Category: Previous Issues Articles

The Ray of the Year goes to Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

CAN does not often award Rays of the Day; to receive such an award requires a significant step forward on climate action and these happen lamentably infrequently. However, there is a body that CAN has decided deserves not only a Ray of the Day, but Ray of the Year.

  The winner of this prestigious award is…the Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)!

  This award aims to recognize the amazing work of this Nobel Prize winning group of scientists. They produced three key reports in the past two years that provided the basis for all the work civil society is doing to pressure governments to accelerate climate action and decarbonize the economy. 

We applaud these scientists for providing the solid truth that we need to do more and we need to do it faster to save humanity and the planet fromm devastating climate change.

Finance for Loss and Damage = Essential COP25 Outcome

We came to COP25 in light of rising seas, heat and water stress, decreasing crop yields and fish stocks, spreading diseases, and increasingly frequent and severe floods, droughts and storms, which threaten the right to life, health, food, water and housing.  We came with the expectation that rich countries would take this problem seriously heeding the desperate calls of developing countries for new and additional finance for loss and damage.

ECO already indicated yesterday how inadequate current finance is: it is essential that COP25 agree on new sources of finance and a time-bound process to proactively explore these new sources of finance, and by COP26, agree to and implement a concrete plan to increase finance for loss and damage. 

Anything less than this would be an abject failure of rich countries at this COP. The obfuscating and delaying tactics of the US in particular are designed to ensure we get nothing. Other rich countries – the EU, Norway, New Zealand, Australia and Canada – must stand apart from the US. It is not acceptable to continue to hide behind this climate criminal.

ECO has plenty of ideas for new and innovative sources of finance that are “polluter pays” sources of finance including, for example, a climate damages tax on the fossil fuel industry, international aviation and maritime levies, and debt relief.
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Dear Ministers,

We, the so-called civil society that observes negotiations, would like to call your attention to the many gaps we need to close to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement on mitigation, adaptation/resilience, and support. ‘Gap’ is amongst the most spoken words in these negotiating halls, maybe no less than ambition. 

So which gaps is ECO talking about? 

They go by many names. We talk of the ‘emissions gap,’ the ‘ambition gap,’ and lately also the ‘commitment gap between what we say we will do and what we need to do to prevent dangerous levels of climate warming’ as the 2019 UNEP Gap Report puts it. 

But maybe the biggest gap this year is between the voices of the youth and people taking to the streets, and what you and your governments are doing to tackle the climate emergency. 

Here in Madrid ECO has sadly faced yet another gap: the civil society participation gap in these processes. One example is that we were not able to distribute our paper edition of ECO in the first week of COP25, at one point even outside the IFEMA. As a symptom of the shrinking space for civil society, globally, this is a cause for concern. 
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Last week the Global Carbon Project side event reminded us again how small the window is to avoid dangerous climate change.

The pressure to act and incorporate recent science to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) is rising. ECO is dismayed that Parties have not yet reached an agreement on the scope of the Second Periodical Review (SPR) working from 2020-2022. Without a decision on the scope, the FCCC would have no impressive science-based advisory body any more – and the science-policy interface of the Convention would be seriously damaged.

ECO fears that the science part of the SPR could become a victim in a political war on other important items like Pre-2020, and calls on ministers to find consensus and make a speedy decision at COP25 so that it will be possible to start the review next year.

As you know the SPR has to evaluate new climate science published since the First Periodic Review (e.g. IPCC three Special Reports) and to analyse all actions based on equity taken by all countries to reach the ultimate goal of the Paris Agreement and to formulate climate policy conclusions.

For ECO, it is helpful to be aware of the new CONSTRAIN report zeroes on the remaining carbon budget by Climate Analytics as well as projected surface warming rates over the next 20 years.
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Achieving environmental integrity in the implementation of Article 6 requires many things; but where to start? For ECO, environmental integrity is impossible to achieve without conservative baselines, set well below business-as-usual (BAU). And even these are necessary, but not sufficient elements. 

ECO is encouraged to see that the text forwarded to the COP Presidency included some principles for conservative baselines in Article 6.4.  However, ECO is concerned to see many of these foundational principles in brackets, and some key principles missing or muddled. Methodologies in the new Article 6 mechanism must require baselines that are well below business as usual. While “best available technology” is listed in the text, it is also important to take into account what is economically feasible without the mechanism, as well as what is legally required.  

Approaches based on projected or historical emissions are not appropriate for a conservative or ambitious benchmark.  ECO urges Parties to remember that historical emissions are how we got into this mess in the first place. We need to do better.  

As the economic, political, and technological contexts in which projects take place evolve, so should the baselines. Ensuring that methodologies are approved for a time-bound period, and requiring the review and update of baselines over time, is necessary in order to reflect the inherently dynamic nature of the viability of various technologies. 
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We, the European Youth, want to remind all country delegates that are already comfortable with the current development at COP25: we did not meet in Madrid for a second-class climate conference, but to decide on the crucial remaining subjects of the Rulebook and – of course – to take the urgently required next steps: increase efforts and reach the ambition we need! 

After one week of polished and largely unproductive negotiations, we are still awaiting proof of your commitment and ambition. There is one thing, civil society and the climate need: a clear promise and decision from member states to enhance their NDCs in 2020 at the latest. 

And we have one Party we want to focus on: what is your next step, EU? Your Parliament declared a climate emergency and you, new Commission, have promised to put climate action at the core of its activities. Yet, here at COP25, no official statement has been made about when you will step up to raise ambition. Come on, we know you just got started, but climate change is not really waiting for you to decorate your offices…

COP25 is the time for the EU to choose whether it wants to be a “Climate Champion” or to slow down action.
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ECO is pleased to share our platform with the Indigenous Peoples Caucus to amplify their unique and individual voices.

Bushfires have been raging across the illegally occupied lands of Australia for the past few weeks, wiping out homes, displacing communities and threatening wildlife populations to the point of extinction. Lidia Thorpe, Gunnai, Gunditjmara, Djab Wurrung Woman reflects on the way that disregard for indigenous rights and knowledge has resulted in what is now an uncontrollable situation. She says, “the logging of old growth forest in the name of jobs continues to strip the earth of moisture and throw the ecosystem out of balance.” This has contributed to what has been one of the driest summers to date. 

The traditional practice of burning, a form of fire management that has been used successfully for thousands of years by her people, has been ignored and misused. She says “the way the Department of the Environment go about their business is not in line with our traditional ways of protecting and preserving country.” As residents throughout Australia are subject to the devastation of these fires, environmental groups are finally coming to the realisation that indigenous knowledge and practices are a vital part of ongoing climate solutions.
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Last week ECO exposed the Australian Government’s role in pushing for use of carryover units from the Kyoto Protocol to meet a large portion of their already very low Paris NDC for 2030 – ECO likened this to a runner wanting to start a race at the half-way point, rather than at the starting line. That’s obviously not fair or responsible (ECO might say it is even cheating), especially when the race is about stopping catastrophic climate damage.

This week ECO can reveal it’s even worse than that! The Australian government has updated their plans on carryover and is now trying to use it for almost 60% of their NDC, to avoid a whopping 411 million tonnes of carbon abatement. This gets right to the heart of ambition and their genuine commitment to meet responsibilities under the Paris Agreement.

Australia’s strategy in Article 6 negotiations to ensure use of Kyoto carryover is basically a ‘nothing to see here’ strategy. After all, Australia is reportedly the only country admitting that it will use carryover credits to meet its Paris target, and seems to be hoping the issue will just slip by.

But early in week two of COP25, their cover was blown, after the Guardian Australia reported that as many as 100 countries, led by Costa Rica and Belize, formally challenged Australia and called for a ban on the tactic, including text to be inserted into the rulebook.
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Multilateral Development Banks Promise Paris Alignment: but won’t say when they’ll stop funding fossils.

The nine multilateral development banks (MDBs) — which include the World Bank, the Asian Investment Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank among others — have an outsized influence on the private finance landscape and on countries low carbon development pathways. 

As public *development* banks, who are mandated to act in the public good, they should be at the vanguard of the all-important provision of Article 2.1c – “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”

It seemed they got off to a good start — they first promised to align their financial flows with the Paris Agreement in 2017! But they’re yet to come up with the goods and a timeline ever since. On Tuesday at COP25, ECO waited with baited-breath for another much-anticipated joint announcement, but instead was greeted with a dizzying array of impressively content-free flowcharts, assurances their framework would show “some projects are Paris-aligned and others are not”, and a promise that full implementation won’t happen until 2023-2024. Another smoke and mirrors powerpoint presentation! It seems politics trumped science on this occasion.

If public banks who are literally mandated to do sustainable development want to wait until 2023 to implement a framework that will eventually get their finance aligned with 1.5°C, we hate to think what the plans of the private arm of the financial sector might look like. 
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