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Reshaping the Debate on Climate Change

A lecture by Mary Robinson, President, Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice

Tuesday, 23rd November 2010, 6.30 pmThe Round Room, The Mansion House, Dawson Street, Dublin 2

1 Reshaping the Debate on Climate Change Tuesday 23rd November 2010 2

In hard times and goodness knows in Ireland we already know we are in for very hard times, it can be difficult to attend to the long-term. When recession and debt pose urgent constraints, 10 year targets and 50 year plans may appear a luxury. Climate change can appear far away in both time and space and yet of course it is not far away it is not merely a long-term problem.

Climate change is what we are doing right here and right now. That this proximity is often forgotten is testament to the many ways in which the headline debates about climate change can lead us astray. For example we tend to think of climate change as something invisible something that is taking place behind the scenes so to speak but it is actually very visible. It’s visible in the disappearing glaciers and the rapidly receding snows of Kilimanjaro. It’s visible in the carbon monoxide plumes of rush hour traffic and the city lights that you see flying on an aeroplane. It’s visible in the 10cm of sea level rise around the Irish coast since 1900 and the one billion sterling a year that the British Government now spends on flood damage.

Or again climate change can appear to require a leap of faith as something almost mystical, a domain of believers. But again this is not so. Our understanding of climate change is based on hard science and is not only thoroughly vetted but it is easier to understand than much of the financial wizardry of the past decade, the wizardry of derivatives and rebundled debt. The problems of the bubble that Ireland and other countries got caught up in because nobody in fact could understand it, not even those who were making a lot of money out of it. So while we often speak of climate change as requiring vision it does not really need much more vision than we need to act, to do the right thing as in any other area of life. The evidence is here in front of us, the means to deal with it are here too. The vision that is needed is merely a belief that we can act, individually and ultimately collectively to address the problems.

The energy we use, the forms of transport we choose the decisions we take for the economy to open new terminals for example, the degree to which we diagnose the consequence of our actions, all of these things are right now and right here.

In recent months and years the debate on climate change has become somewhat tense and obscure and contested particularly in the United States where I was based, working out of New York and you see the lobbies, largely fossil fuel companies, supporting the lobbies of deniers trying to confuse us. Perhaps it’s time to change all this. I’m going to suggest this evening that change means talking clearly about two things: what we can do right now about climate change and who will suffer if we fail? These are the things that I think we really ought to focus on this evening.

Let me begin with the second of these points; who will suffer if we fail to manage climate change? The question immediately opens up a number of other questions. For one, are there not already people suffering from climate change? And the answer I really do feel is a very definite yes. So far it is mostly restricted to the world’s extremities - among the Arctic people for example fishing and herding patterns are changing. Livestocks that used to be seasonally dependable are less so.

Thank you very much for that warm welcome. It’s really very nice to be back here in the round room of the Mansion House, it brings back a lot of memories of earlier meetings here on issues we wanted to talk about over the decades. Director General, Mary Kelly, chair, ladies and gentlemen, I’m very pleased, indeed I am delighted, to have been invited to give one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change lectures that you’ve just heard about; the eleventh in a really very significant series and the first of the 2010-2011 series.

I know that the Agency has been attracting speakers of the highest calibre who have illustrated the many different aspects and challenges of climate change. All the lectures to date have followed the EPA description of the remit to focus and I quote

“on providing updates from the science of climate change as well as the policy and political response to this global challenge.”

My approach is somewhat different. As the title suggests, I feel it’s important to reshape the debate somewhat. That’s not in any way denying the science rather it’s simply putting people, both individuals and communities at the centre so let me begin to argue my case.


Equally obviously we cannot sit back and resign ourselves to the possibility that we will overshoot our targets and so we have to adapt to a changing climate, and that’s the second kind of management. For our capacity to adapt will depend on how well we have succeeded in stalling or impeding climate change in the first place.

Mitigation and adaptation are really closely linked and inseparable. Our adaptive ability depends not only on the degree of climate change that eventually happens and of course it becomes more difficult with every marginal increase in global average temperatures. It also depends on the predictability of the effects for we can only prepare for outcomes that we can reasonably expect.

Unfortunately the more we allow climate change to take hold the more unpredictable will be the effects. This is true for a variety of reasons including the existence of feedback loops and the complexity of the world’s climate which is beyond even our best models. There are degrees of mismanagement and each further step we take into a world of climate unpredictability will bring in its wake an ever expanding group of likely victims. But the actual vulnerability of individuals in any given case will be ever less predictable.

That takes me back to the question I haven’t really addressed yet: who will suffer? There are ways in which we will all suffer of course from the loss of biodiversity of plant and animal life that climate change will wreak. These are losses in the planet and to humankind as such, they’re common goods, if you like, that we’re losing But there are also very particular people and groups who will bear tremendous personal costs.

For the most part the numbers of these people remain large and somewhat vague, couched in the language of probability. The probability that we will have 200 million climate refugees by 2050 - a probability that we need to think about a lot. Flooding in the low lying delta areas of Bangladesh for example is predicted to affect some 20 million people. This figure is in many ways too large to comprehend, it fails the imagination. In time these shadowy figures will begin to take on real flesh and blood. We’ll read about them in our newspapers and in our media increasingly and we’ll begin with more confidence to attribute floods and other extreme weather events to climate change. The recent floods in Pakistan for example are a case in point. They took place at a time when fresh water flows have increased by 18% since 1994 challenging the existing flood control infrastructures in many countries.

Were the flood victims also climate victims? Questions of this kind will no doubt always be somewhat contestable but as climate events proliferate their man-made cause will become ever more difficult to deny. I think we need to pause and think about the fact that 20 million people were displaced by the flooding in Pakistan and many millions are still displaced and the more remote millions, and they’re still millions, will remain displaced for quite some time. It’s somehow a forethought of a reality that you know a lot about in this room because you’ve been concerned about this issue. But why is it that we are not thinking about it in more thoughtful, in more analytical, in more real terms of an urgency of what we need to do?

And there are plenty of other concrete examples of populations vulnerable to climate harms right now.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where we’ve done most of our work in Realising Rights the dry periods have become longer and harsher. On average the seasons are no longer what they used to be. I was recently in Liberia and heard the president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf complain:

“The rains should have stopped a month ago but it’s still raining and it’s very hard to fix our roads and we are suffering now from flooding in parts of Monrovia”.

It’s the pattern all over Sub-Saharan Africa: long periods of drought and then flash flooding and then drought again - not normal seasons where farmers will know where to sow and when to reap. And while it’s predicted that each of these phenomena will worsen, it won’t be long before we can add to them an increase in the intensity, if not the number, of hurricanes and a shift in their location towards more populated areas; flooding and eroding coastal areas, and of course, droughts.

Another question that arises when we ask who will suffer if we fail to manage climate change is: what it would mean to manage climate change at all? There are at least two different ways we might manage it. One would be to prevent it altogether or reduce the chance of it becoming severe or irreversible. A second way of managing it is to learn how to adapt to those changes that will take place. As to the first, the idea that we can stop climate change happening at all is looking increasingly out of reach. As things stand, as I think you well know in this audience global concentrations of greenhouse gases cannot increase by very much more if we are to stop average temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius, the target set in Copenhagen. This target has created much hardship for people in certain parts of the word, like the Maldives and other small islands. It’s not as if this level of 2 degrees will protect these places, which is why a number of people want us to aim for the target of 1.5 degrees and 350 parts per million.

However none of the main emitting countries currently have policies in place that would achieve this goal of staying below 2 degrees Celsius. None of the countries have adequate binding policies in place. One important reason for this is that the immensity of the task of emission reductions is frightening, it’s very hard to look at it politically for rich world governments. It’s simply hard to see how emissions can be reduced by 90%, even over a period of 40 years. As a result there’s been a lot of talk of achieving global cuts by acting in low emission countries. Acting to put clean technology in poor countries is of course immensely important but it is not a substitute for cutting at home.

By definition there is less room to cut there (the developing world) than there is in the rich world that has seen its growth based on carbon and based on emissions. In truth we’ve reached the limits of the world’s development space and from now on the challenge will be to ensure that it is more equitably distributed. Factor in development needs and population growth and the scale of the task becomes quickly apparent. We know that we are going to go from up to 7 billion either at the very end of this year or sometime in 2011, to more than 9 billion in 40 years time by 2050. That’s the fastest growth of population the world has ever seen and it is mainly in poor populations that we’ll see that growth.


challenge is to find the sorts of policies that promote growth and development and to implement those policies in poorer countries. There’s been much talk of creating an enabling environment for growth and investment, about the benefits of free trade and intellectual property protection. About the need to build the rule of law in fragile states, the richer world has been active in creating these frameworks in poorer countries through development assistance.

A second less commonly articulated view is that it was up to the poor countries to adopt the appropriate means of generating growth themselves. This response derived either from a solid belief in self determination - that the rich world had no business telling poorer countries what to do, or it came from the rather less charitable assumption, that developing countries had no one to blame but themselves for their predicament and were not owed a handout from the rest of the world, from wealth to which they had contributed little.

It’s gradually becoming clear however that climate change is making both of these positions difficult to sustain. As to the first, continuing global growth at 2% to which we have become accustomed in recent years, that’s overall averaging is simply not compatible with the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases. The planet will not be able to bear the consequences of all populations attaining to the kinds of standards that typify the wealthiest lifestyles. Even with a revolution in green technologies, a revolution that is vital, and has so far been slow in becoming even then it’s clear that stark choices lie ahead about what kinds of lifestyle will be able to be realised at the global level on the one hand and what basic subsistence level must be available to everyone on the other.

As to the second argument it turns out that poorer countries have been contributing all along and not just in terms of the standard natural resources we’re all familiar with. First, they have contributed in that the space for carbon driven development that was always assumed to be waiting for them no longer exists. I think we really have to ponder that. We’ve got poor parts of the world where over a billion people have no access to electricity and they want the benefits that we take automatically by just clicking a switch. But we’ve used up the space for a safe world and if all of the two plus billion who are going to join our world in the next forty years were to live the kind of lifestyle we live then we have no way of staying below (2 degrees Celsius) unless we have mitigated by the 90% that has been talked about, that we are frightened by and haven’t found a way to do. So we’ve been using up, in a greedy way, the development space that is now no longer available for the poorest who are being born into our world. That space has already been confiscated and used towards growth in other parts of the world. And second the poor now appear to be further paying in terms of the ravages of climate change. In short, as things stand, the world’s poorest seem to be well placed to carry much if not most of the cost of climate change. The costs in terms of the harms of climate change itself but also the opportunity costs in terms of development options forgone.

Inuit groups in Alaska and Northern Canada testified in a legal brief taken to a regional human rights tribunal the Inter-American Commission to the degree to which their lifestyles had already been impacted by changing coastlines and the altered migratory patterns of fish and animals. These Inuit are now asking the rest of us, the international community, do they not have the right to be cold? The right to live the life that their ancestors lived? To fish, to have their culture, and all that based on what they have always known and handed down from generation to generation?

The population of sinking islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu are increasingly treating their plight as urgent. Sami reindeer herders in Norway have voiced similar concerns about the depletion of their livelihoods. In some cases small island governments are supporting proactive emigration to other countries and seeking territory in less vulnerable neighbouring countries. The sadness of that for island peoples is very hard to measure; they are leaving the place where their ancestors were buried. These are people who link their sense of community with the past and their ancestors and they are facing a reality where this will no longer be possible for their children and their children’s children. And maybe they should be thinking of where are we going to try to move to? Who will take us in? How will we bring our culture and our sense of community identity and individual identity there? But beyond these considerations of individual harm and community harm the question - “Who will suffer?” - is also a much larger question - one that I call Climate Justice.

What is Climate Justice? Perhaps the most straightforward way to conceive it is to ask the question who will carry the costs of climate change? The costs include not only the actual damage to lives and livelihoods caused by changing weather patterns. They also include the costs of adapting and the costs of having to either stall development or to develop in new and untried ways.

Viewed in this way the degree to which climate change carries the potential for grossly cruel and unfair outcomes begins to come into focus. I mentioned earlier that we’ve practically used up the world’s development space. We have of course in this part of the world benefitted immensely while doing so but the “we” who have benefitted remains a comparatively small minority. One billion people today live in hunger, one billion live in slums, many more live in poverty however it is measured. We have witnessed a long period of extraordinary growth and wealth creation but large swathes of the Earth’s population have been omitted from the process. Even within richer countries of course these benefits are spread very unevenly. There’s a lot of documentation at the moment about the increasing inequality in the United States and the fact that those on long-term unemployment are running out of their benefits. So in the still richest and most powerful country in the world the divides are actually widening which is an interesting perspective. But the principle wealth differential remains broadly between countries or groups of countries north - south or what we call developed - developing.

Before now there were two common responses to this observation – the most common has been to say that the poorer world will catch up in time. The key


This is the kind of conversation that I hope we can increasingly have here in Ireland. It would be good to see Ireland giving a lead on this issue being a bridge with developing countries that we have an historic link with, it’s in our DNA to understand this justice dimension and the issues for developing countries.

So it turns out that a debate about climate change is actually a conversation about many other things; about growth, about energy, about technology, about economic policy, about international relations, about ethical leadership, about what a global policy might look like and indeed about the impossibility henceforth of not having one. But this aspect of climate change the way it changes how we talk and think about everything else is not always obvious in the way we talk about climate change itself. Too often we still talk about the weather or we get nervous about the implications for a given government of taking unpopular or difficult steps with elections always looming not far ahead. Or we debate the science and the scandals, the possibility of the emails showing that the science may not be as good as it is and that getting inflated by the deniers.

Perhaps it’s time instead that we started to talk about justice. When we do many of the answers will begin to appear much clearer, much more obvious. And it’s my firm belief that we must focus on justice that actually led me a few years ago to a conclusion that we have to find a concept that bridges the issues that I have been talking about. The concept of Climate Justice which has led me to establish as you’ve heard The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice under the innovation alliance of Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin.

I want to assure you that we won’t be building a major office rather we will be what might be described as a lean mean machine focusing on solidarity, partnership and shared engagement with all who are interested in Climate Justice. We’ll provide a space for facilitating action on Climate Justice and we plan to make our website a one stop shop, to gather what is happening around the world, what different communities and thinkers and academics and others are doing so that we have an up to date and accurate informational topic and we’re really drawing attention to the best practices. There are some incredibly interesting ideas of how to encourage adaptation, how to encourage more effective efficiency and mitigation and so on. We hope that this will be a go-to place for solutions to inequities faced by the most vulnerable and we will always be focused on sustainable and people centred development.

So I am really happy to be coming back to Ireland particularly at this difficult time. I think it’s more important to be at home, more important to be seeing what we can do as a people. In New York when people are down on their luck it’s amazing how the following morning they pick themselves up, they reinvent themselves and they decide to move forward and there’s a little bit of a need, I think, to have a certain climate of not so much analyzing and reanalyzing and worrying about the things that have gone wrong in recent months and even years but also seeing the immense potential in this country for moving forward.

The distribution of costs at present in short is extraordinarily, starkly unjust. What is crystal clear is that from now on the wellbeing of those in richer and poorer countries is intimately related. We are inextricably linked in our futures because we’re using up this development space and we have to find ways to be fairer, to be more equitable in doing so.

The global development space is it turns out very scarce. It must be treated with immense respect and closely regulated and the same rules must sooner or later apply to everyone. Development is a global concern and so by corollary is the welfare of those living in other countries. We live, in short, in a world of increasing intimacy. It’s not enough for me to realise that my carbon saturated life here today has in part caused the climate refugee fleeing her flooded home in Bangladesh tomorrow. I must also recognise that if she is to be denied access to carbon fuelled economic growth I must also surely be obliged to provide her some substitute form of wherewithal.

Our good life here and of course the current financial mess shouldn’t blind us to the fact that we still in Ireland, whether we like it or not, in global terms have a good life on average. Some much better than others but overall we still have a good life and this has been built, at least in part, on her precariousness – by my climate refugee in Bangladesh. Of course in many senses we already know this so to approach climate change as Climate Justice means we can’t ignore it, we must respond, we must do the right thing.

These thoughts already led me in some way into my second question: What can we do right now? In further response to this question it’s worth noting that one country has already pledged to be carbon neutral by 2020. That’s a pledge made by its president. It was made publically in Copenhagen and steps are being taken by his country to achieve that carbon neutral status. The country is the Maldives - the islands of the Maldives. The Maldives of course is a tiny polluter and its efforts will have no noticeable impact on global climate change but there lies the rub. The Maldives is likely to sink before the century is out and cannot by itself do anything about that. so it is showing the way to the rest of us.

The Maldives story show us two things. On the one hand this problem will only be fixed through concerted global action. As long as the energy used in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole which is about 700 million persons continues to be matched by that of greater New York City which is 19 million we cannot expect to fix the problem.

On the other hand however countries don’t have to wait for international negotiations to be resolved in order to take steps to treat climate change They can act on their own, they can show the way. Even if they cannot lead the world they can show what leadership is, they can do the right thing, they can if you like light a candle rather than cursing the darkness. They can start to think through what a responsible economic policy would look like in a Climate Justice world. They can begin to enact R&D policies that focus on green technologies. They can begin to explore means of transferring technologies to countries badly needing them.


Questions and Answers Session Questions and Answers chaired by Dr. John Bowman

So I look forward to the challenge ahead and to exploring potential linkages with the EPA and with other agencies and indeed third level institutions throughout the island of Ireland and abroad. We want the Foundation to be very open source and very much linking with those who are working in the area.

In conclusion let me return to the concern I expressed at the beginning of my talk this evening; the fact that in hard times it can be difficult to attend to the long-term. I hope that what I’ve said already and the dialogue that we are going to have will help to convince us all that we don’t have the luxury of not attending to the long-term and as I so often do I rely on the words of one of our great poets to help argue my case. To show us the way in his great poem “Under Ben Bulben”, Yeats said and I quote

“Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.”

Now more than ever we need to draw on that spirit of indomitable Irishry to encourage us to work to secure Climate Justice for all, to have Ireland give some leadership in this so that we can be proud of it. So that we can be the bridge that Ireland is so equipped to be, that we can work together to impact the world and to give voice and space to those who need us to be there with them and for them.

Thank you very much and I look forward to our discussion.

~ end ~

Q Can I just begin perhaps by asking you would you be hopeful talking about the Irishry that Irish foreign policy would embrace this agenda because in some ways there’s not a cost involved. It’s an idea and it needs as much support diplomatically and politically as possible?

MR In fact in a very encouraging way that’s already happening. I’ve been trying to quietly consult with academics, with civil society, with NGO’s but also particularly with Irish Aid with the Minister and his officials and in fact we got an unsolicited establishment grant from Irish Aid.

This is an area that fits very well with the policies of Irish Aid in the countries that we are involved in. In our work in Realising Rights I think I’ve been in all of the Irish Aid countries, except Lesotho, in the last year and a half. I’ve had really very good discussions on the ground with our Ambassadors and their colleagues there and there is a very real connection with the work that’s already being done. If anything this is a framing that can help to bring that work together and link it in a very supportive way.

(Please take note that the following is not an exact transcript).


So that’s where you are looking at statistics and you can have effective deniers. My sense is that if we can get the Climate Justice debate across - it’s about people and it’s about people suffering and they can be witnesses.

And in Cancun we’re bringing wise women, grassroots women to tell their story and we are trying to highlight women’s leadership in Cancun in a very practical, people-oriented way because you actually can’t deny that.

There’s a certain integrity about people giving witness whether it’s the president of the Maldives talking about his country or an Inuit farmer or an indigenous person or farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. I think it’s that people-centred voice that will prevent us from these clever, fossil fuel supported deniers with their bad science.

Q Some of them, it’s not just bad science some of them know what they are doing don’t they? It’s mischievous and it’s disinformation. I mean misinformation is when you don’t know. Disinformation is when you know and you tell it wrong. The tobacco industry did that for years. Do you know of any climate denier who doesn’t have a vested interest in being a denier?

MR I don’t have many climate deniers among my close acquaintances to be honest! I think your point is well taken I think there is a real link and there is a media link as well. There are powerful media figures who are giving a lot of oxygen to the deniers it’s all kind of connected.

Q What would their motive be?

MR I think in a way it’s a motive of wanting a particular approach to governance and to the economy that doesn’t want to face these kind of issues which would require a very different approach of equity, of fairness, between governments, of more government policies that provided for more equality at international level. All of that is an anathema to some of the press.

Q And do you sense that when you want to get your message across through the media that it sometimes doesn’t get as much coverage as you were promised by the journalist?

MR I haven’t been able to pick that out particularly. I would say in the United States partly for the reason of the word justice already evoking lawyers and courts it can be more difficult to get mainstream media.

Q I was in Copenhagen and I attended the Alternative Climate Forum and the message there was System Change not Climate Change. Could you comment on this please? Thank you.

MR I think probably what was being discussed is a dimension of a Climate Justice approach which takes to a logical conclusion what I was talking about. About richer countries based on fossil fuel growth having actually used up a disproportionate part of the carbon budget that the world can use and that now Climate Justice demands that we all have a limited carbon allocation.

This is an argument made with a lot of logic behind it.

So I’ve been enormously encouraged by this because as I mentioned earlier the Foundation is going to stay extremely small and we’re hoping that we can partner and leverage and link as much as possible and that it will be possible maybe in four or five years’ time for people when they hear the word Climate Justice - oh that’s something that Ireland is leading on.

Then that has to be Ireland as a whole, the EPA, Irish Aid, academic, universities, NGO’s etc. If we do, then I think it’s an important bridge is the word I would use - it’s an important link that I think we can really fill and we have the integrity.

We are very well regarded by developing countries because our aid is very country owned, very respectful. Irish people on the ground, as we know, mingle very well and get on very well with those we work with and partner.

Q You also have one terrific advantage that the brand has a concept; two words four syllables that are immediately understandable.

MR Well I’m not sure. A lot of people say to me, “What’s this Climate Justice? I don’t understand what you mean”. I’m trying to spend some time trying to clarify.

It causes some problems in the United States the word justice means lawyer and courts and you are going to rush into court and sue.

So that can be quite a problem but we’ll get over that. There are actually Climate Justice enthusiasts in the United States as well including in academia.

Q I’d really like to ask you how you counter the avalanche of the deniers, the cleverness, the mendacity of it? It’s a bit like the Tea Party and Obama and organic food or non-organic food. There’s always that propaganda that’s going to tell you this is not necessary to be so concerned about it.

MR I think that’s a very timely question because the reality is and I think we’re aware of this that because there wasn’t more political leadership in Copenhagen - maybe it was too ambitious to think that we could get the great big fair agreement “The FAB Agreement” the Fair, Ambitious and Binding Agreement that the civil society groups were looking for.

But actually there was a lack of political will and coherence so we got the Copenhagen Accord and somehow that has increased the deniers particularly in the United States but even in Europe if you look at opinion polls.

So we really have to work very hard and I believe and - I’d be interested in views from others in the audience on this - I believe that one of the reasons why we have this problem of the deniers is because the debate of the UNFCCC has been led by scientists and environmentalists.

Now there is logic in that because it is about science and the environment but scientists and environmentalists and then economists like Nick Stern saying we have to do something about this if we do it sooner it will cost us less in GDP terms and all the rest of it.


How do we link to the bigger countries? I think that advocacy will play a part. We are already doing the first piece of advocacy under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Foundation, we’ll call it MRFCJ, has been bringing together women leaders on climate with a particular focus on Climate Justice and the gender dimensions of the Climate Change issue.

We had a meeting in New York just before the Development Summit where we brought together about 60 women from different perspectives from government, from UN, from CSO’s etc. We have an active network of over 60 women who are exchanging in preparation for Cancun. About half of those women will come to Cancun.

We have a side event with very good partners, Wangari Maatthei who will be known to most of you and her Green Belt. She herself can’t come but her Green Belt Centre will be coming and she’s sending a video message to us and also the Nobel Women and my day job Realising Rights and the MRFCJ.

Our initial focus is on women leaders at grassroots level; women leaders in civil society, women leaders in indigenous communities get their voice, their priorities and then we’ve been able and I hope this is tangibly going to work out,

I feel myself that certainly for the foreseeable future, if I could put it that way, it’s unlikely that the United States would accept a much smaller carbon footprint or Europe for that matter - so the emphasis that we are putting on trying to engender a greater fairness of approach and trying to square this justice circle is that the poor have a right to development.

Indeed this is the 25th Anniversary of the Declaration on Right to Development under international human rights law and that right to development has to be fully supported from a human right’s perspective.

But it’s in the interests both of the poor and of the rest of the world that it be as much as possible a low carbon, renewable future. In other words the technologies that provide off grid solar and small hydro and clean cooking and water distillations etc. to households to enable them to be productive.

But that alone will not solve the problem as I said we still have to get much more commitment to strong mitigation and binding targets of mitigation of the rich countries.

There is that strong argument of a systemic approach to this limited carbon budget and I think over the years we are going to hear more and more discussion of this.

I find the logic of it appealing but my political nose tells me there’s no way that we can realistically adjust as quickly as some people would wish to this but I think that that argument should continue to be made.

Q I’m just wondering what you are trying to do within your Foundation? Are you looking at the lobbying side of it or the more scientific side of it? Because it strikes me that in Copenhagen and I wasn’t there so I don’t know but it strikes me that, you were saying that you have a lot of favour within the developing countries but what about the countries with the power that are doing the bullying? Do we have enough power with them?

MR Well I’ll start with the first part of your question of what we are trying to do with this Foundation.

As I mentioned we are linked through the Alliance of Innovation which already links Trinity and UCD, so we would look to the universities for the science and the research. They do it far better than a small foundation although we will have a very good head of our research and development, somebody known to Mary Kelly and I’d say quite a few of you here, Dr. Tara Shine and I am delighted that she will start with us on the first of January. And she will certainly bring a strong science base and knowledge about the UNFCCC process and all the rest of it and very good connections.

But the foundation I hope will have the intelligence to let others do what they do best and glean it, use our website to promote etc. and I’ve already said that even though we have a routed link to Trinity and UCD we hope to be a space that anybody in Ireland, the very good work that’s being done in Maynooth and Galway and Cork, and in other universities in Dublin – its a very open source of anyone that wants to be involved.


Q I was at a “Business in the Community Event” last week about corporate responsibility. The one issue that wasn’t talked about was growth is not compatible with sustainability consumerism is not compatible with sustainability. And growth seems to been rebranded as sustainability now. So that’s just an observation I had. Because 100 of the largest economies in the world of those economies 67 of them are actually corporations and as consumers we’re all part of the systemic failure as well. I have a couple of questions for you; one is do these people who are running these corporations really get it? And if they do well why aren’t they doing something? Or what do we need to do to get them to do more about it? And if they don’t what do we need to do to get them to see it?

MR I think we’re going to have to take much more seriously the responsibility to change our habits and to reduce, reuse, recycle. That’s families; communities etc. and corporations have a responsibility to be part of thinking through how we become more efficient, how we use energy in a renewable way etc.

The interesting thing is that there are a number of companies that see huge corporate opportunities and they’re busy doing quite a lot of research and development looking at this and they’re companies like GE and Deutsche Bank and in particular Chinese companies.

There’s a rule in China now and some of you may know more about this than I do but I’m fascinated that any gadgets sold in China as I understand it there is an obligation if it has a plug then the manufacturer is responsible for the ultimate disposal of the plug or the battery because of their polluting possibilities.

One of the realities I felt in Copenhagen was that governments were not being honest with what was happening in their countries and a lot of it was what was happening in the private sector or in state run companies in places like China.

There’s far more work being done on energy efficiency and cleaner technologies etc. than companies were admitting because they were in a kind of trade negotiation stance.

They didn’t want to give anything away and if there wasn’t a binding agreement then they weren’t going to volunteer and so on.

And it’s a few countries that have slightly broken through on this and one of those is Mexico which has said, “we are going to have a green fund we are going to be a country that’s going to move a bit in this direction”. And I am hoping that in Cancun where there is less expectation there’ll be more focus on these practical areas where corporations have to have their responsibility etc.

And then on the wider sustainability, just to flag we’re moving towards a very important international conference in July 2012 which is the 20 years after Rio. I think it is all our responsibility to try to really talk about a sustainability that takes into account the whole climate challenge and the way in which we are using up too rapidly our carbon global budget if you like.

because it’s not yet totally certain but we’re more of less sure that we’ve persuaded the Mexican Government to host with us a meeting of women ministers who will be present at Cancun.

And it’s quite interesting how many women fill key positions; The Secretary General Christina Figueres, Connie Hedegaard the Commissioner of the EU. The Mexican leader is a woman. There are about 40 women ministers, not all of them will be in Cancun, but there should be at least 20 women ministers from different countries of environment or energy who will be there.

Bringing them together I think will be a way of having a constituency of ministers who put more focus on people and who put more focus on this Climate Justice kind of approach.

So that’s only if you like a beginning we will have other networks. We actually are very conscious that young people get the climate issue. They understand it’s their future so we want to try and have a global conversation with young people both in universities and elsewhere.

The other obvious network is those who are interested, social entrepreneurs and indeed increasingly some leaders of industry who are interested in the transfer of technology to the so called bottom billion – the 1.4 or 1.5 billion who don’t have any access to electricity – and that is going to involve new types of public-private partnerships for scale. At the moment you have social entrepreneurs who are selling solar lights that also recharge telephones, cell phones for $10 in India. The Acumen Fund has supported an entity that is selling now these $10 lights. If they were sold to 5 million people instead of 100,000 they should be able to be sold at much less and then why not a 100 million? Again clean cooking methods bio-fuel etc. exist but always in small areas. How to bring this to scale; that’s the big challenge.

Q Have you thought at all of working on the vanity of the multinationals because they are all into corporate social responsibility? You have an agenda where you can identify targets and programmes which could be under that heading in their annual report but which would move them towards your agenda and away from the polluting which they are engaged in?

MR The answer is yes I think we are already trying to have this kind of conversation and anything that will move them.

Q Vanity you couldn’t exaggerate their vanity and corporate social responsibility is where they become the peacocks. You could capture the agenda.

MR Part of me, is also conscious that Realising Rights has been working in the area of leaving out the “Social” in Corporate Responsibility and saying Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights and it’s not a compassionate, feel good factor. It’s part of a 21st century responsibility.

So we are working more at trying to help Professor Sir John Ruggie in his work of fleshing out what is the responsibility of all corporations to respect human rights and then build in the Climate Justice in that context.


sense of frustration and anger that is welling up and that isn’t as constructive as we need. We need to have more sense of looking to our strengths and as I said reinventing ourselves to that extent with our values and moving forward.

Your question about the human rights framework I think the human rights framework can be helpful but shouldn’t be asked to be adequate for Climate Justice. We need a proper UNFCCC Framework, we need the Fair, Ambitious, Binding Agreement that so many of us hoped would happen in Copenhagen and we will still need it. We cannot privatise climate and go to other large gatherings of G20’s etc.

We need the UNFCCC process even though it’s not the most efficient process it is the inclusive process, it’s the process for small countries and islands and indigenous peoples and others who have to have their voices heard if we are going to move forward fairly.

So the human rights framework helps but we shouldn’t overload it. It does certainly matter in terms of a people-centred approach because climate is undermining the human rights: the rights to food and safe water, and health and education of millions of people particularly the right to food security and so we can use it in that sense but we want a proper framework.

Q I read recently that 50% of those elected to the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections are officially climate deniers. 50% of the people going in there so that the chances of the US being on board on any kind of an agreement, a UN type agreement, is slim to nil. So my first question is; do you think we can get a meaningful agreement without the United States on board? And secondly in the light of what happened in Copenhagen and it was a disaster in many respects and as someone who knows the United Nations intimately are they equipped do you think to bring about a meaningful global agreement?

MR Certainly the mid-term elections in the United States were not good for looking to the United States through Congress to give leadership on Climate Change. But there is leadership in different parts of the United States. There’s leadership in cities, there’s leadership in States which don’t have the deniers in key positions and notably I think California under Governor Gerry Brown now will become I believe a real leader in the United States.

What’s going to matter is that a leadership on climate is also seeing the opportunities and understanding what’s happening in China and that China and to some extent India and to some extent Brazil are becoming leaders of the opportunities and the jobs and that’s going to be what’s going to turn the argument round in the United States.

The more you can demonstrate that a good approach combining well mitigation, adaptation, technologies, transfer those technologies, creating markets for those technologies and jobs that go with it the more that this is the way forward. So I think at the moment as you say we’re not going to get leadership from the United States so we’re not going to get an agreement clearly in Cancun.

There is a commission on sustainability that’s going to advise the UN on this and one of the members of it I’m glad to say is Gro Brundtland who was the author of the original idea of sustainable development, The Brundtland Commission. She is an Elder like myself and we’ve talked quite a bit about this and she is very keen that this Commission on Sustainability and that Conference to mark the 20th anniversary of Rio really takes seriously what we mean now in the world today about sustainable development.

It cannot be the growth patterns of the past. It cannot be so how do we move in a different direction and do it in a way that is well thought through and equitable in particular towards developing countries? In other words, a Climate Justice approach to it.

Q The question I have is really about the overlap between human rights framework and Climate Justice. The values you embody in terms of intelligence, integrity and humanity are the values we need to fill the void that’s opening up in our society today. And the question is really; is the existing human rights framework adequate for addressing Climate Justice or is additional legislation needed in an international framework? Or is it a matter of more intense implementation?

MR Well first of all if I may just briefly, in the comment about values, obviously I am very conscious that we are going through an incredibly difficult time and it’s a bitter time and people are very angry etc.

I think we need to remind ourselves of the inherent values here in this country and of the resourcefulness that we have as a people and of what we owe to our younger population in particular in making sure that as we move forward we do it in a way that often for me and I sometimes use this expression when I’m talking about Ireland and our sense of ourselves, that lovely Irish phrase, - ‘Ar scath a cheile a mhaireann na daoine’ - it’s in each other’s shadow that we flourish, that we survive.

One of the things that absolutely struck me in 1990 was the amount of local self development that was going on in towns, in villages, in parishes, on islands. On the basis that Ireland had become a little bit richer but was still not a wealthy enough country for towns and villages to have the kind of facilities for young people, for the elderly and people were saying “the government isn’t going to do this we’ll do it ourselves in our neighbourhood” and it was a huge strength and I talked it up because it was such an important issue at that time. And then gradually as we move towards this famous Celtic Tiger people stopped volunteering in their community, wanted to be paid, wanted the big jobs, wanted the big bubble etc. I think we just have to go back to the spirit of ‘meitheal’ the neighbourliness, find again that ability to work together more in a kind of community and local self development because it’s going to be necessary.

Sorry just you triggered a lot of thoughts that I’m having at the moment about the way in which we need as you said to fill that values void and that


A lot of the carbon credits at the moment are in fact simply an easy way of letting companies and countries continue in polluting ways but there is at the same time a strong case for having an effective carbon credit system and that that could move things very rapidly in a way that would help developing countries. I think we can’t just dismiss the whole idea of carbon credits.

In many ways developing countries are now realising, particularly African countries, that they have lost out a lot in this argument and that they are wondering how to be able to participate more effectively and why most of the benefit of the carbon credit is going to China and India and countries that are able to milk the system if I could put it that way.

For example Liberia has over 40% of the forest of West Africa and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been spending Liberian money to stop loggers and she’s trying to find out how can I get in on the carbon trading instead of spending my precious resources and if we don’t pay those who depend for their livelihoods on forests they will go the logging route.

So you know it’s a very complicated world and I’m not the world’s best expert on it. I’m going to be hoping I can be briefed on the pieces of it more expertly to answer that question more effectively in the future.

But I think Cancun can prepare some of the building blocks of where we need to go on financing, on REDD+ on other issues that are being discussed on support for adaptation and the report of the finance taskforce on longer term from 2020 on what can be the ways in which you can generate a financing through some of the recommendations that they’ve made.

On the UN process even though it’s unwieldy, even though it’s hard to get agreement I still fundamentally believe in the process.

The trouble with the UN is the same problem that Winston Churchill identified when he was talking about democracy - that democracy is the worst system except for all the others.

Well the UNFCCC is the worst system except we don’t have another inclusive process that involves all the voices that need to be heard round the table. I also believe that some of the problems of Copenhagen are also learning curves for even the UNFCCC process itself. That we are now building towards South Africa next year and maybe beyond to get an agreement and all the time the evidence is going to get stronger for the reasons that we were talking about; the hurricanes are going to increase, the drought in the Western part of the United States is going to increase and so on.

People will no longer be able or find credible believing in the deniers. The trouble is that we don’t have the luxury of time and it’s just a case of when all this comes together.

Q When you say that the Californians are leading and they often do in so many areas of the United States, do you think that will apply to Climate Change? That what happens there is likely to percolate to other parts?

MR Yes and it’s not just California, there are really interesting models of practice in different parts and also major industry – I mentioned GE, they’re at the cutting edge of a lot of the green technologies and they’re going to show the opportunity and the jobs that that creates.

President Obama himself is absolutely convinced. He is a bit blocked at the moment through Congress but I have no doubt he will find ways even if it is to talk up the good practices which is something a president can do. It’s where he goes; it’s what he shines a light on by going there that can generate a different approach.

But I still feel that the point made about politically the damage of those elected to Congress and so many of them being deniers or likely to obstruct any moves is very depressing in the short term.

Q Do you have any opinion on the trading of carbon credits? Is it a good thing? Or is it just another example of exploitation of the developing world by the developed world?

MR That’s a very good question and I don’t know that I am going to give an entirely adequate answer.


The mobile phone is one of the most productive instruments in the hands of poor people, they transfer money, they look at markets, they do health surveillance. They do adult education, they hire it out, it’s a terrific part of the poor being productive. Access to affordable energy will be the same. It will galvanise development in a very different way and we still have to continue to put pressure on heavy mitigation we know what the science is saying about how far we have to reduce but whether we can do it by a fair allocation. Certainly I hope that argument continues to be made because it is a logical argument. But I think we also have to move with reality and come at it in different ways.

Q We only have one world and we have an unsustainable economic system the way we are at the moment but alongside that we also have unsustainable population growth. Will your Foundation try to address this? And considering your experience back in the 60s in this country looking at education, birth control, and also gender issues - will that experience will it be valuable for you in trying to address this?

MR Thank you for raising this issue – it increasingly comes up in climate discussions and quite often it comes up in a way that worries me, not the way that you’ve put the question, you put it very fairly, but sometimes you get a kind of aggressive question saying “We need population control because there are these millions of poor people coming into our world”. And we have to be really very careful not to allow that kind of approach to take hold.

There is only one way to address the issue of population and that is through the country, the people, the community, having opportunities for reproductive health, family planning, being in control of how it’s done and the way in which it can address the issues. And making sure that women and girls are educated is absolutely fundamental.

I have in fact accepted what is in a way a challenge from two foundations that are very concerned that the right approach to addressing the issue of reproductive health and family planning be part of this discussion; The Packard Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation in the United States.

They have supported the creation of a Global Leaders’ Council on reproductive health to mainstream the issue. To put the focus on educating girls and women, to put the focus on local leadership on this issue and supporting it.

There are, I think it’s, 16 of us on this global Council; it includes two sitting presidents; the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen a number of has-beens like myself, President Cardoso of Brazil, Gro Brundtland, Margot Wallstromm; who was here in Ireland recently and a number of others.

But I do know that there are those who feel that an effective, well run, carbon credit system could be very good for some poor developing countries and I think that’s what we need to look for.

Q You touched very much on the whole question of equity and I think you would agree that one of the main problems in the UNFCCC process has been the lack of trust between North and South and that lack of trust is for the reasons that you so eloquently described: equity and the other problems, do you believe that every individual, globally, should have the same right to emit into the atmosphere? Should we start beginning to look at taking sides and saying right this is what should be allowed to be emitted and each person should be given the same right which would imply of course that the Masai warrior should have the same right as the man and his in hummer in New York city. Do you think that that’s in any way feasible? It’s a question I’ve been involved in this process for a long time myself and it’s hard to get an honest answer.

MR First of all if I could just take your point about the lack of trust for a moment and link it with one of I believe the advantages that Ireland has in being a leader on Climate Justice.

We actually have the trust of developing countries for very good reasons: for good development aid, because of our history there’s a link. In fact many developing countries looked to the economic progress of Ireland and now they are not looking at us anymore.

But nonetheless I believe that there is a trust that we can build on in being that bridge that I think is both necessary and would be good for the country and good for our morale and our sense of values.

The second point I actually touched on this earlier. There is a case being made by a significant number of people that the real Climate Justice is what you are talking about allocating certain tonnes of carbon per head and they show the difference now between the United States, Europe, China, India, Korea etc.

As I said there’s a logic in that and it does bring home the justice argument but I don’t see it as being realistic because there is no way that the average American could possibly survive on the average of what an Indian or Chinese and so it’s part of the justice case and getting to an overall equity.

But I feel myself that certainly in the immediate term that justice is probably more met in changing the lives of people by access to affordable renewable energy.

What has been remarkable in changing the lives of people in Africa and other parts of developing countries hasn’t been the policies of governments - it’s been the mobile phone.


MR Well thank you for putting the question in that way because I think that really is a very very important issue of equity and fairness.

As I said from a human rights perspective it’s extraordinarily important to keep affirming the right to development, the right of the poor to a better standard of living. This is where the big population bulge is, this is where if they were to have the same carbon based and frankly profligate waste of carbon that has been part of our having a better standard of living, so much waste, so much over consumption that isn’t necessary etcetera, so much throwing out of stuff then we will not have a safe world for anyone.

But we must be fair and equitable in the way we balance so in being conscious of the importance of ensuring that the development of the poorest is in so far as possible a low carbon development. If that is not possible they’re entitled to a messy carbon development like we had, but the world will not be a safe place and at the same time we must mitigate.

So it’s a balance of mitigating and reducing the waste and the excessive use of carbon that is not necessary for a reasonable lifestyle in the western countries and at the same time improving the standard of living of the poorest including through access to affordable energy because that is what makes people productive.

Q I’m a student at NUI in Maynooth and I’m currently conducting research looking at developing short rotation willow crop as a sustainable carbon neutral bio-fuel crop in the not so far away fossil fuel free years. What’s your opinion on the development of renewables such as this on arable land when you speak of the millions in developing nations struggling with poor nutritional needs?

MR Well thank you very much for the question because it’s a really important dimension.

What I love about your question and what you are doing is this is what we need more of in Ireland - innovative approaches – realising the importance of being able to develop different low carbon bio-fuels that aren’t food crops.

A lot of mistakes have been made with corn for example as a bio-fuel that has driven up food prices particularly in Mexico. That is really using up a lot of energy to have corn as ethanol and that’s a very undesirable consequence of developing a biomass.

What I really would say is I’m really interested in what you are doing in Maynooth. I know that very good work is being done in Maynooth and I’d like to know more about it and to keep in touch.

We will over the coming years try and very much argue for the appropriate people-centred again way very much focussing on education of women and girls. It’s not easy, as we found in Ireland to legalise family planning in the 1970’s. It’s not easy to address this issue in a number of cultures in developing countries.

I’ve learned a lot for example from Rwanda: I’m going back to Rwanda this Saturday for a GAVI Alliance Board Meeting early next week starting on Sunday. And the Minister of Health of Rwanda is on the board of GAVI. GAVI is the Fund for immunising children worldwide and it’s a big public private partnership and we have reached many more children because of this partnership.

But Richard Sezibera the Minister of Health of Rwanda has spoken about his efforts as a good minister for health to increase family planning in Rwanda.

Now Rwanda as many of you might know is an African country that’s very well organised in fact some people would say over managed in some degree that it’s the Singapore of Africa. But once they set their minds on something they really go about trying to do it.

And they’ve set their minds that access to family planning is a high priority and he has spoken about how difficult it is to get the use of condoms for example to go up. It went up from 10% to 27% in a period of 5 years and he said, we really tried very hard.

That’s important I think for us to realise there is no quick fix and that’s why we know that education of women and girls and indeed economic development help. But we will see that population increase because of the difficulties and most of that population, a lot of that population increase will be in poorer populations in Africa.

Q I come from a different culture and different people and different land. I learned the history and I should ignore it fully because you talk of not only just the human rights and progressive policies and development and you care about the whole world. Today you’re also talking about Climate Justice. But will you forgive me your Excellency for just a few seconds to be a little bit cynical in relation to what I face on a regular basis from the people that when I ring home.They tell me the same thing and that is the West had a progression, had development they have a certain standards and so on and I tell them that they should have the same but they can’t. Will Climate Justice be able to solve the dilemma of allowing them the progress that they need to have a standard of living that is a little bit better than what they have at the moment? Maybe a compromise on all living standards in the West which I love to maintain as well. But it’s a dilemma because if we are actually going to raise their standards we have to compromise ourselves and how practically is that possible? Thank you.


Q I’m a first year environmental and sustainable development student and a lot of what we are learning about is very deep and intimidating. But Climate Justice seems to bring it together on a humanitarian level that’s quite easy to relate to. My question to you is what can we do to support the Climate Justice campaign? Thank you.

MR Well I would just put that straight back to you, you’re the right generation, you’ve obviously got the opportunity to become very knowledgeable on the more science and environment side which is good. The wonderful thing about the world today is how possible it is to communicate to group with others, to show an interest, to form a group in your university.

Form a Climate Justice group and the more we have of this the more we will change our own approaches and encourage each other.

JB I am getting a signal here I must conclude on that point. May I say that I first heard tonight’s speaker more than four decades ago. I was a student in Trinity and it was the inaugural of the Law Society. The agenda which Mary Burke, as she then was, set out that night was absolutely astonishing in its ambition and she has ticked most of those boxes. In fact all of those boxes though of course society has come a long with her on that agenda but she was at the cutting edge for much of the time. She has now set out I think an extraordinary agenda for us here tonight. It’s so big that it is in one sense you might say it’s a continuum rather than can it be achieved or not. It’s an ocean liner that has to turned around and we have in our former president a remarkable diplomat and politician and somebody who makes things happen and I therefore am very pleased to have been invited to chair this tonight.

Q I work for a small NGO called the Community Workers Co-op and we are just completing a piece of work funded by the EPA that looks at the affects of Climate Change and the affects of policies such as mitigation and adaption on the poorest and most disadvantaged communities in Ireland. And I am reminded of this time last year when there were 6ft of water in a very poor part of Cork City in Farranree and not a bit of water to drink. So we’re trying to look at starting to build resilience amongst communities in the most disadvantaged areas and we’d love to talk to you maybe about that. And just a very quick second point a number of weeks ago under the umbrella of Claiming Our Future with some of the people in this room may have heard of over 1100 people from all walks of civil society and none came together to look at what type of a society do we want? And it sounded very familiar to me some of the things you were saying today because the analysis that we are developing around the Celtic Tiger with say it was a failure socially, a failure economically, and a failure environmentally. And what came out of that day were the two principles that people would like to see a society built on was equality and environmental sustainability. So I think what we need to do is we need to garner that type of interest and that type of social movement and that appetite for change. And start to build on the work that’s been done by the likes of Tim Jackman and our own John Barry in Queens which talks about no more economic growth what we need now is redistribution. Thank you very much.

MR Well thank you very much for the points that you have made, in a way I think that if Ireland starts to become a leader on Climate Justice with a focus on developing countries we cannot avoid and we shouldn’t what you’re talking about. We have to do it at home. We have to walk our own talk.

In a way as a former president I’m probably less easily going to talk about policies here in Ireland. I mean yes in general terms but not specifically in the political sense. It’s you and your generation that have to push this very hard in an Irish context and try and make sure that we are doing as a people what we should be doing.

We should also be coming much more energy efficient, we have a wonderful island so we have an opportunity to be a place that resonates with Climate Justice internally as well as being the bridge with developing countries. I think this does speak to the debate that’s opening up and should be opening up evermore in this country about what kind of society, what kind of democracy, what kind of accountability, what kind of people we want to be.

It’s just wonderful to hear you because I have a real sense there’s an awful lot of good going on in this country among people in communities, people in networks, people in NGOs and we need to bring it out and give it space and visibility.

~ end ~

27 Reshaping the Debate on Climate Change

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