Heritage.Org: U.S. Should Put U.N. Climate Conferences on Ice

Click here to read this story on Heritage.org: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/12/climate-change-us-should-work-outside-of-united-nations-climate-conferences

By Brett D. Schaefer and Nicolas Loris
December 5, 2012

The Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is currently holding its 18th meeting in Doha, Qatar. The two-week conference ending on December 7 is intended to jump-start the stalled negotiations on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Midway through the meetings, it is clear that very little of substance will transpire, which has been the case for years.

The past four years have demonstrated conclusively that there is no international consensus for action. The U.S. should refuse to attend future U.N. conferences on climate change, call for a moratorium on future conferences unless there is a fundamental shift in position among key countries, and focus its efforts on alternative forums involving key countries. Further, the U.S. should prevent and remove unilateral attempts to address climate change that have adverse economic effects and no environmental benefit.

Talking in Circles
 
The U.N. has been the central forum for discussing climate change issues for more than two decades. The U.N. led the effort to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, which released its first report in 1990 and, unsurprisingly, confirmed the global warming theory and laid the foundation for an international agreement to address the issue. The 1992 Rio Earth Summit produced the UNFCCC, wherein countries pledged to consider actions to limit global temperature increases and cope with the resulting impact of climate change.

The high point of UNFCCC efforts was the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which established binding restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in 37 industrialized countries, including principally the European Community, by an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008–2012.

The U.S. is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, and supporters of the pact point to this fact to justify its failure. In reality, even accepting all IPCC model assumptions, shortcomings of the agreement—particularly the exemption of major developing country sources of greenhouse gas emissions, loopholes, and other ruses that allow some developed countries to largely avoid emissions reductions—ensured that the Kyoto Protocol would do virtually nothing to reduce emissions and have no detectable impact on climate change.[1] The bottom line is that even with perfect compliance and U.S. participation, Kyoto would not significantly arrest projected global warming.

The past four years have seen successive annual U.N. conferences (Copenhagen in 2009, Cancun in 2010, Durban in 2011, and Doha this year) frantically trying to reach agreement among nearly 200 countries on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. In essence, these conferences have succeeded only in wresting vague pledges from developed countries to reduce emissions, contribute funds to help developing countries adapt to climate change, and meet again to try to negotiate a binding treaty by 2015.

An Unworkable Premise
 
The problem is that the basic approach is unworkable. The Kyoto Protocol essentially placed the entire economic burden of addressing climate change on a few dozen countries while asking nothing from more than 150 countries. Perhaps this makes sense if the industrialized countries alone could address the issue by reducing emissions, but that is impossible.

The primary source of greenhouse gas emissions is increasingly the developing world. For a number of reasons—including sluggish economies and a shift toward energy sources (such as natural gas, nuclear, or renewable energy) that emit fewer greenhouse gas emissions—most industrialized countries have seen their emissions stabilize or fall. In fact, U.S. emissions are at their lowest level since 1996, according to the U.N.[2] China surpassed the U.S. as the largest source in 2006, and its emissions were 45 percent higher than America’s in 2009 (the most recent year available). Other developing countries are also rapidly increasing their emissions as their economies develop.

Developing countries, primarily India and China, have made it quite clear that they have no appetite to slow economic growth or stop using fossil fuels to curb emissions. In fact, according to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, there are proposals to build nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants worldwide totaling over 1.4 million megawatts. China and India alone account for 76 percent of the proposed build.[3]

For this reason, Canada, Japan, and Russia refused to sign onto a new agreement committing them to emissions reductions unless major developing country emitters were also included. Understandably, they see little benefit in undermining their economic growth and their citizens’ prosperity for the sake of a symbolic gesture that, in the end, would not significantly alter the trajectory of emissions growth.
All of this leaves aside, of course, outstanding uncertainty about the accuracy of UNFCCC claims on climate change, the magnitude and pace at which the climate is changing, its causes, and whether the costs of emissions reductions might be better used in other ways. Specifically, the famous “hockey stick” used by the UNFCCC for years to illustrate global warming has been proven to be fabricated,[4] the models used to predict future temperatures have been unable to replicate past temperatures, and global temperatures have stabilized over the past 15 years.[5] Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg and other experts suggest that the costs of emissions mitigation are prohibitive and that countries should focus on other, more urgent development problems.[6]

U.S. Should Be a Leader
 
Proponents of the U.S. taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions often argue that if the U.S. acts, the rest of the world will follow suit. As the developing world has made it clear, this is not the case. Instead, the U.S. is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars attending and financing these conferences and, ironically, encouraging unnecessary emissions from those sent to represent their countries, industries, or interests at these unproductive meetings. Instead, the U.S. should demonstrate real leadership by:

• Undertaking independent efforts to more accurately determine the severity of climate change and verify U.N. claims.
• Working with a smaller group of nations through informal arrangements such as the Major Economies Forum to undertake appropriate steps that are both cost effective and effective in reducing warming.
• Refraining from attending future U.N. climate change conferences and calling for a moratorium on conferences that emphasize financial transfers and reinforce the flawed, ineffective Kyoto methodology of differentiated responsibilities.
• Resisting and ceasing attempts to address climate change unilaterally. This includes removing onerous and unnecessary regulations on fossil fuels that are driving up the cost of energy, stopping wasteful and ineffective attempts to subsidize carbon-free energy sources, and preventing an implementation of a carbon tax. Attempting to address greenhouse gases unilaterally comes at great cost to the taxpayer and energy consumer for no meaningful environmental impact.

A More Effective Way
 
Efforts to address climate change do not need to be hammered out at a U.N. conference. Indeed, by working with a smaller group of key players, the U.S. is far more likely to negotiate a more effective and less costly strategy to address climate change without the tangents that bog down U.N. negotiations.

Instead of letting the U.N. funnel negotiations toward an unrealistic, grossly expensive agreement, the U.S. and other key nations should work outside the U.N. to hash out a realistic, effective strategy by which they are prepared to abide.

—Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, and Nicolas D. Loris is the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Heritage Foundation: U.S. Should Hold the Line on U.N. Salaries

Click here to read this in full at Heritage.org: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/united-nations-us-should-hold-the-line-on-un-salaries

By Brett D. Schaefer

Personnel costs, including salaries, comprise nearly three-quarters of the U.N. regular budget, and increases in U.N. salaries have significant budgetary implications for the member states. Over the past few years, the U.N.’s International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) has recommended salary increases despite the fact that some member states, including the U.S., have been forced to freeze their government salaries in response to significant fiscal crises. As a result, U.N. compensation—already more generous than that paid by the member states to their own civil servants—has grown even more lavish.

Surprisingly, the ICSC recommended a temporary freeze in U.N. salaries in July. However, unless the General Assembly (GA) decides otherwise, a salary increase will go into effect in January 2013 and will apply retroactively to August 2012. The U.S. should oppose the proposed increase in U.N. salaries and urge the GA to update its 1985 instructions to the ICSC and demand a salary freeze until U.N. net remuneration falls to match that of the U.S. federal civil service.
 
Lavish Salaries and Benefits
In order to attract and retain qualified staff, the U.N. has long operated under the Noblemaire principle, which states that professional staff salaries should be determined by comparison to those of the civil service of the member state with the highest civil service pay levels. Ever since the U.N. was founded, this has been the U.S.
U.N. professional categories, however, do not line up neatly with U.S. civil service grades. To address this, the ICSC calculates equivalencies between the two as a basis for determining compensation. According to the ICSC, U.N. compensation significantly exceeds that of the U.S. equivalent.[1] Specifically:

• The seven U.N. professional or higher categories in New York receive net remuneration between 26.6 percent and 44.2 percent higher than the net remuneration of U.S. federal employees based in Washington, D.C.
• On average, weighting for the number of U.N. employees in each category, U.N. net remuneration is 31.3 percent higher than that of their U.S. equivalents in Washington, which is up from 29.5 percent in 2011.[2]
• Even after applying its own cost-of-living adjustment for New York, which is significantly higher than that used by the U.S. government, the ICSC reports that the average net remuneration of U.N. employees was 17.7 percent higher than the U.S. equivalent.
• Based on the 2012 ICSC report, the most numerous U.N. professional grade (P-4) earned an average net remuneration in 2012 of $136,351, versus $104,704 for the U.S. equivalent.

In addition to these lavish salaries, U.N. employees enjoy generous benefits and allowances, including a rental subsidy of up to 80 percent above a specified threshold; education grants for staff serving outside their home country amounting to 75 percent of tuition (up to $32,255 per annum), payable through the fourth year of college up to the age of 25; and annual vacation of 30 days, 10 official holidays, 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, and four to eight weeks of paid paternity leave.[3]
 
Time for Revision and Restraint
The ICSC operates under an instruction from resolution 40/244 adopted by the GA in 1985 to maintain U.N. net remuneration between 110 percent and 120 percent higher than the U.S. equivalent. The ICSC asserts that the pay discrepancy is “necessary to compensate for specific elements relating to expatriate service.”[4] Considering that many of the U.N.’s generous benefits are specifically intended to address these challenges, the salary premium above U.S. civil service salaries—the highest of any member state—is not justified.
Moreover, the U.S. instituted a pay freeze for federal workers in 2011 and 2012, but the GA approved a salary increase of nearly 3 percent in 2011. Ambassador Joseph Torsella, U.S. Representative to the United Nations on Management and Reform, sharply criticized the 2011 decision, announcing that the U.S. “calls for a freeze on pay for United Nations staff while the comparator salaries, those of the United States federal civil service, are frozen. We also repeat our call for repealing the nearly 3 percent raise given to New York based employees through the cost of living adjustment in August, and we urge the General Assembly to act on this matter.”[5]
The GA did not rescind the pay increase, but it did instruct the ICSC in resolution 66/235 to “explore the feasibility and suitability” of reflecting the pay freeze for the U.S. civil service in U.N. salaries, to determine whether the ICSC has the authority to implement such measures, and to “exercise such authority, as appropriate.”
In its July report to the GA, the ICSC determined that various factors should lead the GA to approve an average cost-of-living post adjustment increase of over 2.2 percent for U.N. professional and higher categories in New York. The ICSC decided to temporarily “defer” implementation of the adjustment “in view of the financial situation of the United Nations as described by the Secretary-General.” Unless the GA acts otherwise, however, the salary increase will “be promulgated on 1 January 2013 with a retroactive effect as of 1 August 2012.”[6]
 
The Need to Rein in U.N. Compensation
As stated by Torsella, the U.S. should urge the GA to prevent this retroactive salary increase:
The ICSC’s recognition of the need to control staffing costs in a time of global financial crisis is a first step in the right direction. And it is hardly a radical step, especially compared with the actual job losses and salary cuts—not just freezes, but cuts—borne by the citizens and civil servants of many member states. It is now up to all of us to rise to the occasion, to match the ICSC in responsible governance, and to adopt this sensible—and modest—recommendation.[7]
But additional steps are necessary to bring U.N. salaries into line with U.S. civil servants. The U.S. should urge the GA to:

• Reject the salary increase proposed by the ICSC in its post adjustment for 2012 and maintain salaries at the 2011 level;
• Rescind the instruction to the ICSC in resolution 40/244 to target U.N. net remuneration at 110 percent to 120 percent of the U.S. equivalent and replace it with an instruction that U.N. net remuneration should match that of the U.S. civil service;
• Instruct the ICSC to use the U.S. Office of Personnel Management locality pay adjustment for New York rather than its own cost-of-living calculations, which are significantly higher; and
• Instruct the ICSC to freeze salaries and the post adjustment until U.N. net remuneration falls to match that of the U.S. civil service.

Hold the Line on U.N. Budgetary Constraint
Governments around the world have to implement austerity measures to meet budgetary necessity, including salary freezes. As a composite of the world’s nations, the U.N. should not be insulated from this reality.
—Brett D. Schaefer is Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation and editor of ConUNdrum: The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009).

Click here to read this in full at Heritage.org: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/united-nations-us-should-hold-the-line-on-un-salaries

Heritage Foundation: Living the High Life at the U.N.

By Brett D. Schaefer
September 25, 2012

Click here to read this @ Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2012/09/living-the-high-life-at-the-un

Tomorrow, President Obama will make his fourth address to the United Nations General Assembly.  According to tradition, the U.S. leader will follow Brazil, which will officially kick off the start of the 67th session as the first speaker of the “General Debate.” Later that week, heads of state from Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Haiti will take their turn at the podium.

Why highlight these countries? They are among a select group of 49 “least developed countries” (LDCs) that receive substantial reductions in their assessed contributions to the U.N. 

How low you ask? Currently, the minimum assessment is 0.001 percent of the organization’s regular budget. That works out to and annual assessment of $25,852 per LCD.

By contrast, the U.S. is assessed 22 percent of the regular budget--$567 million for 2012. Thus, the U.S. assessment is more than 22,000 times that of the least assessed countries.

But that’s not all. LDCs are eligible for a travel allowance to attend the General Assembly. That’s right; the U.N. budget includes $2.2 million ($1.1 million per year or about $23,000 per eligible country) to pick up the travel expenses of five people to attend the General Debate. 
  
All told, after credits and travel allowances are applied, about two dozen countries pay roughly $500 to $1,000 annually in U.N. dues. Other countries also benefit from the travel subsidy, but have a higher assessment. 

The idea behind this subsidy, indeed behind the incredibly low assessments of many U.N. member states, is that poor developing countries lack the financial means to send representatives the General Assembly or pay anything more than token amounts for the U.N.  Indeed, the minimum assessment has been lowered several times to allow developing countries to “meet their priorities at home.”
Unfortunately, the leaders of these “poor” countries often fail to emulate this prioritization while hobnobbing in Turtle Bay:

• President Joyce Banda of Malawi will make her first trip to the U.N. General Debate this year.  She will not be alone.  According to the Nyasa Times, a “huge delegation that has accompanied the President including traditional leaders, clerics, Members of Parliament, relatives and ruling People’s Party cohorts.” The projected cost is 308 million Malawian Kwachas (over $1 million).
• During the 2011 General Assembly, President Ernest Bai Korom of Sierra Leone occupied—12 rooms—two entire floors of the Hyatt 48Lex. The hotel internet rates shown for the week of this year’s General Debate lists rooms from $1,596 per night to the penthouse suite at $5,596 per night.
• The New York Post reported last year that Rwandan President Paul Kagame stayed in the $16,000-per-night presidential suite at the Mandarin Oriental.
• Haitian president Michel Martelly was criticized last year for skimping on official meetings, while attending private dinners and parties.

This extravagance is not unusual. The New York Post article on Kagame details other delegations’ expensive hotel stays and even more expensive shopping sprees as does one published earlier this month on the Huffington Post. Indeed, New York hotels make a killing this time of year, jacking up rates in the knowledge that nearly all of the 193 U.N. member countries will be sending high level delegations that prefer to stay in penthouses close to Turtle Bay.

But this raises some basic questions.

Is it really necessary for countries whose populations are extremely poor to send large delegations to New York at enormous expense? Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and many other U.N. member states have per capita incomes around $2 per day or less.

The Malawian government justified its trip saying it “is a rare opportunity for the president to garner support from development partners world over to assist Malawi.” Other governments similarly argue that it is really these side meetings that matter.

But must they go in person, every year? Bear in mind, these countries have diplomats permanently stationed in New York to represent them. What about video conferencing with or telephoning donors? Moreover, most bilateral and multilateral aid donors have embassies and missions in Malawi and other developing countries. Their very purpose is to meet with the government and facilitate cooperation.

Additionally, if these nations can afford tens of thousands, even millions, of dollars for penthouse suites and large entourages to go to the U.N. each fall, why do they need $23,000 in travel allowances from the U.N.?

Finally, shouldn’t it cost a nation more to belong to the U.N. than it does for them to send their president to New York City each fall for 15 minutes on the global soap box?

The vast disparity between financial obligations is a key reason why U.N. reform and budgetary restraint are so difficult. When countries pay virtually nothing into the U.N., it is little wonder that they pay scant attention when its budget increases or its programs are mismanaged.

Just a few things to ponder when you see someone haranguing the assembled leaders at the U.N. this week or get stuck in Manhattan gridlock arising from endless motorcades.

--Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org).

Click here to read this @ Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2012/09/living-the-high-life-at-the-un