engleski

After Copenhagen: Climate, Energy and Geopolitics

The unfulfilled expectations preceding the Copenhagen Climate Summit 2009 are giving way to a new, more illusion-less discourse about the future approach on how to control, and cope with climate change. The paper reviews the main elements of the emerging discourse. The uncertainties of the scientific predictions on (consequences of) climate change are brought into focus. With growing criticism of the present mitigation policies and instruments, the urgency of adaptation to climate change is increasing. More effort is needed to assess the regional consequences of predicted climate change, including the roles of presumed losers or winners. New security implications related to climate change are emerging, with examples including the Arctic, South-East Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Energy supply security, in relation to climate change, remains a dominant factor in geopolitical considerations, with increasing focus on maritime and terrestrial transport. The challenge of climate change is a race with time, whereby the main challenges are a timely availability of appropriate technologies, and the quality of governance. Geo-engineering is an uncertain solution in the longer term. Whereas the outcomes of the Copenhagen summit demonstrate the still important but diminishing influence of the EU, the role of China is clearly increasing, with the role of US still undecided. Coping with climate change evolves as a testing ground for competing political and economic models in achieving sustainability.

Climate-change policy; Kyoto protocol; Copenhagen Accord; mitigation; adaptation; geoengineering; security; geopolitics; EU; Russia; China.

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