COP16: Day Five.

The 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) is currently being held in Cancun, Mexico with the aim of expanding scientific knowledge of global warming and to provide economic and political solutions to climate change. While there is no expectation that this summit will result in a legally binding, global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions there is one area where the summit should be able to make great progress. The vulnerability of human populations to the problems created by global warming and how best to adapt to these problems. In the unlikely event that it's found that greenhouse gases do not cause global warming this aspect of the summit becomes all the more important. If humans are not causing global warming then there is very little that can be done to stop climate change meaning that these problems will become even more widespread and the challenge of adapting to them even greater.

The classic example of humans vulnerability to climate change comes from the Sahel belt in Africa. Stretching from Senegal on the west of the continent to Somalia on the east this region suffered from almost thirty years of continuous drought between the late 1960's and the early 1990's causing many famines including the infamous 1984 Ethiopian famine which gave the world the Live Aid concerts. Although the rains did come for a few years during the 1990's they failed again at the end of the decade meaning the region is now entering it's 11th year of drought. In 2010 alone this has created a continent wide famine that has put 10 million people (1.3 million children) in need of emergency food aid which has cost the United Nations alone US$190 million.

Although so heavily contested that the argument is actually disrupting the aid effort the role of climate change in the Sahel crisis is obvious. Changes to rainfall patterns mean that the region is almost constantly in drought which makes farming next to impossible. This makes the people there more dependent on animals which leads to overgrazing. Combined with increased sunlight and temperature this strips the land of its vegetation turning once arable farmland into desert where humans, plants and animals simply cannot live.

Within the COP process there are two main mechanisms to help the Sahel region and other vulnerable nations to tackle the problems of climate change. The adaptation fund and the Nairobi work program on impact, vulnerability and adaptation. The adaptation fund is simply a financial mechanism that allows rich countries to give money to poor countries so they can adapt to climate change. At COP15 in Copenhagen the main debate about this fund was how large it should be and how much of it should be "faststart" money that can be paid out immediately. At COP16 the debate is more about how this money should be spent with progress being made on the idea that it should be spent by the donor country with little or no input from the recipient country. This has the obvious advantage that the donor countries are more scientifically advanced then the recipient countries meaning that they are more knowledgeable about how to spend the money. It also provides assurance that the money won't be stolen by corrupt governments. The problem is that donor countries can't always be trusted to behave ethically and this approach dramatically undermines the sovereignty of the developing nations. In fact it is reminiscent of the European colonialism that caused so many problems in the 19th century and continues to create problems in places like Rwanda in the 21st century. I have always been a firm believer that the best way to create economic and social development is by supporting countries and governments to develop themselves. Therefore I cannot undermine that in the name of climate change especially as such a move will create tension in Africa between the USA and China.

The Nairobi work program is more focused on the technical aspects of vulnerability and adaptation. Apart from increasing the scientific observation and monitoring of conditions in vulnerable regions in order to better understand the effects of climate change the Nairobi program is focused on providing practical solutions to real world problems. Within the Nairobi program there is a debate over which of two approaches is best to take.

Microfinace and Farming Reform. Although one of the most revolutionary ideas in global development in that last 30 years microfinace is incredibly simple. It involves lending small amounts of money to small business owners in the developing world in order to allow them to expand their businesses. As the amounts of money involved are tiny, even by local standards, and the high interest rates mean that only ideas with a high chance of success apply these loans are invariably paid back increasing the amount of money available allowing the scheme to expand as it achieves self-sustaining growth. In terms of adaptation to climate change microfinance is used to allow farmers to buy equipment that increases the amount of food they are able to grow on their farms. While climate change is undoubtedly a major contributor to the Sahel crisis the region does have other problems in growing food such as a lack of irrigation systems, a shortage of fertilisers and a lack of basic tools such as shovels and plows. Along with an increased flow of knowledge from developed to developing countries the microfinance approach would allow farmers in vulnerable areas to buy little things like plastic piping for an irrigation system and fertiliser in order to boost their crop yields, improve their resistance to drought and improve their food security. The advantage of this approach is that it is incredibly high value with an investment of as little as US$500 able to make a small community self-sufficient. The problem is that no farming technique is 100% drought resistant because without rain an irrigation system simply isn't going to work. So while this approach will dramatically reduce vulnerability to drought it will still leave a degree of vulnerability.

Genetically Modified (GM) Crops. This approach is for scientists to create crops which are resistant to drought so the droughts don't matter anymore. It is so simple it sounds like the magic, silver bullet that will solve all the problems of governments of developing nations. They should be very cautious though because this technology is still very young. Putting aside the usual worries about the impact that GM crops have on biodiversity early indications are that many of these new crop varieties actually result in lower yields making it impossible for governments to stockpile staples for times when crops may be damaged by things other then drought. Also GM crops are hugely expensive and because they have been designed, created and patented the seeds and the crops they grow into remain the property of the biotechnology companies that created them. This creates huge problems for farmers in developing countries because they will no longer be able to produce, buy and sell seeds themselves. Instead they are forced to buy their seeds, at an inflated price, from a sole supplier who in return is able to lay claim to the farmers crops and the farms themselves. This loss of sovereignty plays directly into the strategy of some developed countries of ensuring their own food security by taking control of farmland in the developing world and using it to grow food for their own populations. That approach is not neo-colonial it is simply colonial. Also it is worth remembering that throughout the 1980's and 1990's biotechnology firms like Monsanto spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing GM crops for the developed world only to discover that nobody wanted them. Therefore it must be very tempting for those biotech companies to use the panic over climate change and world food prices to recoup some of their huge losses by dumping those unwanted GM products on the developing world.