A Greenhouse Gas Trajectory Change-Enabler

The Fifth World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was this week the location of the launch of the Global Greenhouse Gas  Standard for cities, enabling a common approach for cities to calculate greenhouse gas emissions within their boundaries.  The Standard was launched by UNEP, UN-HABITAT and the World Bank.

The Standard builds on a number of existing protocols and methodologies, including the WBCSD, ICLEI and IPCC, and a host of existing efforts by cities to estimate baseline emissions and apply emissions accounting tools.

Mitigation and Adaption in Agriculture: World Bank Summary Note

The World Bank have recently published an agriculture and rural development note on ‘Reduced Emissions and enhanced adaptation in Agricultural landscapes’ which reports key messages from a Bank conference in January.

It includes some succint messages about the potentiality and issues related to integrating adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, including in the context of the post-2012 framework.  With the meetings in Barcelona and Copenhagen, the timing of the release of the note is clearly opportune.

On the mitigation potential represented:

Leveraging opportunities for low-carbon innovation

Any policy prevarication and lack of coherency in a supportive innovation framework would undermine Australia’s potential to succeed in the global carbon market.

Many organisations are overwhelmed by having to make seemingly large adaptations in the transition to the carbon economy. While I’m convinced it needn’t be so scary, there are a host of issues that need to be addressed and explored in the short term to enable an appropriate transition.

Certainly, there will be some teething problems whilst we calibrate what the carbon market will look like in Australia and in the context of an emerging framework.  However, with the right design, the end result should be of net economic benefit to the Australian economy overall. This has been attested to in the Garnaut review.