Current Issue Articles

Time For a Timetable

The scope, structure, and design of the 2015 agreement must keep the global temperature increase below 1.5ºC. It must contain national, legally binding targets and actions on mitigation, adaptation and finance to achieve this goal within an overall framework of ambition, accountability and equity.

There has been a lot of discussion here in Bonn on the process and timetable for developing such an agreement by COP21 in 2015. ECO suggests …

From Bonn to Berlin: Ministers At the Petersberg Dialogue Take Over

When the climate policy train leaves the ADP2 station in Bonn today, it moves on to Berlin at the Petersberg Dialogue. Germany and the next COP host, Poland, will serve as the conductors for this next stop. Three dozen ministers from around the world have been invited to this informal exchange of views to complement the UNFCCC process. ECO is happy to hear that ministers are finally getting together to …

Climate Finance In No Man’s Land

The importance of finance to both raising pre-2020 mitigation ambition and getting a successful deal in 2015 cannot be overstated. Right now, climate finance appears to be in no man’s land.

This year should mark the start of a new finance period, given that the Fast Start Finance period ended last year. Instead, we are almost halfway through the year and we’ve seen no new finance commitments beyond the small …

The Equity Review

Today, it is widely understood that without a Science Review there would be no real possibility of achieving the ambition required by science. An Equity Review is imminently needed to muster sufficient political will for that needed ambition.

Such a review must be based upon the equity principles that are embodied in the Convention, most notably the principles of ambition, responsibility, capacity and developmental need.

The challenge now is to …

You Can’t Feed Your Addiction and Break It, Too

While delegates will be discussing low emission development opportunities in today’s workshop, many of your countries are still feeding their tragic addiction to fossil fuels. You say you want to keep global warming below 2°C and to keep the door open for 1.5°C, but in fact you are consuming fossil fuels as if 4 degrees was the new 2 degrees.

The International Monetary Fund tells us that this addiction is costing your taxpayers …

On Equity: Part 1

ECO was positively surprised, during yesterday’s ADP2 opening and the following workshop, hearing Parties expressing the fact that equity can’t be neglected in the negotiations – a viewpoint that ECO shared long ago. Now that ECO and Parties have this common understanding on the importance of equity for the 2015 deal, let us suggest a way ahead: Parties should consider the equity spectrum approach.

Firstly, the core equity principles should …

Raise the Bar or Stay Home

Even as CO2 concentrations are about to break the 400ppm threshold, fresh climate disasters are announced all over the planet, and carbon prices are collapsing because of lax targets on par with BAU, countries have apparently come to the UNFCCC ADP meeting in Bonn with nothing to offer. Developed countries seem to be looking off in the distance beyond 2020, with images of universal participation and bottom-up national pledges dancing in their heads. Mundane issues …

On Equity: Part 2

The following are excerpts from a particularly incisive intervention in the ADP workshop yesterday afternoon. In case you missed it, ECO suggests you take a look. And if you didn’t miss it, ECO suggests you take a look anyway, since it’s a subject Parties need to work much more on:

“What is needed is a process that would allow for a proper equity review of the pledges, to be conducted in parallel with the …

Putting the “2 (degrees)” back in Workstream 2

It is well-trodden ground that there is a huge gap between what Parties say they want (staying below 2°C and keeping the door open to 1.5°C) and what Parties have pledged to contribute between now and 2020 to achieve that planetary necessity. In theory, Workstream 2 has already identified how to bridge the gap through: 1) improving developed countries’ woefully inadequate 2020 emission reduction targets; 2) identifying ways to enable …

Mothers of Ambition

Plato observed in The Republic that necessity is the mother of invention. Parties, he was speaking about you. Humanity formed the State to enable the conditions for sufficient food, shelter and security. Today we face an unprecedented challenge – how will we respond?

At this early stage in developing the global climate agreement in 2015, “ambition” dominates the agenda – and for good reason. The IPCC’s forthcoming AR5 will shine a bright and …