Category: Previous Issues Articles

Rules, Rules, Rules – they are important and we all knowweneedthem!Themeetingroomsherearefilledwith delegates engaged in intense discussions over the minutiae of the Paris rulebook. The incoming Polish Presidency also never misses a chance to emphasize their laser focus on the rulebook outcome as their absolute priority for COP 24.

But there are other conversations going on here, on equally important subjects – where actions of Parties will match the ambitious objectives in the Paris Agreement. In the back room informal consultations, a vision for how the Talanoa dialogue will play out at COP 24 is taking shape, and, ECO hopes, on how it will grapple with the all-important IPCC 1.5 special report.

ECO expects the Polish COP Presidency, in close cooperation with the current Fijian Presidency, to ensure a strong message emerges from the Talanoa Dialogue and COP 24. A message that the world expects more than the ambition in the current NDCs, which puts the world on a path to 3 °C warming or more. A livable planet depends on a clear and unmistakable signal that the world expects countries to spare no effort to improve their NDCs by 2020 and close the emissions gap.

Without a strong and resounding drumbeat at COP 24 on scaled up ambition, the world will judge Katowice harshly.

Australia’s new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has just toured the 100 per cent drought stricken country-side of the most populous state, refusing to recognise any possible connection to climate impacts – all while unprecedented bushfires rage during winter!

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Turnbull was unceremoniously dethroned for trying to rein in coal-fired emissions. Public confidence in the ruling party has been destroyed by an unseemly self-serving revolt by a group of pro-fossil fuel members. The complete absence of a program to meet Australia’s Paris commitments has put the government at odds with the mood of the Australian people. They are on track to lose heavily in the elections that must be held before June next year.

It is understandable that Australia’s Prime Minister avoided going to the Pacific Island Forum due to his lack of a climate policy. Despite this seeming lack of attention to the Pacific, Australia signed on to a Forum communiqué which recognises that “climate change presents the single greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of Pacific people.” Now let’s see action.

There’s a new brand of sceptic in our midst: the loss and damage sceptic. Just like the kind you’re more familiar with, they also deny the evidence of climate impacts right in front of their eyes. It almost defies imagination that parties would be arguing against the inclusion of loss and damage in the Global Stocktake (and elsewhere) given the litany of climate impacts that have been wreaking havoc all over the world.

This year’s impacts should be enough to convince even the most hardened loss and damage sceptic. We’ve had heat waves effecting massive death tolls across the planet; the worst drought in living memory on the east coast of Australia; drought across Europe including Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia, where reindeers are starving; the drought in Poland has affected a third of its crops; in Brazil the capital Brazilia is in danger of running out of water; savage wild fires in the forest of the west coast of the US and Canada; Japan has been hit by the strongest Typhoon (Jebi) in last twenty five years; in Senegal people are being displaced due to rising sea levels and diminished fishing resources; one million people have been displaced by devastating floods in Kerala, India, with at least 445 people dead; with yet another flooding 24,000 people have been affected in Assam — all of this without needing to go back as far as the devastating 2017 hurricane season.
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We at ECO are wondering whether we should have a chat with the nice lawyers at the UNFCCC Secretariat.

We’ve spotted a problem with the agenda that is increasingly creating confusion. We think the ‘SBI informal consultation on common timeframes’ (CTFs) might be better renamed as the‘SBI informal consultation on multiple and differentiated timeframes’, as communicated by China on behalf of LMDCs, so Parties can really relax and kick back with the scope of the exercise at hand.

Let’s be clear – the LMDCs’ proposal of introducing differentiationisnotnegotiatingingoodfaith.Differentiation and flexibility should be applied in other parts of the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP), but for CTFs it would simply riddle the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement. The multi-layered, almost Kafkaesque proposal was, can we agree, more than a little difficult to grasp.

With Japan, on the other hand, we are just disappointed. It seems they feel the need for some additional thinking space, gatecrashing in on what was almost a complete 5-year CTF consensus with the friendly offer of an extra 5 years. Maybe they’ll use the time to contemplate and brainstorm further creative solutions for inclusion to their NDC. No matter the rapid descent into planetary chaos before our very eyes.
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ECO notes that there are some signs of progress in the negotiations on climate finance accounting. SBSTA started the week with a 62-page document and is now down to two competing and polarised submissions of 9 and 4 pages respectively. At the time of writing, the co-facilitators were boiling the submissions down into a new (presumably shorter) text.

With this new text in hand, ECO hopes that negotiators will not be as drastic with their scissors, as the 4-page submission made by Australia, the US and Japan might indicate. Their proposal on accounting modalities basically brings us back to square one, where each developed country is more or less allowed to report climate finance on their own terms. The submission offers very little by way of ENHANCED transparency, comparability and accuracy, which the provision of climate finance desperately needs.

Based on their proposal, it seems that Australia, the US and Japan are not up for reporting the grant equivalent value of any loans and other non-grant instruments – which is a key element in the 9-pager from the G77 and China. They would rather continue to inflate their numbers by reporting the full face value of loans, despite the fact
that on average, developing countries are likely to have to pay back about half of the value of these loans.
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In the midst of the finance ‘storm’ falling on Bangkok, everyone wants to know what is next for the Green Climate Fund (GCF)?

ECO watched, with great disappointment, events unfold at the last GCF board meeting. While countries failed to come to any kind of agreement regarding procedural issues, the collapse of the last board meeting also postponed the approval of 11 projects, valued at almost $1 billion. These delayed projects have direct impacts on the ground. A three month delay means precious time lost for those who still require support to tackle the increasingly hostile impacts of climate change, to access renewable energy and to build low carbon and climate resilient societies.

So what’s the GCF all about? Supporting climate action around the globe, particularly for the most vulnerable countries. Created 8 years ago, the GCF is still a critical financial mechanism for countries to deliver much needed financial support and is the core multilateral fund to allow for full and fair implementation of the Paris Agreement. Since its inception, the GCF has proved that it is able to support a growing and diverse portfolio of projects. The quality of these projects has increased over time, and has helped support direct access entities and build the capacities of national implementing agencies.
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Developed countries have long been fans of the “do as we say, not as we do” approach to climate diplomacy; so it should come as no surprise that they’ve adopted this approach to loss and damage in advocating for climate insurance as the solution.

As much as surely can be clear after the first days of this week; some developed countries still think, “Loss and damage is not a thing”. Yet, they have fallen over themselves to push vulnerable countries to take up climate insurance to deal with this “non-thing”. In fact, in the face of much more effective and evidence based solutions, they have pushed climate insurance as almost the sole response.

A new report, Not a Silver Bullet from the Heinrich-Böll- Stiftung, foundation shows how misplaced this reliance on ‘insurance only’ is. Not only is it doubling down on the injustice of climate change to expect vulnerable countries to pay insurance premiums to cover a risk they did not create, but also, insurance alone is just not up to the task at hand. In the best case, insurance pays out a very small portion of the costs of loss and damage. Typically only two percent, as in the case of Dominica, where the costs of Hurricane Maria fell overwhelmingly on ordinary Dominicans, and other examples outlined in the report.
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We know we’ve raised it before, but we realized yesterday that it was worth another reminder as none of our concerns were raised during the transparency discussions: the Facilitative, Multilateral Consideration of Progress (FMCP) will only be effective if it builds on the expertise and perspectives of civil society. Unless you step up, we risk ruining what could be a constructive process. So let us try present- ing it in a different medium…namely, in a song! We sincerely hope you get this song stuck in your head.

(The song should be read in a sing-song-y voice to the tune of Village People’s 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.

We could provide info, we could send in questions,
We will add some action…

Party, are you listening to me?
I said, Party, what do you want to be?
I said, Party, you can make the PA strong.
But you got to know this one thing!
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Market negotiations resumed at full speed in Bangkok, with new text being published after only one day of negotiations. Parties are feeling the pressure now that COP24 is looming. We’ve started the session by hearing lists of priorities for items that could not be postponed to 2019 (assuming that not all issues could be resolved at COP24). Two of these priorities stick out for ECO: the need to avoid double counting through corresponding adjustments for all international transfers, and the transition away from Kyoto Protocol Mechanisms to Article 6. This applies especially to avoiding double counting with ICAO’s CORSIA! ECO shares the view that these are crucial priorities if market mechanisms are to increase ambition, but one critical priority was missing. We need to ensure compliance with human rights and social safeguards to avoid the ghosts of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) coming back to haunt us after 2020.

Now urgently need to operationalize rules in order to ensure that the new market mechanisms can start on the right foot and promote ambition in the Paris Agreement. After hearing Parties mention the transition from Kyoto Protocol (KP) mechanisms to Article 6 as a key priority, we were surprised when we discovered that there is no strict timeline to deal with the transition of these elements within the documents drafted by the co-chairs.
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It’s all well-known – the UNFCCC negotiations are progressing at a slow pace, the workload and delivery is lagging behind schedule, and the parties’ enthusiasm on rapid and early enhancing of ambition to meet the Paris objectives is hardly visible, particularly with the looming COP in Poland. But here comes the IPCC to the rescue – hopefully.

As we all know, as a result of the Paris negotiations in 2015, Parties commissioned the largest global climate science authority, the IPCC, to assess in a Special Report the feasibility of meeting the objective to limit global warming to 1.5°C, and what failing to meet the goal would entail. After two years of work by a large number of expert scientists, the report and particularly its Summary For Policymakers (SPM) will be negotiated and agreed upon in Korea by Parties in early October. By nature, the findings of the IPCC will have significant impacts on governments’ climate policies and domestic implementation, the Talanoa Dialogue and the necessary enhancement of the 2030 NDC. The question remains – which political impacts?

ECO has always defended the IPCC and its many products over the years as fundamental parts of advocating awareness and solutions to the global climate crisis.
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