Tuvalu and its surrounding waters

The Copenhagen climate summit ended today, with a non-binding agreement signed by industrialized countries to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the temperature when industrialization began.

The island nation of Tuvalu led a revolt last week by developing nations against the 2-degree idea, asserting it wanted increases to be capped at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialization levels.

Apisai Ielemia, the Prime Minister of the 10,000-person island chain in the south Pacific, said his people will have "no other inland to run to," when average ocean waters are expected to rise because of melting polar ice.


Developing nations also protested a pre-conference paper that was discovered to be circulating among developed nations, with suggested stipulations that have proven to be similar to today's end agreement.

China and the US, meanwhile, went head to head over what could be quantifiable and verifiable in China. There was even talk early this week of border tariffs that may be imposed by the United States on Chinese imported goods if they do not transparently demonstrate their greenhouse gas reductions.

The agreement called for the US to cut CO2 emissions between 14-17 percent by 2020 from 2025 levels. Presdient Obama called the deal "meaningful and unprecedented."

Developed countries including the United States will provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help "most vulnerable" poor nations (Tuvalu?) cut their carbon emissions in a deal that was announced by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday. They will also pay out $30 billion to developing countries from next year through 2012.
The agreement occurred after US President Barack Obama had at-the-deadline talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and South African President, Jacob Zuma
No agreements have been made for emission reductions by 2050, and follow-up talks will be necessary to put binding measures into effect. A scheduled meeting in Mexico City in December 2010 may be moved up to this summer if negotiating countries decide they want to act sooner rather than later in establishing a binding treaty for global greenhouse gas reduction.

According to the Wall Street Journal, today's uninspired Copenhagen conclusion also has made it less likely that the Senate will pass greenhouse gas cap and trade regulations during its next session.

That doubt makes the US Environmental Protection Agency's announcement earlier this month that it will begin to regulate greenhouse gases even more critical in terms of how the US will actually achieve its pledged 14-17% greenhouse gas cuts by 2020.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Mumbai flooding after 2006 deluge

Leading up to President Obama welcoming India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the first official State Dinner of his presidency at the White House, The Bay Area Council Economic Institute yesterday released its new report, "Global Reach: Emerging Ties Between the San Francisco Bay Area and India."

At a release event in downtown San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, a panel addressed why, according to the Institute's president R. Sean Randolph, "No place else in the nation comes close to the economic connections that the Bay Area has in India."

The sheer numbers of Indians employed by Bay Area firms in such as Cisco, Visa and Semantec are a testament of India moving from a contractual model (think of the call centers in Slumdog Millionaire) to being a true strategic partner, because of its rich base of domestic and ex-pat engineering, management and venture capital talent.

With a fast-growing population of 200 to 300 million earning "disposable income," Hewlett-Packard and other Silicon Valley product manufacturers have been fighting for market share throughout the South Asian nation. Economic growth may lift some from the slums, but experts worry about the capacity of India to grow so quickly without detrimental climate and other sustainability impacts.

Like China, it now looks like the cities of India--both existing and new--are on the verge of an unparalleled urban population boom.

Michel St. Pierre, Director of Planning and Urban Design from San Francisco-based architectural firm Gensler, was the sole panelist addressing the topic of
Indian urban sustainability of the five other software, biotech and venture capital firms represented at the event.

"By 2022, there will be a need for up to 500 new cities in India to accommodate the urban growth in the country," St. Pierre said. "Reduced quality of life could greatly affect the success of the nation's economy if growth is not planned and executed properly."

St. Pierre said the biggest challenge is to address sustainability in all aspects, with cities such as Mumbai operating its current systems--including transportation, water, energy and environmental analysis--at full capacity and beyond. Then there is the emerging threat of global climate change, particularly flooding.

"The livibility and sustainability of cities like Mumbai and Delhi are critical to the success of the country," he opined about the city of 14 million, the largest city proper in the world. St. Pierre quoted Prime Minister Singh: "If Mumbai fails, then India fails."

St. Pierre compared India's urban growth to that of China in its scale, yet contrasted it with its neighbor to the north in terms of governance. Because India is a democracy, versus China, which has a planned, centrally controlled economy, India cannot so easily create whole-scale national programs around Eco-Cities, which China is in the beginning stages of trying to roll out.

India's advantage as a democracy is that it more likely to successfully enact public-private partnerships in such complex endeavors as the densification of its cities and in providing more mixed-use real estate with access to public transportation.

Most of India's so-called Eco-cities projects have attempted to create more healthy and sanitary conditions in such areas as those in the Kerala state by reducing pollution in rivers and drinking water supplies.

Indian cities have also been global leaders in converting their dirty diesel bus fleets to compressed natural gas (CNG), which emits far less particulates and other deadly air pollutants than diesel or gasoline-powered vehicles. Some fleets are even being switched to dual-fuel supplies of CNG and hydrogen.

But so far, there has been less success in redesigning slum areas or other development to take advantage of new innovations in renewable energy, green building and advanced water-conserving technologies, let alone district flood-resistant planning.

And then there are the masses of people, buildings and infrastructure. Mumbai has only .03 percent open space, one of the lowest rates in the world, according to St. Pierre--compared to an average of 5-7 percent open space in US cities. The country also suffers from constant power outages, chronic water shortages, and systemically contaminated water.

With the advent of corporate-backed city-wide sustainability initiatives, including the "Connected Urban Development" program from Cisco (with its global headquarters for development now in Bangalore) and IBM's Smarter Cities initiatives, India stands to become a fertile land for bringing software innovations into 21st century applications in planning and management of energy, water and transportation.

HP even has its own nascent "Sustainable Cities/ City 2.0" initiative, which is less defined at this point, but hinges upon the mother of all data centers as a massive brain behind Smart Grid, telepresence, intelligent buildings and metro transportation systems.

There is so much more to be launched that can harness the deeply educated pool of talent in India and California's Silicon Valley, particularly in light of climate change.

All of this brings us back to Obama's meeting with Prime Minister Singh, and the coming of the Copenhagen climate summit, for which one major point of negotiations is the amount of funding available from developed nations for financing greenhouse gas reductions and climate adaptation in developing nations such as India.


President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Singh at the G-20 summit.

Concluded Genler's Michel St. Pierre, "India can lead the way worldwide for sustainability by addressing innovation just as it has done in software and all these other industries."

Let's hope that the buzz tonight at the State Dinner over the fresh veggies and herbs from Michelle Obama's White House garden goes beyond the gossip of celebrities and at least touches on issues so critical to the future of India, the United States and the world at large.

Warren Karlenzig is President of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability consultancy in San Anselmo, CA. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

How do we put the pieces together to make our cities and metro areas stronger than they were before climate change, energy volatility and the Great Recession?

(See "*answer" at end of this post...)

That's what I'll be discussing tomorrow (Tuesday) night on a panel, "Urban Resilience in Post-Carbon World," in Vancouver with Bill Rees, of Ecological Footprint fame, and Daniel Lerch, author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty.

The panel, sponsored by the Post Carbon Institute, will be open to the public and is part of a larger event on urban resilience bringing together local government leaders from Canada and the United States, as well as academics and practitioners in urban sustainability--er, resiliency--management.

Vancouver has been viewed for a decade as a success story in sustainable planning and programs. From the city's emphasis on increased downtown density, bikability and green buildings, including its sponsorship of a "21 places for the 21st century" contest, to a city farmer program for exchanging surplus fruit, Vancouver is on the vanguard of urban resiliency innovation. It also is one of Canada's most diverse cities, home to significant numbers of Asians from many countries, including India, as well as indigenous North Americans.

The rich offerings of the Resilient Cities event demonstrates that Vancouver is thinking ahead once more. Besides its Mayor Gregor Robertson, minions of regional and local government, non-governmental and business leaders will be putting on events, including:

• The Vancouver Design Nerds and Open Space Network will be facilitating an urban agriculture ideas jam while another group of food system experts and producers will examine "Planning Metro Vancouver as if Food Matters."
  
• A local university campus (BCIT Burnaby Campus) will be having a design charette, led by Ecocities founder Richard Register, to reduce its ecological footprint by a factor of four.
• City government and groups including TransFair Canada will examine how to invigorate local economic development through fair trade and sustainable purchasing.
• The city's "Greenest City Action Team" including the manager of the City of Vancouver Sustainability Group will share advice on engaging people in change.
  
• BC hydro will lead an interactive session on sustainable community energy.
• Provincial official will examine convening action throughout British Columbia (Vancouver's province) that achieves settlement in balance with ecology.
• Real estate experts including David Suzuki Foundation author Nicholas Heap will explain how climate change could impact the region's real estate.
• Other cities, from New York City, with former Sustainable South Bronx's Majora Carter, (a Fellow at Post Carbon Institute along with Bill Rees and myself) to Berkeley, California, will have case studies presented. AAt in

Key to a successful event will be how well presenters and activities engage systems approaches for resilient communities, rather than just repackaging siloed sustainability chestnuts under a new label.

Besides regional government organization Metro Vancouver's hosting of a session on "The Politics of Decision-Making for Sustainability," Vancouver is making attempts at coordinating with Seattle and Portland on how to make the Cascadia region a more interconnected and better managed bioregional market. Cascadia forces helped push Amtrak to connect Portland and Vancouver for the first time without border fees, for instance.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams will be at the event with a contingent from that Oregon city, as will Jim Diers, author of Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way.

* The easy answer to my opening question, by the way, includes providing better regional collaboration, particularly in the area of land use, planning and transportation.

Unfettered growth in car-dependent sprawled communities proved during the past few years to be the biggest economic risk factor in real estate, endangering the whole US economy. Exurban Sun Belt homes and entire neighborhoods went from being hot properties to foreclosed or even largely abandoned, as rising gas price rises changed speculative economics from 2006-2009.

Sprawl also has which has massive implications for higher average water, building and infrastructure energy use, increasing greenhouse gas production beyond tailpipes.

Which means that because of climate change, the issue of how to control and rethink sprawl on the regulatory and policy level should become a leading order of business in metro areas, states, nations and the world.

The unplanned sprawl that already exists will need to be re-engineered or "undone," which means that the alternatives provided by the Vancouvers and Portlands--transit-oriented development, multi-model mobility (including walking and biking), regional energy and food production--will need to be applied at regional levels throughout North America.

The suburbs and exurbs are ground zero for change, particularly in the United States, where though most people live in urban areas (79% in 2000), they do not live in big cities. Only a quarter of US residents live in cities above 100,000 in population, so no matter how green cities become, we must think in terms of metros and their smaller cities if we really want to prepare for the future.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and co-author of a forthcoming book from the Post Carbon Institute on urban and societal resiliency

The US House passed the first climate change legislation in the history of the nation, by a narrow margin. Whatever the pitfalls of the new legislation, the nation is now on its way to being part of the solution to climate change.

Despite opposition rhetoric claiming the move will be will be a "job-killer", the United States can now join other leading groups of nations (The European Union) and nations (China, Japan, Australia, Korea) in developing a clean energy economy.

From cleaner electricity, building design and transportation to the development of new cities, the US can again innovate. And these new jobs cannot be exported as much of this new work can only be done in the United States.

Yes, some jobs will be lost in dirty oil, gas and coal production. Many more jobs, however, will be created as the world for the first time purposefully shifts its transportation and electricity/ building energy sources at the same time.

Almost two weeks ago I presented to the European Union's Committee of the Regions special meeting on "Green and Connected Cities" which was held in Brussels. I also presented on the same theme at an event in Paris the same week.
(Please excuse the late post).
I was struck by how much more advanced Europe is in policy as it relates to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to acheive sustainability, and that naturally includes economic dvelopment. The EU has an official mandate to use ITC to help not only reduce climate change through greater energy efficiency, but to:
"stimulate the development of a large leading-edge market for ICT-enabeled energy efficiency that will foster the competiveness of European Industry and create new business opportunities."
The event was oragnized by ACIDD, the European association for communication and information for sustainable development, and it featured 31 other presenters from Europe and Africa.
Two of my fellow presenters on my panel were notable. One was Charles Secrett, of the London Development Agency, who guided sustainability policy including but by no means limited to the congestion pricing scheme implemented by outgoing London Mayor Ken Livingston.
Though Livingston lost in a recent election, congestion pricing has been a great success reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in the range of 20-40 percent. Secrett told me it's anyone's guess whether incoming mayor elect Boris Johnson will maintain congestion pricing or Livingston's other well-laid plans for carbon reduction.
Also on my panel was Leda Guidi, head of Iperbola. She described in detail the electronic participatory democracy of Bologna, Italy, which has been garnering citizens votes and feedback on sustainability planning since 1995, with impressive participation rates (30k visits per day).
Cisco presented on its Connected Urban Development initiative which is working with cities such as San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul on everything from wireless building networks and transportation systems, to teleworking centers for commuters to use in lieu of driving. Madrid, Lisbon, Hamburg, and Birmingham, England are the next locations for pilot projects.
A dose of realism was brought to the proceedings by Ronan Uhel from the EU's Environment Agency, as he said the EU's 27 countries and countless regions and cities will need to develop common data methodologies and processes to make these scale up across the EU.
"Stop exchanging data," Uhel told the Brussels audience. "And start sharing data, ontologies, multi-lingual websites, metadata and formats. Success will be predicated on the work that goes on backstage."
EU Commissioner Nicholas Hanley gave paticipants the big picture of why cities should be the focus of sustainability and climate change policy engineering: "Cities concentrate the problems related to sustainability, but they also concentrate the capacity for response."

The tropical storm that kicked off the Pacific monsoon season Saturday has now officially killed 22,000 (expect a much larger death toll, perhaps more than 100,000) and left an estimated 1 million homeless.

How much of the event's intensity was caused by global climate change can be debated, but I was struck by the "before" and "after" satellite view of the region.

This is what future climate-change caused sea-level rise projections look like in low-lying regions all over, not just in the Irrawaddy Delta--The Mississippi Delta, Chesapeake Bay, throughout earth.

Look at the difference between the photo on the right, after Cyclone Nargis, and on the left before the cyclone. On the right, hundreds of square miles are now under water as can be seen by the expanded blue at the bottom of the photo.

The frightening part is that this photo is not a projection. It's real, and it's what one million or more people are struggling to survive in at this very moment. Tens of millions more will be impacted by the resulting famine that results from the loss of not only farmers and their rice crops, but the permanently impacted center of the nation's agriculture.

With climate change there will be slow changes to some coastlines and low lying areas.

Climate change may also literally submerge overnight coastlines and river deltas, such as these densely populated areas just outside Burma's largest city, Yangon, which are now more part of the Indian Ocean than mainland Asia.


Photo: AP/Yahoo

1. Peaking Resources:
   
   • oil
   • natural gas
   • coal
   • minerals
   • topsoil
   • fish
   • fresh water
   
   

2. Global climate change adaptation. Now that climate change is a given, watch the economics of climate change adaptation come into play not only in energy markets, but in myriad unexpected ways. Global seaport consultant Scott Borgerson in the upcoming March/ April 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs describes how the rapidly melting arctic ice creates open waters, which absorbs even more sun than ice, known as the "ice albedo feedback loop." The result? Consistently navigable waters for the first time in human history. Expect new shipping arctic megaports, with a mad scramble for newly available oil and minerals.

3. $100 a barrel oil. Our planet's main source of mobile energy is at its historic price high. Any movement beyond current pricing is bound to multiply impacts in food markets, supply chains and public mobility. Whatever the causes, no conventional expert has forecast oil price dynamics accurately since 2005, when crude's price began its stratospheric ascent. From now on, any major or perceived major disruption in supply will continue to cause even more dramatic price spikes, impacting global trade, government and civic life.

• John McCain was the first major Republican advocating climate change measures nationally (even before Arnold), back in 2003.
• Barack Obama has written of taking on the "tyranny of oil" and has announced a program to pour $150 billion into renewables and green collar jobs.
• Hillary Clinton has plans for a $50 billion Strategic Energy Initiative

Photo courtesy Flickr user lexrex