This article was originally published in Jordan property Magazine issue of May 2009

The year 2009 will be exceptional for global climate change policies. Denmark will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in December. The meeting will hopefully mark the turning point in the world’s effort to effectively combat climate change and it will be the last chance for a new global deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol before it expires.

This is a tedious task by any means. This is why 130 ministers are expected to attend the high level meeting and why countless preparatory meetings are conducted all over the world to try to reach a common understanding that would seize the opportunity and strike a deal accepted by all countries. There are no over expectations, and a new deal might be similar to the Middle East peace negotiation processes with a lot of good promises and very little of implementation mechanisms. Talking about the Middle East, where does Jordan and the Arab World stand in such a conference?

Political polarization  

The international Global warming negotiations are politically polarized, but the alliances are rapidly changing. During the Bush doctorine, The USA, Australia and Canada lead a group of countries that believe the provisions of climate change conventions should not impact national oil and coal based economies and that developing countries (China, India, Brazil, etc…) should shoulder more responsibility in reduction of greenhouse emissions. After the recent change in Australia the new government is more active in pursuing proper action for climate change and may leave this group. The Obama administration is more concerned with reaching a global deal based on a cap- and-trade system of emission trading with the parallel support of renewable energy sources.

The EU is the most advanced block in terms of environmental awareness and commitment as the EU is the only group which has developed Carbon emission cuts for 2012 and beyond. It is naïve also to discount the EU vested interested in expansion of renewable energy use taking into consideration the high quality EU technology protected by property rights that can make the EU control the new energy politics. The EU countries are starting to feel the real impact of global warming and want fast action as well. Developing countries with large economies restrain from commitments to reduce emissions claiming that they have the right to seek economic development just like the developed countries that have contributed to the Climate Change in the last decades and should have the biggest responsibility.

The OPEC states refuse any commitments and shift to renewable energies to protect their own economies. They only focus on increasing energy efficiency of carbon based sources. However, countries like UAE, Oman and Bahrain have started to pioneer some alternative energy innovations. Jordan is stuck between the conflicting priorities of USA, EU and Gulf States but the current pressure of increasing oil prices is making Jordan more open to renewable energy schemes.  In the last OPEC meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE have pledged US $ 750 million for a technology development fund for better energy efficiency and carbon storage in order to improve their global image and enhance oil based technologies as well. The fund will also promote the transfer of environmentally friendly technologies from advanced countries to the 12 OPEC member countries, as well as other developing nations.

Jordan, in particular:

From our tiny country still moving from an agriculture based to a service based economy without passing through industrialization there is very little contribution from our side to the problem of climate change as the total Carbon emissions of Jordan not reaching more than 0.1% of global emissions.  A high ranking environmental official once described to me how amusing such conference are with Jordan represented by one or two people in maximum while our alphabetical neighbors Japan bringing more than 100 negotiators and experts, arriving in five separate flights to make sure than if a crash happens, Japan will still be defended and represented in the conference.

We do not emit but we are a vulnerable country in terms of climate change impact. In the latest assessment report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's top expert group of climate change scientists that won the Nobel Prize in 2007 shared with Al Gore, Jordan and many Arab countries will suffer from reduced agricultural productivity due to more erratic rainfall patterns, reduced freshwater resources and increased temperatures. This is bad news for a country that is facing tremendous agricultural challenges even without the potential impact of Climate Change.

As a good global partner, Jordan has signed all the environmental agreements pertaining to Climate Change. It has been the first developing country to [resent a national assessment report of emissions and vulnerability in 1997. However, it has been 10 years since the second report is being developed currently by a team of experts in the Ministry of Environment in a project supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This report should provide an updated and precise assessment of the sources and amounts of emissions in the sectors of energy, transport, agriculture, waste management and industrial development. The report should also identify potential mitigation measures to reduce emissions (enhanced technology, shift to renewable energies, etc…) and most importantly to develop adaptation measure that will assist the various sectors to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

One of the main opportunities that Jordan can gain from Climate Change management systems at the global level is the Kyoto protocol. Signed by Jordan in 2001 the Protocol allows the developing countries to sell "virtual carbon emissions" that are allowed for them and will not be reached to developed countries that have surpassed their emission limits. In this transaction the industrial country will buy the amount of carbon emissions of a developing country at a global carbon Market rate in the form of funding for alternative energy projects and direct financial support tailored also for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In the Jordan case The Jordan Biogas Company in Ruseifa is currently conducting negotiations with the government of Finland to sell biogas generated from the Ruseifa landfill. The plant reduces methane emissions by utilizing solid waste for generating electricity and producing organic fertilizers. The factory, expected to reduce 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, generates 20,000 megawatts of electricity annually, thus limiting the emission of 5,000 tonnes of methane and saving 6,000 tonnes of diesel for the use of generating electricity. This is the kind of innovation that can be sold in the global carbon market with an average of 7.5 Euros/tonne of carbon reduced.

Lack of public interest:

The public opinion in Jordan does not seem to be very interested in climate change issues. The Jordanian society is more sensitized to environmental issues affecting their daily lives (air and water pollution, solid wastes, water shortage, etc…) which need immediate actions. The impacts of Global warming need time to be realized, and the lack of proper policies and research to document potential impacts on Jordan (drought, changes in rainfall patterns, impacts on water and agriculture) means that the exact impacts are not well delivered to the public.

According to the Annual Pew Global Attitudes Survey, respondents from the three Arab countries surveyed (Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon) were among the bottom five populations concerned with climate change and environmental issues. Not surprisingly, the two other nations that completed the unhonorable list are the USA and China.

The survey that measures public opinions on a package of political, religious and economic issues has introduced environment in its 2007 edition. The first assessment in 2007 showed that environmental concerns are raised in all countries except the Arab World.

The current survey is interesting in the fact that the top four countries whose respondents showed environmental concerns were not western. Nearly every Brazilian (92%) and at least two-thirds of the publics in Turkey (82%), Tanzania (75%), Japan (73%) showed environmental concerns. The top four countries were followed by France (72%), Argentina (70%), Mexico (70%), South Korea (68%), and Spain (67%).

At the bottom comes the figures from the Arab World. Anxiety about global warming is low among Lebanese (43%), Americans (42%), Jordanians (41%) and Egyptians (38%). However, the country that holds the bottom ranking is China with only 24% of the sample concerned with environmental matters.

The United States, however still holds the reputation of being the most environmentally destructive country. publics in 13 of the 24 countries surveyed name the United States more than any other country as the world’s top polluter. This view is especially prevalent in Argentina (54%), Spain (51%), and Pakistan (51%), where more than half say the U.S. is hurting the world’s environment the most. More than four-in-ten in Turkey (46%), Brazil (44%), and Indonesia (42%) also place clear blame on the United States, as do smaller pluralities in several other countries, including its neighbor to the south; 38% of Mexicans fault the U.S. for global environmental problems.

On the positive side, most of the respondents say that Germany is the country which may have the best impact on enhancing the state of environment. Majorities or pluralities in 10 of the 24 countries surveyed name Germany the most likely to do so (80%), followed by the France (71%), the UK(45%), and Australia (43%).