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This report analyses the international climate negotiations at the UN climate conference in Warsaw in November 2013. The report covers the discussions under the Durban Platform on developing a new comprehensive climate agreement by 2015 and increasing short-term ambition as well as the issues relating to near-term implementation of previous decisions in the areas of emission reductions and transparency, adaptation, loss and damage, finance and technology. The report concludes that Warsaw once again starkly highlighted the sharp divisions and lack of trust among countries. Industrialised countries' collective lack of leadership strongly contributed to re-opening the traditional North-South divide. As a result, on many issues the outcomes hardly go beyond the lowest common denominator. The conference only agreed on the bare minimum to move the 2015 process forward and also made no headway in strengthening short-term ambition. Some progress was made with the establishment of the "Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts" and the completion of the rules for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. However, here as well further substance, in particular financial support from industrialised countries, is required to actually fill these mechanisms with meaning. If countries want to escape from groundhog day, they will have to start seeing and utilizing the UN climate process rather differently.
Economy of sufficiency : essays on wealth in diversity, enjoyable limits and creating commons
(2013)
Another summit of change, known as Rio+20, has passed in summer 2012, nourishing the rumours of a green economy. Building up a green economy seems to be the all over recipe for different crises of capitalism, among them climate change and resource scarcity. Yet efficiency and consistency, as their main strategies, do not suffice to reach sustainable levels, as they cause rebound effects and keep stimulating economy growth. Obviously, there are limits to green growth, too. Can we conceive an economy, and respective economic institutions, that serve human needs and wealth without a built-in necessity to grow? What kind of political, mental, and individual changes does a sufficiency economy require? And what are perspectives and policies to actually start implementing it?
Just before Rio +20 the symposium "Economy of Sufficiency", devoted to Wolfgang Sachs on the occasion of his 65th birthday in 2011, examined these questions in three dimensions. Accordingly this selection of contributions to the symposium follows the chapters "Wealth in diversity" (Ashok Khosla, Marianne Gronemeyer, Vandana Shiva), "Enjoyable limits" (Richard B. Norgaard, Tim Jackson) and "Creating commons" (Ezio Manzini, Silke Helfrich).
The essays indicate the historical development of the ideas on a sufficiency economy. Wandering through discourses of sustainable development for several decades, the authors map the range of perspectives, practices as well as barriers and bridge them between cultures, agencies and schools.
This report provides an overview of current activities regarding climate change mitigation in six emerging economies: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. We cover the institutional set up, measurement, reporting and verification systems for greenhouse gases and mitigation policies and measures. The analysis also addresses existing barriers to mitigation and considers where the international community could provide support to remove these.
Based on the European Waste Framework Directive and the German Recycling Management Act of 01.06.2012 the objectives for a national waste prevention programme were defined. As main objective, according to art. 1 WFD, the "prevention or reduction of the disadvantageous impacts of waste generation and management on the human health and the environment" is recommended. Indicators for a quantitative and qualitative monitoring are derived for both, the individual measures as well as for a waste prevention programme.
As part of the discussion on a new international climate agreement, which is supposed to be concluded by 2015, the European Commission conducted a stakeholder consultation, to which the Wuppertal Institute contributed. The Wuppertal Institute suggests that Parties should revisit the widely shared assumption that there is a trade-off between climate protection and economic well-being. The problem is not so much the macro-economic outlook. The problem is that climate policy causes substantial distributional impacts and thus naturally leads to resistance. The Wuppertal Institute recommends to reconsider the political wisdom of the quantity-based approach that climate policy has so far been based on. As long as emissions are seen as inextricably linked to economic well-being, framing commitments in terms of emission reductions directly triggers the perspective of seeing climate protection as an economic loss. Commitments should ideally be multi-dimensional. Possible types of commitments to consider may include scaling up certain climate-friendly technologies, improving energy efficiency, limiting fossil fuel use and fossil fuel extraction, or emission price commitments. The strongest mobilisation of political support might perhaps be achieved by framing commitments as a joint international undertaking to provide universal access to sustainable energy services by a specific date.
Our perception of design is changing, for design today is no longer concerned only with aesthetics. Now the key factors are interdisciplinary competence and approaches to problem solving. Both politicians as well as businesses recognise design's hybridity and increasingly implement it as a driver of sustainable development (see Chap. 2: Design as a Key Management Factor for Sustainability).
But what exactly does "sustainability" mean? What does it mean in this specific context? People must make use of natural resources to meet their basic needs. In this process, resources are transferred into commercial circulation and usually transformed into products with a particular function. Yet the environment is limited and humanity uses more resources than the Earth can sustainably provide. It is time to rethink and generate the same usage while consuming fewer resources (see Chap. 3: Environmental Space - Challenging Transitions).
Most countries have incorporated sustainability strategies into their political agendas in order to counteract the threats of climate change caused by the overuse of natural resources, high CO2 emissions, and other factors. The indicators for these strategies vary greatly from country to country (see Chap. 4: Sustainability - Challenges, Politics, Indicators).
These indicators need to be taken into account if we are to successfully implement a product or service within a specific context. A concept can only be successful when country-specific indicators are taken into account and the societal context is incorporated into the plan right from the start. The goal is to develop services that support national sustainability targets in production and consumption systems (see Chap. 5: Managing Sustainable Development).
When it comes to companies, these changes can simply be introduced in the form of services or products. In the end, it is the users who decide on the success or failure of innovative solutions by either integrating them into their daily lives or ignoring them. Solutions will only be integrated into users' lives when their role within the social framework remains unchallenged by behavioural transformations caused by use of the solution. In order for users to be able to adopt innovations, sustainable development must take place simultaneously on many different levels. These multi-levelled transitions allow for the transformation of society as a whole. Designers can act as agents of change by providing the needed innovations (see Chap. 6: Transition Requires Change Agents for Sustainability).
If we are to develop suitable solutions and new approaches, the real needs have to be analysed at the beginning of the development process. New physical products, which frequently result in auxiliary products, are often developed without taking into account the overall context, whereas the development of service-orientated solutions is ignored. A physical product is not absolutely necessary. A service (which is naturally dependent on physical products) can usually fulfil the need just as well - or perhaps even better and at a lower cost – while using fewer or no resources (see Chap. 7: Needs & Services - An Approach). There are a variety of possible approaches to integrate sustainability into the design process (see Chap. 8: Design Process).
Precisely which solution is "most or more sustainable" (this is dependent on the defined targets and the indicators used) is often not immediately obvious, and we must turn to a set of methods for a transparent and tangible assessment (see Chap. 9: Sustainability Assessment in Design - Overview and Integration of Methods).