Cement Energy and Environment

I The negotiations under the Bali mandate led to a significant interim achievement: the Cancun Agreements reached last year (201 0). The outcome in Cancun was projected as encouraging. The Cancun Agreements include a comprehensive package to help developing nations deal with climate change, including a Technology Mechanism, Adaptation Committee and the Green Climate Fund. Importantly, the Cancun Agreements provide the strongest signal the international community has ever given to the private sector on the need to move toward low-carbon economy, by committing to limiting temperature increases to a minimum of 2 degrees, and to consider limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. By end April 2011, The UNFCCC secretariat has received and published information from all developed countries on their quantified economy-wide em1ss1on reduction target, and from 48 developing countries on the nationally appropriate mitigation actions - referred to as NAMAs - , which they will implement in their effort to seek a deviation from business-as-usual em1ss1ons by 2020, with technological and financial support. What do the Cancun Agreements Mean for the Transition to Green Growth and Sustainability? Needless to say, you cannot solve climate change without sustainable development and you cannot advance sustainable development without solving climate change . The Cancun Agreements present a springboard for moving forward some solutions for both. The agreements firmly anchor low-carbon development as the key direction for the future. Industrialized countries committed to develop low– carbon development strategies, whereas developing countries were encouraged to do so. This may be testimony to the fact that increasingly, countries are realizing that changes need to be mad in their own self-interest. Experts at the World Energy Congress at Montreal in September 2010 expressed concern at the projection of the International Energy 2010 expressed concern at the projection of the International Energy Agency that world demand for primary energy will be 40 per cent higher in 2030 than it was in 2007. For oil, this would mean adding the equivalent of 4 Saudi Arabia's to production, half to meet the decline in existing oil fields and half to meet the increase in demand. The general expression was that the world should find an energy trajectory that can be shifted to renewable energy resources and low carbon technologies. People have to understand that moving the world onto a low-carbon path is not about waging ideological battles between lobby groups. Rather, the low-carbon pathway is critical because it simply doesn't make sense to rest all economic activity on the back of an overly expensive, finite system. Developed countries believe that the Cancun Agreements offer the first official step away from carbon-intensive growth, and officially open up space for the development of serious low– carbon policies. If an agreement is reached amongst developed and developing governments then the planet now needs national governments to turn the Cancun Agreements into action, for national policies to provide the muscle that implements international will. International and national policy need to work in tandem and be mutually reinforcing, while having distinct roles. The Cancun Agreements can incentivize action, and it is hoped that the international incentives are used to strengthen low-carbon policies on the national level. But the identified incentives have to be effectively delivered in ful l. The alignment of international and national policy has the potential to significantly alter emission trends well into the future, and in doing so, boost sustainable development. The key to success lies in ensuring that national policy not only takes aggressive advantage of the incentives provided by the Cancun climate change regime, but fills in the incentive, regulatory and legislative gaps at home to provide sustainable solutions with a level playing field at the national level. But, that will be possible only when agreed technology transfer and financing is put in place. IPCC-Moving from 'Projection' to 'Scenario' Effective and meaningful policy needs to be based on sound science. In this context, the IPCC has some important contributions to make vis-a-vis the climate change negotiations. Nowhere is this more important than in terms of the review of the adequacy of the long-term global goal. The Cancun Agreements call for this rev iew to be guided by best available scientific knowledge, including from 29