To anyone who continues to deny the reality that is climate change, I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of your armchair. I dare you to go...where climate change has become a matter of life and death as food and water becomes scarce.
-Yeb Sano, Undersecretary, Philippine Climate Change Commission
Environmental, economic and ethical risks face Australia if we don’t act decisively on global warming. There is a real chance Australia could add diplomatic isolation in our own region to the list-if climate change attitudes amongst our neighbours continue to harden. This article is about how we can protect ourselves from this eventuality-but first we need to take a small detour into policy and politics.
The problem with policy is that it is subject to politics. This self-evident statement is epitomised by the circus surrounding the execution of convicted drug smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.
President Joko Widodo of Indonesia may feel the best way to deal with the Australian drug smugglers is to shoot them, or perhaps driving his hard line is domestic politics, where a strong anti-drug stance makes him very popular amongst Indonesians. Maybe it’s a useful bargaining chip in Australia/Indonesia relations. It certainly isn't principle; Indonesia paid US$1.9m to Saudi Arabia in 'blood money' to save Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad, an Indonesian domestic worker sentenced to death for robbing and murdering her employer’s wife.
Equally, contributions like Tony Abbott publicly pressuring Indonesia to spare the men are usually counter-productive to behind the scenes diplomatic efforts. They are, like President Widodo's hard-line stance, more for the consumption of domestic constituents than a measured, coherent policy statement based purely on outcomes. (This is not to question Abbott’s sincerity).
These examples illustrate that politicians have to play to a domestic base which have a strong influence on decisions. Yes, this is obvious, but it has ramifications in international politics too, for example when leaders use nationalism to distract from issues at home (Vladimir Putin) or when voters reject outsiders calling the shots (Greece’s rejection of austerity).
What does this have to do with climate change diplomacy?
The fact is this: If Australia is perceived to be dragging its feet on climate change, we will pay a price for it, because our neighbours-the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia (combined population 590m) are starting to frame natural disasters as man-made events, not just natural ones.
If something is man-made, somebody is responsible for it; can be blamed for it. Developing nations already embody this attitude-it’s their justification for wanting transfers (technology, cash) from the rich world to mitigate against warming. What we’re witnessing is a hardening of this attitude.
Because our neighbours think warming is hurting them, it shapes their priorities. The Philippines is the chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a bloc of twenty countries (including Vietnam and Bangladesh) who feel imminently threatened by warming and at climate change negotiations form a negotiating bloc.
Indonesia occupies the same region, and has the same vulnerabilities to warming as the Philippines; according to the Indonesian Disaster Management Agency, that country saw twenty-eight (28) times as many typhoons in 2012 as 2002. The Indonesian government attributes this increase to climate change. If Indonesia were to align their negotiation position more closely with the CVF, our climate attitude-what we are perceived to be doing in relation to our capacity to act-would be radically different to all our closest neighbours.
At the December 2014 COP20, the head of the Philippine delegation said; “We support any solidarity for the Philippines, but not sympathy. We sustain losses every year: from Typhoon Frank, to Parma, to Nesat, to Bopha, to Haiyan, to Hagupit. But our vulnerabilities can be reduced.”
This from Bangladesh; “These more frequent and increasingly severe weather events are a call to action.”
Anecdotally, I travelled to Tacloban in the Philippines directly after Typhoon Haiyan to assist with the clean-up. Speaking with locals, they blamed many things for the destruction and number of dead. There were two overriding factors mentioned: Poor government preparedness, and global warming.
The people of these countries see damage and death on a vast scale. To them there is no debate about climate science. They not only blame these calamities on climate change, but firmly believe things will get worse-and that humans are responsible.
In 2013, the Annual Disaster Statistical Review found that, China, the United States, the Philippines, India, Indonesia and Vietnam constitute together the top six countries that are most frequently hit by natural disasters. All our either regional neighbours, major trade partners or key allies.
Relevantly, non-weather related disasters (e.g. earthquakes and volcanos) are only 11% of the total occurrences and 4% of deaths. Perhaps this is representative of long-term trends, however these days governments are starting to blame human factors.
But wait-what’s the problem? After all, foreigners don’t make our policy, we do.
It's a problem because such calamities inevitably have a political dimension. Death and destruction incites strong emotions and politicians tap into strong emotions. Traditionally, natural disasters are seen as “acts of God” or bad luck, with nobody to blame but Mother Nature. However, as shown above, nations and politicians are increasingly blaming natural disasters (or at least the weather related ones) on human activity.
At the start of the article we looked at how politicians, rightly or wrongly, frame external threats as rallying cries to their domestic constituents. Sometimes this is cynical exploitation, or it may be a true and just cause, like Britain during WWII under Churchill. The risk here is that we become the focal point of negative regional climate diplomacy, a whipping boy for nations and leaders looking for someone to blame for the plight of their citizens. Indonesia’s massive contribution to warming through deforestation will be subjugated to politics and arguments about Australia’s overall contribution to greenhouses gases become irrelevant-we’re a wealthy country and it’s our attitude that will be judged and used against us.
Australia does not have the clout to just do our own thing. Big countries, like the US can, for many reasons-not least because they give the Philippines US$6bn in aid each year. The US also provides a counterpoint to Chinese power in the South China Sea. This is a big issue for the above-mentioned nations. Australia doesn't have that the luxury of that influence.
Renewable energy, like all breakthrough technologies, needs, at the very least, to not have an unfair playing field. Refusing or reducing subsidies on free-market grounds (ie abolishing the CERF) is fine-if you internalise negative externalities of the incumbents. That’s what the carbon tax was for. The Abbott government can’t have it both ways and then claim to be reasonable, or retain credibility.
The argument that we should expand coal use and abolish because it's cheap and good for the prosperity of our country is at worst an example of an ideological “liberal” government “picking winners” in a sop to big coal, and at best, a purely a self-interested, Australia-first pragmatic argument.
Giving Abbott the benefit of the doubt, self-interest isn’t intrinsically bad in itself, because that’s how international politics works. However, the logic behind such an approach is deeply flawed. One hundred years ago it might have been sound policy. Nowadays, it is anachronistic.
It’s anachronistic because environmental, economic, even ethical concerns are all reasons to act on warming. We should now add diplomatic concerns to that list.
Australia has long punched above its weight in diplomatic circles. Fundamental to this has been the perception that, broadly speaking, we're a principled country. We can continue this legacy whilst acting demonstrably in our national interest; by taking firm action on climate change, and being seen to act.