Suivez l'événement en direct :
Introduction
The Rio Climate Challenge/Rio Clima (RCC) 2015 will meet on the 26th and 27th of October in Rio de Janeiro - one month before the 21st Conference in Paris of the UNFCCC (COP21) - to brainstorm the ‘positive pricing’ of carbon reduction as well as carbon taxation issues in order to define concrete and realistic proposals to be presented to the UNFCCC and the G20 group.
Its main purpose is to add critical mass to the approval of the Brazilian submission (made in COP20 in Lima, Peru) in the Paris process related to “recognizing the social and economic value of carbon reduction” and to refine, aiming at the post-Paris process, the “positive pricing” mechanisms, including the one presented by France Strategie. The RCC 2015 will bring together prestigious leaders and thinkers working on low carbon transition issues for a two-day event with closed and public sessions.
The hurdles of low carbon transition finance
The financing of the transition to low carbon economies demands only in the energy sector U$ 1 trillion every year. Governments - most of them running persistent deficits and huge debts - do not have sufficient resources to fund it by themselves.
The Green Climate Fund, in the best-case scenario, will guarantee U$ 50 billion for all mitigation actions, although it is hard to believe it actually will. The risk of deflation has induced the EU to pursue ‘quantitative easing’ without a specific productive low carbon destination. The global financial system operates close to U$ 300 trillion in pursuit of self-multiplication, detached from productive investment. As the world experienced in 2008 and subsequently, this comes along with dire macroeconomic consequences. How to bring at least a fraction of this enormous wealth into productive transition to low carbon economies? Would that make sense for macroeconomics and social development?
The international community should officially recognize carbon reduction as a convertible unit of value enabling an agreed upon institution – the IMF or a pool of central banks, to guarantee commercial banks financing carbon reduction investments to be replayed in ‘carbon reduction certificates’ convertible to currencies by this existing or new institution.
The financial system could then design an array of new products linked to this “climate currency”. In fact, this recognition is not based on that much of an abstraction. The economic global losses in ‘business as usual’ or in other underperforming carbon reduction scenarios are quantifiable with increasing precision notwithstanding some degree of controversy.
In fact, carbon reduction has an intrinsic social/economic value to be recognized and incorporated to both international and national accounting. This arrangement along with the reforms of taxation systems – at local, provincial, national and international level - focusing on carbon intensity and ending fossil fuel subsidies are fundamental conditions for success beyond the classic command and control actions and agreements which will not be able, by themselves, to ‘bridge the gap’.
Agenda
9:00 - 9:30 - Opening session
Eduardo Eugenio Gouvêa Vieira (President, Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro), Alfredo Sirkis (Executive diretor, Brazil Climate Center), Marina Grossi (Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development - CEBDS), Israel Kablin (FBDS) and André Correa (Rio de Janeiro State Secretary).
9:30 - 9:50 - Keynote speaker
Ken Berlin (President and CEO of Climate Reality)
9:50 - 11:10 - Proposals for positive pricing of carbon reduction
Discussion about the transition to low carbon economies and their instruments. Conclusions based on the debates from the previous day.
Michele Stua (Sussex), Christophe de Gouvello (World Bank), Jean Charles Hourcade (CIRED) and Irving Mitzner (Johns Hopkins)
11:10 - 13:30 - Before and after COP-21 in Paris. Towards a low carbon “Bretton Woods”?
Vincent Aussilloux (France Stratégie), Rogério Studart (COPPE) and Celso Lemme (COPPE).
Discussion about the Brazilian proposal about the recognition of the social and economic value of mitigation activities. Guiding questions:
- What would a new financial order for low carbon economies look like?
- How to get there?
- What is the role of governments, financial system, private corporations, multilateral institutions and civil society?
13:30 - 15:00 - Lunch
15:00 - 16:30 - Carbon taxation and the suppression of fossil fuel subsidies
Baptiste Perrissin-Fabert (Ministère de l'Écologie, du Développement durable et de l’Énergie, France), Alfredo Sirkis (Executive diretor, Brazil Climate Center) and Emílio la Rovére (COPPE).
Guiding questions for discussion:
- What is the relevance of these policies for the transition to low carbon economies?
- What are the economic pathways and obstacles to be faced?
- How to deal with the social and political consequences?
16:30 - 16:40 - Coffee Break
16:40 - 17:00 - Assessing Brazil’s actions towards a low carbon economy
José Eli da Veiga (USP), Roberto Schaeffer (COPPE) and Alexandre Prado (Instituto Arapyaú)
Guiding questions for discussion:
- What are the perspectives for an effective low caragriculture low carbon
- How to deal with issues of transport and urban mobility?
- How to avoid the forecast of increasing emissions related to energy after 2020?
- What is the role of the BRICS bank in solutions for pricing carbon?
17:00 - Final considerations and recommendations
Mario Molina (Climate Reality), Isaura Frega (Rio de Janeiro State Secretary) and Branca Americano (ICS)
