESA, with responsibility for communicating and publishing UNDESA’s knowledge products and policy messages in economic and social development and building international communities of development knowledge and practice, particularly using information technology. His current responsibilities include leadership for the UNDESA Climate Change knowledge portal at: http://www.un.org/esa/desa/climatechange/ and the on-line news magazine DESA News: http://www.un.org/esa/desa/desaNews/v11n10/. He has authored a policy note for governments proposing policy options for sustainable development (http://esaconf.un.org/WB/?boardid=ndsnet) and recently co-authored a paper for the Club of Rome on transforming values through education for sustainable development in the 21st century.

His special interests include human development, sustainable development, and intercultural and inter-religious dialogue. He recently made a presentation to the Carnegie Council, on “Crafting a Fair Climate Agreement”. (Summary and audio link: http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/media/audio/data/000164 ) and to the UN Association of the US on “Amazonia: security, livelihoods and nature.”

He is fluent in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. He is married to Dr. Marilda Ines Coutinho Chandavarkar, a Brazilian science educator, with whom he has two sons, Neil and Mark, and resides in Scarsdale, N.Y. He may be contacted at: chandavarkar@un.org.