Categoría: Previous Issues Articles

With two months between the adoption of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C in Korea and the COP in Poland, ECO has a couple of suggestions for Parties on how to best use this time, and beyond, to understand the implications and consequences of the report for the their domestic and international decision making.

ECO believes that the important results of the Special Report, published by the most authoritative scientific global body will inform Parties about cost- effective and sustainable options for necessary, possible, and enhanced decarbonisation actions to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Based on that new information, we expect that UNFCCC Parties will review and strengthen domestic and international climate policies to “avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

One key result from the report is expected to show the necessity for substantially enhancing 2030 ambition to comply with the 1.5°C limit. Until now, third party analysis suggests that only a very few developing countries have provided more or less Paris-compliant NDCs. However, the sum of all current NDCs will lead to an increase of global temperature in 3°C from preindustrial levels..

There are a couple of things governments need to do either in sequence or in parallel to support the crucial IPCC results after the meeting in Korea, if they want to maintain the spirit of the Paris Agreement.
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The Green Climate Fund is running out of funds. At the rate the Board has been approving projects in recent meetings, they will have allocated all of its remaining money sometime next year. Recent governance snafus notwithstanding, the GCF has come a long way on the path to fulfilling the high expectations placed on it as the centerpiece of the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. The pipeline of projects is expanding and quality is improving overall. More importantly, the world and vulnerable people are depending on the GCF to channel funds to meet urgent needs and achieve the transformation required to achieve low carbon development and help people deal with the growing consequences of climate change.

With climate impacts being felt throughout the world, and becoming more dire by the day, the fund cannot be allowed to run dry. On the contrary, meeting current needs, as well as funding scaled-up actions and more ambitious NDCs require confidence that financial support, too, will rapidly increase. ECO expects the October GCF Board meeting to kick off the formal replenishment process. This makes parties’ homework clear – prepare for a replenishment process that results in at least an overall doubling of contributions to the GCF for the next period.
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ECO commends the technology talks under SBSTA for progressing in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. What confuses ECO however, is that some negotiators also appear keen to remove all traces of the very same collaboration and cooperation from the draft text, and to keep the technology framework as narrowly defined as possible. To deliver the monumental changes needed to reduce emissions, adapt to a changing climate, and respond to loss and damage, technology will be essential. It is therefore imperative to get a technology framework that is fit for purpose and equips Parties for meeting these global challenges. This requires a broad, inclusive, and participatory approach, one that facilitates innovation and transfer and ensures technology is targeted towards the critical transformations we need to achieve.

No framework or mechanism can function if it is not properly and sufficiently resourced. Developing countries need financial support to be able to build their capacity, successfully implement climate technologies as well as develop and maintain these technologies themselves. To facilitate a bottom-up, inclusive, and country-driven process it is therefore vital for the developed world to deliver on promised support. This requires dedicated and predictable funding – not just kind words and small injections of cash for technical consultants.
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ECO presents its compliments to all delegates of Parties, representatives of the media and of observer organizations.

The United Nations will commemoratethe 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the 10th December 2018.

On this occasion and to celebrate the progress achieved by Parties, we wish to invite you all to join thefestivities in Katowice, Poland, during COP24 by ensuring that human rights are respected, promoted and taken into consideration in climate action as outlined in the opening paragraphs of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement implementation guidelines offer an important tool to support and promote the efforts made by Parties to ensure that human rights serve as a basis for their implementation of effective and sustainable climate action, placing peoples and communities at the core of mitigation and adaptation action. COP24 is the occasion to remind the world of the importance of these norms.

COP24 will also finalize the operationalization of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform. This is a critical body to ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ participation is strengthened in the UNFCCC process and that traditional knowledge supports the implementation of the Paris Agreement in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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Delegates, take a deep breath and think about the moment the gable sounded and the Paris Agreement was decided. The applause, the recognition, the enthusiasm for action! All those pats on the back! You lapped it up – you had worked hard! Well, the Paris agreement was about past work … and future promise. And now is the future. Time to live up to your promises!

Each one of the Articles in the Paris Agreement was hard- fought and finely balanced. Including Article 8 – the one that some of you (US, EU, Australia) would, incredibly, rather forget. ECO says incredibly, because if the UN Convention on Climate Change is not about obligation and solidarity for vulnerable countries facing the worst impacts of climate change WHAT IS IT FOR, EXACTLY?

ECO hears some of you (US, EU, Australia) saying “we have the WIM, we’re done here” and ECO calls bullshit. It’s clear that your objective is to push it into a body that you keep under-funded and under-resourced, where your delegates block progress at every turn (how about two hours spent discussing whether it is possible for the ExCom to have a conversation with the IPCC authors and not allowing an outcome) in order to stop real progress on loss and damage.
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Dear Ministers, we are looking forward to seeing you at the Talanoa Dialogue in Katowice. While it will be freezing outside, Talanoa Dialogue will bring some much needed warmth and lots of dialogue to the process. ECO hears the incoming Polish Presidency has begun setting the stage – but plese be reminded, dear Ministers, the Talanoa Dialogue will only be as good as you and your contributions make it!

The combination of the urgent imperative of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5oC to reduce losses and damages by climate change, and the many opportunities for accelerated climate ambition, leave plenty of options to enhance your NDCs for the 2020 submission deadline.

The NDC revision process will be different for every country, involving national stakeholders in the discussion to identify the areas that can be enhanced, and you can kick this off by coming to the Talanoa Dialogue fully engaged to share experiences from your country, learn from others, and start building a process to revise your NDC by sharing experiences and learning from others. To help you prepare for a Talanoa Dialogue with a strong outcome, ECO has put together a small list of “do’s” and “don’ts”:

Do’s:
– Prepare before attending.
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While you deliberate on item 5: (section D.5,7 & 8) in the air-conditioned ESCAP conference centre, Where Are We?

We are on the front line of climate breakdown. As people of faith and people of conscience, we are struggling in our moral obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable, provide for our children and respect our inheritance.

We are facilitating Talanoa Dialogues in South Sudan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Mali, Niger, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Kenya.

The Fiji presidency has promised that these stories and suggestions will be put before the governments who are committed to the Paris Agreement as they draw up their new 5 year plans and promises for combatting climate change.

While you decide where to go for green curry after hours of negotiation, Where Do We Want To Go?

We want to see people stay in their homes, secure in their livelihoods, building for the future and ready and able to overcome the next set of shocks and disruption.

We want people to be listened to and their concerns and suggestions be acted upon.

We want people to be party to solutions with their insights and knowledge accumulated into national plans rather than their being planned for and told what todoandhowtodoit.
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In the corridors of the UN conference centre in Bangkok, ECO heard a widespread old mantra: “Finance is POLITICAL”. Well, yes, finance is political, as most of the issues you’re negotiating here are. Should it prevent Parties from progressing on the elements in the agenda, therefore putting at risk an ambitious overall outcome by Sunday? Clearly not. Is it an excuse for the EU to spend their time in rainy Bangkok hiding behind a toxic Umbrella? Hell no. Countries cannot leave Thailand without a clear pathway on finance from here to Katowice.

Speaking of political, Parties should actually think hard about how to elevate the finance question between now and Katowice, in order to find the much needed landing zones to set modalities to make climate finance predictable, define a new finance target by 2025 and adopt robust accounting rules for finance. Let ECO remind you that by December, you will have many opportunities to address climate finance at a high political level: you should use the IMF/World Bank annual meeting, the Pre- COP and G20 to send the right signals that finance will be taken seriously and progress by COP24.

While ECO expects you to arrive in Katowice with clear options to make climate finance a strong element of the Paris rulebook, we also hope you will make the best use of the high-level meetings you’ll have there.
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ECO wants to draw the attention of negotiators to the tens of thousands of people here in Bangkok and around the world taking part in more than 600 Rise for Climate actions this weekend. In more than 80 countries, communities are taking part in a range of creative, distributed local actions in cities, towns, institutions, universities, and places of worship to demonstrate the urgency of the climate crisis. We are emphasising the increasing impacts we are all experiencing, particularly in the most vulnerable regions, while simultaneously showcasing innovative community-led solutions to keep fossil fuels in the ground and accelerate the just transition to 100% renewable energy.

ECO isn’t here just to criticise the (pretty slow) progress of these negotiations per se. But perhaps negotiators would like to look long and hard at the motivation, energy and leadership that people from California to Colombia and Thailand to South Africa are demonstrating this weekend. We are seeing the largest ever climate march the US West Coast has ever seen, the first ever virtual mobilisation (with holograms!) taking place across Asia, groups in the UK and Germany pushing for more divestment, leaders in Australia, Colombia and Canada facing pressure for continuing to dig up fossil fuels, swathes of town-hall actions across the USA and France, and banks coming under fire in Tokyo for financing fossil fuels.
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ECO is pulling out the popcorn for the discussion on the transition away from Kyoto Protocol mechanisms today. The current Annex on the table is vague about where we are going and when, but it’s clearly on the minds of a large number of Parties, so we think it’ll spark some serious discussion.

We’re not saying the discussion will be easy, but we hope Parties will highlight where we’ve been and where we’re going – namely how we learn from the lessons of the past, while considering the urgencies of the present. Especially because things have gotten a lot more complicated with all countries having NDCs, the evolving framework of carbon accounting and corresponding adjustments, and the new offset market that will be created by aviation’s 2016 climate deal–the CORSIA.

One thing is clear: We don’t want a copy-and- paste of old tools. An automatic transition of CDM credits, or any KP credits for that matter, would destroy the credibility of the new system, undermine ambition and the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement, and completely disregard the outstanding questions around the local impact of some these projects on communities and the environment.

We hope that parties will focus on the critical question at hand: What does a transition of Kyoto Protocol mechanisms mean?
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