The Millennium Development Goals and global climate change

>> German version
 

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become the core objectives of international development policies. They entail objectives such as halving the number of people suffering from extreme poverty, fighting hunger and securing environmental sustainability. It becomes ever clearer that climate change has severe consequences for the MDG core areas, for example regarding food security and water supply. At the same time, progress towards achieving the MDGs will reduce the vulnerability of many millions to the adverse impacts of climate change. The concerns of the developing countries will play an important role at the 12th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taking place in Nairobi (Kenya) from 6 to 17 November 2006. One key concern is that climate change increasingly threatens progress towards achieving the MDGs. Germany in the next month will play a key role in climate negotiations, due to its EU and G8 presidency in 2007. Against this background, in October 2006 Germanwatch interviewed the Commissioner for the Millennium Development Goals of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Stephan Klaus Ohme, regarding the linkages between climate change and the MDGs and how this is reflected in the German development cooperation. Mr Ohme, you are the BMZ Commissioner for the Millennium Development Goals. What is your assessment of what has taken place so far and of the future outlook up to 2015? Is global achievement of the MDGs possible? The Millennium Development Goals bring together agreements reached at the UN World Conferences held in the 1990s. The starting point for the targets is therefore not 2000 but 1990. If we look at what has been accomplished half way through this period of 25 years (1990-2015), within which the MDGs are therefore to be achieved, we see the following: Since 1990, the world has made significant progress on achieving most of the goals. For example, between 1990 and 2002, the number of people throughout the world living in extreme poverty fell by about 200 million. During this period the child mortality rates sank from 103 deaths per 1000 live births each year to 88. An additional 8 percent of the population in the developing countries (that means about 1.2 billion people) gained access to clean drinking water, and an additional 15 percent gained access to improved sanitation. In some areas, however, things are not moving so fast: one area for which this is true is combating AIDS. Development is also progressing at very different rates in different places. I see major deficits in sub-Saharan Africa. Global achievement of the MDGs by 2015 is possible if the donors and the developing countries step up their efforts quite clearly now. The Millennium Declaration and the confirmation of the MDGs in 2005 in the follow-up conference are essential prerequisites for doing this. What matters now is that we maintain and make use of the existing momentum in order to accelerate the implementation process with further concrete steps. Germany is well on the way to fulfilling the commitments arising from the MDGs on the basis of the Millennium Declaration - for example through a notable increase in so-called ODA funds as part of a gradual plan. How important is climate protection for the BMZ compared with the Millennium Development Goals? The MDGs are not able to cover the very broad scope of sustainable development, environmental protection and poverty reduction adequately all in one go. Climate protection and exploitation of resources are global environmental problems that have a direct impact on the lives and survival of billions of people in developing countries. For example, it explicitly says in MDG No.7 that sustainable environmental development must be brought about by integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies - as sub-goal 9 says - and that the trend towards an increasing loss of environmental resources must be reversed. However, too little attention is paid in the MDGs to the systemic interactions between poverty reduction and environmental changes. Anyone who wants to fight poverty must protect the environment and vice versa. Global environmental policy should not be a marginal aspect of implementing the MDGs; it belongs at the centre of their implementation. If we do nothing to counteract global climate changes, then they will have an even greater existentially threatening impact in the future. Within the framework of the German presidencies of the EU and G8 in 2007, by the way, climate change and the continuing high level of emissions in the industrialised countries will play a central role, as will the raging growth of the larger emerging economies in particular, which is speeding up climate change still more. The climate protection negotiations scheduled for 2007 will be supported by the so-called G8 process. This includes in particular the successful continuation of advisory services under the umbrella of the climate framework convention and the Kyoto Protocol, so that an agreement can be reached in good time for what should happen after 2012. We will put the global expansion of energy saving measures, energy efficiency and increased use of renewables on our agenda. We must heed the call for an efficient international appraisal mechanism for the development of renewable energies on the basis of the decisions taken at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg 2002) and in Beijing (2005). The BMZ played a major role in promoting the 2nd World Conference for Renewable Energies in Beijing in November last year. You know that a decision was reached at the 1st "renewables" World Conference in 2004 in Bonn to make it possible for 1 billion people to have access to modern energy from the sun, wind and water and adapted use of biomass by 2015. In Beijing, the fruits of this German initiative were seen. Today, renewable energies already account for about 17% of global energy generation. And they are growing more strongly than conventional forms of energy production. Melting glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts, the discussion about the tipping points in the climate system: Do you discuss, in your work, whether and in what way climate change is affecting the MDGs? Would you say there are synergies or contradictions between climate protection and the Millennium Development Goals? Climate change has the potential to destroy the efforts made by development cooperation in a wide range of areas and thus jeopardise the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, addressing the causes of climate change and supporting the efforts of particularly hard hit, poor developing countries to adjust to climate change are essential tasks for development cooperation. Effective climate protection is an elementary prerequisite for sustainable development and thus also for achieving the MDGs. This is not just a question of MDG 7 "Safeguarding ecological sustainability"; it is also about income and food security, drinking water supplies and health, issues that are reflected in other MDGs. The ecological, social and economic dimensions of sustainability are closely intertwined in climate protection. This becomes particularly clear when you call to mind the cross-sectoral nature of the tasks in connection with adjusting to climate change in developing countries. How much importance do your partner countries attach to climate change in their dialogue with the BMZ? There are different levels where we are in dialogue with our partner countries. First of all, there are government negotiations, where we agree upon our contributions to the development goals of our partners. Here we have seen that climate change has also become more important for our partner countries. A new development in the past 3-4 years is that we have bilateral projects whose sole focus is on climate change, e.g. in Tunisia and India, together with disaster prevention measures in Mozambique and Nicaragua. In the past, climate change was a topic that played an indirect role, e.g. in rural development, the spread of malaria or combating desertification. Secondly, we are represented at the climate conferences and are in direct contact with the representatives of the developing countries. In November, the climate negotiations will take place in Nairobi, under the umbrella of the United Nations. We take the concerns of the African countries in particular very seriously. That is why possibilities for adjusting to climate change will be very important at this climate summit. What measures is German development cooperation using to address these questions? We have been promoting climate protection in developing countries for more than 12 years and have gathered experience on climate protection in more than 30 countries. Over the course of time the profile of our work has changed in many ways. In the beginning, our main focus was on drawing up inventories of greenhouse gases and on recognising the potential for reductions in developing countries. Nowadays we are no longer solely concerned with reducing greenhouse gases and with anchoring climate protection aspects in other policy areas, e.g. by promoting renewable energies, energy efficiency or the preservation of tropical forests. Based on the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's climate-science body, we know that poorer countries in particular will be the hardest hit by the results of climate change, even if we manage to achieve a stabilisation level of 2°C warming, which is the EU's goal. That is why supporting the efforts to help particularly vulnerable segments of the population adapt to climate change is a focus of climate protection in developing countries. This can mean providing support in the field of agriculture, for instance, or with regard to the management of water resources, or in the field of health, for example because of increased risk of malaria, or it can mean building upon the experience gained in disaster prevention. There are many examples where extreme weather events have clearly set individual developing countries back in their development and where development successes have been wiped out. Is it not true to say that, given the expected consequences of climate change, disaster preparedness ought to have the highest priority in development cooperation, at least in particularly vulnerable countries? Do you support the idea of mainstreaming disaster prevention in development planning for countries at risk? The management of disaster risks is an area in which extreme weather events have attracted increasing attention in recent years. Most recently "Katrina" made it clear just how vulnerable even industrialised countries can be, to a degree never seen before. Together with the private sector, whose cooperation we are expressly seeking for the successful implementation of development priorities, we are therefore working on insurance solutions for people who have experienced climate damage and on incentive systems to promote preventive, risk-minimising behaviour, also with a view to possible climate disasters. We are currently preparing a major project of this kind in India. Given the rapidly increasing damage from weather extremes, would it not be more consistent if a growing share of the prevention and disaster aid was financed by those causing the problems, i.e. the emitters of greenhouse gases, instead of from the development budget? Yes, that would be more consistent. That is why the EU has also acknowledged its role in leading the way among the industrialised countries. Translating this role into action, i.e. into a globally binding climate protection policy, is no easy task. At the same time, the economic development of China and India means that new emitters are coming onto the scene; like the US and Australia, these countries have yet to make any commitments to reducing emissions. The challenge now facing us in international climate negotiations is to get a maximum number of countries on board so that, together, we can design a just system based on commitments to reduce emissions on the one hand and fair development opportunities on the other. Adjusting to climate change and the resulting need to reduce emissions are therefore topics that we will be discussing - as I said at the beginning - during Germany's G8 presidency. This is also a prerequisite for appropriate measures like the Clean Development Mechanism and for a functioning international emissions trading system. The BMZ is supporting the necessary technology transfer under the Kyoto Protocol. The greatest potential here is indeed to be found in the emerging economies and anchor countries. In particular, there are opportunities to be found in bringing together the prevention of deforestation and climate protection, using this instrument as an incentive. The Interview was conducted by Sven Harmeling und Christoph Bals (Germanwatch) in October 2006. Contact: Sven Harmeling, Senior Advisor Climate and Development, harmeling@germanwatch.org

Photo: G.Kier