ECO would like to offer some observations on the cover texts and suggestions for how they can better reflect the desperate urgency for action that is needed. The texts fail to reflect the urgency being called for by the people of the world, especially those already suffering the impacts of climate change.
The texts remain worryingly unbalanced between the issues. Whereas ECO is pleased to see many mitigation elements and details on operationalizing these elements – ECO wonders whether Parties misunderstood that we are in fact experiencing increasing climate impacts as we currently move on an uncertain temperature pathway. So then if climate mitigation is not the only solution to the climate emergency – Parties should also want to address Loss and Damage Finance and Adaptation in equally detailed ways as the mitigation section!
There is a need for more clarity on how the solidarity elements around loss and damage finance, adaptation and finance more generally are to be mobilized in time and in sufficient quantity to address existing and future needs of developing countries.
Greater precision is needed so the world can hold Parties to account, including clear time bound processes and outcomes rather, than generalized calls for more action. Also ECO wonders where is the recognition of the gross inadequacy of the existing pledges of mitigation targets and finance and the need to bring these in line with the 1.5°C goal – we need urgency rather than ‘urging’, perhaps.
Overall the texts feel very incremental. Can it be true that even after the IPCC 1.5°C report, Parties are content to refer to a 2°C goal first introduced by the EU in the distant mists of the past (1996)? Even after the IPCC 1.5°C report, and the ones on oceans and land, there is no sense in the text on the table of the wider potential for sustainable development that realizes co-benefits across a variety of social and environmental challenges.
Another area where new advances in the external world are not reflected is the lack of reference to the UN Human Rights Council resolutions on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the new Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change. All this should be recognized in the text – simply recalling the Paris preamble does not add much six years later.
The text is a floor, we must look to raising the ceiling.
LOSS AND DAMAGE
Loss and damage is an issue of climate justice and should be recognized as such. Actions in response to loss and damage need to reflect the needs of those affected responding to the real and escalating costs of loss and damage. The cover text should also acknowledge the ongoing and increasing reality, including the scientific basis, of loss and damage for many of the poorest people around the world that is associated with rising temperatures.
Parties should be invited to submit loss and damage assessments/impacts studies by COP27 to inform the GST. It is crucial that these assessments be incorporated into planning processes, and that requires enhanced support for the development of assessment methodologies.
As in other sections of the cover decisions, urgency of action should be underscored and unlocked through increased and additional financial support. Many people around the world are already losing their homes, livelihoods and even lives to climate impacts. Schools and hospitals are being destroyed. Without such finance, these people will continue to struggle to rebuild their lives.
ADAPTATION
While the text is quite strong on impacts, needs and scaling up, it does not give any recognition of the importance of locally led adaptation, despite its effectiveness and relevance. ECO is waiting for the important final decision text on the Global Goal to have this reflected in the text, but reflected it should be.
ADAPTATION FINANCE
The call for doubling adaptation finance is too weak as it is neither time bound nor a commitment. The texts need to express an explicit commitment by developed countries to increase the share of adaptation finance to reach 50% of total public climate finance before 2025.
MITIGATION
ECO welcomes the call in the texts for a high level dialogue with the UNSG and the mandate for an annual synthesis report – although to be useful an annual report requires ambition to be raised each year.
While there are welcome details and suggestions in the text on raising mitigation ambition, there is a lack of concrete and active calls for countries to raise their NDCs in line with 1.5°C. This is, after all, a goal of the Paris Agreement, and the ambition and implementation gaps have to be closed within the next few years. Because of this, we need to see regular and annual ambition raising. And the link between ambition raising and the temperature goal needs to be explicit in the text.
The text should clearly recognise the role of nature as an essential component of keeping 1.5°C within reach, alongside accelerated fossil fuel phase out. Ecosystem protection and restoration must be carried out as well as not instead of ending the use of fossil fuels, and must respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and of human rights.
The text needs to land a strong broadside against fossil fuels, calling for an acceleration of the global energy transition, including the phase-out of fossil fuels. The many announcements made during this COP reflect this need. The decision needs to include the phase-out of all fossil fuels and related subsidies on an ambitious timeline, driving a just transition as the world moves away from their use.
FINANCE, TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND CAPACITY BUILDING FOR MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION
While the draft text regrets that the promise by rich countries to ramp up climate finance to US$100 billion a year by 2020 has not been kept, it only expresses regret and fails to strongly commit rich countries to compensate for the failure in later years so that, on average, $100b is provided in each of the years 2020 through to 2025, as promised in Copenhagen and Paris. This fulfillment of the promise made by developed countries needs to be clearly reflected.
The draft text is completely silent about the fact that most of public finance comes in the form of loans, further increasing high levels of debt for countries many of which have had no role in causing the crisis but are suffering from the worsening impacts. The need for grants based finance should be expressed in the cover texts.