Category: Previous Issues Articles

The negotiations for the Global Stocktake (GST) during COP26 are now over. Congratulations! This means we are beginning the first GST process. Now we are on our way to technical dialogues, submission phases, workshops, data analysis, output production…

So we still have a lot to do. And by “we”, ECO means all possible actors at the UNFCCC. Non-state actors have to submit inputs for the GST, as well as Parties. ECO supports the inclusion of civil society in the GST process. However, this means financial and technical support for all constituencies as well as developing countries to be able to be fully part of the process. But ECO will come back another day to this issue.

Today, ECO would like to talk about the guiding questions of the GST. Now, there are 43 guiding questions proposed by the SBSTA chair. ECO thanks the chair for this work. But we think several important topics and aspects of climate policies are still missing. 

Why is this important? To ECO, the main aim of the GST should be to protect the most vulnerable from the impacts of climate change. This can’t happen without an adequate consideration of adaptation and loss and damage and the protection of ecosystems, terrestrial and marine alike, as well as keeping the planet livable for youth and future generations.
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Can you be shocked and not surprised at the same time?

It’s one thing to hear the term “climate colonialism” and it’s another to see and feel it up close. It oozes out of every plenary, every action room, nearly every side event at this COP – and is propagated by governments, corporations, and I’m sorry to say, sometimes CAN-I alike.

The tragedy is not just the continued violence against Australian First Nations Peoples at this COP – the continuation of the colonial project reinforced by the almost complete marginalisation of our voices, as bad as that is. It’s seeing so many people working so hard to find a global solution to this existential problem, when we hold the wisdom and solutions if only others would lower their voices, step back, and give us a seat at the Australian Federal Government’s table, and lead.

My First Nations brothers and sisters from around the world occupy a crowded pavilion – a space so tiny and cramped it is emblematic of the marginalisation and disrespect awarded to First Nations voices. In this tiny room, harrowing story after story of dispossession, colonisation and desecration of Country is told. The stories are the same all over the world.
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Today, it is exactly 8 years ago that super-Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, made landfall in the Philippines. As one of the deadliest Philippine typhoons on record, it killed at least 6,300 people in that country alone and led to economic damages of about US$2.2 billion in the country.

The reality of the climate crisis was pushed right into the negotiation rooms, when Filipino lead-negotiator Yeb Sano gave a very emotional speech, after his hometown was destroyed by the typhoon. He pledged to fast until climate talks showed real progress and called on Parties to “stop this madness”. It was a turning point in the UNFCCC negotiations on Loss and Damage, and we saw the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage established shortly after.

What has happened since 2013 in the real world? Science has proven beyond doubt that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change – but people on the ground don’t need scientific proof. They have felt the consequences of climate change first hand through record-breaking storms, floods, and heat waves. Climate change violates their human rights and creates a daily climate emergency for millions of people.
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The Gulf region is rich in fossil fuels, which have been the driver of its economy for decades. Fossil fuels therefore have a deep-rooted social license, and national fossil fuel companies are a source of national pride. Of course, this has contributed to climate denialism over the last three decades, despite the impacts that have heavily affected the region, from desertification and loss of biodiversity, to more frequent and intense heat waves, drought, and flash floods as well as significant impacts on agricultural yields and small farmers’ livelihoods. And these are only the tip of the iceberg, with more impacts predicted in coming decades.

Denial of the science is no longer possible for governments of the region, as awareness of the climate emergency is more deeply entrenched in the minds of the population and the impacts manifest in their lives so profoundly. Sadly, the Saudi government, which has been obstructive to climate negotiations since their onset, continues to be so. They are predicted to be the final bastion of oil production in the coming years, due to having the lowest extraction costs and “high quality” of oil, and over the last week they have reaffirmed their intent to delay the inevitable end of the era of oil as far as possible.
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Unlike the food options at the venue, the Glasgow initiatives include an astonishing array of new announcements to scale up forest and “nature” climate action. Yay! Amazing, right? But, hold on… doesn’t this sound familiar? 

Let ECO look back for a moment at all the forest climate initiatives of the last decades and see if they worked at all. Wait! Don’t get us wrong. ECO does so in the spirit of increasing understanding of the blockages, rules, and perverse incentives created by the UNFCCC system, and not because it doubts the good intentions of current or past initiatives.

Way back in 2007, at COP 14 in Bali, REDD+ was agreed and hailed as the new pathway to prevent deforestation and forest degradation and save the world’s great primary tropical forests. Well… it hasn’t.

In 2014 the New York Declaration on Forests announced an ambitious programme to “cut natural forest loss in half by 2020 and strive to end it by 2030”. But the first 5-year review expressed deep dismay that the initiative had failed to curb loss and damage to Earth’s irreplaceable primary tropical rainforests and that the annual rate of global deforestation had increased by 43%. 

And let’s not forget the 2018 Katowice declaration on “Forests for Climate” (what happened to that anyway?).
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In his opening remarks this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it — or it stops us”.

ECO sees this as yet more evidence that the world needs to tackle fossil fuels head on.  The challenge is to do so in a fair way, rather than just crashing the economies of both fossil dependent and fossil-export dependent countries.  

That is where the new report of the Civil Society Equity Review, endorsed by more than 200 civil society organisations from around the world, comes in.  A Fair Shares Phase Out: A Civil Society Equity Review on an Equitable Global Phase Out of Fossil Fuels highlights the terrible truth driven home by the  Production Gap reports : we’re on track to produce more than twice as much fossil fuels as are compatible with 1.5°C. But it doesn’t stop there.  The report also shows that while wealthy country pledges fall far short of their “fair shares”, developing countries are, for the most part, making pledges that approximately correspond to their “fair share”.  

Developing countries, as it turns out, must do far more than their fair shares if we’re to stabilise the climate system.
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In case you forgot, ECO wants to remind you: the ocean, covering 70 per cent of our planet’s surface, drives global weather systems and the climate, and is the world’s largest long-term store of biological carbon. It is sucking up 20 to 30 per cent of global emissions and absorbing over 90 per cent of human-made heat. We would be cooking without it. But the ocean isn’t just a climate saviour, it is also a climate victim: marine species and ecosystems are suffering from climate change-driven rises in water temperature and from ocean acidification. Coral reef ecosystems, home to about 30 per cent of the oceans biodiversity, are one of the first global ecosystems at risk of being almost wiped out. They face a 70 to 90 per cent loss at 1.5°C global temperature increase. 

ECO is surprised that, despite its enormous contribution to life and climate regulation on the planet, the ocean is still considered a side-event of the climate negotiations. The “Blue COP” in Madrid in 2019 was a first step to change that, resulting in the SBSTA holding a first of its kind Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue in 2020. 

Now, at COP26, is the time to turn this initial exchange into an annual dialogue that improves coordination of ocean-related discussions already taking place under the UNFCCC, e.g.
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ECO was awaiting yesterday’s Open Dialogue with excitement. After all, this is a key event to “enable admitted NGO constituencies to have an open dialogue with Parties” as mandated in (FCCC/SBI/2017/7).

However, after arriving ECO had to look in the dictionary to make sure that dialogue indeed means the kind of conversation that is carried out by more than one person…as in the opposite of a monologue.

For the first hour, only observers spoke, as no party was present in the room. The European Union eventually found its way to the room for a quick intervention in the end. ECO waited patiently for the presidency of COP27, Egypt. Or any other Parties for that matter.  Maybe delegates lost their venue map and could not find the room…or maybe delegates got their fingers stuck in a bowling ball or their goldfish fell sick – ECO assumes there must have been good reasons why only the UK and the EU showed up.

That’s why all nine constituencies jointly request to repeat the meeting in week two of COP26 – this time with an actual presence from Parties. ECO looks forward to a real dialogue.

India, what happened to your “cooperative and constructive” engagement on Article 6? ECO hasn’t seen much of that lately, and was particularly struck by your comments yesterday. It’s as if you carefully read all of our previous articles and decided to promote the exact opposite of what ECO recommended.

First, you proposed to bracket (aka: delete) references to Human Rights and sustainable development in the establishment of the sustainable development mechanism! ECO would find this grotesquely funny if it wasn’t also very concerning and sad. With this, India aligned itself with Iran as the only two countries taking the floor to criticise the inclusion of Human Rights in Article 6.

ECO also heard India say that cancelling credits to deliver an overall reduction in emissions was “illogical”. But what is illogical is the idea that a mechanism, which operates as a zero-sum game, can actually increase overall ambition. Without cancellation, Article 6 will not make a meaningful contribution to climate action. It seems India supports a 100 per cent cancellation on ambition.

Additionally, it sounded as if India was promoting a review of the concept of additionality, except that, unlike many others who have contributed to this discussion, they actually seem to support weaker additionality rules compared to the Kyoto Protocol era.
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