Time for Walking the Talk: Climate Change Action Plan

Time for Walking the Talk

Ministry publicized the long waited National Climate Change Action Plan

By Arif Cem Gundogan on Aug 1, 2011

As previously announced by the Ministry of Environment & Urbanization, National Climate Change Action Plan is published after delays caused by ministerial structure changes. One thing is for sure: despite having not met high expectations of the civic society & did not set qualitative adaptation targets, it can be counted as a very big achievement in this unambitious political environment and will cause transformational changes in many areas.

The action plan was presented to the stakeholders on 29 Aug when unusual heat waves were hitting many parts of the country. It is the final product of a UNDP led, FCO (Foreign Commonwealth Office) supported project, which took more than 2 years to be completed. At the final conference of the project last Friday, the Ministry of Environment & Urbanization, UNDP Turkey & British Embassy Ankara representatives gave short speeches to congratulate each other, outline major successes and failures of the project. The experts from the Climate Change Coordination Unit of the Ministry presented the plan with a significant enthusiasm. The action plan mainly focuses on actions in two specific areas: mitigation & adaptation.

I will write on the details of the actions set soon, but in this article, I would like to focus on other details that also deserve attention in order to reflect the issue in a right context.

No ambitious targets, lack of participation

The plan has been criticized since it does not include ambitious targets (in some areas, no concrete targets at all). Ministry representatives underlined that this is just the beginning of the low carbon era and it will take time and effort to align all actors accordingly.

Several concerns have been raised due to lack of civic society participation. Despite participation of business oriented civic society organizations like TUSIAD & TOBB, lack of inclusion of most of the environmental NGO’s created mistrust on the plan among the general public. The ministry representatives accepted the responsibility and claimed that they already started to work to improve this issue.

Moving the dinosaur is (and will) not (be) easy

It has always been difficult to build a national action plan regardless of its subject since it requires consensus & commitment of various stakeholders, which have different interests. Not to mention the hardness of overcoming slow Turkish bureaucracy, The Ministry of Environment & Urbanization performed great role of coordination in this aspect. With the expertise & financial support of UNDP Turkey & FCO, Climate Change Coordination Unit did its best so far. They really gave me the impression that they will be following up closely the post-planning period because they repeatedly underlined that the document will not be a static & dusty one.

Follow-up Committee: most important outcome

Well, dozens of actions have been defined both in adaptation & mitigation areas, but who will follow up & update them? Experts gave the answer: Monitoring and Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of Environment & Urbanization will track whole progress. I believe that this is the most important (complimentary) outcome of the project and as far as I understand from the feedbacks, I have the impression that I am not the only one who thinks in this way.

Expectations from the climate diplomacy

Climate Change Coordination Unit expressed that they set very ambitious position for Durban, where they will negotiate for a better (unique) position for Turkey. At the first commitment period, Turkey has no binding mitigation target and it will likely continue like this in the post-Kyoto 1st period. When it comes to the carbon markets, as expected, Turkey will continue with the Voluntary Market and push for more elastic solutions such as bilateral or multilateral carbon trade mechanisms.

Need for speed: low carbon economy on the way

Representatives underlined the fact that business environment is not that excited about possible opportunities that may born with climate negotiations. This is very interesting. I am not sure what is the reason behind it but I guess business world (apart from big players) still perceive the issue as a burden rather than opportunity.

Well, what is going on the government side? Things are getting fastened after the elections. There is an ongoing work about setting a stock exchange on carbon trade by the Capital Markets Board of Turkey (SPK). Meanwhile the Carbon Trade Working Group, which operates under the Climate Change Coordination Unit of the Ministry, also works on several important issues like a regulation on disclosure & monitoring of greenhouse gases (expected to be in force by the end of 2011). This regulation will definitely cause a boost in the number of carbon verification companies in Turkey. In addition, new opportunities are on the way with arrival of new funds likely in this September.

What next?

In addition to monitoring & evaluation activities, experts from the ministry said that they would be working on complementary projects. Socio-economic impact & cost benefit analysis should be made as soon as possible, they claimed. Another focus will be on building greenhouse gases measurement & verification procedures. Deputy Undersecretary especially mentioned that they would welcome donor supports for post-planning phase.

Last but not least

Whether we like it or not, here came the plan and even its presence on its own is a huge success. We should congratulate all parties, and start working together for more inclusive, effective, and dynamic follow-up & implementation periods. We should not forget: without the governmental bodies, incremental change will not happen.

Good luck to all!

Arif Cem Gundogan
ClimateTurkey

The plan can be found here: http://iklim.cob.gov.tr/iklim/Files/İDEP_Rapor.pdf (Available in Turkish)