The crazy rich Paris Agreement free-riders
On the brink, time is running out for progress at COP25
The stakes for action on the climate emergency have never been higher. In a recent report by the UN the world is “on the brink” of catastrophe unless drastic changes are made to energy and carbon emissions policy by world leaders. The prognosis of the future warming based on best available scientific knowledge of current actions and commitments and policies of world governments and businesses is +3–4 C far beyond the safe limit of +2 C [3]. In 2018 the emissions gap in 2030 between current policies 60 Gt CO2eq/yr and the safe limit for +1.5 C warming (25 Gt) is 35 Gt or 58% of projected emissions. Not only current policies but also conditional nationally declared contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement fall far short of the required emissions reduction by 29 Gt [3]. Noteworthy among those countries that are falling short of climate ambition is the People’s Action Party (PAP) ruling political party of Singapore, who’s current policy of a negligible carbon tax of $US 4/ton and NDCs to reduce emissions per $ of GDP by -36% and to stabilize emissions by 2030 are rated as highly insufficient and if every country adopted the same policy would result in a catastrophic global warming of +3–4 C [5].
This week in Madrid Spain world leaders will meet at COP25 to negotiate the final points of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which is scheduled to go into force next year 2020. Article 6 covers the mechanism of carbon trading to facilitate cross-national cooperation on emissions reduction allowing countries that are slower at reducing to buy credits from other countries who are faster at reducing emissions[4]. If successful this would provide a level playing field of transparency by objectively comparing ambition on climate change mitigation between states by assessing the state’s expenditures on the social cost of carbon and as a share of their GDP along with their NDCs.
Doing your part
A full accountability program for objectively assessing a country’s compliance with the Paris Agreement should ask the following set of questions
- What is the states development status?
- What are the pledged Nationally Declared Contribution (NDC)?
- What is the progress vs the NDC?
- What is the state paying for carbon vs the social cost of carbon, and as a share of GDP?
First some background into the wording of the The Paris Agreement. The document is a voluntary international agreement to limit global warming to well below +2C and targets for < +1.5C [2].
Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below
2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature
increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would
significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. (Article 2a)
The agreement is based on the principle of climate justice, that developed states are expected to lead in emissions reductions and allow a delay for developing countries to continue their development and reduce emissions in a later period.
Developed country Parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking
economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets. Developing country Parties should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances. (Article 4.4)
It also indicates that the individual states NDCs should reflect the national circumstates, and does not elaborate further into what exactly is considered relevant measure of national circumstances in the context of emissions reduction. As a whole, compared to other agreements the Paris Agreements leaves a lot of flexibility to the individual member states to either over, or under achieve its stated goals.
Unlike its predecessor Kyoto Protocol and the Doha Ammendment, the Paris Agreement is a voluntary, non-binding agreement — which means that it is possible for some states to free-ride on the ambition of other more responsible and morally conscious states. A free-rider in game theory is a self-interested strategy in collective action problems that undermines the social outcome at the benefit of personal gain [6]. Free-rider problems arise in voluntary collective action problems if individual players are more interested in their private gains than the social outcome. If only a few states free-ride, it may not substantively impact the overall results, however if enough states choose to free-ride, meaning that they delay their emissions reductions, then the whole agreement could fail, which based on the UN report appears to be exactly what has happened.
One of the more well publicized free-rider is the United States when the Republican Trump Administration declared that they intended to withdraw from the agreement [7], but unfortunately the Trump Administration is not the only Paris Agreement free-rider.
Four types of free-riding
As the UN soberly reveals, emissions are rising instead of falling and most countries in fact are failing to submit NDCs that fully meet the necessary ambition to limit warming to <1.5C. There are four main ways that states can free-ride and avoid to pay their full part of the obligation
- Withdrawing from the agreement
- Submitting NDCs that do not meet the scientific requirements which right now is the most common form of non-compliance
- Missing their NDC pledges
- Obscure their true development status and thus securing an priviledge of delayed emissions reduction
Very few states if any at this point are openly chosing to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. While the Republican Party under the Trump Administration has initiated the administrative formalities of withdrawing, the United States as a whole is not only represented by the intentions of one political party and at COP25 a representative from Congress — Speaker of the House and highest ranking member of the Democratic Party Nancy Pelosi attended to represent the US interest in climate action negotiations with a clear message — We are still in.
Some states are slipping on their NDC pledges, by far though the most impactful negligence from world leaders is insufficient NDC pledges, which is a focal point for the COP25 and 2020 for countries to revise their ambition on NDCs. Another less publicized free-riding tactic that appears to be going on in quite with less international press attention are category 4 free-riders — those states who are shirking their NDC obligations by manipulating their development status.
Who goes first?
For the case of the Paris Agreement, the distinction of whether a country is classified as developed or not has substantial economic implications for the pace of change, and thus the cost of emissions reduction. Transitioning away from fossil fuels will be a dramatic transformation for any state as the IPCC clearly states, but a key cost consideration is the pace of change. As with any kind of change, slower changes are less costly than last minute changes. Just think about the difference in price between a round-trip flight to Chicago a year from now vs tomorrow. The origins to the Paris Agreement was the Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding emissions reduction scheme from 1997. In the Kyoto Protocol countries were classified into Annex I, II and Non-Annex I, which at the time was intended to reflect the distinction between developed and developing countries and was a self-determined process. The membership was a nearly one-to-one reflection of OECD membership. The Paris Agreement retains the same Annex I classifications as the Kyoto Protocol. While the concept of climate justice is important, the reality is that the majority of share of current and future projected emissions is from non OECD countries, so in order to achieve the right outcomes both Annex I AND non-Annex I states must adopt ambitious mitigation pledges to assure warming is limited to <1.5C. There are signs that some states have adopted such an ambitious approach — Bolivia, a Non Annex-I country announced at UN Climate Action Summit in Sep 2019 its plans to be 79% renewables in the electricity grid by 2030 [11]
How does you measure “developed”?
One of the open themes of the climate crisis as an “inconvenient truth” and something economists have been aware of for as long as the subject has been studied is that while human needs are finite, human wants are infinite. Economic development at a state level and its household equivalent of “standard of living” are concepts which have taken on an open-ended meaning beyond its originally intended purpose to absorb concepts from both needs and wants into a grey continuum with no hard and fast lines in the sand on what is considered “enough” or “developed”. As we know from research the majority of household footprint can be traced to discretionary lifestyle choice and consumption behavior that is in excess of basic sustenance needs [10] A similar analogy applies to the state level as measued by GDP and economic activity. The idea of a country being “developed” unlike the status of being alive or dead, is not a prescriptive diagnosis but instead something that states self-determine. Membership into the OECD is voluntary and for the example of Mexico and South Korea, they did just that and left the G77, joined OECD and are signaling to the world of having reached a new status and closure on their development narrative, although they have not changed their Annex I status and their NDCs are mostly status-quo. Like many concepts in economics and politics “development” is a socially constructed idea which over time has been refined into more precise definitions and metrics.
Attempts to put clear metrics and definitions on “needs” and “wants” for a state for the purpose of measuring development progress is the Human Development Index (HDI)[9]. The first version — Historical Index of Human Development (HIHD) excluded income measure and focused exclusively on endogenous direct measures of development — such as literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy. The later, more widely used index HDI added GDP per capita. HDI attempts to measure the degree to which the population is meeting their basic sustenance and educational needs. According to the UN, a low level of development is a score of <0.55 and a high development score is >0.7. Many countries have already achieved high development status so a third category is created “very high” which is >0.8.
Since the original formation of the G77, a number of new countries have joined so that the membership is now 135 [19]. Some noteworthy members that stand out among their cohort are the countries that score “very high” in human development, but yet are not members of OECD, Non-Annex I and participate in the G77 voting bloc. These countries share a number of similar features. Singapore, United Arab Emerates, Qatar, Brunei, Bahrain, Malaysia, and Kuwait enjoy high human and economic development (measured by GDP per capita) score low on civil liberties measures such as the Democracy Index [12] and most significantly for the Paris Agreement — have significant economic interests in oil and gas and petrochemicals industry.
In a league of its own
One of the most prominent offenders of the free-riders is Singapore. Depending on the context, at times the mainstream media sources and other official sources refer to the state as developed in spheres of finance, education and technology. This inconsistency is cannonized in title of the famous autobiogaphy of the state’s head from 1965 until 1990 “From third world to First”. In a 2010 report (10 years ago) the OECD remarked how Singapore quickly developed from the perspective of education and how it ranks at the top among OECD countries as a leader in educational achievement[12].
Singapore is classified as very high human development with a human development index (HDI) of 0.932 #9 of 189 countries 96th percentile where an HDI of >0.79 is considered highly developed [9]. In terms of wealth it also ranks high with a 2016 GDP per capita of $55k [14] which places it in the top 83% percentile compared to OECD metropolitan areas [15] and is safely classified as advanced which is defined as > $12k/yr according to the World Bank [16]. Singapore not only ranks high in terms of wealth, but also power and influential. It ranks 5th behind London, Tokyo, Paris, New York and ahead of Seoul in the 2019 Global Power City Index [17] which takes into account 70 different metrics in areas such as Economy, Cultural, Research, Livability, Accessibility and Environment. Relative to its peers of other cities Singapore stands out above the others complicit with responsibility to lead first in emissions reduction. The city’s total consumption based carbon footprint of 31 tCO2eq/capita ranks at the top 99.3% percentile #4 of 500 cities [18]
In contrast to these measures of Singapore’s economic progress and development, its behavior to the Paris Agreement measured by its NDC reflects a complete opposite narrative as an identity of a lagger, willfully and unapologetically intending to free-ride and shirk its obligation to the Paris Agreement by submitting a pledge considered to be far behind what is demanded of states and closer to a catastrophic business-as-usual path of 3–4C warming[20][5].
In the PAP administration’s official communications, it cites its “national circumstances” in an attempt to justify the unambitious NDCs citing irrelevant factual statistics of its geography. The true determinant of NDC ambition however is not determined by geographic circumstances but instead financial and economic capabilities. It’s a question of who pays first.
Getting the price of carbon right
A widely cited study published by the OMB of the Obama administration estimated a social cost of carbon for the United States of $45/tCO2eq. The study was redacted by the Trump Administration and replaced with a much lower figure of $1–5/tCO2eq by applying a much higher discounting factor towards the value of future economic outcomes of 7% vs the earlier value of 2.5%. The use of 2.5% is more widely recognized for a variety of reasons, and when applied to the global social cost the value rises to $75/tCO2eq, which is also the value recommended by the IMF [21]. The IMF and a wide range of economists across a range of schools of thought from keynesian to neoliberal agree that one of the most effective policy measure to mitigating emissions is to fully price the social cost of carbon through a carbon tax program.
Using a figure of $40–80/ton, a range of economists estimate the total cost of mitigation to be 1–4% of GDP, with most believing that this is an over-estimate and would likely be less due to synergy positive externalities created from mitigation such as lower environmental pollution, empowerment of women and enhanced agricultural productivity [22].
To be fair any politician when confronted with the news of a bill of 1–4% of GDP may fall out of their chair in shock, and they would be right in doing so, the truth is though this is just a statement of the reality of the global situation on climate crisis. This is the price of years of inaction and a history of failure of collective action, so now the bill is coming due. The problem statement for the world requires deep, unprecedented system transitions and therefore calls for significant upscaling of investments. The size of the problem has been outlined by scientists and economists — $75/ton and 1–4% of GDP, and the basis for allocating the responsibility is laid out in plain English in the wording of the Paris Agreement — developed countries to make the first move to pick-up the bill. “Mai dan” as they say in Chinese.
Pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems. These systems transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and a significant upscaling of investments in those options
Summary for Policymakers section C.2 — IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5C October 2018
What is the state paying for carbon vs the social cost of carbon, and as a share of GDP?
National circumstances — geography or money?
When it comes to Singapore, a common narrative promoted by the PAP administration is to fall behind geographic constraints as an interpretation of how national circumstances limit the countries ability for ambition on NDCs, however, this obscures the full picture of mitigation options available to the state. While the state’s land territory is small 740 km2 and sets a limit of 50 km2 of rooftop area available for solar deployment, this is only one of many levers available in a portfolio of mitigation solutions. As elaborated in detail in an earlier article on Singapore’s Green New Deal [8] There are four primary means by which the state could meet scientific targets -45% by 2030 for the Paris Agreement given that the funding meets the required levels of 1–4% of GDP or $75/ton of carbon
1 Carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS)
45% of the state’s emissions is from its petrochemical sector and furthermore 95% of its electricity generation is by natural gas. As noted by numerous reports CCUS technology is being deployed at large scales in the US, Japan and could quickly be scaled and implemented in Singapore in less than 5 years with secure funding at a carbon price of $40–80/ton, and possibly lower if the end-use includes enhanced oil recovery (EOR) with existing oil fields [24]. According to the IPCC, CCUS is not a “nice-to-have” it is a neccessity to meet emissions targets to limit warming to <1.5C and of all of the technologies, CCUS and Nuclear are lagging behind projections. According to Shell, CCUS is not a new technology but rather a mix of existing technologies that already exist within the oil and gas industry (Amine, reforming, membranes, pyrolysis, EOR, etc..). Given Singapore’s real national circumstances, including its greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, CCUS is the top candidate for emissions mitigation. Based on information revealed from investor fraud court case regarding Exxon’s “Greenhouse gas cost”[25], it is likely that the oil and gas majors on the island — ExxonMobil, Shell already have draft plans in place ready to deploy the projects in the event of a change in carbon policy that the company itself has lobbied for in other political context.
2 Tap into Southeast Asia (ASEAN) regional renewables capacity through direct development subsidies and electricity import terminals.
While its true that Singapore’s territory is small, this is misleading since it imports nearly everything necessary for daily life, including the natural gas, it should not come as a suprise that it should also import renewable electricity.
3 Cross-border mitigation financing
This is why Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is pivotal. When viewed at the global level, there is a good argument to be made that the financing should rightly flow first to the left hand side of the abatement curve [25] — the low hanging fruit — ahead of the more costly measures at the opposite end of the curve (CCUS). Via cross-border financing credits it could be theoretical in an ideal world with perfect international cooperation and fully mature, transparent and effective carbon credit transfers that cities like Singapore help to finance the low hanging fruit in land-based mitigation measures such as agricultural reforms. In such an idealistic world this would create the opportunity for the state to literally $ buy more time to work out the finishing touches on domestic emissions reduction plans, and then as the technology matures and the low hanging fruit become exhausted, international capital flows will move up the cost abatement curve to close the remaining gaps via CCUS. While some cross-border carbon credits will likely make it into Singapore’s portfolio, a number of concerns are likely to limit this to be only a minor part of the overall strategy. Such large capital outflows may not be as politically popular compared to domestic investments such as CCUS which create jobs and the multiplier effect. Also some of the assumptions about maturity of international cooperation and data transparency may be more optimistic than the evidence of the state of affairs today.
4 Gen III/IV Nuclear power.
Not strictly required in the short term for Singapore but may play a pivotal role in a portfolio of solutions for the long term energy solution as demand for electricity rises, the need for a 24/7 reliable base load, and later stage sunset decline of the oil and gas industry (no more EOR credits for CCUS). While the word “nuclear” sends chills down some people’s spines, so does the prospects of a world warming to 3–4C. A cool-headed quantitative assessment of the risks on both sides will soon conclude what the IPCC has said that in order to meet Paris goals, nuclear is not just a nice-to-have, it is mandatory. Somebody has to do it. The reality is that for most states the real barrier for nuclear is also not necessarily the risks or the waste, which can be managed with the state-of-the-art technology design and operational best practices, but rather just as for CCUS, it all comes down to money. Nuclear, like CCUS, has not kept pace with falling costs in other low carbon electricity — solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and so it remains as a lagger. Much of that may soon change, like CCUS when the price is right.
A history of morally questionable international free-riding policy— from tax haven to carbon haven
The PAP was also famous for its morally questionable quest for profits and free-riding internationally when it enjoyed free flows of wealth and foreign direct investment using its unofficial reputation as a “tax haven”. For years the state allowed banks to protect the identity of foreign account holders similar to Switzerland, but in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, and under pressure from trade partners such as the US by the introduction of FACTA laws[27], Singapore banks eventually rolled back these protections. The PAP now has become for the petrochemical industry a climate change free-riding “carbon haven” so it remains to be seen whether it will again follow its historical precedence of waiting for international pressures to coerce it into compliance, or whether it will see the handwriting on the wall and make the shift together now with the rest of its true OECD peers.
Can Singapore afford a fully priced carbon tax? If not, we’re all in trouble
To recap, the world is reaching the brink of disaster and collective action failure, and we can attribute a large amount of this failure to the free-riders to the Paris Agreement, of which the paragon free-rider in a league of it’s own somewhat a micro-cosm of what is happening all over the world is the Crazy Rich island-state of Singapore. So let’s pretend for a moment that the PAP is sensing the political winds are shifting on the consensus for ambition on climate action, how much would it cost, reflecting again on national circumstances, relative to its peers could the city afford it?
An objective starting point is to look at Singapore’s tax burden — public taxes as % of GDP, sure enough Singapore has a long way to go before it maxes out its taxation potential, and furthermore as we learned earlier, it has a lot of surplus GDP wealth from which to draw on for mitigation. An additional tax revenue stream of 1% of GDP would move the tax burden from current 13.7% to 14.7%, still in the top quartile of lowest taxed cities — very unlikely to incentivise business to leave given the alternatives and considering other pull factors for Singapore. While consumption based industries like retail and heavy industry may and probably should see a contraction of business volumes, and GDP may very well take a dip in the short run, this narrow view is also urealistically pessimistic. If planned well via a just transition “Green New Deal” which Singapore has a positive track record for — the capital deployed from the new revenue stream should more than compensate in growth of new jobs in the green economy. While there are no promises, if managed well the new green industry growth should have amble opportunity for exports around the world as the global community rallies for the World War II scale mobilization of climate change mitigation.
So the message remains for the PAP to answer, as a micro-cosm for the global stage the call to action by Antonio Guterres presented to the world leaders this week in Madrid
The point of no-return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us. However, my message here today is one of hope not of despair. Our war against nature must stop. And we know that that is possible. The scientific community has provided us with the roadmap to achieve this. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we must limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030.
…
What is still lacking is political will. Political will to put a price on carbon. Political will to stop subsidies on fossil fuels. Political will to stop building coal power plants from 2020 onwards. Political will to shift taxation from income to carbon — taxing pollution instead of people.
UN Secretary General, 01 Dec 2019 Antonio Guterres — COP25 Opening Speech[28]
How do free riders like the PAP get away with what they are doing by continuing to contribute destruction of the planet by emitting carbon pollution, but not paying the full social cost or adopting commensurate level of ambution to draw down and stop the harm? The lessons we learned from WWII atrocities and crimes against humanity of the Holocaust by the Nazi Party and the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese Imperial Army is that when aggressors threaten innocent lives, bystanders and free-riders are commensurately complicit by their inaction as the perpetrators themselves.
The only hope is that enough people are compelled enough to speak up when they see what is going on. So where will the political will come from to speak up against the PAP policy for those voiceless victims around the world who will pay the cost of climate change consequences — from Honduras, Mumbai, Bangladesh, Miami, Houston, New Orleans, and the natural habitats destroyed by wildfires in California and New South Wales Australia
Who will speak up?
Who will deliver Antonio’s message to the free-riders of the world that enough is enough, its time to pay up and consider not what will happen to your profits and GDP when you implement mitigation, but what your actions today of inaction are costing those outside your borders.
References
- Rennart and Kingdon, Resources for the Future published 01 Aug 2019 The social cost of carbon
https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/social-cost-carbon-101/ - United Nations, 2015 Paris Agreement
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english_paris_agreement.pdf - United Nations Environment Programme, 2019 Emissions Gap Report
https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2019 - Climate Change News Dec 2 2019 What is Article 6? The issue climate negotiators cannot agree https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/12/02/article-6-issue-climate-negotiators-cannot-agree/
- Climate Action Tracker — Singapore
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/singapore/ - Free-rider problem — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem - US State Department, 4 Nov 2019 On the withdrawal of the Paris Agreement
https://www.state.gov/on-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-the-paris-agreement/ - Hickem, Medium 22 Nov 2019 A Green New Deal for Singapore
https://medium.com/@taylor.hickem/a-green-new-deal-for-singapore-5602ee5bb69b - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2018 Human Development Report 2018 — Human Development Indices and Indicators
http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2018_human_development_statistical_update.pdf - Drukman, 2016 Understanding Household as Drivers of Carbon Emissions
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20571-7_9 - Farand, Sauer Climate Action News, Oct 2 2019 This is what the world promised at the UN climate action summit
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/10/02/world-promised-un-climate-action-summit/ - Wikipedia — The Democracy Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index - OECD Singapore: Rapid Improvement Followed by Strong Performance — 2010
https://www.oecd.org/countries/singapore/46581101.pdf - World Bank, dataset GDP per capita accessed 2019
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=MY-SG-Z4&start=1960&end=1965 - OECD Statistics Cities dataset, accessed 2019
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CITIES - Brookings Institute, 2018 Global Metro Monitor 2018
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Brookings-Metro_Global-Metro-Monitor-2018.pdf - Mori Memorial Foundation Institute for Urban Strategies, 2019 Global Power City Index Report 2019
http://mori-m-foundation.or.jp/pdf/GPCI2019_summary.pdf - Moran, D., Kanemoto K; Jiborn, M., Wood, R., Többen, J., and Seto, K.C. (2018) Carbon footprints of 13,000 cities. Environmental Research Letters DOI: 10.1088/1748–9326/aac72a.
- Wikipedia Group of 77
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_77 - National Enivornmental Agency of Singapore — 2018 Singapore’s Fourth National Communication and Third Biennial Update Report
https://www.nccs.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/singapore's-fourth-national-communication-and-third-biennial-update-repo.pdf - International Monetary Fund — Sep 12 2019 Fiscal Monitor : How to mitigate climate change
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/FM/Issues/2019/09/12/fiscal-monitor-october-2019 - Stern, 2008 The Economics of Climate Change
http://mudancasclimaticas.cptec.inpe.br/~rmclima/pdfs/destaques/sternreview_report_complete.pdf - IPCC — special report on global warming of 1.5C
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf - 350 Singapore Vision 2050 Sep 2019 — Section D Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage
https://drive.google.com/a/350sg.org/file/d/1-8GpwQSVdQlqYWNfnucMdlEpCCFh2yBK/view?usp=sharing - Climate Case Chart — People of the State of New York vs ExxonMobil
http://climatecasechart.com/case/people-v-exxon-mobil-corporation/ - Mckinsey — 2010 Greenhouse gas cost abatement curves
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/greenhouse-gas-abatement-cost-curves - Joseph — 2016 The IRS vs Singapore
https://sbr.com.sg/financial-services/commentary/irs-vs-singapore - UN Secretary General — COP25 Opening speech
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2019-12-01/un-secretary-generals-remarks-pre-cop25-press-conference-delivered