Category: Previous Issues Articles

Even though agriculture is more visible than ever at COP this year, this isn’t necessarily a good thing. False solutions in food systems are more active than ever!

In these stressful times, let us remember a time when Agroecology almost made it into a COP outcome. Agroecology that empowers rural communities is the only approach that is built from the ground up by peasant and social movements. It is the only approach that ticks all the right boxes: adaptation, mitigation, biodiversity, human rights, and much more…

Sometimes ECO has to ask itself: Did we dream that the text from Glasgow COP26 included [Agroecology] in brackets?

Today, on Agriculture day at COP27, those days feel like a long time ago – much longer than a year ago. Especially when you look at the initiatives being announced today with so much fanfare.

With initiatives such as AIM4Climate, the corporate agribusiness sector is serving up its false solutions that see farming as the job of technology instead of smallholder farmers. Instead of real solutions for climate, farmers, and food security, the AIM4C menu includes “innovative tools by the private sector,” sensor technologies and MORE fertilisers instead of fewer!

Brace yourselves, agri-eenwashing is coming!
AIM Cartoon.jpeg

ECO is happy to share this part of our publication with the Indigenous Peoples Caucus(IPO) to help amplify their voice. This article reflects the views of the IPO.

As we wrap up week one, the Indigneous Peoples’ Caucus held a press conference to highlight the outcomes of the lackluster negotiations. The impassioned speakers laid out the concerns, updates, and calls to action from our caucus. It’s become clear the objections to Loss & Damage, climate finance, and Article 6 are becoming illusions. The negotiations have become a battle of rights-based approaches versus market-based approaches. If we continue down this path, then who are we even trying to save the planet for?

Our rights and knowledge continue to be sidelined and left out of the global stocktake, climate finance, and Article 6 negotiations. This has enabled big polluters to dominate the discussions. When we start to look at the composition of the largest ‘delegation’ in the hallways and buzzing in the ears of state nationals, it’s big oil and gas. At COP26 they were the largest delegation, but that wasn’t enough – this year they decided they needed to increase their representation by another 25%! These busybodies are out here greenwashing, and promoting false solutions geared towards allowing big polluters to continue business as usual – pillaging Indigenous lands and waterways, all while making record-breaking profits off the genocide of our peoples and lands.
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Today is Decarbonization Day, which is why there are four winners of our Fossil Award today.

The United States wins the Fossil of the Day Award, coinciding with President Biden’s visit to COP27. The US Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry, announced on Wednesday the “Energy Transition Accelerator”, the US’ inadequate plan to streamline carbon offsets in partnership with corporate philanthropic groups such as Bezos’ Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Fund which is being touted as climate action. The expansion of carbon markets and the marriage of corporations and government is the epitome of a neoliberal agenda that does absolutely zero to reduce actual emissions globally. Enough with the fluff and grand speeches, when it comes to putting real money on the table the US disappears from the scene.

Russia will also receive a Fossil of the Day Award for using dirty fossil fuel money to fund its illegal war in Ukraine. In COP27 the Russian delegation has 33 fossil full lobbyists from oil and gas out of 150. 60% of Russia’s budget comes from selling fossil fuels. Russia has already generated more than 33 mln tons CO2 emissions through this full-scale war in Ukraine. And it continues its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which is definitely not the way one should be phasing out fossil fuels.
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It’s been seven years! In Paris, all countries agreed to shift finance flows to be consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. Despite this pledge, countries have done the opposite. Fossil fuel subsidies have continued to increase and 2.1c has been kept away from the agenda.

Since the Paris Agreement was adopted, G20 governments have continued to finance more than US$77 billion dollars annually in fossil fuels – three times the support they provide to clean energy. These high emitting countries use multilateral development banks (MDBs), bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs), and export credit agencies (ECAs) to support the expansion of projects that are making us poorer and more vulnerable to the climate crisis.

We need political courage. The Paris Agreement has called for a new global paradigm of how finance flows both domestically and internationally, echoed in many of the contributions at the world leaders summit. And yet we see countries coming to COP27 to sign new, dangerous, fossil finance deals. This must stop. There is no space for exceptions.

The trillions (trillions!), are there. ECO is calling for a process that helps identify what’s blocking us from aligning financial flows, both public and private, with a real zero future and keeping the global warming below the 1.5°C limit.
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“Where is the money?!” cried John Kerry, US Special Envoy for Climate on Finance Day. “We need vast amounts. Not millions here and there.”

ECO thinks this is a very important question. And drawing attention to the huge climate finance needs of developing countries, and the paltry millions in climate finance contributions (taken from previous pledges) we have seen so far at COP27, is equally valid.

Perhaps some parties have not been listening attentively to fellow negotiators or the leaders’ statements in the opening to COP27. If they had listened to AOSIS they would have heard the answer loud and clear.

From the outset of the COP we heard Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley call attention to the vast amounts of profits hoarded by the fossil fuel industry. And heard Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne say that fossil fuel companies should pay a “global carbon tax” on profits as a source of funding for loss and damage, and call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. We have heard negotiators drawing attention to this burning issue.
The profits from the 3rd quarter of 2022 (July-September), which are the most recent reported, of six large international Oil & Gas companies are as follows: Saudi Aramco: US$42.4 billion, Exxon: $20 bn, Chevron: $11.2 bn, Total: $9.9 bn, Shell $9.5 bn, BP $8.2 bn.
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Carbon capture: really good at capturing public dollars. But emissions? Not so much.

That’s why we at ECO are so concerned about the platform being given to fossil fuel companies today at Decarbonization Day to peddle their dangerous distractions.

Fossil fuel companies are pretending that by relying on risky and expensive techno fixes like carbon capture and storage we can keep digging up fossil fuels. But they’re lying to everyone.

As a climate mitigation technology it just doesn’t work. Eco notes that despite decades of research and tens of billions in subsidies, carbon capture’s track record is of expensive failure after expensive failure.

Even if it did work, it’s not a climate solution. Carbon capture does nothing about the 80% of emissions that come when the oil and gas gets burned. Sinking billions of dollars into clawing back a fraction of emissions from already expensive, polluting fossil fuel facilities is absurd and unnecessary — it is always more efficient and more effective to invest in renewables and energy efficiency.

It’s no surprise that the most recent IPCC report ranked carbon capture and storage the highest cost and least effective mitigation option. There’s also a reason that carbon capture doesn’t show up even once in the new UN guidelines on net zero plans.
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The fact that thousands of delegates, civil society and the world media have converged in a seaside resort town for an important climate conference while tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience are languishing in jails is a different level of dystopia that deserves calling out. We know there can be no climate justice without human rights.

Even more enraging? We now learned there are 600 fossil fuel lobbyists roaming the venue – 25% more than at last year’s COP. It is outrageous that civic spaces remain severely restricted while those destroying the planet are being welcomed and courted in a climate conference.
And what’s with all the whispers about tapped phones and blocked websites? Here we are trying to focus on the extremely important substance of the climate talks- on loss and damage, climate finance and adaptation which – with all due credit- is at the front and centre of these talks.

We’d be happier without having to worry if the official COP27 app is ‘listening to us’ or bumping into security personnel around every corner or having them barge into closed meetings unannounced and in some cases even disrupting meetings and having to be escorted out by UN security.
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The first sign of COP27 logistics trouble came back before the Bonn sessions, when out of the blue, hotel contracts and bookings (some fully paid for) were summarily cancelled with no notice because a new minimum price had supposedly been set… at double the price. We should have asked more questions when in the first (pretty awful) logistics briefing in Bonn, COP27 hosts presented Sharm El-Sheikh as a wonderful tourist destination, with swimming, sea-adventures, great weather and good food. (P.S. we learned today that people are STILL being kicked out of their hotels even now unless they pay more money than the already highly inflated rates).

Since the first day of COP, the rosy picture presented in July did not materialise (a bit like the US$100bn for climate mitigation and adaptation that was supposed to be delivered two years ago). It is evident that the organizers at COP have priorities, which is not to ensure that delegates (who have paid a fortune to attend COP, or to host a pavilion at COP) have their needs met in a timely manner. Flies infest the COP space, so today, ECO met an official fly smacker. Yes, literally, someone walking around smacking flies! So that just leaves a few other things to sort out.
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In the midst of an existential crisis caused by hyper-addiction to fossil fuels, the EU yesterday launched its Communication on the availability and affordability of fertilisers, focusing on exactly the wrong issues. Here in the middle of COP27, in the face of developed countries’ steadfast refusal to make the money available for urgently needed investments, the EU is proposing a strategy to increase public funding to ensure a steady supply of highly emitting fertilisers, with subsidies for producers and “continued and uninterrupted access to natural gas for fertiliser producers”.

The financial costs are real. A report released on Tuesday by GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed the EU will spend an estimated $3 billion more on fertiliser imports than in 2020, assuming constant demand. But the environmental costs are also enormous.

You would think that we would have learnt by now… But no. There are no targets put in place to reduce GHG emissions from farming systems. Instead, the strategy focuses on gaining alternative markets for imports of fertiliser ingredients. Globally, the price of fertilisers has increased due to political instability and restrictions on imports. The fertiliser companies don’t care. This year the world’s largest fertiliser companies have enjoyed bumper profits while developing countries and farmers within them, those who can least afford it, will have to pay much more for their fertilisers.
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ECO reminds rich governments that climate finance is a matter of justice, and of paying the historical debt that they owe the Global South for centuries of extraction, colonialism, and climate injustice. Rich countries must listen to demands of the Global South and pay up! It’s NOT climate finance if it creates more debt for countries who are not responsible for this crisis. ECO recognises the current reality, where, instead of getting reparations, Global South countries are the ones paying illegitimate debts to their colonizers who caused the crises they’re in.

As part of the (super annoying technical terminology forthcoming) New Collective Quantified Goal (aka NCQG) process, for the first time, parties get to discuss the quality of finance! ECO believes the new goal should place climate justice at the center of the new goal, and go far beyond the unfulfilled promise of US$100B, while being based on real needs of communities most affected in the South.

ECO celebrates the progressive proposals coming from global south countries and our feminist decolonial heart was beating fast when these LAC regional leaders were brave enough speak the truth to the system. As such, ECO wants to shout-out & uplift the messages of some of our faves:

Prime Minister Mia Mottley (Barbados): Besides challenging the massive debt that comes with funding or strongly suggesting a need to reform multilateral development banks (ECO is rolling eyes at the World Bank and IMF), she went to the heart of power saying: “How do companies make $200 bn in profits in the last 3 months and not expect to contribute at least 10 cents in every dollar of profit to a loss and damage fund?”
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