Category: Previous Issues Articles

Do you remember that kid at school that was loquacious or an empty suit? 

Someone who talks a lot and always has something to say. Someone who thinks they have all the good arguments to save the world but when it’s time to deliver their words don’t mean anything. 

ECO has been paying attention to the discussions around the UNFCCC programme budget for 2020 – 2021. If you have enjoyed the time you’ve spend at the conference centre in Bonn, it is in great part thanks to the amazing and rigorous work of UNFCCC staff members, who help structure our work and help us achieve the objectives we set around the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the Convention. Sometimes, it can be easy to forget that. Implementing the Paris Agreement in an inclusive and participatory manner also means providing sufficient resources to translate our words into climate action. 

The UNFCCC Secretariat has rigorously provided Parties with a proposed budget of €68.7 million. This represents an increase of €11.8 million from the previous budget of 2018 – 2019. And the increase is mainly due to three different aspects: 

1. Correcting structural and programmatic imbalances that have existed in the Secretariat, for example, dedicating support to specific thematic areas (Loss and Damage, Gender and Action for Climate Empowerment); 
2. New tasks mandated in Paris and Katowice,  such as a new body for Indigenous People and a new body for response measures and support to the preparation for the global stocktake; 
3. Statutory staff cost increases of approximately 2.5%.

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ECO has been noting with interest here in Bonn the countries which have been bold enough to ‘Step Up’ and answer the question, ‘What will you be doing to enhance your NDC?’  So far (drum roll…) we have found that out of all the countries who have dropped by the Step Up booth, there are 31 heroes who are willing to go on record to talk about how they will contribute more to the global efforts to reduce emissions and address the climate emergency. 

‘The 31 most productive and advanced economies?’, ECO hears you ask. ‘China, maybe?, The US, surely? Major EU countries will no doubt be falling over each other to associate themselves with urgent climate action, right?’ Existential crisis must be very high on the list of priorities for these great nations as they will gather together in Osaka for the G20 Heads of State meeting on Friday 28 June. Japan’s own Shinzo Abe raised such hopes when he touted himself as a climate leader last fall.

Alas! It is not so. In fact, only one solitary G20 country, Indonesia, found its way to the Step Up booth and got ECO’s hopes up, by stating that it will look into how it will strengthen its action.
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Dr. Hélène Connor died last Friday 21^st of June on a flight as she returned home from a long-wished trip to Tibet. Hélène was a Montreal University Ph.D and a graduate of France’s top business school Hautes Etudes Commerciales. This soft spoken, unassuming and charming Frenchwoman was radiantly brilliant.

She was a real multitasking powerhouse of ideas, advocacy, scholarly research and innovative thinking regarding all aspects of the energy transition to 100% renewables and overcoming energy poverty in developing countries. 

Her four decades of ceaseless activity were formally honoured with the Legion of Honour award from the President of France. Amongst her many achievements were the founding of the global network HELIO International – Energy for ecodevelopment, the highly influential climate and development research of the South South North network, and her science-based, perceptive and surely ‘annoying’ critique of nuclear energy.  

Hélène, a frequent COP participant and active member of CAN, was an unfailing source of wisdom, guidance, political savvy and inside information. She was always ready to patiently guide her many friends and contacts with her invaluable insights. 

Merci Hélène, for all you did. You will be greatly missed! The highest tribute we can pay to you is to determinedly continue your struggle for responsible planetary management and truly sustainable development, which leaves no one behind.

It has come to ECO’s attention that some rich countries may need a quick refresher course in the basics of mathematics. There are four elementary arithmetic operations: + (addition), − (subtraction), × (multiplication) and ÷ (division). Let’s put these to use in some examples:

Addition

Country A has a four-year budget allocation for multilateral climate funds of £2 billion. It decides to give £300 million to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), £200 million to the Adaptation Fund and £1.5 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

£300 million + £200 million + £1.5 billion = £2 billion.

Simple.

Subtraction

What if Country A decided that it wants to contribute £1 billion to the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs)? This would be subtracted from their £2 billion budget allocation like so:

£2 billion – £1 billion = £1 billion

This leaves only £1 billion to split between the GCF, GEF and Adaptation Fund, meaning these UNFCCC funds will have less money to go around. Not good, especially since the CIFs are not accountable to the UNFCCC, are 80% mitigation focussed, only support half of developing countries, and don’t allow direct access to funding.

Multiplication

Country B pledged €750 million to the Green Climate Fund’s initial resource mobilization in 2014, and decides to double its contribution in the replenishment this year:

€750 million x 2 = €1.5 billion

Way to go!
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In the loss and damage negotiations, ECO sometimes hears the argument that no additional sources of finance are needed. Some say, for example, that humanitarian finance is available to address the impacts of weather disasters. But what are the facts? The latest Humanitarian Finance Update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) shows that, out of the total amount assessed as humanitarian funding requirements of US$ 26.42 billion, only 18.6%, equivalent to US$ 4.91 billion have been made available. That number rises only slightly if funding outside the UNOCHA coordinated overview is taken into account (another US$ 2.76 billion). ECO has pulled together a table of some of the recent weather-related disasters that have caused massive human suffering, and which remain underfunded. These disasters clearly demonstrate that there is a massive funding gap. There are other similarly underfunded crises where climate change is a contributing factor.

ECO also would like to mention that there are other loss and damage funding purposes – rehabilitation after disasters, dealing with territorial losses from sea-level rise, harvest losses, etc., which result in further funding needs.

Who are the climate leaders in this era of emergency? ECO would argue they are typically found outside this conference centre. They are the everyday people on the frontlines of confronting the fossil fuel industry (psst … the biggest cause of the climate crisis), defending human rights, and working to transition their communities to 100% clean and renewable energy. 

For example, did delegates know that, just a short train ride from Bonn, 6,000 of these leaders came together in the Rhineland last Friday, with Ende Gelände, to peacefully block climate-wrecking coal operations for 48 hours? That 40,000 students took to the streets of Aachen that same day, to strike for a future they can thrive and survive in? And that the next day, 8,000 more people protested in solidarity with German towns threatened to be bulldozed by coal mine expansion? 

“Because politicians are failing, we are stopping the diggers ourselves,” said Nike Malhaus, press spokesperson for Ende Gelände.

Such protests respond to climate science. The carbon pollution locked in by existing oil, gas, and coal development globally is more than enough to push the world well above 1.5°C. It follows that a baseline for climate action is taking action to wind down the fossil fuel industry in a just and equitable way (i.e.,
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ECO is excited to see the trickle of pledged national net zero goals gaining momentum, with the potential to become a flood by 2020 when, ECO reminds you, all countries should have submitted updated NDCs in line with the 1.5ºC imperative and the need to reduce global CO₂ emissions by around half by 2030.

A newcomer to this net zero club is the UK. In May, its Climate Change Committee (CCC) recommended that the UK could adopt a net zero greenhouse gas goal by 2050 – advice, which was accepted by the government on June 12^th. Although ECO has reservations on the lateness of the date – 2040 would seem a more appropriate outer limit – this change in target would be transformative for the UK, not least as it covers for all greenhouse gases, not only CO₂. 

The CCC is notably conservative in its modeling, and has publicly noted, with some chagrin, how far out its assumptions were on the costs of renewables when it helped to prepare the groundwork for the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008. This time, it has still been cautious about its assumptions on the roll out of innovations, it makes no assumptions on the benefits to the UK economy of the transition to a net zero emission economy and hasn’t considered the benefits of avoided costs of impacts.
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ECO gets the feeling that negotiators prefer to talk about the past rather than about the future… 

In 2016, the development of a technical paper that elaborates sources of and modalities for accessing financial support for addressing loss and damage was mandated. The Secretariat had a very long time to prepare it and yet it was only released two days before SB50 started. However, we do believe that this paper provides a good starting point to discuss sources and modalities for L&D finance. It usefully gives examples of loss and damage and to some extent addresses the intersection between adaptation, humanitarian and development programs. It highlights how difficult it is to report on loss and damage financing, as it is not accounted for separately.

However, ECO believes that there are major problems with the paper, which are primarily rooted in its mandate: By focusing solely on existing funding, it delivers a backwards-looking analysis of financial contributions to avert, minimize and address L&D. The ill-designed mandate excludes a forward-looking component from the technical paper. It contains no references to  (future) needs, additional innovative sources or institutional arrangements to channel funding.

In the current negotiations on the WIM review, ECO notes that negotiators are experiencing the same struggle with back- and forward-looking components.
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With apologies to Justin Timberlake:
I’m bringin’ science back (yeah)
Some of the boys don’t know how to act (yeah)
I think it’s special, the IPCC and facts (yeah)
So workshops ho! the report we’ll unpack (yeah)

Last week, science got a rough ride in the SBSTA item on the IPCC SR1.5, with the Saudi assault on attempts to fulfill the COP instructions to engage with the content of the IPCC report.
This week, science has its mojo back, and defenders of science’s role in continuously informing policymaking appear to be on track to get substantive conclusions from this session and find a way to do justice to this momentous and ground-breaking report.
Most parties are now supporting a substantial package of draft conclusions to forward to the plenary, as well as additional time in the informal consultations to consider them.
Yesterday AOSIS, LDCs and AILAC presented a proposal to organize 4 workshops – 2 at SB51 and 2 at SB52, with a synthesis report for consideration at a high-level event at COP26. This process of unpacking the IPCC report can help inform the process of parties revising NDCs over the next year or so, and the synthesis report can inform the Second Periodic Review, which will likely start in 2020.  
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ECO is excited to see so many Annex I Parties participating in the multilateral assessment for their biennial reports. ECO congratulates Parties for participating and thinks the multilateral assessment can be a great place to share experiences and lessons learned with other Parties in a constructive environment. We look forward to hearing your presentations and Q&A sessions throughout the day. 
Since ECO can’t ask questions during these workshops, we figured we’d share our questions with you here:
To all Parties:
Can you provide an update regarding any action taken to strengthen policy-making processes — in particular public access to information and public participation — so as to improve climate responses and promote policy coherence in the context of progress made towards meeting your commitments under the UNFCCC?
To Norway:
Norway has a national goal to cut emissions 30% by 2020, and two thirds of these cuts should be done domestically. But in 2017, according to the Government’s Prop 1.S 2018-19, Norwegian emissions had risen 2.4% since 1990. What is Norway’s strategy to deal with this?
To the Russian Federation:
According to its own last national inventory report in 2017, Russian GHG emissions were 68% of 1990 level without accounting for LULUCF, and 51% with the given accounting.
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