Nolan Hunter, Greg Hunt push land use at Paris climate talks

Indian PM Narendra Modi speaks to US President Barack Obama in Paris on Monday. Picture: AP

Paris in winter, where the first hints of snow are swirling around armed soldiers patrolling terrorist-weary streets, is a long way from the red rock and sapphire blue ­waters of the West Australian Kimberley.

But Kimberley Land Council elder Nolan Hunter has made the trip to France where he has been swept up in an international push to close the circle on climate, land use and culture, and to test the good intentions of a corporate world publicly turning its back on dirty old fossil fuels.

It’s all part of the grand charade that has consumed the Paris climate talks, which started this week with a record gathering of world leaders eager to profess their solidarity with France and pledge their enduring good intentions. After four days, however, negotiations remained deeply split along well-established and seemingly intractable lines involving money, responsibility and honesty.

In coming days, French diplomacy will be tested to its limit as the conference hosts attempt to put a negotiating text on the table for the final week.

Mishandled, it could produce another walkout by most nations, which fear they are being herded through to what they consider an unsatisfactory conclusion.

Having been allowed in from the cold, Australia is portraying itself as an honest broker between various factions. But on the ­substantive issues of finance, transparency and historic responsibility, Australia remains firmly in lockstep with the US, as it has been since climate conferences began two decades ago.

Contemporary talk about whether the ultimate target for global temperatures should be lowered from a 2C rise to 1.5C is a distraction from the fundamental point that the Paris talks will not deliver a legally binding outcome and that even the higher target of 2C remains out of reach.

The push for five-year reviews, highlighted by Malcolm Turnbull, can be viewed either as a sign of incremental success or admission of defeat.

It is not all bad news in Paris, however. Tight security has narrowed the conference participants to the most substantial core.

And, as demonstrated by this week’s breakthrough on innovation funding and the keen interest in forests, blue carbon and the Kimberley Land Council’s savanna-burning successes, a bigger picture is coming slowly into focus.

On one measure, the most significant event this week was a joint announcement by US President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the American billionaire Bill Gates.

Governments have promised to double research funding into new energy technologies to $27 billion.

Gates has assembled a consortium of some of the world’s richest individuals and funds to take any breakthrough technologies to the marketplace.

The Gates plan delivers on a long-held belief that technological innovation is the only sustainable pathway to tackling climate change without disenfranchising the hundreds of millions of people making their way from poverty.

“I think that (research-and-development) announcement is one of the biggest things that’s going to come out of this COP (Conference of Parties),” US lead negotiator Todd Stern says.

“We have a lot of technology that is available right now on the shelf. But to get where we need to get, we need more.

“That’s something that our leaders understood, that’s something that Bill Gates and his colleagues have understood, as well,” Stern says.

“Research and development is an absolute core driver for what we’re going to have to do — not just this year or next year, but over the course of the decades ahead — to get the kind of reductions that we need to get.”

On another flank, the Paris conference is making peace with nature.

The major event this weekend will be the third Global Landscapes Forum being held at the Palais des Congres in Paris.

It follows a leaders’ statement on forests and climate change on November 30 that endorsed forests as a key climate solution and set out the important contributions of forests, both economic and environmental.

The Australian government will today launch its own initiative to build a global compact to protect and restore global rainforests.

And, despite what many may feel at home, there is an appetite for information on Australia’s Direct Action plans, particularly the way in which they integrate climate, environmental and social outcomes.

Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt is clearly passionate about the emerging trend towards recognising the appeal of climate change mitigation with co-benefits. At the Kimberley traditional burning round table he pledged a “national corporate launch of indigenous savanna management that brings together philanthropic, the voluntary and the government side”.

“The headline is a billion tonnes potential,” Hunt says. “We ought to work on bringing together the United Nations University and the Kimberley Land Council in launching an international billion tonnes per annum initiative. That is the language of the convention, the language of the COP, the language of mitigation.”

The evidence is it is not all dreaming. Corporate heavyweights such as South32 and big US institutions are starting to show interest. Mark Burrows, Credit Suisse managing director and vice-chairman of global investment banking, has been secured to help lead the charge to bring serious money to the scheme.

“All private banks are looking for impact investing products,” Burrows says. “It is a terrific opportunity to access large private wealth managers around the world. “Valuing natural capital is the next big thing,” he adds. “Investors are looking for investments that are socially conscious.”

The traditional fire management involves saving carbon emissions from wildfires by pre-emptive slow burns. It has an advantage over forest programs for carbon sequestration in that the savings are delivered annually rather than relying on long-term forest management plans of up to 100 years.

But with the use of helicopters, it can be expensive. No figures were given in Paris; the suggestion was mitigation is less than $20 a tonne, but still much higher than the average price paid under the federal government’s Direct Action auctions.

For Bardi elder Hunter, it is more about acknowledging and valuing the role of indigenous people in climate change.

“We have our social issues. There were 25 suicides in the last 12 months,” Hunter says.

Programs such as the savanna burning, which is being funded through the Direct Action reverse auction scheme, can help.

Similar schemes are emerging around the world in which investments are being judged not only on carbon savings but on the value of environmental services and social good.

“Climate isn’t everything,” says Peter Holmgren, director general of the Centre for International Forestry Research, which is a key organiser of the Global Landscapes Forum. “And neither is a global agreement.”

Holmgren says climate-related aspirations have to fit into a broader context of sustainable development and more. “Landscapes produce almost all our food, provide livelihoods for billions and represent cultural heritage for everyone.

“They are a cornerstone of the economy, they house our terrestrial biodiversity and they are the source of a third of our greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.

“They are places where many of our solutions for a more sustainable future must happen,” he says.

But even now, they are struggling to force their way to the centre in global climate negotiations.

Hunt, who will speak along with Burrows at the Landscapes forum, says things are changing. “In previous conferences, it has sort of been shunned as if it was cheating,” says Hunt. Now, he says, “it is about limiting what (carbon) goes up and maximising what comes down”.

“Suddenly the whole net balance argument seems to have landed, which is what we have been arguing for a long while,” he says.

“Two-thirds of Australia’s emissions reduction fund activity is bio-sequestration.”

Critics argue the cost of land-use abatement is high and hard to measure compared with renewable energy and energy efficiency. But supporters believe the key lies in finding proper ways to compensate the co-benefits of environmental preservation and cultural support.

And alongside the arcane negotiations on the main conference floor in Paris, it makes a lot of sense.

It is too early to get a firm snapshot of where things will end up by the end of the next week, when the Paris conference ends. But against the “cautiously optimistic” tone of heads of government, there are plenty of risks of failure.

Kevin Rudd, who is in Paris for the talks, has a diplomatic answer for what the future holds. “As they say about the long-term impact of the French Revolution, it’s too early to tell,” is his assessment of what will happen next.

But the former Australian prime minister believes there has been progress since the conference process was rescued from the ashes of the Copenhagen meeting in 2009.

“I think the French and the United Nations have both studied carefully what went wrong with the Copenhagen process and have learned from that in terms of how to negotiate documents and, secondly, how to deal with civil society,” Rudd says.

His view will be sorely tested following the release of a joint statement by the Group of 77 plus China, which represents 80 per cent of the world population. The statement highlights concerns about slow commitment to a $100bn-a-year fund for mitigation and technology from 2020.

Developing nations are standing firm on their demand that the developed world take responsibility for the fact it has been responsible for historic carbon dioxide emissions.

Where China was the deal-breaker in Copenhagen, success in Paris will involve placating India.

Obama spent much of his time on the ground speaking directly with Modi. Direct talks between the leaders even delayed substantially the Gates announcement on innovation.

But by week’s end, there was little evidence that Modi’s position had moved: economic development for India is paramount, his country wants Australian coal to fuel development, and the West must bear responsibility for any climate change solutions.

Everyone agrees that telling India it cannot develop is not feasible.

But there is frustration among negotiators that by 2030 half of the world’s man-made carbon dioxide emissions will have come from the developed world.

India is not willing to compromise. And the West is not willing to write a blank cheque.

The slow burn in Paris could still become a wildfire.