First, let’s go back to the main class textbooks. The IPCC Impacts Report tells us with very high confidence that “the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming”. Our first message to you is therefore that this is not only about mitigation, but also about adaptation and loss and damage. It’s all connected, friends. The less mitigation you do, the more money you will need to spend on the adaptation and loss and damage side — and the same IPCC report has made it very clear that there are limits to adaptation.
And now, before your astonished eyes, ECO presents the manual for the MWP:
Instruction 1: Broadening and deepening sectoral decarbonisation, including industry
The IPCC has already provided detailed sector and gas decarbonisation pathways; however, these are not fully represented in most of your NDCs to date and, all too often, your pledges and commitments are lacking accountability. So, you must urgently broaden your sectoral decarbonisation actions. No one is suggesting that countries be required to adopt binding sectoral commitments; but there is a lot that can be achieved through scaling up collaboration, reducing barriers, and providing incentives for actions to accelerate decarbonisation in every sector. For developed countries, this means not only taking accelerated action at home but delivering on means of implementation to support action by developing countries.
Instruction 2: Shifting the trillions
Speaking of means of implementation, we need to see clean energy investments in developing countries increase sevenfold – from the current $150 billion to $1 trillion annually – by 2030, as the IEA shows is needed to transform their economies in line with a 1.5°C compatible pathway. At their summit later this month, G7 leaders must reaffirm the pledge they made last December to help mobilize these scaled-up resources, and they must instruct their finance ministers to bring back specific proposals on how to operationalize this pledge for the leaders to review and approve before COP27.
Instruction 3: Capacity-building as a key enabling condition
There is also the need to support capacity-building or developing countries on economy-wide and sectoral decarbonisation plans and policies to share best practices amongst countries; and to more fully engage states, cities, companies, and other non-state actors in this work in order to create the conditions for countries to increase both the ambition and implementation of their NDCs. All of this can be done without reopening the Framework Convention and its Paris Agreement.
Instruction 4: Accelerating implementation to deliver enhanced NDCs
In the Glasgow Pact decision, Parties acknowledged that “limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases,” and that “this requires accelerated action in this critical decade, on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge and equity, reflecting common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of different national circumstances and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
It is in the service of these goals that we need to adopt a robust mitigation work programme at COP27. You have already acknowledged that the NDCs you have submitted under Paris are not in line with a 1.5° trajectory, and that this poses serious risks to both humans and natural ecosystems. The MWP is clearly distinct from the GST – which is designed to inform the next round of post-2030 NDCs to be submitted by 2025 – but it is complementary and reinforcing to the GST, not duplicative.
ECO is not asking for anything new. We merely want you to deliver on what you have already committed to do at COP27: launch a comprehensive MWP designed to rapidly scale up the ambition and implementation of your mitigation commitments and the provision of support for developing countries’ mitigation actions. Together with significant efforts to scale up finance for adaptation and loss and damage, such an MWP will ensure a successful COP in Sharm el-Sheikh. ECO’s ask for Parties in the second week here in Bonn is that you raise your sights above the usual tactical positioning in negotiating rooms and collaborate to make meaningful progress towards these vitally important objectives that the world needs and expects.