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by Frank E. Loy
March 13, 2006
(This commentary was originally published as an Op-ed in the March 13, 2006 edition of the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.)
Recently, in Moscow, at the meeting of G8 Finance Ministers, the Europeans gave us a repeat performance of an all-too-familiar pattern: they appeased George Bush at the expense of the global environment. There is good reason for the Merkel government to lead the effort to reverse this decision.
At last year’s Gleneagles summit of the G8 industrialized nations, the G8 leaders, led by the Europeans, invested considerable political capital to find common ground on climate change. While they failed to persuade George Bush to agree on what arrangements should take the place of the Kyoto Protocol, when it expires in 2012, they persuaded Bush to join in calling climate change a serious problem that warrants urgent action. More specifically, Bush reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to a 1992 climate treaty (which, unlike Kyoto, the United States has ratified). That treaty requires industrialized nations to assist developing nations to grow cleanly, and Bush pledged at Gleneagles to do more to help poor nations obtain climate-friendly energy technologies. The Gleneagles consensus was at best a limited success, but the commitment to work with developing nations on clean energy seemed promising.
Well, that was last year.
About ten days ago, President Bush proposed cutting U.S. funding by 50% for the leading global institution that helps poor nations acquire clean energy technologies. The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a little known but critically important arm of the World Bank, assists poor developing nations fight climate change, pursue sustainable development and manage their natural resources. To date the GEF has provided grants for 1,500 projects in 140 countries, and these projects have reduced climate pollution by an amount more than France or Italy emit annually. The GEF also has conserved 279 million hectares of national parks and protected areas, thereby helping secure livelihoods for poor and indigenous communities. The GEF, importantly, is the one and only official funding mechanism of the very climate treaty President Bush promised to support at Gleneagles.
While the international community has suspected since November that President Bush plans to slash GEF funding, European leaders have remained silent and passive. Even though finance ministers from Germany, the UK, France and Italy help oversee the GEF, and also play a major role in implementing the Gleneagles commitments, they have yet to confront U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, let alone engage their heads of government to lobby the White House. Of course, Europe’s silence has been devastating to the GEF’s champions in America. U.S. environmental organizations have little standing to
complain about President Bush breaking U.S. international commitments if other major countries seem willing to accept America’s backsliding.
The Bush administration claims that the GEF, like the United Nations, needs to be reformed. Greater efficiency and accountability are reasonable goals. That’s why Europe rightly joined the United States in pushing through a reform package for the GEF only last year. In the wake of these recent successful reforms, America’s proposed funding cuts are entirely indefensible. If more reforms are needed, surely they can be achieved without hobbling global efforts to protect the environment and assist poor nations.
Europe wailed publicly about Bush’s rejection of Kyoto in 2001 but said remarkably little to the President and his senior advisers in private. The President concluded that Europe’s professed interest in climate change was driven by domestic politics more than genuine concern. Europe seems on course to be even less forceful this time. If Europe wants to really be a global leader on the environment, it needs to do more.
What specifically? First, it should state publicly that Bush’s budget proposal for the GEF is completely at odds with America’s international commitments and therefore unacceptable. Second, it should work constructively with the United States to strengthen the GEF through sensible new reforms. Third, it should insist that the United States commit to continue to fully fund the GEF if further reforms are negotiated within the next year. The United States would have no legitimate basis for resisting this compromise.
Why should Germany should lead this effort? Well, it has, after all, a long history of leadership on both issues of development and climate change. Moreover, this issue presents an opportunity - an achievable opportunity - for the Merkel government to put the relationship with the U.S. on a new footing, an unsentimental partnership based on realism to replace the old one based on gratitude and sentiment. Central to that is acceptance of the notion that at times Germany too must insist on receiving support for an agenda important to it.
Complacency regarding the GEF risks undermining one of the few tools the international community has to address climate change emissions in developing nations. Meaningful action by those nations is a prerequisite to success globally. Europe and Germany must rise to the occasion.
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Frank E. Loy, currently Chair of RFF's Board of Directors, was Under Secretary of State and the chief U.S. climate change negotiator in the second Clinton Administration.
RFF is home to a diverse community of scholars dedicated to improving environmental policy and natural resource management through social science research. Resources for the Future provides objective and independent analysis and encourages scholars to express their individual opinions, which may differ from those of other RFF scholars, officers, and directors.
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