Carbon trading, food miles, eat-the-view: the language of popular concern is changing and with it the way in which the Caribbean will have to engage with the world.
In a little over six months, climate change and the issues associated with it have gone from a relatively low level on the global agenda to becoming a matter that will affect almost every aspect of international relations and trade. It is now widely understood that if carbon emissions are not reduced, global warming will occur, sea levels will rise and within a decade there could be irrevocable changes to the world’s climate, with unpredictable consequences for all.
Due to the work of Al Gore and Sir Nicholas Stern the consequences of climate change are now well known. However, less understood is where this is leading or the challenge it poses to the economic development of the Caribbean.
If global levels of carbon emissions are to be reduced, they will have to be regulated and traded under global agreements. The implication of this is that until environmental friendly technology, industries, agriculture and lifestyles can be introduced, there will be limits to growth.
As matters now stand, the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol provides for emission reductions to be traded between developing and developed countries. It aims to ensure that such reductions contribute to sustainable development based on the standards set by each nation. The implication of this is that the more stringent the sustainable development criteria set by governments, the more likely they are to lose or forgo investments.
In the context of the Caribbean this suggests that as the environmental security agenda takes off globally and moves towards compulsion, establishing special or different treatment will be essential, but as difficult to resolve as it has proved to be in the Doha Round at the WTO.
The thinking in almost every nation described as developing, is to end poverty and provide first-world lifestyles and wealth. As a consequence Brazil, India, China and other nations with more advanced economies do not see why they should be constrained by nations in the North that experienced early industrialisation and wish to maintain their margin of advantage.
As a consequence at the heart of the increasingly vocal environmental debate are a number of hard-to-answer questions that ought to be provoking discussion between the region’s governments and its business leaders: Should the developing world be treated in the same way as the developed world? Who will pay the development cost of reducing carbon emissions? Can viable carbon trading platforms be constructed that benefit low carbon emitters like the Caribbean? If there are to be limits to economic growth who will determine what these are and who will the winners and losers be? And what if there is no regional or global consensus?
Although the Caribbean is well placed to address and speak on these issues as one of the world’s lowest carbon emitters and a region whose environment is its wealth, it has not developed a coherent regional position to deploy in international exchanges at ministerial or any other level.
Nor have the region’s businesses recognised that there is a unique opportunity for the region to develop a carbon trading platform for the hemisphere. Despite this, the Caribbean’s employment-dependent tourism and agriculture based economies are uniquely vulnerable to changing global sentiment and the growing clamour for practical measures to address carbon emissions.
In the space of a few months, food miles (a concept that encourages consumers to exercise choice on the basis of how much carbon has been expended in, say, getting the components of a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich onto a supermarket shelf) have become a front-page issue in the European media. Equally there are growing public concerns about the carbon footprint of fertiliser use in agriculture; the carbon emissions resulting from flying exotic fruits to Europe; and the start of high-profile campaigns that promote the purchase of domestic foodstuffs through low-carbon ‘eat-the-view’ policies.
While these initiatives are in part being driven by farm lobbies and non-governmental organisations, they are catching popular imagination in a manner that will cause Europe’s food distributors and supermarkets to make new demands on suppliers.
Governments, tourist boards and the tourism industry also seem not yet to fully understand how public policy and sentiment is changing in the region’s prime tourism markets or the challenge this presents as other destinations take steps to declare themselves or a region UNESCO biosphere reserves.
There is trend that seeks to have visitors make choices about the nature of their destinations or hotels based on their environmental credentials and buy-local policies. There is also growing movement that sees air travel as environmentally damaging and if undertaken at all, as an activity to be highly taxed or restricted. While limits to air travel may seem to be a thought originating with the wilder side of the environmental movement, the issue has become of particular concern in relation to the huge amounts of carbon that jet aircraft dump into the atmosphere and the vapour trails they create.
Where this is leading is to a desire to legislate on air travel and incentivise domestic and short-haul vacations. As a consequence, there are moves in a number of EU countries to enforce higher passenger taxes, a rethink of airport expansion plans and the introduction of charges levied on airlines to promote fuller loads and greater efficiency.
In all these respects Caribbean governments, agriculture, the region’s business community, airlines and the tourism sector need to determine how they re-position themselves and the region’s product if they are to defend present levels of growth and make a virtue out of the Caribbean’s natural environmental advantage. The Caribbean is a globally known and a recognised brand name and destination because of its environment. Its uniqueness provides it with an extraordinary opportunity to re-engage with the world if it can develop and promote a clear message on climate change.
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
