Category: Previous Issues Articles

We know we’ve raised it before, but this is really important. The facilitative, multilateral consideration of progress (FMCP) will only be effective if it builds on the expertise and perspectives of civil society. ECO is asking Parties to allow observers to participate in the FMCP under the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework. Since ECO was unable to participate in the multilateral assessment and facilitative sharing of views this session, we presented our questions in a previous ECO. ECO appreciates that the Marshall Islands posed our questions to Germany. However, it’d be more efficient if you just let us ask the questions directly.

In the spirit of the CAN party on Saturday night, we want you to continue singing and dancing so we are sharing the song we wrote during the Bangkok session about the FMCP.

(To be read in a “sing-songy” voice to the tune of the YMCA)

Party, there’s a place we can go.

I said, Party, let us compliment your info

You can play there, and I’m sure we will find

Many ways to have a good time

It’s fun to be – a – part of the F.M.C.P.

It’s fun to be – a – part of the F.M.C.P.
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Today’s official U.S. side event promoting fossil fuels is bound to attract a lot of attention – after all, the U.S. is the only party which officially intends to quit the Paris Agreement. While it is obvious that any event promoting greater fossil fuel use has no place here at COP24, ECO readers should keep in mind a few things:

1. As was the case with a near-identical U.S. side event at COP23 last year, this year’s U.S. event is designed to anger COP attendees and divert attention from real climate leadership. The Trump White House delights in enraging its enemies (namely, anyone who accepts climate science). If today’s event makes you mad, remember that Trump’s coal-and-oil lackeys want you to be mad.
2. This event is also a performance intended to satisfy both President Trump’s diehard supporters back home and appease his fossil industry patrons, who have a direct financial incentive in weakening the Paris Agreement. Wells Griffith, the ringleader of today’s event and Trump’s chief climate advisor, cannot keep his job unless he publicly pleases the boss. Remember: Trump’s world is Game of Thrones. Everyone is one tweet away from being fired.
3. Despite what will be said at the U.S. event today, the Trump team cannot deliver on their promise to build an international alliance to support coal.

The pre-2020 issue is a waiting game where everyone loses. People who are vulnerable — as they face dangerous loss and damage from climate impacts. People and communities all over the world — whose recent development successes may be undone. Those employed in the fossil fuel industry — who need a just transition to real, alternative livelihoods.

And even the polluters, who are not yet acting and paying sufficiently, and for whom the price they must pay will only go up. After all, we know the conclusions of the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and we all know that the cost of action will increase as the problem itself grows (and pretending the report doesn’t exist won’t change it).

You didn’t think that just because we’re now 12.5 months away from the year 2020, that the issue of pre-2020 climate action would go away, did you? That you could wait it out, until we’re all safely in the era of Paris? That’s not going to happen, and so there’s even the High-Level part of the pre- 2020 stocktake taking place today.

ECO has suggestions for the many Ministers we hope will attend this event and engage in constructive discussions on how to close the pre-2020 ambition gap, and, in the process, build the trust we need for pre-2020 action by developed countries to work as a foundation of post-2020 engagement.
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There are several ways to make a person doubt themselves. One insidious way to do it is gaslighting: psychologically manipulate someone, or a group of people, making them question reality, and even their own sanity. We’ve seen examples of such behaviour from the Trump.

Within the climate negotiations we have our own set of gaslighters. Developed countries have raised hopes to engage in serious work on progressing on loss and damage finance first at Warsaw (“enhancing action and support”), and secondly at Paris (“enhance support on a cooperative and facilitative basis”). The french capital is also where countries agreed that loss and damage was a stand-alone element of the Paris Agreement – important enough for its own article.

Yet, in every negotiation rich countries gaslight us. They’ve claimed that loss and damage is “under” adaptation, that it is not important enough to provide finance in addition to adaptation (square brackets everywhere), report on that finance and assess it as part of the Global Stocktake or the enhanced transparency framework. Ignoring L&D would prevent us from having a full picture of the reality of climate impacts and needs but also actions taken to address irreversible impacts. Isn’t this what the Global Stocktake is all about?
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Introductions can be kind of important, don’t you think?

We use them to connect to people in a “Hi, how are you?” way, or in documents to give a sneak peek at what the text has in store for the reader. Sometimes they are relevant in treaties… Wait, just sometimes? That can’t be right.

Saturday’s fossil went to the US for rejecting the inclusion of human rights and other elements of the preamble of the Paris Agreement in the Paris Rulebook.

On Friday, in the APA discussion on agenda item 3, the US challenged the inclusion of a reference to the preamble, saying it was attempting to operationalize something that by definition wasn’t operational. We’re not the only ones perplexed by this, right? Parties should know that preambles and the important framing words they contain are integral to treaties. This one, in particular, happens to house the agreement that Parties will respect, promote, and consider human rights. The US legal gymnastics to exclude the preamble suggests a hidden intention: further sidelining human rights from climate action. But every country at COP has existing human rights obligations, so the Preamble isn’t new or additional. And all 184 Parties to the Paris Agreement should respect, promote, and consider rights obligations in climate action.
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Dear ECO: We’ve been coming to UNFCCC meetings for 24 years, but we still are not on track to stop climate change. Why is reaching our climate goals so hard?

– Sincerely, Parties to the UNFCCC

Dear Parties,

It is pretty hard to fight anything with one arm tied behind your back. How do you expect to adequately cut emissions without also addressing the primary source of the problem: the production of oil, gas, and coal?

For many years, Parties have admirably worked to reduce the demand for carbon-emitting fossil fuels through policies like promoting energy efficiency, electrifying transportation, encouraging the growth of renewable energy, and more. These are all smart moves, but all the while you’ve been leaving the supply of fossil fuels up to the market. Talk about doing things the hard way!

It is Economics 101: Markets are created by the intersection of both supply and demand, so cutting the demand for fossil fuels while continuing to increase the supply just makes the fossil fuels cheaper. Perhaps, it’s time for you to also start cutting carbon at the point of extraction?

ECO has noticed that some clever countries have already figured this out on their own. New Zealand, France, Belize, Costa Rica, and Spain are all at various stages of addressing the need to restrict exploration and production of fossil fuels.
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Seventy years ago the world came together following the devastation of the second world war, one of the worst human rights atrocities of our time, and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to ensure that egregious human rights violations would never be repeated on such a massive scale! Today we are facing a different, but equally existential and calamitous crisis: climate change.

ECO is concerned that as we celebrate UDHR’s 70th anniversary, Parties inside the Spodek have forgotten what happened 70 years ago and the commitments they made in the UDHR. Over the last few days, we’ve witnessed Parties cutting out references to human rights across different parts of the rulebook. On this Human Rights Day, it feels wrong to see draft texts that exclude human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, gender equality, public participation, food security, just transition, ecosystem integrity and protection of biodiversity, and intergenerational equity.

It does not have to be. ECO wants to remind Parties that it is not a tradeoff between ambition and the Paris Agreement rulebook. ECO was extremely disappointed at Parties’ unwelcoming stance to the IPCC 1.5 report because we can all agree that increasing ambition is necessary. Successful climate action requires integration of human rights.
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