Pre-2020 climate action is a prerequisite for delivering on the 1.5°C goal. At current emissions levels, the carbon budget for a strong likelihood (66%) of keeping warming below 1.5°C could be exhausted in as little as 6 years. If more is not done now, the Paris Agreement will be too little, too late.
ECO has long supported the notion of high-level champions as a way to foster concrete near-term climate action by unlocking the necessary attention and support for this issue to deliver more, faster and now. ECO is delighted by the active engagement of the first two champions, France’s Laurence Tubiana and Morocco’s Hakima El Haité; as well as by Morocco’s vision of COP22 as an “action and implementation COP”.
A strong and ambitious roadmap for the champions’ work, with the Global Climate Action Agenda (GCAA) and enhanced pre-2020 action under the UNFCCC at its heart, will reduce emissions, increase resilience and help mobilise support for further action.
1) ECO fully supports the situation analysis and appreciates the recognition of the need to prioritise pre-2020 action. We want to highlight the need for more means of implementation for pledged action to further increase ambition.
2) Given the mandate of the champions stems from the need to close the pre-2020 ambition gap, champions should tailor their engagement as much as possible to facilitating the implementation and scale-up efforts in this period. They have a critical role to play in unlocking synergies between government and non-state action, and should not focus exclusively on either.
3) The success of the GCAA will rest on its criteria and accountability measures. The champions must ensure the robustness of the criteria for participation and accountability of the results. Adequate upfront information should be provided on initiatives to ensure transparency, effectiveness and replicability to scale-up the initiatives, aiming for large scale mitigation and adaptation action.
4) Technical Expert Meetings (TEMs) have important roles to play for mitigation and adaptation. The mitigation TEMs have proved their value by bringing, nay, allowing, discussions of specific policies and measures, such as renewables and energy efficiency into the UNFCCC and by fostering efforts such as the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. They now need to focus more on identifying and overcoming common barriers that countries face to scale-up ambition. The adaptation TEMs (TEM-A) are an exciting new opportunity, but to ensure success, Parties need a common understanding of the value added compared to other adaptation processes,.
5) Champions should help foster the full potential of UNFCCC institutions and initiatives set-up to deliver early action, by reestablishing trust in the NAMAs as a vehicle for increased ambition, and fully operationalising and implementing REDD+.
As a very last point, ECO must also emphasise that pre-2020 climate action cannot be limited to the UNFCCC. Beyond potential synergies with the SDGs, champions should also consider investing their political capital to support ambitious agreements under the Montreal Protocol, the IMO and ICAO, to rectify any inconsistency between them and the Paris Agreement. Pre-2020 climate action is not a niche, but a necessary common effort.