Rhetoric will never yield meaningful results: Yvo de Boer

But leading the negotiations with a team he called “butlers of the process” was no easy feat. It was a highly fraught and complex process during which the Dutch bureaucrat was famously reduced to tears out of frustration at a 2006 meeting in Bali, Indonesia.

In a recent interview, de Boer says the four years as executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was a period of time when he “learnt the most”. Prior to that, he was Director for International Affairs at the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment of the Netherlands.

He says his UN stint reinforced his belief that to come to an understanding with someone, you need to have a good understanding of the person’s wants and needs: “My sense is that the climate negotiations are
rhetoric among people who don’t understand and respect each other’s interest… (so) you can never get a meaningful result.”

In 2010, he left to join international consulting group KPMG as global adviser on climate and sustainability, where he says his approach to business was not to talk about the environment, but to ask three questions: Firstly, how
can sustainability contribute to the growth of your business? Secondly, how can your business be more cost-effective; and thirdly, how is sustainability critical to the value of your brand?

These words – growth, cost-effectiveness, and brand value – are the “language of business” that strikes a chord more than talking about saving the earth and dying trees, he notes. These days, as the Director-General of the Seoul-headquartered Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), he has shifted his attention to working with governments to help them achieve their priorities and implement sustainable development policies.

As we look back on the year, what do you think were the biggest headlines that had a significant impact on business and sustainability?

The agreement between US and China was significant. The deal itself is more spectacular than the results of the deal; there are some who argue that the Chinese economy has already peaked (in emissions) and what China is promising now is nothing beyond business as usual. I’m not sure it’s true, but the fact that China and US have come to a common understanding on climate is very significant politically.

The US is also working hard to find common ground with India on World Trade Organization (WTO) matters – climate and trade are the biggest international processes and we need to see progress on both. If trade negotiations slow down, it also has an impact on sustainability because part of the trade negotiations involves
environmental goods and services and how they are treated favourably. The environment domain needs progress on trade.

The third development is the Green Climate Fund. In recent months, there have been significant pledges to the to fund, and it’s important that developed countries put money where their mouth is.

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My feeling is we are in a different situation now. The expectations are less high – it may not be good for the environment but it’s good for the chances of getting a result.

Yvo de Boer, director-general, Global Green Growth Institute

What do you think are the key themes that will dominate the corporate agenda as we go into 2015?

I think we have progressed from two years ago, when at the Rio+20 conference most political leaders were absent but commitments were made by business. In September, at the UN climate summit, business and government were present and made significant commitments.

I think there is now a mood within the business community that it cannot afford to sit around and wait for governments. There will be increasing pressure from the community on business leaders to provide the right policy framework. I think we’ll see more of this emerge as we approach the Paris deadline at the end of the year.

More than 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are related to the energy sector;many of the investments in energy are very long term, with equipment that span 30 to 50 years. The thing that makes business leaders most nervous is the lack of clarity and predictability, so business leaders in Paris will say: If you want us to make long term
investments in dramatic, fundamental technological change, then you have to create the political trust.

What is your outlook on the progress of sustainable development specifically in Asia?

I think the struggle not just in Asia but many parts of the world is the debate on green and sustainable growth is largely in the domain of environment ministers and NGO community. But key decision makers - presidents, ministers of finance, economic affairs and heads of private sector - are not properly engaged and that means many environment ministries struggle to implement politices because there is insufficient leadership. The debate has to be taken up to the political level.

The second big problem I see is around capacity. In many Asian countries, staff in environment ministries change quickly, and when someone is familiar with an issue they move on to something else so it becomes difficult to build capacity to shape regulation and debates.

One challenge for sustainable development is that in many Asian countries, eradicating poverty is still a priority and many see the Western economic growth model as successful, so many of them provide cheap labour to the West without adding a great deal of value to their economies. Europe, the US, have outsourced manufacturing to Asia for decades so developing countries see the Western growth model as the best way of lifting them out of poverty.

Another issue is that many green growth projects don’t make it off the drawing board because they can’t get funding. That’s why at GGGI we focus on policy analysis and help countries make these projects “bankable”.
We write proposals in a way that they can be financed, whether by the Green Climate Fund, Asian Development Bank or commercial banks. We have to write the proposals in the language of bankers.

What are your hopes for the coming year as we approach the December deadline for a global agreement on climate change in Paris? 

In Copenhagen in 2009 (which had a similar deadline for a global deal), the expectations were too high and too unclear. My feeling is we are in a different situation now. The expectations are less – it may not be good for the environment but it’s good for the chances of getting a result.

There is also more clarity on what a Paris outcome should deliver. I would consider it a success if four things happen - the first being every country rich or poor, large or small, needs to announce a commitment to act on climate change. All the commitments will be different, but everyone needs to publicly commit to action or we’ll never get this fixed.

Secondly, making statements is easy but delivering on them is another story. Every country must promise to write the commitment into national law. If you make a commitment to reduce emissions by x per cent, you commit to prepare legislation to achieve that goal, it will build trust in the words. Even if those two things happen, it will likely not be enough to limit warming to a more than two degree temperature increase. We are not ready for that level of ambition, so the whole climate problem will not be solved in Paris.

The third thing is countries have to agree that every three to four years, they will review their promises, and whether they are good enough to prevent more than a two degree rise. The fourth thing is money – industrialised countries caused this problem, so rich nations have a financial obligation towards poor nations and this has not been met, and not in transparent ways.

What will you and your organisation be working on this year? 

At GGGI, I now work together with countries to assess risks and opportunities, do macro-economic analysis and identify where sustainable development policy can be meaningful. Then we help the government shape and implement that policy, so there’s a certain consistency and hand-holding.

The governments are receptive, only because we work with them on what they want to work on and provide technical expertise. We don’t come with a pre-agenda. For example, in Thailand we are working with the government to evaluate if emissions trading is viable. In India, we are working at the state level to analyse how green growth strategies could be meaningful. In Mongolia, we’re working on green buildings, and in Indonesia, we’re helping to design payment for forestry schemes.

This interview is part of the “15 on 15” series by Eco-Business where we interview 15 global and Asian leaders on their thoughts on the year ahead. Read all the interviews in the latest issue of the Eco-Business magazine here.