As of late last night, December 15, the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen are deadlocked. According to excellent Third World Network reporting, developed country governments want to scrap the Kyoto Protocol and draft a new agreement that would allow developed countries to choose the baseline from which they would make greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cuts. (The Kyoto Protocol requires GHG cuts from a 1990 baseline, whereas U.S. climate change legislation proposes cuts from the much higher 2005 baseline, to ease the burden on U.S. industry.) The developed country governments also want developing countries to commit to emissions reductions, which is not a provision of the Kyoto Protocol. At a contact group session, a U.S. negotiator said that the United States would never ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
It does not seem likely that the arrival tomorrow of more than a hundred heads of state will lead to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, whose first GHG reduction commitment period ends in 2012. Nor does it seem likely that the presidents and prime ministers will agree to launch negotiations for a new agreement. In the midst of this logjam, why are advocates for water as a human right proposing to add water to the climate change negotiations agenda?
Advocates for water as a human right made the proposal at an event last night in the Klimaforum, the site of the unofficial side events to the negotiations. "A call for Water Justice in Copenhagen" was read out to general applause from participants in the event, “World Water Movements and CoP 15: Proposals and strategies for water and climate justice.” IATP’s Shiney Varghese helped to draft the two page call, which asserted that “The effects of climate change on water will directly affect agriculture and the food security of billions. The agricultural sector, accounting for 70 percent of global water use, is not only affected by climate change but can also help to mitigate it,” i.e., to repair the economic and environmental damage caused by climate change. The call proposes that by 2012, governments negotiate a legally binding World Water Agreement to be administered by a World Water Agency under United Nations auspices.
Water policy advocates want to get a foot in the door of the negotiations, as agricultural policy advocates have just achieved. This year agriculture became a topic of climate change discussions for the first time and the International Federation of Agricultural Producers was recognized as the Farmer’s “focal point” (representative group) of the a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In response to a question from Klimaforum participants about why water policy advocates should get involved in the protracted and deadlocked negotiations, Maude Barlow, of the Council of Canadians, said that the first effects of climate change had arrived in the form of drought, floods, melting glaciers and their social, economic and environmental consequences. Water is the “first face” of climate change. However the United Nations had ceded control of water governance to the World Water Forum, a transnational corporate association. Although the UN system itself is dominated by transnational corporations, Barlow believes that the UN must assert global governance over water as a global public good and human right. The climate change negotiations offer both a venue and a crucial issue though which the UN system, aided by civil society, can take back water as a global public good and reject the transnational corporate commodification of water.
There were more than a dozen speakers at the three hour long Klimaforum water event and no summary here can do them justice, but three speakers stood out as representative of the issues discussed. Professor Ricardo Petrella presented a “Memorandum for a World Water Protocol,” that resulted from a World Political Forum conference with the European Parliament in February 2009. He said of the climate change negotiations, “Our leaders believe that the future of the world depends on price of carbon emissions [in a UN approved carbon trading scheme]. That’s criminal. That’s nonsense.” Improving water use is a more effective climate change mitigation practice than relying on “market mechanisms” to find the "right" carbon price to induce investments in a low carbon economy.
Michal Kravcik, of the Kosice Civic Protocol gave a powerful and detailed overview of various technical projects, distributed to over 7,000 institutions, for climate change mitigation through anti-flood protection, rain-water harvesting, anti-erosion techniques and other water mediated mitigation means. He showed projects not only from his native Slovakia, but from projects in Africa to prevent desertification that exacerbates climate change.
Alivio Aruquipa, of the Bolivian mountain community of Khapi, closed the event by discussing the loss of potable water, food security and livelihoods as the Ilimani glacier above his village of 190 people disappeared. If the shrinking of the glacier could not be reversed, his people would be forced to migrate. Aruquipa’s sobering account depicted a future that now directly affects the most vulnerable populations but soon could directly affect us all if there is no effective global governance of water, combined with local projects to make the use of water sustainable and the fulfillment of a human right.
