Thank you very much. First, all Europeans are not named Francois. It's an accident.
Maybe one correction. You said I'm the coordinator. No, I'm one of the coordinators. Climate change
is way too big to be coordinated by one person. Maybe one word about me and the last one.
I was trained as a journalist. My first training is journalist and then I became a bureaucrat.
So I have some understanding, some understanding, maybe remote of what edges, what angles you
would have to look for and I will try to help you as much as possible finding relevant information,
interesting angles for your work. Maybe before I start, maybe two things. Climate change is not
linear, which means it doesn't have the same effects everywhere. Second, climate change is
global. All this means that climate change is extremely complex. I'm really sorry, but it's
going to be very complex. I tried to have a simple presentation, but you must keep that in mind.
It's very, very complicated. There's a lot of interrelations, a lot of interlinkages. Also,
because it is complex, the policy response is complex because there are many different actors,
different level of development. We discussed it early on this morning. Diversity in the countries,
diversity on the continents, diversity in the society, and we got to put all this together
to try to come up with something that would look like a solution. Okay, the EU has been dealing
with climate change since actually the early 90s. I've put here 97 because 97 is the Kyoto
Protocol and we have developed a program which we call the European Climate Change Program in the
early year of 2000, but we already had climate change measures in the 90s. I remember I used to
work in the European Parliament, I was following Environment Committee, and we were discussing
carbon tax in 94 already. We're not there yet. I remember also that one of the first person in
Europe to talk about climate change was Mrs. Sacha. Mrs. Sacha, which we do not imagine would be a
climate-friendly person, but she was a chemist, and that obviously made her understand that climate
change was an issue she made that made her sensitive to what the scientific community was
saying. The measures we've taken on climate change, I'm going to take a few of them and at the end
of my presentation you have a few references, a few web links where you can find much more
details, but basically our response is about obviously cutting our emissions and finding the
right instrument to do it. So I've put regulations or laws basically. We have put standards for
appliances, for building. One of my first work was to work on energy efficiency for fridges. That
might seem a bit strange, but keep in mind that fridge is the only appliance that works all day
long in your home. And if you can make your fridge more efficient, you really make a difference in
terms of consumption and of emissions. We also have issues like we use tools like regulations or
laws and information to the consumers, the energy labeling, which is now I think existing pretty
much everywhere. And we are developing also things like market instruments and we'll be
talking about the emission trading schemes. I've heard that some people are not too keen on this
here. I would be happy to discuss that. A couple of years ago climate change started becoming a
really, really hot issue. It was already hot, but it became really hot at the political level.
First, of course, we had the IPCC 4 and the Nobel Prize, the mobilization of people like
Al Gore, but also many more. And at the EU, we had mobilization by our heads of states,
which is one of the first time that really at the top level in the EU, our president-prime
ministers got together and started getting interested in climate change. So at the beginning
was a bit surprising because all their entourage, all the people working with them did not consider
the environment as such an important issue. So it took a bit of time to get them understanding
this. But I mean, now I think it is important to note that at the top level, at the heads of state
level, there is a very strong interest on climate issues. And we see, I can talk about my boss,
Barroso, is really an expert on climate change. He really understands climate issues. He's not
a mathematician, he's not a physicist, but he has a good understanding of the politics of it
and how to come up to a deal. I think all the EU offer to reduce our emissions by 20 percent,
by 220, and by 30 percent in the framework of a global deal. I think this has been mentioned.
So I guess you guys are familiar with it. If you're not, please don't hesitate. We'll discuss
this. Our idea is to, and this is something we will be discussing also, is we really want to
have a global deal. It's very simple. If we do all the efforts we want in the EU and nothing is
done in the US, nothing is done in India or China on different ways, several different ways to do
it, but it is important to understand that this is global. One ton of CO2 is one ton of CO2
wherever it comes from. So it's very important that we don't have holes in the system that we
set up. But of course, our system must be able to deal with the fact that there are different
levels of development, different financial capacity. Okay, we adopted in December 2008 last
year. We were in Poznan. I was in Poznan covering the climate conference, and at the same time,
we were all hung on our mobile phone to wait for the results of a big meeting at the heads
of state level in Brussels, where they were finalizing what we call the climate and energy
package. The energy package is where you can, you really weigh faster than I talk. So, but
basically the key measures, and these are the ones I would like to elaborate a bit on, we're
expanding our carbon market. We are boosting the use of renewable energy. We are developing
renewable fuels in terms of transport fuels. So that's biofuels, but not only biofuels. We are
improving energy efficiency. We're working on what we call CCS, which is capture and storage,
carbon capture and storage. And we have specifically a specific directive on reducing
emission by cars. Now we're going to start getting into the tricky thing. Okay, carbon markets. I
don't know if you are familiar with carbon markets. Yes, good. I'm happy because I didn't want to get
into explaining what the carbon markets are. So basically what you can see here is that we've
developed a market in 2005. It is true that our market was criticized at the beginning. We have
the feeling we're quite confident that the market is operating relatively well for now. It is the
first market at a continental level, and we are really hoping that a lot can be done by using
this type of market instruments in order to, at the same time, reduce emissions, but also leverage
finance, which could be used in the negotiation. I've heard comments early on about the market,
the first ETS not being hard enough on companies, about the ETS being too easy, about member states
over evaluating the need for emission permits. I can understand all this, but we have to understand
that also it was about setting up a system. This is why we had a revision of this system in order
to tighten up everything. From a policy point of view, and which is my job now, not so much
to analyze and investigate, but analyze, investigate, and propose solutions, you have to keep in mind
that you have to find a solution that is workable, which means that people can agree with, and it is
very nice to propose a perfect system if nobody agrees with him from a policy point of view. It's
a complete mistake. We have a lot of proposal, lots of laws like that, which are on the paper very
good, but got rejected right away. So of course our work, and I understand that from a journalist
point of view or from an NGO point of view, it can be a bit frustrating because you see this is
not perfect because you see there are loopholes. Yes, there may be loopholes. This is why we're
trying to close them. This is what we've been trying when we expanded the ETS, and this is what
we will be trying to do when we develop our policies and try to complete our policy portfolio.
Carbon market, maybe one thing in the discussion. In our negotiations in Copenhagen, there's going
to be one of our proposals in Copenhagen. We would like carbon markets to be developed worldwide,
first starting at OECD levels or richer country levels, and then expanding, especially with the
most advanced economies. We don't want these economies to go full covering all the sectors.
We understand that there are diversities, and in some cases we would like simply to get the most
advanced and most polluting sectors in the market. Second objective, and I would just like to highlight
this too, is the renewable energy. I think you can see here the position of all the EU countries,
not all of them actually, EU 15. You can see this with relation to renewable energy. We're
committing to 20%. We are 8.5%. That means we've got a lot of work to do. This is basically what
it means, a lot of work to do. The EU is quite advanced in terms of reducing emissions, but
also renewable energy. Still, we are not there yet. We're not there yet. We need to really push
and continue to push further for this. This is taken by a lot of different measures,
national measures, also more efficient markets. More efficient markets, because if you're a
producer, let's say if I put a wind turbine up my house, I would need to be able to sell it on
the market. If I don't sell on the market, it's not going to be worth it. It is important also
to look at the regulatory dimension and enabling operators to benefit from their investment.
So this requires a lot of changes in national legislation, but also in the European legislation.
I would like to move a bit quicker to what is my daily work. My daily work is the external
dimension. I'm working in the external relation department, basically the diplomatic department,
and my job is to promote a climate change agreement, but beyond the agreement to promote
climate change resilience to facilitate the adoption of climate change policy in partner
countries, but also within our instrument. As I was saying, it's not linear. It's complicated.
We need to adapt all our instruments. Not easy, not easy. If I take an example, the EU plus the
member states are the biggest donors in development cooperation. Now we need to make sure all these
projects, all these money is climate change-proofed, or at least is improving the climate change
situation. Very simple example. If you build a school, if you build a hospital, you don't want to
build it in a place where it gets vulnerable to floods or whatever happened. It is important to
integrate this because this is where the complexity in the policymaking lies. It is not always very
sexy. It is not always breaking news, but we believe that this is also a big element of where the
work is taking place. I wrote Integrating to Development Cooperation. This is something we
are doing right now as we are talking. When we are discussing with the governments of a third
country, let's say Indonesia, we're discussing with them how we will be spreading our development
cooperation money. We discuss with them, we say, okay, let's look at tourism. Tourism will be
affected. How do we do this? How are we going to integrate the climate into this? We're working
a lot with experts, but also with the government in the country so that what we're doing has a
positive effect. We're also developing specific instruments. There are a bit more. Global
Climate Change Alliance is focused on the least developed countries and the small islands developing
states. We are talking about the Maldives, we are talking about Yemen, we are talking about Laos,
about a big part of Africa. Here what do we see is that these countries are the countries which are
likely to be the most affected by climate change, first because of their geographic situation,
but also because they have weak governmental capability. They have the difficulty to develop
the planning and they have difficulty to integrate, do this as I was mentioning,
integrate climate change into their work. So we are working in this Global Climate Change Alliance.
We are working with them in order to develop planning to integrate climate change into their
policy. We have a tool that we call GRF. Yes, we like acronyms in the EU. I'm sorry.
Basically, the GRF is working a bit like a bank whose objective is to promote renewable energy
and energy efficiency. In terms of deforestation, we are signing agreements with countries.
We call them voluntary agreements in order to promote sustainable forestry, which is a very
important aspect if you use a lot of countries whose emissions are connected to,
let's put it differently, about 20 percent of climate change is connected to deforestation
and for a lot of countries it is very important that we tackle with them, maybe differently,
maybe differently that they tackle with us the issue of climate change.
We are developing a relatively intense diplomatic activity. I was checking on the
web this morning, but normally there should be a big article by President Barroso in the press
all around the world where he's explaining how important we consider climate changes and
is pushing and calling for mobilization on climate change. We would be in the
debate in the UN this week. We are working a lot at grassroot level because we have embassies
in about 150, 140 countries and we've been developing a lot of lobbying and our approach
was very much of a lobbying type, which is identifying who in the country is important
on climate change, who are the important people, the NGO, the politicians, the academics and we
engage with them, discuss with them and call on them to mobilize because climate change is not
only an issue for environment ministers and for negotiators. You must go way beyond. Climate
change, as you mentioned before, is also an issue for finance minister because this is
very much where it will happen. Climate change is also an issue for foreign ministry. It's an
issue for social ministry. It's an issue for education. It is also an issue of security
and we've been mobilizing a lot the security community. If you look at the budget used for
defense and the budget needed for climate change, you understand that it is worth it talking to the
military. It is worth it talking to the defense because climate change has impact on security
and I will develop a bit on that, but also because global mobilization is what will make
happen. Climate change will have an impact on the military assets, for instance. If you have a
naval base somewhere and the island gets flooded, well, you've lost your naval bases without being
it at war. So it is a concrete element for the military community. Maybe one thing, if you could
show the next slide. Okay. Now, if you look at, I stole this slide. It's not mine. I stole it
from the foreign office from the UK. They've put together different pressure and when you look at
them, you'll see what could be the situation impact. If you have water scarcity, next, you put
together demographic pressure, crop decline, hunger, coastal risk, and the last one is the
recent conflict. Where did we have conflict recently? Now, you see a pretty scary scenario
because everything adds up. We, in spring 2008, I think you could find that, yes, I've put the
reference at the end, we produced a report on climate change and security where basically we
say, I must say what all other people say on climate change and security. We all agree on this.
We basically say that climate change will multiply threats. We don't engage into whether climate
change will create wars. That's a debate for academics. That's not a debate for us. But climate
change certainly adds pressure, certainly makes things more complicated, certainly makes states
weaker, certainly makes that there are people which might be tempted to seize resources, to
find solutions outside of the law, outside of the negotiation. There might be impacts on crime.
There will certainly be impacts on health. So one of the key messages we want to send on the
issue of security is that climate change will make things more difficult and that the security
community must mobilize because they have a high reach in government, they are managing lots of
money, and also we're talking about strategic interests. Now, why are we doing all this?
We're obviously partly responsible. But I would say everyone's responsible. We're responsible
for the past, but we're also responsible for the future. This is why I would always argue,
and I might have a different view than my colleague, that we might discuss who has to pay
more, and I think we will agree on this, but I think it's very important to understand that
there is global responsibility on climate change and not simply take it to North-South
debate. I think it's much more complicated than a North-South debate. Also, we have a direct
interest in it because Europe is extremely vulnerable. It's my first time in Copenhagen,
but when I came down, I could see that this is very flat here. This is very flat. Sea
level rise will affect the city right away. I mentioned already the global impact, the impact
on instability. Now, we also have the responsibility to try to get out of it and benefit from it
because this is the best way to change. We can change with fear, but we're not going to go
very far. We're going to change much further if we seek interest and if we seek global interest.
No. I think you probably had a look at the Stern report. If you haven't had a look, I really
strongly recommend you read this. Basically, Stern is an economist from the UK Treasury,
and he's been analyzing the economics of climate change. That's already two, three years ago.
Basically, what he's saying is that climate change could cost from 5 to 20 percent of GDP.
It depends on, of course, how far, how much the earth is warming, but the cost, he placed it at
1 percent. Some other estimation placed it a bit higher. I saw yesterday in the US in the debate
for the worksman-marquee bill, so the US policy on climate change, and some are claiming that
there would be 3.5 percent impact of climate change, oh, sorry, of climate change policy
on the budgets and on the economy. I see that if we have even 3.5 percent, and you will see the
cost of inaction at 5 percent, it's still worth it. We have all the benefits coming from climate
change policy, obviously reduce their pollution. Important dimension, which is the energy security,
which is also something we're working on. If you reduce your energy consumption,
you are less vulnerable to price hikes. You're less vulnerable to what could be
attempt by some countries to play with their energy as a weapon. It is also potentially very good
in terms of job creation and what we call the green economy, which is a paradigm that has been,
which is being developed pretty much everywhere. There are some skepticism about it, I hear sometimes,
but I think in a whole, we see that there is a need to move. There is a clear need to move from
a highly carbon-based economy to a low-carbon economy, which will require a lot of innovation,
which require also using a lot of solutions that already exist. Maybe I would like to close with
a few ideas. I was trying to think of what could be food for you when you do your work,
and obviously not up to me to tell you what you have to write. This is your own business,
but the difficulty, I would imagine in climate change, if you want to block on climate change
and if you want to block ahead of Copenhagen, that is just extremely complex. It's probably very
difficult to say something relevant in a relatively small volume. Now, I've listed a few ideas over
there. Maybe one date, which I wanted to mention, sorry. At the end of October, our heads of states
will get together and discuss the details of our position on climate change. I think lots of it
is already known. Lots of it is already mentioned quite a few. Lots of it is already widely available,
but it will get also into the matter of finance, which is a very important issue. You have to
understand that we are going into one of the most complex negotiations in history. The finance
will certainly play a part. There will be a part of pork again during the negotiations. It's important
to understand this, because if you start in a negotiation by putting all your cards on the table,
it's going to be a bit difficult. You must understand that exceeding to information
will not be difficult to access it. It will be difficult to understand the use of it
strategically. You will understand to follow the negotiation. I've highlighted a few things,
the security threat, the human rights and migration, which is a very important issue on
climate change. There are already talks about millions of climate change migrants. What is
the climate change migrants? There are a lot of issues which are quite interested to investigate.
Climate change and politics, which is one of my favorite subjects, is how can you make society
change? Politics is one of the good ways to make society change, because the politicians are the
one voting the laws. It is important to see and quite interesting to see how the climate issues
have been entering the political stage and how the politicians are positioning on climate change.
No time for sleep? Yes. It is a complicated challenge to be a climate negotiator from
whatever country, and the reach of the country, I wouldn't say the lesser challenge, but I've met,
I remember being in the Bali negotiation, meeting the representative from Costa Rica,
if I remember correctly. There were two people from Costa Rica to defend the interests of their
country in a meeting like that. Can you imagine how complicated it is? The EU delegation is over
100 or 150, if not 200 people, Costa Rica are two. In their life after Copenhagen, what I meant
was how is the climate change regime going to operate? What institutions? Who will decide if
people do not respect their commitments? What will happen? That is also something which I believe
would be quite interesting. Now, two tips. I would simply would like to stay with you since
there were some requests from tips. One, that was already mentioned, read, study, check your facts.
It's very complicated, but you can get a lot of resources, a lot of good information on the
environment agency side, on the commission side, on UNFCCC side, which is extremely well done,
and also on national, on the websites of most countries. It is interesting to have a look
at the national submissions of countries. Not always easy to read, not always easy to understand,
but it's quite useful. If you can have access to the negotiating text, which are discussed now,
now it's 250 pages. It's a bit difficult to read, but if you have the courage to read that,
and if you get most of it, it will be quite useful for your work, because you understand
where the issue lies. Last point, which would be my recommendation, place yourself in the shoe of
the negotiators or other people, but then step back into use, very important. Place yourself
in their shoes to understand where their constraints are if you want to cover the negotiation,
but then step back into use, because you're not a negotiator, you're here to blog, and I think it's
quite important that you keep a complete freedom of expression and obviously a complete freedom
of assessment, but I think it is important to understand what they're doing. Yes, that one,
that one was in, I'm sorry, I thought you guys didn't want more polar bear, but okay, I have this
one. This one was in Poznan, and I found it pretty cool. You have, I think, on the previous slides,
you have some links. I will make my presentation available so you can have a look at these links,
and I think I will stop here, pass the floor to my colleague from the environment agencies,
and then we will take questions.
