Category: Previous Issues Articles

We find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. The first paradox is that the world’s glaciers are now moving quicker than the Parties to the UNFCCC. The Greenland ice sheet has started doing something we were expecting it to do in 2090. Meanwhile, a large number of countries still have not done what we’ve expect them to do since 2014. Slow and steady just won’t do when we’re trying to honour treaties we have created to fight the climate emergency. Now you’re moving slower than a glacier. 

Remember the table below, Parties? We welcome Kuwait, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Mongolia, Montenegro, and Paraguay – countries, who have all ratified the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol (KP2) since COP24. We also welcome the references to the need for the entry into force of the KP2 made in sessions such as SBSTA item 6 on matters relating to science and review. Given how much importance Saudi Arabia puts on this matter and how it’s an opportunity to hold developed countries to their commitments, ECO hopes to be able to welcome Saudi Arabia as a KP2 ratifier in the very near future. Can we get this done pre-2020? 

We still need 16 more Parties to sign up to reach the threshold of ¾ of Parties to the KP to secure entry into force.
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Parties [and political leaders] are clearly still struggling with the notion of ambition, despite all the guidance provided to them by the IPCC, NGOs, think tanks, the UN Secretary General, Greta Thunberg, and despite the increasing need to address impacts of climate change all around the world. 

ECO has lost count of how many times we’ve said that science’s role is to inform ambition. And we’re not referring only to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C. New scientific studies (which missed the SR1.5 deadline for consideration) remind us that climate change could be happening faster than we originally thought. One recent example shows that if emissions remain unabated, Greenland’s ice will melt at higher rates than initially expected. The climate forecasts are now up to 80 percent higher than previous estimates of 35 inches (89 cm) of sea level rise. Europe is again this summer experiencing a heat wave – all you need to do is to step outside of the conference halls for a bit of empirical research. 

ECO has talked a lot about it, but since we’re not seeing ambition from you, we feel the need to unpack what we mean by climate ambition. Bluntly put, we want a credible and solid response to the climate emergency from all countries based on their different capacities and resources.
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On this final day of SB50, ECO would like to remind Parties about the importance of strong environmental integrity provisions in the Article 6 rules.  

It is fundamentally critical that emissions transfers under Article 6 prevent double counting. Article 6 can only work properly if the rules ensure that double counting is avoided both in 6.2 and 6.4, and that corresponding adjustments are applied for mitigation outcomes both inside and outside the scope of a host country’s NDC. This must apply regardless of where the credits are used – i.e. for NDC and non-NDC purposes alike. 

ECO continues to hear from some Parties that corresponding adjustments for mitigation outcomes used toward purposes other than NDCs — like aviation’s carbon market, the ICAO CORSIA — are not important. ECO strongly disagrees. Leaving non-NDC adjustments out of the picture could punch a hole in the Paris Agreement the size of an A380 jumbo jet. 

And if Parties allow Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) or Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) to transfer over without any conditions, it would punch a hole in the Paris Agreement big enough for a whole airline’s fleet. Allowing activities and methodologies from the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms to carry over without conditions would widen that enough to add another airline’s fleet!
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ECO is watching how developed countries progress on their climate finance in light of the annual US$100bn goal. One way to keep track of the direction of provided mitigation and adaptation finance is using the climate-related development assistance as reported to the OECD’s DAC, even if the climate finance reported to the UNFCCC doesn’t necessarily match this data. ECO is fully aware of some challenges already identified with the methodology. Different analyses have shown that there is a significant over-reporting in applying the Rio Markers, which indicate the level of climate relevance. For example, indicating that the ‘principal’ objective (Rio Marker 2) of a project is either adaptation or mitigation relevant, means 100% of the budget will be counted as climate relevant. When giving a project Rio Marker 1 (‘significant’), 40 to 50% of the project is usually counted as climate finance (OECD member countries’ practice varies), even though it can have only little detectable climate relevance. 

Where the European Commission, Sweden, Norway and others are scaling the Rio-marker 1 (“Significant”) with 40%, these “coefficients” differ across countries from 0% (Portugal) to 100% (Japan, Luxembourg, Greece, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland and Iceland). This is a sad example of the lack of common reporting standards among OECD member states.
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Last Friday, ECO witnessed a negotiator from Saudi Arabia repeatedly bully and intimidate the female co-facilitator at the SBSTA informal consultations on SR1.5C. While a Party is entitled to express its views, this Saudi negotiator’s vociferous personal demands for an apology or admission of wrongdoing from the facilitator is entirely unacceptable—and tantamount to bullying and harassment. 

What is more, no other Party in the room spoke out to oppose the Saudi conduct and stop the out-right harassment. 

Sadly, these moments where Parties freely intimidate others and bystander Parties remain silent are neither rare nor openly acknowledged during climate negotiations. It feeds into the pervasive and toxic culture of discrimination against women that the UNFCCC’s 2018 “Code of Conduct to address harassment at UNFCCC Conferences” was precisely designed to combat–and that we as a community do not tolerate. 

The Saudi negotiator’s behaviour and bystander Parties’ silence are acutely problematic because they contravene the very values that the Paris Agreement espouses: equity, respect for human rights, gender equality and the empowerment of women. As a climate community, practicing these values means standing up against bullying, harassment, and any other forms of abusive treatment and violence against women and all delegates within the walls of the UNFCCC space.
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What’s at the heart of the Paris Agreement? For ECO, it is the NDCs. In Katowice, Parties discussed many topics related to the structure and content of NDCs and reached agreement on some items, such as the information necessary for clarity, transparency, and understanding. However, there’s a glaring gap – what will be the time periods for the NDCs? 

Yes, Parties agreed to apply common time frames for those NDCs to be implemented from 2031 onward. But the most important outstanding issue – the length of the time frames — is still outstanding! Given the range of divergent views, ECO knew Parties wouldn’t agree on that substantive issue here but hoped that Parties would at least be able to set a deadline for a decision. Alas, no decision…!

ECO reminds delegates that a substantive outcome on this issue in Santiago is necessary. Planning an NDC can be a lengthy process and it is crucial that Parties know early on what the timeframe is going to be. There is no reason to delay a decision. Let’s be honest, we all procrastinate on our homework until we have a deadline that gets us to buckle down and accelerate our work. 

And (in case you’ve forgotten since Saturday’s issue), ECO firmly believes a single five-year time frame is the best solution to avoid locking in low levels of ambition, harnessing rapidly evolving real-world opportunities, and synchronizing better with five-year cycles of the broader Paris climate regime (i.e.,
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With the complexity of GHG fluxes in the land sector, it is often difficult to see the wood for all the trees. So let’s go straight to the root of the issue: some groups – notably, the forestry sector – claim that young, rapidly growing trees are the best at soaking up carbon from the atmosphere, and that using wood harvested from such plantations for furniture and building construction can lock away large quantities of carbon. Such false solutions are myths that disingenuously position the forestry industry as a key ally in the fight against climate change.

The truth is that trees only reach their maximum “carbon carrying capacity” many decades, and sometimes even centuries, into their growth, and that harvested wood products, on average, store only a fraction of the carbon contained in a living tree. 

But don’t despair – there are real solutions! Proforestation is a process that allows older forests to continue growing to reach their biological sequestration potential. A newly published paper finds that protecting existing natural forests and allowing them to grow offers far superior mitigation value and significant co-benefits compared to plantation forests, such as nutrient cycling, water regulation, and pollination. Proforestation applies to all forest types. 
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ECO has observed that loss and damage negotiators have been working hard here to find an agreement on the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the review of the Warsaw Mechanism. The heatwave in Europe hopefully has inserted pressure to come to an agreement (hm…is that the reason why “one party” did not accept reference to the IPCC reports? Given the overwhelming real-time impacts of climate change happening now everywhere, this Party may have found the IPCC reports no longer necessary…? ECO does not at all support any rationale that aims to disregard the IPCC!).

Now it is time for negotiators, when they arrive home the day after tomorrow, to get prepared for the next round of submissions — wherever you may spend your holidays, you may find inspiration from some relaxing.

ECO would have loved to see the ToRs being more clearly guided by the needs of vulnerable countries, its people and ecosystems, for whom the WIM has been set up. But even after so many years in the process, ECO still learned something new: the review will take place even in the absence of the ToRs. So in case Parties do not manage to agree on the ToR, each Party could proceed on its own discretion.
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Climate is a clear priority for Finland, who takes over the presidency of the EU Council this Monday. At the national level, Finland is aiming high: to be carbon neutral by 2035 and to achieve net negative emissions shortly thereafter. Respect! Finland also supports increasing the ambition of the EU’s NDC to -55% by 2030 (from 1990 levels).

In fact, ECO hears that one of Finland’s main presidency priorities will be to strengthen the EU’s position as a global leader on climate action. And if not now, then when?  

What matters now is significant emission reductions in the short-term. The UN Secretary General puts it very clearly in his call for the Climate Action Summit in September: unless we cut global emissions in half by 2030, we will not be able to avoid devastating climate impacts. He calls on the EU to improve its severely inadequate 2030 target and reduce emissions 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. ECO agrees that would be an improvement, but believes the EU can consider doing even better and move to cut emissions at least 65% in order to contribute its fair share of reaching the 1.5°C target and respect the Paris Agreement’s objectives.

Historically, the EU has often been there, at crunch times, to push global climate ambition forward.
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Today, we are racing towards tipping points in earth systems, for example in West Antarctica. We have reached societal tipping points with thousands of people on the streets, protesting for more ambitious climate policies. With all this pressure, ECO asks itself: What needs to happen for the negotiations to reach a tipping point themselves, to speed up and adequately address the climate crisis we are facing?

We are in the middle of a climate crisis – the devastating impacts of climate change are already being felt on all continents, in all regions. Looking at Asia, we see increasing stress on freshwater resources in India. The megacity of Chennai faces extreme water shortages, due to a drought in Tamil Nadu. Water deliveries have to be accompanied by the police. In the countryside, people have left their villages as there is no water left, nor do water deliveries reach them. 

Looking at Europe, Germany, France and other countries are experiencing extreme heat with  temperature records for the month of June likely to be broken. In Switzerland and Italy, storms, hail, and floods caused severe damage. Looking at North America, Colorado got 60 cm of snow on the first day of summer.
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