ND Future Forum 2020: Curbing Black Carbon Emissions in the Northern Dimension Area
mikhail hilden professor as i told you of the finnish environment institute leading the climate change programme and he concentrates his research on climate and environmental policy he's also a former chair of the expert group on black carbon and methane under the arctic council the eu is funded you probably know this already an initiative called action on black carbon in the arctic in the long term aim it aims to reduce black carbon emissions across the whole of the arctic region and it also supports continuing systems for cooperation that aim to protect the arctic environment this eu initiative is not just a compilation of sources and emissions of black carbon researchers have also looked into how to turn knowledge into action by cooperating internationally using this knowledge to guide policy in his keynote speech dr hilden will outline the road map 2020 to 2030 for black carbon action that the eu funded program action on black carbon in the arctic is currently finalizing he'll talk about the many different routes needed to reduce the emissions of black carbon affecting the arctic so dr hilden how have you become involved with black carbon and why is black carbon significant at all we look forward very much to hearing from you dr hilden okay thank you renee indeed i got involved through the environmental policy work uh looking into various aspects of climate change and ways to mitigate climate change and then also the various co-benefits and uh that complexity is actually for policies for scholars of policy like myself that is quite a challenging but also interesting area so here you have me and we'll look into the multiple pathways in a little while i look forward to your um to your keynote speech if that is okay okay uh thank you very much uh the northern dimension institute and all the other organizers for for giving me this opportunity and to all gear participants throughout everywhere the theme of my speech is the multiple pathways needed to reduce emissions of black carbon affecting the arctic so we can jump straight into the next slide okay the black carbon has been alluded to already in the introductory remarks is a complex material with many different sided effects it's not as elusive as the dark matter of the universe but it's challenging in its own right and i'm happy to to give some ideas on the work that is going on under the eu funded action and when i'm presenting i'm certainly not presenting only my own thoughts or my own ideas but this is a collective effort by a group of institutes and people involved in them who have been working on this topic for now some years and the action is really about finding the possible collective responses to reduce black carbon emissions in the arctic the next slide please so we know that black carbon is emitted from many sources and that it also has multiple effects so that this picture in this slide illustrates these many different pathways both when it comes to sources when it comes to the spreading of the emissions and when it comes to the effect both on the incoming sun which uh some particles may actually uh hinder the sun from reaching the the earth whereas others uh in particular in the arctic falling on on snow and ice will enhance the heating effect of of the sun so we are dealing with a complex set of processes that that the black carbon causes and this means that it is an issue both for air quality like rene was saying in the beginning it's part of the small particle emissions in general and then also like in the subsequent session it will be an issue for for health and it's related also and linked to climate change in many different ways both as a heating agent but also of course when it comes to the forest fires it's a loss of of the carbon uh sinks you know that then turns into black carbon so so there are indeed many pathways and the next slide please when we then look at zoom in on the arctic and look at what causes black carbon emissions and that reads the arctic we find that the arctic council countries and the observers account for about half of the black carbon reaching the arctic or that is of course an important part of the story and as i mentioned that the arctic has become a center for for the concern probably because black carbon is so obvious and visible when it lands on on white snow surfaces and particularly in the melting period but that doesn't mean that it's a it's not an issue or a problem for the rest of the world first of all uh part of it as is the air quality issue that we will come back to certainly and probably also in many of the comments and then in other parts of the world there are also significant emissions of black carbon that affect both local snows and glaciers but also importantly again the health issues so we are dealing with indeed a complex set of substances set up of the material and the next slide we can get and this complexity means that there are lots of potential actors involved so when we are aiming for emission reductions there's a need for international cooperation and the whole sort of carrying idea of this black carbon action on the arctic is to look for the possible areas where international cooperation can be enhanced in one way or another because as this slide illustrates there are a number of important actors so from the arctic council which raised the concern in their policy document we have the unece the air convention we have the ipcc providing the scientific background the climate cleaner their coalition uh giving impetus to action the osd on on economic calculations the imo um on the shipping the air convention sorry the paris convention of the united nations and the eu so all of these actors have a role to play and the purpose of a road map in general is of course to find the right way to navigate from uh various in a complex environment to the end result that we wish to see and the uh logo of zuka here on this slide can be said to represent the many national research institutes that are also involved and feed into this the next slide please in developing the road the first thing was of course to identify the existing and potential areas of cooperation and in this work uh five main areas have been singled out so there were the domestic heating gas gas clearing in as part of the oil and gas production the time shipping and the off-road and android transport with diesel engines in particular also including stationary diesels and then uh open burning of biomass both as an agricultural practice but also in particular then significant for for the arctic are the wildfires occurring over vast areas in some regions but then in addition to these areas of substance we also have the questions of monitoring of emissions so we need to know in order to take action where the emissions actually occur and how big they are and then when we are talking about the impacts on the arctic we need to know how much of those emissions actually reach the arctic and in what form so these two levels of monitoring are also needed in order to deal with these five complex areas of substance next slide i think it's important to recognize that these areas of action differ in nature and also by that token the possible action and cooperation will be different depending on the area so if we start with the emitters we have the in some of the areas we have large point sources such as the oil and gas production which are identifiable even from satellites by their flares and on the other hand in the other extreme we have the small scale diffuse operations such as heating domestic heating or off-road transport which are occurring over a large area and their impact arises because of their large number not by their single emissions and it's significant to consider these differences because on one hand when you have a few large leaders it's possible to engage in negotiations and commitments with these particular actors whereas when you have numerous actors it's a question of nudging their behavior of giving signals that how to change the behavior in such a way that the emission sources are addressed the second level you could say is the institutions the differences in institutions in some of the areas marine shipping being a prime example you have strong international organizations that have a established way of operating a clear set mandate and then you have on the other hand domestic and local authorities that operate partly on their own with some cooperation with some initiatives carrying over and the implications for the uh areas of actions is that in when you're dealing with strong institutions that are have established practices it's about developing and agreeing on standard common standards and protocols whereas if there are numerous small actors and authorities that have limited local power it's a question of developing criteria for design so that these low emission solutions are replicated across the board and then finally there's a difference in the frequency of emissions you have the continuous emissions such as those arising from let's say transport or from domestic heating versus those that are accidental in particular such as those caused by wildfires or temporarily such as those due to burning up of agricultural waste next slide so then what do we have in terms of cooperative actions some of the areas are prone or have a possibility for harmonization of regulation and criteria we know from historical studies of also emissions from many different sources that by establishing harmonized regulation across large areas it's possible to stimulate innovations and new solutions and that's exactly what has happened in say for example the car industry that has achieved substantial reductions in the emissions from from diesels and these will spill over also to machinery to stationary tools and so on so it's important but it's not possible in all instances to come up with harmonized regulations and criteria but that could be or should be an important part of the cooperative actions in particular when we are dealing with those areas which have strong institutional backing then in particular for the monitoring we have the question of sharing and joint development of information systems that can communicate with one another so the data exchange and the interoperability of the systems even though we would not have a full full-blown standardized sampling system or so but when things are harmonized and communicate with one another we are able to generate knowledge and understanding that army that is needed for for taking action on many of the areas we can say that carrying out various piloting um exchanging the good practices and providing material for awareness raising is quite an important in this which i referred to earlier as nudging so that the changing of behavior is a very complex event this morning i participated in a discussion with economists on climate change issues and they said well we know very little about how to change people's behavior really by various incentives and the blood carbon is no exception to this rule so it's a question of manifold awareness rating and by exchanging information of what is successful what is good practice that we may achieve quite substantial change in for example uh switching from agricultural practices that are based or used extensively burning of of residue on the fields to practices that do not and then finally we do have of course an important task and important possibility for for cooperative action at the level of research and development and innovation the low emission technologies do not and should not know any borders and so does not the research so by developing this and again piloting and also communicating with the harmonization of regulation it's possible to make progress so it's about that this whole setting is about developing joint policies uh in a harmonized way at the transnational level so different actors in the previous slide can come together and there are some of these such as the regional operator of the arctic council that can bring a lot together and also have specific actions at the piloting stage that can can help in making this progress next slide as i mentioned the joint monitoring is really a key in in this work so because it becomes a base for the evaluation and learning and the two basic questions are say alluded to earlier how much black carbon is emitted where this is necessary in order to focus the actions to see what are the cost-efficient cost-effective solutions and to achieve this we need both improved mandatory reporting in terms of quality control and harmonized methods and also like the reporting activities part of it is voluntary part of its by the air convention part in the arctic council possibly in the future also more extensively under the paris agreement which currently does not recognize the black carbon of a specific area of action and then the other question is how much of this black carbon does actually reads the arctic that the calculations and skin of scenarios that have been made suggest that black carbon emissions could be reduced by even up to 70 percent um and how will this be reflected in the arctic so it's the question also tracking the global effectiveness of the action state next slide and so in coming to the key point that in order to get this reduction going we need a pathway for the emissions and the road map is actually about finding the roles of these different actors that were mentioned in one of the first slides seeing how they interact in these different substance areas with their different roles and different capacities that provide information provide policies provide a platform or forum for exchanging the good practice and with this combined uh joint effort through the roadmap like ideas it is possible to find both the harmonized policies find the piloting and demonstration that is needed to show that the solutions are actually viable and then coming back to the monitoring and evaluation that teaches us whether the actions are successful and teaching decreases also how we should adjust if if needed the policies to become even more efficient and this process is of course partly going on within the arctic council but this slide serves to stress that it is not the business of one organization it is really an area where we do need the transnational cooperation with different organizations taking on different roles and when this is carried out then this weekly line of lowering the emissions from 2010 level to 2030 by 70 percent could become reality next slide please so with that i will thank you for your attention and look forward to the discussion that this hopefully will lead to and uh as in the link to the to the for the call of this conference or meeting you saw the link to the summary of the roadmap and that summary can also be distributed to anybody who wishes to have it so thank you very much for your attention and
2021-02-27 18:30
