Category: Previous Issues Articles

Under the climate agreements, if you want to access climate finance to install solar panels to mitigate your greenhouse gas emissions, you can access the climate facility to purchase the panels. If your house is threatened by increased flood risk, you can access climate finance to raise your house to adapt, again paid for by the climate facility. But if your house is devastated by a massive flood, you lose your house and your belongings. You suffer huge Loss and Damage and you are on your own. You cannot access climate finance to help you rebuild.

The science is conclusive. The recent impacts report from the IPCC shows extreme climatic events have been observed in all regions. Populations with considerable development constraints, who have the highest vulnerability, and who have contributed the least to climate change, are disproportionately suffering these impacts. Simply put, those least responsible for the climate emergency are paying the highest price.

If we don’t act now, then we already know that the costs will add up. NOW is the time for increased global solidarity. NOW is the time for courage to stand up for the greater good. Lessons learned from the global pandemic demonstrate that money at scale can be mobilized when the political will exists.
... Read more ...

As SB56 reminds us of a fantasy world far from reality, we are reminded of a book where wizards must follow certain rules. The first rule states, “People will believe a lie because they want it to be true or because they’re afraid it might be true”. Another one: “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to oneself” because then you fall victim to the first rule.

ECO likes to think along the same lines as the wise wizard in the story. So, dear Parties, here goes truth number 1: The last two weeks have been a deliberate waste of time. Truth number 2: Your endless talking is killing people. Truth number 3: What we do here and at COP27 matters, and what we don’t do here and at COP27 also matters.

The objective of SB56 was to come up with solutions, but instead we have just been talking. Your inability to deliver has deepened distrust and has failed on our ‘check box’ of climate justice and integrity. As a reminder, here is the list of insufficiency:

The Santiago Network: While developing countries want an institution that is fit for support, developed countries only want a checkbox exercise.

Glasgow Dialogue: ECO feels that any small spirit of empathy, solidarity and collaboration displayed last Saturday has not followed through.
... Read more ...

A long time ago, in a conference hall far far away, COP26 saw the Scottish government put £2 million on the table – de-tabooing a tabooed issue. But since this show of solidarity, the plea of civil society and of First Minister Sturgeon has remained unanswered.

The Glasgow Dialogue must deliver a Loss & Damage Finance Facility. In the closing hours of the COP, Antigua and Barbuda reminded the Presidency of the compromise. We saw rich countries showing sympathy, but ECO felt the pain when we saw that once again they have gone back to their old ways, spending hours of the GD chatting about Avert and Minimise when what we need is to Address so people can recover from climate impacts and rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

They now want to discuss the issue next year, and ECO expects they will want to keep discussing and not paying. Such apathy towards vulnerable people and communities has consequences for people most at risk of losing their homes, farms, incomes, and lives.

As we go into an African COP -– the COP of the vulnerable – loss & damage must be on the agenda and this must lead to a Loss & Damage Finance Facility that provides needs-based, accessible support for people who are facing the climate emergency now.
... Read more ...

After 10 days of “intense” negotiations, delegates are tired and bored, and decided to start playing ‘Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) is lava’ in the Chamber Hall. The rules are simple: in this game, all Parties pretend that the MWP informal note is made of lava, and thus must avoid touching (agreeing to) it.

What Parties are forgetting is that tackling climate change is at the heart of the Convention and of the Paris Agreement, and that the new MWP is our chance to close the 2030 mitigation ambition and implementation gap.

The issue is tricky as some countries see this focus as inequitable and a risk of transferring more responsibility from developed to developing countries since the former have not delivered on their past promises of emissions reduction and support for the latter.

Undelivered climate action by rich countries thus stands in the way of future action by all, as developing countries demand both enhanced action from developed countries, as well as a greater sense of urgency on adaptation and the delivery of loss and damage finance before agreeing to a meaningful UNFCCC process on mitigation.

As a result, we leave Bonn with a document lacking legal standing and a long list of possible elements for a mitigation work programme.
... Read more ...

One of the expected outcomes stated by many developed countries prior to the SBs in Bonn was operationalising the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage. Sadly, as we enter the final day, all the hard work remains. One of the critical obstacles to progress has been reaching agreement on the governance of the Santiago Network.

This difference of governance thinking reflects the more significant and divergent visions for the Santiago Network. The developed country vision is restricted by limited resources, while the developing country vision is expansive to establish a network that is commensurate with what is needed on the ground, to address loss and damage in communities already reeling from the climate emergency.
The developed countries want the Santiago Network to be overseen by the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), whereas the developing countries suggest an inclusive advisory board. That is to say, not a replication of the advisory boards already in existence for the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund or the CTCN, but an advisory body that learns from these and adopts their strengths while learning from their challenges.

So why can’t the ExCom provide the advisory function to the SNLD? ECO would like to highlight two significant limitations.
... Read more ...

Climate change is recognised as the greatest health threat of the 21st century, while action on climate change could offer the greatest health opportunity.

Health may not formally be on the agenda here in Bonn, but it flows through the veins of these negotiations. From health metrics as one option to measure progress towards the GGA (put forward by the Adaptation Committee last year), to whether future themes of the Koronivia joint work on agriculture might include malnutrition in all its forms, to health co-benefits through delivery of an ambitious mitigation work programme, to the AOSIS proposal to consider climate-smart health projects under Article 6, and to finance needed for health impacts alongside other losses and damages – mitigation and adaptation in the health sector should be monitored alongside other sectors as part of the Global Stocktake.

Climate change drives heatwaves and other extreme weather events, vector- and water-borne disease transmission, food and water insecurity, malnutrition, and negative mental health impacts, undermining the right to health. In addition, millions of deaths occur due to air pollution, which shares a common toxic root cause with climate change: fossil fuels. We all know someone who has had a heart attack or a stroke, maybe a close relative, a mother, a grandfather or a colleague.
... Read more ...

It sort of doesn’t matter what the details are that have delayed progress this session towards the operationalisation of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). To the millions condemned to autonomous adaptation – that is people dealing with the increasing impacts of the climate crisis on their own – this means that they are going to be waiting for help even longer. Still, there remains a global responsibility for adaptation and it is in these halls that Parties are meant to have been working on meeting it.

The workshops last week might have made some progress after an initial false start – when Parties pretended to carry out negotiations but very quickly went back to quibbling, wasting more time on that than was set up for the workshops. And they still don’t have an agreed text to send to the SBs. This means that we don’t know how the next seven workshops (which is the GlaSS work programme) are going to be organised. It appears to ECO that some Parties still prefer the quite useless mode that failed so notably last week. So, sorry to those flooded in India, parched in Somalia and sweltering in Pakistan; you are just going to have to wait.
... Read more ...

At times, ECO feels like a broken record. Perhaps our tune isn’t catchy enough. Or perhaps you haven’t heard it because observers have rarely been given the floor. So, we’ll say it one more time: public participation and the ability of people to freely participate, including in UNFCCC meetings, is a human right and essential to effective climate outcomes.

ECO worries that when delegates enter the World Conference Center you forget about those with yellow badges. Unlike the double lines on a rapid antigen test, the yellow line on badges isn’t going to hurt you. People don’t threaten the party-driven process. We are here to help. But over the course of the last two weeks, we have faced appalling hurdles to our participation – from platform issues to not being able to intervene in sessions focused on enhancing our participation and on developing an ACE workplan (here’s a hint: that’s about the right to participate too).

All of this has ECO very worried as we head into COP27. ECO knows about the shrinking civic space and situation of environmental and human rights defenders in Egypt. And we remember the participation issues at COP26.

And there’s more — it’s not just about allowing participation, it’s about enabling and promoting it.
... Read more ...

As the SB56 comes to an end, a sigh of relief can be heard throughout the convention centre. Alas! Soon, two weeks of endless negotiations will be over, and delegations will return back to their capitals with the comforting sense of professional accomplishment. Alas! Soon, the ranting of climate activists, youth, and the victims of inaction shall no longer be heard, and governmental officials may go back to the blissful silence of their ministries – troubled only by the languid rustling of their offices’ air conditioning. Alas…!

Unfortunately, the planet cannot afford the euphoric perspective of your uneventful homecoming. Honourable delegates, as you will soon enjoy the ‘well-deserved’ praises of your superiors (or not…?), ECO would like to address – one last time during this SB56 – their most apologetic condolences for the loss of your bureaucratic tranquillity. The end of SB56 does not amount to the end of our engagement and rest assured that you will continue to hear the voices of our outrage well beyond the Bonn UN Campus. The walls of your ministries will never be thick enough to silence the united voice of millions of victims and the many more that are to come in face of your undelivered promises.
... Read more ...

Farewell, farewell…
ECO assisted the last events on the Global Stocktake on Tuesday with the plenary session and the Joint Contact Group meeting, where sadly observers could not take the floor during the second one.

The World Café was probably the highlight of this first technical dialogue. Even if the place was noisy and a bit crowded, we had useful conversations across several themes and also between parties, observers and non-state actors. ECO recommends prioritising this format for Sharm el-Sheikh, which means smaller groups, on more specific topics, and more importantly, with the same diversity of views and actors. The participation of observers and non-state actors beyond the UNFCCC constituencies is critical for the success of the Global Stocktake. Without this, it cannot be meaningful.

However, some key issues for the transition were missing from the conversations, especially for the roundtables. ECO welcomes the fact that losses and damages were discussed at the adaptation and means of implementation roundtables: we are in an emergency crisis and we must respond to the needs of the most vulnerable. The GST should most definitely be a key support to increase loss and damage assessment in terms of impact, good practices, and dedicated finance. However, fossil fuel issues did not receive sufficient focus.
... Read more ...