Special edition  » The climate for change

The risk of climate change knows no precedent and it will know no rival. For most of us, nothing in our lifetimes will surpass this challenge.

No matter what we do, all countries will experience increasing climate change impacts in coming decades. As the driest inhabited continent on Earth, Australia is particularly vulnerable. And with large areas of its most productive farm land at less than one metre above sea level, so is Vietnam.

Penny Wong

We also know that, as an advanced economy, Australia has a greater capacity to prepare and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, than many vulnerable developing countries.

That is why Australia is committed to forging a new path for global cooperation on climate change and working with nations like Vietnam. This December, we have our greatest opportunity to act.

Australia is determined to play its full and fair part on climate change. In May, the Australian government committed to reduce our emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, if together the world can reach an ambitious global deal consistent with stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations at 450 parts per million CO2-equivalent or lower, this will support our aim of limiting the average global temperature increase to two degrees.

Just as important as having an ambitious target, we have a strong plan to deliver it. We are legislating for our Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a cap and emissions trading scheme that covers around 70 per cent of Australia’s emissions.

We have already passed laws to increase our renewable energy by four times over the next decade, so that by 2020, 20 per cent of our energy will come from renewable sources. We are also investing billions of dollars in new, low-carbon energy technology, ranging from solar, wind and wave, to geothermal and clean coal.

Australia is doing this not only because of the overwhelming environmental urgency to act, but the economic need as well. Australian treasury modelling shows that economies that defer action on climate change face long-term costs around 20 per cent higher than if they had acted earlier.

Climate change has the potential to undermine the great success achieved in Vietnam in eradicating poverty, sustaining high gross domestic product growth and ensuring the food security of millions of people across the region.

Australia is working with the Asian Development Bank and the Vietnam’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to fund a $1.14 million climate change impact and adaptation study in the Mekong Delta. The study’s objective is to increase the capacity of sectors and provincial authorities in the Mekong Delta and improve the climate-resilience of future development programmes, plans and policies.

Additionally, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) will be providing up to $3.5 million for research in the Mekong Delta on rice-based cropping systems that are productive under saline and flood conditions. Our focus is on practical adaptation measures to maintain food security and increase understanding of greenhouse gas emissions.

Many developing countries are working hard to tackle climate change in different ways and a more flexible approach is needed to reflect, record and encourage this wide range of mitigation efforts. Australia is proposing an approach of “national schedules” to help find common ground between developed and developing countries.

Under a schedule approach, developed countries would be expected to record an ambitious economy-wide target and developing countries would have the flexibility to record a range of mitigation efforts tailored to national circumstances. For many prospective participants in a global climate change agreement, this flexibility could be the difference between whether or not they start crossing the bridge to a low carbon future. This is a starting point from which there will be debate and discussion.

Vietnam has already shown it has ideas on mitigation, including energy intensity. As an energy partner for Vietnam’s future, Australia hopes we can help advance these ideas together.

There are a number of activities that could potentially be included in a schedule. This includes efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, known as REDD.

Instead of an economic imperative to remove forests, we need an economic incentive to preserve them. Australian modelling shows that the inclusion of forest-related activities in a future global agreement has the potential to reduce global mitigation costs by around 20-25 per cent. The environmental motivation is beyond doubt. An important element of REDD will be ensuring there is capacity for local communities to share in the benefits of protecting forest carbon.

Australia has already partnered with the Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other donors to deliver a series of seminars to raise awareness of REDD in Vietnam. And projects like the biosphere reserve in Kien Giang province funded by AusAID and implemented by German Development Agency GTZ are creating options for real ‘REDD-ready’ options in the future. Another central element of bringing developed and developing countries together in an international agreement will be financing.

Developed countries have a moral imperative to provide public funding for adaptation prioritised towards those of the poorest countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. And we must provide sufficient public funding to ensure that investments in nationally appropriate mitigation actions can be made without sacrificing the over-riding priority of development and in particular the eradication of poverty.

The scale of the financing task we face is uncertain, but there is no doubt that it is extremely large and well beyond the capacity of public sources alone. Contributions will need to come from the broadest range of sources possible, domestic and international, public and private.

Copenhagen presents us with great opportunity. Across a range of issues – financing, mitigation, adaptation, among others – we must do everything we can to reach an effective political agreement at Copenhagen.

It will take more than just the small steps of a few actors. This is a global problem, requiring a truly global solution. If countries stride ahead together, a solution to the challenge of climate change is within reach. In the spirit of comprehensive partnership, Australia will work with Vietnam to meet the challenge.