ClimateChangeFork

Last week’s blog ended with documentation of the COP27’s late unanimous agreement to generate a special fund to help developing countries to cope with adaptation to damage that climate change inflicts. Below is the exact language that the UNFCCC is using to describe the nature of the agreement:

UN Climate Change News, 20 November 2022 – The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 closed today with a breakthrough agreement to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters.

“This outcome moves us forward,” said Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary. “We have determined a way forward on a decades-long conversation on funding for loss and damage – deliberating over how we address the impacts on communities whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by the very worst impacts of climate change.”

Creating a specific fund for loss and damage marked an important point of progress, with the issue added to the official agenda and adopted for the first time at COP27.

Governments took the ground-breaking decision to establish new funding arrangements, as well as a dedicated fund, to assist developing countries in responding to loss and damage. Governments also agreed to establish a ‘transitional committee’ to make recommendations on how to operationalize both the new funding arrangements and the fund at COP28 next year. The first meeting of the transitional committee is expected to take place before the end of March 2023.

Parties also agreed on the institutional arrangements to operationalize the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage, to catalyze technical assistance to developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

As is described here, the all-important implementation of this agreement has been deferred until COP28, with the meeting of an established “transitional committee” to happen no later than March 2023. We obviously will return to this issue.

As promised, this blog will address the question of what the developing countries propose to do in case the funds are made available to them. Next week I will focus on the same issue from the perspective of the developed countries involved.

This blog will focus on a few examples of actual actions of some developing countries and on the related question of whether money from developed countries should be the only source of financing available to confront these issues.

An earlier blog (May 14, 2019), written by my students, addresses the contributions of two important parameters of global carbon emissions: the environmental Kuznets curve, which determines a country’s stage in its economic development (strongly energy-dependent heavy industry or relatively energy-light services) and the income distribution measured through the Gini coefficient. I suggest that you go back to that blog for a refresher on what these two parameters mean. The Gini coefficient is an income distribution parameter that ranges between 0 and 1 (or in percent, between 0 and 100%). 0 indicates perfect income distribution while Gini = 1 indicates all the income is concentrated in the hands of a single person). Putting this in less extreme terms, a small Gini indicates a relatively broad income distribution while a relatively large coefficient indicates that fewer hands hold most of the income. Figure 1 shows a global map of the distribution of the Gini coefficients with the darker colors indicating a more unequal distribution. For more detailed, recent values of the Gini coefficient, one can go to the original World Bank publication. The most recent values from the World Bank are available under the Gini index section of the World Bank website..

Figure 1 – Map of global Gini coefficients reported by the World Bank (Source: ResearchGate)

One can see from Figure 1 that uneven income distribution is less of a problem in richer countries. Many of the rich countries such as most of Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan enjoy relatively broad income distribution. A handful of very poor countries such as Afghanistan and Ethiopia also enjoy a “healthy” distribution, meaning that most people there are poor.

A high Gini coefficient is seen in the southern parts of Africa and South and Central America. One can deduce from such maps that more effective taxation of higher income brackets might be an effective way to increase these countries’ resources to fight ecological disasters. I will return to this issue in the following blog when I deal with the role of rich countries in fighting the climate change crisis.

I will now shift to a few cases of relatively poor countries that have already found the resources to make major progress in shifting their development to a more sustainable landscape. I have also asked one of my students to write a guest blog that will include other examples of what countries that currently lack the resources to fight climate change intend to do once such resources become available.

The efforts below represent major steps to enhance sustainability. First, we look at two small developing countries: Belize and Nepal. Meanwhile, so far, an agreement about the joint environmental impacts between three large developing countries (Brazil, Indonesia, and Congo) that host more than half of the global forests has no source of funding. Finally, there’s an agreement between a group of developed countries to help Indonesia in its transition away from coal:

Belize cut its debt by fighting global warming:

TURNEFFE ATOLL, Belize — Belize faced an economic meltdown. The pandemic had sent it into its worst ever recession, putting the government on the brink of bankruptcy.

A solution came from unexpected quarters. A local marine biologist offered Prime Minister Johnny Briceño a novel proposal: Her nonprofit would lend the country money to pay its creditors if his government agreed to spend part of the savings this deal would generate to preserve its marine resources.

For Belize, that meant its oceans, endangered mangroves and vulnerable coral reefs.

Nepal grew back its forests:

“You see that? They were barren mounds of red mud 15 years ago,” said the man, Khadga Bahadur Karki, 70, tears of pride fogging up his glasses. “These trees are more than my children.”

This transformation is visible across Nepal, thanks to a radical policy adopted by the government more than 40 years ago. Large swaths of national forest land were handed to local communities, and millions of volunteers like Mr. Karki were recruited to protect and renew their local forests, an effort that has earned praise from environmentalists around the world. But the success has been accompanied by new challenges — among them addressing the increase in potentially dangerous confrontations between people and wildlife.

Community-managed forests now account for more than a third of Nepal’s forest cover, which has grown by about 22 percent since 1988, according to government data. Independent studies also confirm that greenery in Nepal haas sprung back, with forests now covering 45 percent of the country’s land.

Brazil, Indonesia, and Congo signed a rainforest protection pact:

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — The three countries that are home to more than half of the world’s tropical rainforests — Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — are pledging to work together to establish a “funding mechanism” that could help preserve the forests, which help regulate the Earth’s climate and sustain a variety of animals, plants, birds and insects.

The agreement, announced on Monday and signed by ministers from the three countries, said they would cooperate on sustainable management and conservation, restoration of critical ecosystems and creation of economies that would ensure the health of both the people and the forests.

The plan has no financial backing of its own and was more of a call to action than a strategy for how to achieve its goals.

US, Japan, and partners mobilized $20 billion to help Indonesia to transition away from coal

NUSA DUA, Indonesia/SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 15 (Reuters) – A coalition of countries will mobilise $20 billion of public and private finance to help Indonesia shut coal power plants and bring forward the sector’s peak emissions date by seven years to 2030, the United States, Japan and partners said on Tuesday.

The Indonesia Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), more than a year in the making, “is probably the single largest climate finance transaction or partnership ever”, a U.S. Treasury official told reporters.

The Indonesia JETP is based on last year’s $8.5 billion initiative to help South Africa more quickly decarbonise its power sector that was launched at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow by the United States, Britain and European Union.

To access the programme’s $20 billion worth of grants and concessional loans over a three- to five-year period, Indonesia has committed to capping power sector emissions at 290 million tonnes by 2030, with a peak that year. The public and private sectors have pledged about half of the funds each.

As I’ve mentioned before, great inequalities are major impediments to addressing climate change on both global and local levels. The next blog will try to address the issues on the rich countries’ level.

The COP27 meeting concluded on November 18^th; I’ve been following its progress. As I described last week, this meeting’s main topic was the difficulty developing countries are having in financing the required mitigation and adaptation to climate change. They have demanded financial help from developed countries and I promised that this week I would address the question of what they propose to do in case the funds are made available to them. Next week, I will focus on the same issue from the perspective of developed countries.

Not surprisingly, given the requirement of a unanimous decision by all participating countries (about 200), there were difficulties concluding the meeting with affirmative decisions. By Sunday morning (NY time), November 20^th, the news media reported the progress in the matter:

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Diplomats from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of climate talks on Sunday by agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations.

The decision on payments for loss and damage caused by global warming represented a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at United Nations climate negotiations. For more than three decades, developing nations have pressed rich, industrialized countries to provide compensation for the costs of destructive storms, heat waves and droughts linked to rising temperatures.

But the United States and other wealthy countries had long blocked the idea, for fear that they could face unlimited liability for the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.

The loss and damage agreement hammered out in this Red Sea resort town makes clear that payments are not to be seen as an admission of liability. The deal calls for a committee with representatives from 24 countries to work over the next year to figure out exactly what form the fund should take, which countries and financial institutions should contribute, and where the money should go. Many of the other details are still to be determined.

While the agreement above obviously didn’t find its way into the final resolution, it was good enough news that I decided to rededicate this blog to the relevant portions that did. I still plan to continue with the promised two blogs about the different perspectives on the role of inequality between developed and developing countries in adapting to and mitigating climate change. I will reexamine the final resolution at the end of this process and will let you know.

Here, I am posting the relevant sections of the preliminary resolution that deal with the transfer of resources between developed and developing countries. These resolutions take time and countless edits; they’re in the process of being updated but for now I’m bolding the sections that still need completion:

{Loss and damage}

38. Welcomes the Parties’ agreement for the first time to include a sub-agenda item titled “Matters related to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change including a focus on addressing loss and damage” under agenda item titled “matters related to finance” under COP and CMA, as a reflection of the wide global consensus around the grave situation in relation to loss and damage and the need for effective funding arrangements related to responding to loss and damage in particular addressing loss and damage.
39. Notes with great concern, as documented by the IPCC 6th AR WG II and WG III reports, the growing gravity, scope and frequency of loss and damage in all regions, and that loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change take the form of extreme weather events as well as slow onset events, and result in devastating economic and non-economic losses including through its impact on cultural heritage, human mobility and forced displacement and the lives and livelihoods of local communities, and underlines in this regard that an adequate and effective response to loss and damage is of great importance to the continue credibility and relevance of the UNFCCC process.
40. Expresses deep concern towards the significant financial costs associated with loss and damage for developing countries, resulting in increasing the burden of indebtedness and impairing the realization of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
41. Welcomes the Parties’ agreement on all the institutional arrangements of the Santiago Network for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change to enable its full operationalization, supports its mandated role in catalyzing technical assistance for the implementation of the relevant approaches at 6 the local, national and regional levels in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, and renews their determination to select the host of the Santiago Network Secretariat by 2023 through a selection process which is conducted in an open, transparent, fair and neutral manner in accordance with the process outlined in paragraphs 17-18 of CMA/**** COP/****;
42. {Placeholder funding arrangement responding to loss and damage}.

{Implementation – Just Transition Pathways}

43. Emphasizes the urgent need for immediate, deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions by Parties across all sectors, in order to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels; and highlights the importance of ensuring and enabling just transition for developing countries.
44. Affirms that sustainable and just solutions to the climate crisis must be founded on meaningful and effective social dialogue and participation of all stakeholders, and notes that the global transition to low emissions provides opportunities and challenges for sustainable economic development and poverty eradication.
45. Emphasizes that just and equitable transition encompasses pathways which include energy, socio-economic, workforce and other dimensions, all of which must be based on nationally defined development priorities and include social protection dimensions to mitigate potential impacts associated with the transition, and highlights the important role of the instruments and measures related to social solidarity and social protection floors in mitigating the impacts resulting from the applied measures.
46. Decides to establish a work program on just transition to discuss pathways to deliver on article 2.1 of the Paris Agreement in the context of article 2.2 and requests the Subsidiary Body for Implementation and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice to recommend a draft decision on this matter for consideration and adoption by the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement at its fifth session, in a manner that builds on and compliments the relevant work streams under the Convention and the Paris Agreement, including the Mitigation work program.
47. Decides to convene an annual high-level ministerial round table on just transition, as part of the just transition work program beginning at the fifth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement.

 {Finance}

48. Reiterates articles 2, 4 and 9 of the Paris Agreement; and highlights that about $4 trillion a year needs to be invested in renewable energy until 2030 – including investments in technology and infrastructure – to allow us to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Furthermore, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least USD 4-6 trillion a year. Delivering such funding will require a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors.
49. Notes with concern the growing gap between the needs of developing country Parties, in particular due to the increasing impacts of climate change and increased indebtedness, and the support provided and mobilized to complement their efforts to implement their nationally determined contributions, highlighting that current estimates of such needs are in the scale of 5.6 trillion USD up to 2030, while the global annual flows to developing countries.
50. Expresses grave concern that the goal of developed country Parties to mobilize jointly USD 100 billion per year by 2020 has not yet been met and urges developed country Parties to meet the goal and address the shortfall to $100 billion since 2020.
51. Emphasizes that accelerated financial support for developing countries from developed countries and other sources is a critical enabler to enhance mitigation action and 7 address inequities in access to finance, including its costs, terms and conditions, and economic vulnerability to climate change for developing countries. Scaled-up public grants for mitigation and adaptation funding for vulnerable regions, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, would be cost-effective and have high social returns in terms of access to basic energy.
52. Notes that global climate finance flows are small relative to the overall needs of developing countries. Global climate finance in 2019–2020 was estimated to be USD 803 billion. This amount is 31–32 per cent of the annual investment needed for the global temperature rise to follow a well below 2 °C or a 1.5 °C pathway. This level of climate finance is also below what one would expect in the light of the investment opportunities identified and the cost of failure to meet climate stabilization targets.
53. Notes the important role of technology transfer in enhancing climate action and that capacity gaps and needs still exist in developing countries.
54. Urges developed country Parties to provide enhanced support, including through financial resources, technology transfer and capacity-building, to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation, in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention, and encourages other Parties to provide or continue to provide such support voluntarily.
55. Calls on MDBs and IFIs to align and scale up funding, ensure simplified access, mobilize climate finance from various sources, and encourages the shareholders of MDBs to define a new vision and commensurate operational model, channels and instruments that fit for-purpose to adequately address the global climate emergency; including deploying full suit of instruments from grants to guarantees and non debt instruments, without exacerbating debt burdens, and address the conservative risk appetites and limited scale of capitalization towards increasing their deployment on climate finance three folds up to 2025.
56. Calls on multilateral development banks to reform their practices and priorities, in order to reduce the cost of borrowing for climate projects in developing countries and to increase their investment into adaptation financing and urges MDBs to align their operations with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and climate change emergency.
57. Urges the ad hoc work programme on the new collective quantified goal to produce more efficient and operational results by 2023
58. Calls on multilateral development banks to significantly increase climate ambition using the breadth of their policy and financial instruments for greater results including on private capital mobilization.
59. Calls on multilateral development banks to ensure higher financial efficiency and maximize use of existing concessional and risk capital vehicles to drive innovation and accelerate impact.

{NCQG}

60. {Placeholder for relevant outcomes from the ongoing negotiations}

NCQG stands for New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, the agreement was “to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations.” The major thing that remains open is where to draw the line of who needs to pay vs. who can withdraw from the fund. To put this question differently, how do we establish where middle-income countries fall on the binary? For instance, China is now the largest carbon emitter by far according to country measures but it trails many rich countries in emissions per capita, income per capita, and cumulative emissions. This issue has shadowed climate change agreements since its inception (put “Kyoto Protocol” in the search box for some perspective). Not surprisingly, the present agreement only establishes a committee that will submit a report about implementation to next year’s COP28 meeting, rather than trying to take definitive action now.

I will continue to follow the progress.

During the active academic year, my main focus for this blog is to provide help to my students in their research assignments. I try to address the blog’s main focus—global transitions (with an emphasis on climate change)—while also staying relevant to the different courses and and being helpful to the general public. Over the previous few weeks, I’ve focused on students who research “Campus as a Lab” as a learning tool. Today, I am starting to address the needs of more advanced students—specifically, trying to quantify attributions of global transitions to local events with a focus on climate change.

Catastrophic floods are now hitting all over the world (for a comprehensive list from recent months, see Al Jazeera.). The devastating flooding in Pakistan probably attracted the most global attention, but by their nature, floods are local events that attract the most attention from the citizens of the affected country. In the US, most Americans are focusing on hurricane Ian’s impact and the devastating floods it wreaked in Florida. However, given that the US has less than a month before important elections, it’s no surprise that some of the responses to extreme weather are being politicized (“Florida’s GOP Leaders Opposed Climate Aid. Now They’re Depending on It.“)

For over a generation, climate change, with all its aspects, has been a politically divisive issue in the US. I have covered the topic extensively throughout this blog’s more than 10-year run. Democrats have argued that most of the global warming, as measured following the start of the Industrial Revolution, originates from human activities—primarily, the shift to fossil fuels as our main source of energy. Meanwhile, Republicans have largely admitted that the warming is taking place but claimed that there is considerable uncertainty about its causes, concluding that we should not take major steps to change our energy sources until we are more certain of the causation. A significant fraction of people who hold this opinion attribute the warming to “natural” causes and ascribe extreme consequences (e.g. extreme weather) to “biblical” causes. In other words, the phenomena are perpetrated independently of humans and we should just learn to live with them.

Figure 1 – Noah’s Ark (Source: Library of Congress via Rawpixel)

Figure 1 shows the most famous biblical flood and Noah’s individual attempt to adapt by building an ark and inviting pairs of animals to share with him its safety (I mentioned Noah’s Ark before, in a different context– February 4, 2020). The attribution, in this case, is clear: God made the flood as punishment for bad human behavior. The proposed mitigation for human sin is also clear: wipe out all badly-behaving humans but save one well-behaved family with the hope that they will multiply and create an improved human population. What’s less clear is how the animals that were fated to survive were chosen.

Wikipedia provides a short summary of Noah’s ark.

Noah’s Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח; Biblical Hebrew: Tevat Noaḥ)^{[Notes 1]} is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative (Genesis chapters 6–9) through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world’s animals from a world-engulfing flood.^[1] The story in Genesis is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the Ark appears as Safinat Nūḥ (Arabic: سفينة نوح “Noah’s ship”) and al-fulk (Arabic: الفُلْك).

Searches for Noah’s Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275–339 CE), and believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times, but no confirmable physical proof of the Ark has ever been found.^[2] No scientific evidence has been found that Noah’s Ark existed as it is described in the Bible.^[3] More significantly, there is also no evidence of a global flood, and most scientists agree that such a ship and natural disaster would both be impossible.^[4] Some researchers believe that a real (though localized) flood event in the Middle East could potentially have inspired the oral and later written narratives; a Persian Gulf flood, or a Black Sea Deluge 7,500 years ago has been proposed as such a historical candidate.^[5][6]

Wikipedia also features more recent lists of deadly historic floods and fires, many of which are now considered to be largely attributable to climate change.

Wikipedia also provides some help describing event attributions to climate change:

Extreme event attribution, also known as attribution science, is a relatively new field of study in meteorology and climate science that tries to measure how ongoing climate change directly affects recent extreme weather events.^[1][2][3][4] Attribution science aims to determine which such recent events can be explained by or linked to a warming atmosphere and are not simply due to natural variations.^[5]

Attribution studies generally proceed in four steps: (1) measuring the magnitude and frequency of a given event based on observed data, (2) running computer models to compare with and verify observation data, (3) running the same models on a baseline “Earth” with no climate change, and (4) using statistics to analyze the differences between the second and third steps, thereby measuring the direct effect of climate change on the studied event.^[5][6]

Heatwaves are the easiest weather events to attribute.^[5]

Zubin Zeng wrote a related article last summer for the news site The Conversation:  “Is climate change to blame for extreme weather events? Attribution science says yes, for some – here’s how it works.” (Retrieved 3 September 2021).

Meanwhile, the National Academy of Science created a lengthy report with a much more comprehensive description (2016). I am including some highlights below:

Definition:

Attribution: The process of evaluating the relative contributions of multiple causal factors to a change or an event with an assignment of statistical confidence (Hegerl et al., 2010).

From the Summary (I added the emphases):

The observed frequency, intensity, and duration of some extreme weather events have been changing as the climate system has warmed. Such changes in extreme weather events also have been simulated in climate models, and some of the reasons for them are well understood. For example, warming is expected to increase the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights (Figure S.1). Warming also is expected to lead to more evaporation that may exacerbate droughts and increased atmospheric moisture that can increase the frequency of heavy rainfall and snowfall events. The extent to which climate change influences an individual weather or climate event is more difficult to determine. It involves consideration of a host of possible natural and anthropogenic factors (e.g., large-scale circulation, internal modes of climate variability, anthropogenic climate change, aerosol effects) that combine to produce the specific conditions of an event. Extreme events are rare, meaning that typically there are only a few examples of past events at any given location.

Event attribution approaches can be generally divided into two classes: (1) those that rely on the observational record to determine the change in probability or magnitude of events, and (2) those that use model simulations to compare the manifestation of an event in a world with human-caused climate change to that in a world without. Most studies use both observations and models to some extent—for example, modeling studies will use observations to evaluate whether models reproduce the event of interest and whether the mechanisms involved correspond to observed mechanisms, and observational studies may rely on models for attribution of the observed changes.

TABLE 5.1 This table… provides an overall assessment of the state of event attribution science for different event types. In each category of extreme event, the committee has provided an estimate of confidence (high, medium, and low) in the capabilities of climate models to simulate an event class, the quality and length of the observational record from a climate perspective, and an understanding of the physical mechanisms that lead to changes in extremes as a result of climate change. The entries in the table are based on the available literature and are the product of committee deliberation and judgment.

Next week’s blog will continue to discuss attributions, looking at specific cases. I will start by discussing the evidence for attributing anthropogenic (human) contributions to the global impact of climate change. I will further explore the methodology proposed by the National Academy, as discussed in this blog.

 

Source: iStock Photo

I know that the title makes for a strange combination! This blog is being posted on the second day of the Jewish New Year. Similar to other New Year postings (see the September 22, 2020 one for Rosh Hashana or the December 31, 2019, posting for the Common Era New Year, that took place days before COVID-19 was escalated from epidemic to global pandemic) I am wishing everybody a better future in the coming year. Why, then, do I combine these wishes with ones for failures and with Campus as a Lab?

Given the current world situation, it is not enough to wish for a better future; to achieve it we have to work hard together. Working hard doesn’t help, though, when we don’t know exactly what to do to confront the threats that surround us—so we have to experiment. University campuses have to lead in the experimentations, with the knowledge that in doing so we will inevitably encounter many failures. As we know from science, those failures are necessary so that we can eventually learn what leads to success.

Last week’s blog started with a figure of the “Magic Triangle” of Curriculum, Research, and Campus Operation (Administration) interacting with the two overlapping spheres of Institutional Sustainability and Living Laboratories. Underneath these spheres, the figure contains suggested specific focus areas such as:

Stormwater projects

Native Landscapes

Energy efficiency

To which I added:

Mandated decarbonization

Mandated decrease in the use of single-use plastics

Testing of sewage for early detection of viral threats

Running schools with decreased enrollments

You may already have thought of more areas to add to this list (feel free to post them in the comments). Clearly, these focus areas include sustainability and well-being, with substantial overlap between them.

All of these areas require the participation of both top-down and bottom-up efforts—in other words: we all need to work together. Whenever I talk or write about how to address this issue in the context of my classroom or the administration’s participation in my school’s activities, I am asked to provide examples. Well, during the last meeting regarding my school’s attempt to address single-use plastic, the CUNY administrator in charge of the process shared how the State of New York has recently begun to address this issue. The governor issued a sustainability and decarbonization executive order on September 20, 2022 that calls on state agencies to lead by example:

WHEREAS, State government can and should continue to lead in environmental stewardship through the use of green procurement and sustainable management practices; and

The order lists 75 affected entities in New York State, including CUNY and SUNY, the two New York public universities. The order is only aimed at state facilities and is meant to serve as an example for others (private sectors, federal facilities within the state, and local facilities).  I am including selected excerpts below but I strongly recommend that you read the full order:

II. Green NY Council

There is hereby established the GreenNY Council (the “Council”). The Council shall be comprised of the Director of the Division of the Budget (“DOB”); the Commissioner of the Office of General Services; the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”); the Commissioner of the Department of Health; the Commissioner of Economic Development; the Commissioner of Transportation; the Commissioner of the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation; the President of the Environmental Facilities Corporation; the President of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (“NYSERDA”); the President of the New York Power Authority (“NYPA”); the President of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York; and the Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

III.  Training, Staff, and Support

1. Each Affected Entity shall, no later than 30 days from the issuance of this Order, assign an employee to serve as its Sustainability Coordinator. Sustainability Coordinators shall be given management support and provided with the necessary resources to enable the Affected Entity to comply with this Order. Sustainability Coordinators shall serve as the Affected Entity’s liaison to the Council.
   1. Affected Entities are encouraged to create a Sustainability Team in-house to support the work of the Council. This Sustainability Team should be comprised of appropriate staff involved in identifying, approving, and implementing sustainability or energy projects, and environmental justice matters. The Sustainability Team should include an executive sponsor at the Deputy or Associate Commissioner, or Vice President level or equivalent.

IV. Reporting

1. All Affected Entities shall furnish such information and assistance as the Council determines is reasonably necessary to accomplish its purposes. All Affected Entities shall share data in the most efficient manner identified by the Council for purposes of informing any progress reports, and the Council shall follow applicable NYS Data Governance procedures regarding any interagency data sharing or collection.

V. Exemptions

1. Exemptions from any of the specific targets, goals, or other requirements under this Order may be granted by the Council co-chairs, provided, however, that any exemptions to Section VII.A of this Order may only be granted by the President of NYSERDA in consultation with the Chief Executive Officer of the New York State Department of Public Service (“DPS”) and Director of Budget.

VI. Buying and Operating Green

1. The Council shall develop and issue sustainable procurement specifications (procurement specifications) for use by Affected Entities in the procurement of commodities, services, and technology, or where applicable, in the development of new public works solicitations and contracts.
   Any procurement specifications developed, approved, or issued by the Interagency Committee on Sustainability and Green Procurement under Executive Order 4, issued on April 24, 2008, shall carry forward in full effect as if issued by the Council until modified by the Council.

VII.  Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

1. By 2030 and thereafter, subject to available supply, 100% of the electricity used by Affected Entities for their own operations, except electricity needed to support the generation of electricity by an Affected Entity in accordance with its enabling authority, shall come from energy systems that are eligible under the CES (“Eligible Systems”) as part of an all-of-government approach to meet the goals of the Climate Act in a cost-effective manner.

VIII.  Reducing Waste

1. The Council shall create a waste diversion plan template that Affected Entities shall use to complete their plans. All Affected Entities shall create a waste diversion plan and file such plan with the Council that outlines how they will meet the following goals:
   1. A decrease in waste disposal of 10 percent every five years from a baseline of Fiscal Year 2018-19, until reaching a goal of 75 percent.
   2. Waste data reported for these goals should be broken out into the following categories: recycled materials; compostable materials and other organics; material sent to landfill (including construction and demolition waste); and special waste (including hazardous waste).

IX. Reducing Use of Toxic Substances.

1. Affected Entities shall evaluate and incorporate toxics use reduction strategies into their operations, to the extent practicable, to achieve pollution prevention. The Council will, at a minimum, provide agencies with information on healthy buildings, green cleaning and disinfection, integrated pest management and green procurement.

XI. Low Impact Development

1. Affected Entities shall evaluate, and to the maximum extent practicable, incorporate green infrastructure concepts to reduce all stormwater runoff and improve water quality in new construction or redevelopment projects submitted for permitting by Affected Entities regardless of disturbance threshold. These include activities such as the reconstruction of parking lots and the addition of new landscaping.

XII.  Promoting Biodiversity and Habitat Protection

1. Affected Entities that have jurisdiction over real property shall, where practicable, seek opportunities to enhance the ecological integrity of their real property to support native biodiversity and the NYS Pollinator Protection Plan, protect threatened and endangered species, and increase climate resilience and natural carbon storage. This includes prioritizing the use of native plants and minimizing the use of non-native plants in landscaping and other planting efforts and other activities that may be identified in the New York Natural Heritage Program conservation guide and its management recommendations regarding listed plants.

XIII.  Disadvantaged Communities

1. Each Affected Entity shall, to the maximum extent practicable, lower the impact of its operations on Disadvantaged Communities, and shall incorporate lowered environmental impact in these communities into the plans developed by Affected Entities pursuant to this Order.

XIV.  Innovative Solutions

1. The Council shall continuously evaluate the potential of new technologies in order to assist Affected Entities in continuing to reduce their environmental footprint and increase climate resilience (mitigation and adaptation) of its operations, and wherever feasible, test new technologies and equipment to determine if such technologies or equipment is practicable for adoption in Affected Entity operations.

Cost is a factor in the order, but only as one aspect to be weighed against other considerations.

WHEREAS, it is the State’s policy to promote cost-effective methods to reduce energy and resource consumption, and reduce or eliminate the use of hazardous substances and the generation of hazardous substances, pollution, and waste at the source; and

It is also brought up in the sections VI. Buying and Operating Green, VII. Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and VIII.  Reducing Waste.

Well, this executive order covers most of the focus groups that we need to incorporate in all our institutions, but not all. The next blog will focus on our ability to learn how to connect these disparate elements through learning from global experiences.