Categoría: Previous Issues Articles

In Marrakech, adaptation finance has remained a sticking point between Parties. When it comes to adaptation finance, wealthier countries have continued their common refrains: “There’s just not enough public money”;“Our cupboards are bare”;“It’s complicated”. The Africa Adaptation Initiative has yet to find any developed country willing to support it, a state of affairs made even sadder by the fact that Marrakech is an African COP.

According to Parties’ own biennial reporting, G7 governments plus Australia are providing roughly $3.4 billion per year in public finance for adaptation activities in developing countries. In contrast, these same governments are providing nearly $67 billion per year in subsidies and public finance to support oil, gas, and coal production, both domestically and abroad.

Yes, you read that right – the G7 plus Australia are giving nearly 20 TIMES as much public money to fossil fuel companies as they are to support adaptation in developing countries. ECO wonders why are these countries are buying more flamethrowers when the world is already burning.

This hypocrisy is not going unnoticed at COP – see Japan’sFossil of the Day for its high levels of fossil fuel finance. As indicated in the UNEP Adaptation Finance Gap report, there’s no shortage of need for investment in climate-resilient, low-emission infrastructure.
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Delegates, ECO can’t help but notice that you’ve had a somewhat relaxed COP. It almost seemed like you were skating on the wins in the Paris Agreement, and using that excuse not to move too far ahead here in Marrakech. Luckily, you’ve got the opportunity to do some deep thinking over the holiday break about how to move loss and damage finance forward in a decisive fashion–with the deadline for submissions coming up on 27 February. Let’s smash that “placeholder” with a clear set of tasks, timelines and outcomes for the mandated strategic priority of loss and damage finance, as well as the other key elements of the 5-year work plan.

One strategic outcome that you will no doubt want to include in your submissions is the goal of increasing financing over and above adaptation finance for those most vulnerable to climate change, from a nice predictable source. Say, from the fossil fuel and aviation industries that have helped get us into the climate mess that we’re in? That’s something for you to think about over the “break”.

As the UNFCCC at last starts to focus more closely on short-term targets, there is a certain invisible and odourless greenhouse gas that no one is taking quite seriously enough: methane.

We aren’t just talking about cow farts here. The massive gas infrastructure that is springing up as the world goes fracking crazy is not only undermining the communities that live above their subterranean explosions, but also the world’s ability to meet any short-term climate goals.

A 2013 study shows that methane is 86 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe. Well, in 20 years we’ll be well past UNFCCC short-term targets of 2020, 2025 and almost to 2035. Bewilderingly, many governments are still using the old numbers from the IPCC’s 4th Report from 2007 that looks at methane on a 100-year timeframe – meaning they are calculating methane as only 25 times more potent than CO2. If we are talking about short-term targets, we need to be looking at short-term Global Warming Potentials (GWP) too.

By that math, fracked gas has a short-term climatic impact almost 3 times greater than that of coal! Time to scrap all those new gas pipelines, LNG terminals, and fracking rigs and start a real transition to renewables.
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Commitments made at this COP greatly impact youths. Elements such as the $100 billion Roadmap, the mid-century goals set out by Parties and the ambition targets that will influence development pathways for the future mean it will be up to young people to implement the outcomes of current negotiations, ensure proposed funding pledges are met and the CMA will be a constructive forum.

The young people of ENGO, YOUNGO and all non-governmental organisations have been pushing our country delegations on a few key agenda items that have not yet been realised:

First and foremost, to ensure that mitigation targets are met, Parties must not forget the “well below” in front of the 2 degrees target. Throughout the week, youth delegates have been pushing for as many countries as possible to be ambitious and aim for 1.5 degrees in their Nationally Determined Contributions.

The Adaptation Fund discussion is equally critical: a push for the fund to serve the Paris Agreement in a transparent and measurable way will enable those of us who are inheriting the established mechanisms to properly implement equitable solutions. Upscaling the fund is going to be vital to protecting livelihoods and development pathways that will empower future generations.

The youths of ECO hope that the COP22 outcomes will begin to resolve these issues.
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The first Fossil of the Day award goes to…take a deep breath…Turkey, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, France, Japan and Indonesia for duplicity at the UN climate negotiations. While representatives from climate vulnerable countries, cities, businesses, and civil society organisations are fighting to keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground, as well as preventing the expansion of polluting airports (hat-tip to France), these countries still aim to increase their domestic fossil fuel extraction. By doing so, they are quite literally drilling under everyone’s efforts to keep global warming below the critical threshold of 1.5°C. These countries helped forge the Paris Agreement which is now in force, committing them to halt climate change, so they really need to get the left hand and the right hand talking to each other. Put your money where your mouth is, please!

The second Fossil of the Day award goes to Japan for its dodgy stance on coal. Japan has a crazy number (48!) of new coal power projects in the pipeline and is funding a massive 10 GW worth of new coal in Indonesia. On a near-daily basis Indonesian locals have been protesting against proposed coal operations in the Cirebon region, concerned about the impact on public health and water supplies.
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Parties came to Marrakech pledging to turn the Paris Agreement into action. But some countries don’t seem to see the need for a COP decision at all, let alone a decision that enables Parties to start discussing how to make the Facilitative Dialogue in 2018 a successful part of a momentous year to increase overall ambition.

ECO wants a clear decision from COP22 that recognises the importance of a robust, inclusive, and transparent Facilitative Dialogue that takes advantage of the benefits of ambitious climate action, and achieves the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Parties should welcome the ability to design a Dialogue that represents an opportunity to take stock of progress already made, identify concrete steps to accelerate implementation, take account of the latest science (e.g. the IPCC report on 1.5°C), acknowledge front runners, and identify further opportunities for cooperation, in a facilitative manner. Waiting until 2023 for the Global Stocktake will be far too long to seize all of the opportunities already at hand.

Here are some lessons learned from past review exercises: agree a process for an effective and impactful Facilitative Dialogue, welcome Parties and non-Party stakeholders to share their views on what would lead to success and how to get there, start with an informal workshop in Bonn in May, and help Parties think through the options and opportunities for an effective process.
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The charming, narrow streets of Marrakech’s Medina teach you to share and co-exist. Perhaps the COP’s large open venue has had the opposite effect on Parties. Yesterday the High Level Ministerials twice passed over or delayed the opportunity to listen to civil society, doubling down the exclusion of civil society from most of this COP.

In the spirit of co-existence, multiple civil society constituencies—youth, women, farmers and environmental NGOs—brought together their diverse perspectives to convey their priorities on adaptation finance in just a few minutes, though to no avail. So ECO steps forward to provide space to voice their concerns.

Adaptation, a pillar of Paris Agreement, needs urgent, ambitious, and transformative public climate finance for vulnerable and impacted communities. The recently released US$100 billion roadmap shows that adaptation finance flows by 2020 will double the current levels. Yet that will still fall far short of the parity with mitigation finance that the Paris Agreement asks for. That gap cannot be filled by profit-seeking private finance, which favours mitigation activities. As well, that will favour richer developing countries, because they are more capable of absorbing private investment. That’s why developed countries should prioritise adaptation to help protect development gains in developing countries.
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It’s always nice to have money in your pocket, so the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) must be feeling cheerful. In a long anticipated announcement that was sprung as a surprise in Marrakech, the CTCN received the grand sum of… US$23 million!

While not as much money as expected, these voluntary contributions provide welcome assurance for the survival of the CTCN and its ability to deliver technical assistance to developing countries. Presented in an undramatic fashion, Canada, the EU, Korea, Switzerland, and the US hope to set an example for supporting ‘technology sharing’. These founding contributors hope to reemphasise the importance of the CTCN as a core mechanism for delivering technology for climate action.

To be clear, this is desperately needed. CTCN staff have spent an extraordinary amount of time securing funding. Of course, their time is better spent on delivering technology support—not having to carry a begging bowl to the capitals. A reliance on voluntary contributions impairs the sustainability and predictability of the CTCN budget and erodes its effectiveness and its mandate. Parties need to support a more regular process for replenishing CTCN funding, especially in the new Technology Framework.

ECO hopes the example set by these donor countries galvanises others to contribute and support developing countries in effectively developing and deploying technology to address mitigation and adaptation.

The Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) is up and running. Eight donors — (Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the Wallon Region in Belgium) have joined the US, UK and Canada to pledge more than US$50 million to the CBIT.

The first set of projects have already been approved by the GEF for implementation in Costa Rica, Kenya, and South Africa. Finally, a global coordination platform is being put in place to share lessons learned and engage with partners to help deliver more country projects. This came less than a week after negotiators approved the terms of reference of the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB). The PCCB’s membership is almost complete with the first meeting set for May 2017.

ECO is happy that things are moving fast on the capacity building front, including beyond the UNFCCC arena. A number of initiatives, consortia and networks emerged during COP22: the NDC partnership, which brings already more than 40 countries and major institutions to accelerate the implementation of NDCs; a network of about 30 universities to support the dissemination of the work of PCCB; and the south-south consortium of 10 universities from LDCs focusing on adaptation.

This also echoes the importance of education, raising awareness and public participation, which were hailed as critical during the education day, to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
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ECO salutes a major step forward in the transition to a decarbonised and climate-resilient world. At 2.30pm in Room Atlantic, please come welcome the launch of the 2050 Pathway Platform, a new tool that allows state and non-state actors to share their plans and learn from one another’s strategies and approaches.

The launch of the Platform marks a high point in this COP. We have already seen the release of the first long-term strategies from several countries. Germany stole the show last week, followed by the US, Canada and Mexico yesterday, and the excitement is building to see which other countries will bring their plans forward with the Platform’s launch today. ECO has heard that 20 countries will be signing up alongside over 200 companies and numerous subnational actors.

Why are we so excited? It’s quite straightforward—the Platform is a concrete sign that countries and other actors are taking the PA seriously and mainstreaming climate planning into a long-term vision for national development – that’s what we need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5ºC.

While having a plan is no guarantee of success, without one, failure is certain. This is the first step towards developing a vision of how achieve our PA goals, and how quickly we need to accelerate action.
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