Categoria: Previous Issues Articles

Rumours are swirling that President-elect Trump may move swiftly to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, or even the UNFCCC. While withdrawal would certainly be a major setback, ECO reminds its readers that one of the great strengths of the Paris Agreement is that it was built to withstand such an isolated, short-term political setback, even by the world’s second largest emitter.

Indeed, the Agreement is already proving its resilience. No country has said that they would follow the US out of the Agreement. Quite the contrary, many countries and groups, including China, the EU, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Least Developed Countries, the High Ambition Coalition and others have all reconfirmed their commitment to continue to take aggressive climate action under the Agreement. Others such as Australia, Pakistan and Italy have even joined the Agreement in the days since the US election results came in. In so doing, they have sent a resounding message that the countries of the world will forge on, with or without the US.

If the Trump administration does decide to cede leadership and credibility on an issue of such surpassing global importance, others are ready to take its place. China has said that it is prepared to have a stronger voice—and to reap the rewards in terms of international standing, goodwill and global influence that will surely accrue.
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ECO hopes that all negotiators had a chance to rest over the weekend and will be back to the conference venue with a renewed sense of common purpose. A good way to demonstrate this would be to ensure that no arbitrary and disproportionate restrictions are imposed on civil society presence in negotiating rooms. Last week ECO saw only 2 representatives allowed in each APA negotiating room to represent the whole range of views and expertise available among environmental and development NGOs.

Having been impressed by the hospitality of the people of Marrakech, ECO really has a hard time accepting these exclusionary rules enforced at the UN venue. Do the secretariat and the APA co-chairs really believe that only two badges allow for a good representation of four-billion women? Or two badges for those representing 1.8 billion of young people?

We call on the presidency, the APA co-chairs and the secretariat to ensure more inclusive arrangements for the second week. Unless they voice their opposition to these new practices, parties remain complicit in this situation.

The first CMA must open in an inclusive context and ECO looks forward to working with Parties to find adequate modalities ensuring a sufficient participation of civil society throughout the second week.

Popular wisdom suggests that you never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because that increases the chances that you will get it wrong, miss deadlines, or both! Climate  ambition is not an exception to that rule especially when missing the deadline could mean losing lives, ecosystems and countries.

Paris Decision clearly states that NDCs do not set us on a well below 2ºC path (not to mention 1.5ºC). Therefore all countries must review and raise the level of ambition if we wish to achieve the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

So far ECO has not seen much enthusiasm for this from any country…except one! Argentina was the very first country to state that a review process for its 2015NDC will start right away after Paris… And it did!

ECO wishes that Argentina’s example will inspire other Parties,to do the same. That’s the only way to be ready for the Facilitative Dialogue in 2018, a decisive moment if we want to achieve the 1.5ºC goal set in the Paris Agreement.

Post-Paris, the gap between reductions needed to reach the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C and countries’ pledged reductions remains too wide. Between now and 2018, Parties need to figure out how to close that gap.

The science is clear. The only way to achieve the Paris Agreement commitments is to stop new development of fossil fuels and keep most of the world’s remaining fossil fuels in the ground.

Communities across all continents are taking up the call and demand that their countries halt the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure. In Argentina, indigenous Mapuche communities are mobilising to defend their traditional territories and halt corporate efforts to exploit the planet’s second-largest deposit of shale gas. In Australia, ranchers and other landowners are joining the Lock the Gate movement to block coal mining and unconventional natural gas operations. In the U.S., Sioux protectors in Standing Rock are defending their sovereignty to fight efforts to bulldoze sacred sites to build a $3.8 billion pipeline. This pipeline would threaten water supplies and facilitate the export of dirty fracked crude from the Bakken Shale. In the Philippines, the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development together with other groups are at the centre of a national movement against coal mining and other dirty fossil fuel extraction.
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With the three proposals on a COP22 decision on long-term finance, negotiators must have had something to chew on over the weekend. Surely, combining the contrasting views on finance such as those of Canada on behalf of a few Umbrella Countries with those of the G77/China is just the treatment to overcome a CAN party hangover.

ECO is not surprised that the EU is keen to see the $100 Billion Roadmap welcomed, nor that the Umbrellas wish to go even further by inserting OECD figures into the decision (drawn from the 2016 Biennial Assessment). That almost looks like hoping that the COP would implicitly accept the donor countries’ methodology on what and how to count – somewhat bypassing the ongoing SBSTA discussions on accounting modalities for support- including overrating the climate-relevance of provided funds and counting market-rate loans at face-value.

These nasty technical issues aside, everyone concerned about the growing adaptation needs in developing countries will have noticed that all sides have understood that something must be done about the existing imbalance between mitigation and adaptation in the allocation of finance. The EU and the Umbrellas seem to be fine with the COP welcoming an increase in adaptation finance and be done with it.
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Maybe being awarded the Fossil last Wednesday helped because Germany has pulled itself together and ended the fight between the ministries of environment, economy, agriculture and transport. It also finally published its 2050 climate action plan yesterday.

Let’s give them a big hug! We know, it’ been painful. Germany is now the first country to present a detailed long-term low greenhouse gas emissions development strategy outlining how it intends to decarbonise its economy. What ECO likes about the plan is that it includes interim targets for 2030, broken down by individual sectors: power, industry, transport, buildings and agriculture. This gives citizens, companies and investors the clarity they need. Germany also recognises its international responsibility, placing the plan (which includes an explicit reference to international climate finance and support for developing countries to implement their NDCs) in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This has to be a short hug, though: Germany has to get back to work. Fossil lobbyists were successful in stripping many good elements from the plan. There are quite a few gaps in the document that need to be strengthened:

• The headline targets—a range between 80 and 95% reduction by 2050—are still not enough to deliver Germany’s share of the global effort urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C.

ECO was thrilled to be able to participate in the informal session of the loss and damage discussion beyond the first contact group. But this excitement was watered down when a Party proposed to delete the paragraph that allowed relevant organisations to express their views and provide input on the possible activities in the work stream of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM), before the first meeting of the Executive Committee in 2017.

Input from observers helps to enrich the discussion, provide experiences and lessons learned from around the world and identify the possible activities that the WIM should take into account to fulfil its objectives.

Additionally, the concept of a “placeholder” on loss and damage finance, instead of more defined work activities, is disturbing. It almost seems like developed countries are procrastinating on the subject. ECO is confident you’ve got it in you to agree to write a submission on enhancing mobilisation of financial support before March.

Finally, the juicy discussion on long-term finance under COP agenda item 10a is getting off the ground. It’s not surprising that virtually every developed country that spoke yesterday celebrated their roadmap towards the $100-billion-a-year promise. And of course they highlighted their projection that public adaptation finance may double by 2020. Maybe developed countries even think they are off the hook when looking at those projections. Yet, with a closer look, a few additional things come to mind that may require COP action.

Let’s start with a key fact. Doubling adaptation finance by 2020 would mean only a fifth of the $100bn would be public finance for adaptation. While a welcome increase, a gross imbalance is still projected between mitigation and adaptation, and Parties may wish to address this in any COP22 decision on long-term finance. They could do so by urging developed countries to increase adaptation finance way beyond the roadmap’s projections. Quadrupling instead of doubling would be a fair start, in ECO’s view. After all, adaptation needs are set to soar dramatically in the near future, especially given the lack of ambition in countries’ NDCs.

ECO was delighted to hear Bangladesh questioning the inclusion of market-rate loans as climate finance.
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The question on everyone’s lips has been: where will the next COP be? Ladies and gentlemen, ECO is glad to inform you that Fiji will have the Presidency of COP23 in 2017. Before you get too excited and start packing your scuba gear though, you should read the fine print: the official bidding proposal requested that COP23 be hosted in Bonn, Germany. All that remains are procedural matters to officially adopt Fiji’s nomination at the COP plenary session. Worry not delegates, even though the COP itself will be in Bonn (think about German night markets!), the pre-COP may be in Fiji.

The period through 2020 is critical to increase ambition. The 2018 Facilitative Dialogue will play a key role. The IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C (expected September 2018) will provide important input. Before Paris, the scientific input of the First Periodical Review (FPR) and its Structured Expert Dialogue (SED) was critical.

The FPR concluded that the 2°C limit as a line of defence should be pushed lower. Additionally, the world is not on track to achieve this goal. In other words: meaningful mitigation measures must urgently be scaled up. In Paris, Parties used this input and took the important decision to strengthen the global goal to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C compared to preindustrial levels.

Periodic reviews and expert dialogues need to be repeated regularly under the Paris Agreement. We need to start with the Second Periodical Review (SPR) and its dialogue in 2017, or in May 2018 at the latest. A further session should be organised in October 2018 to summarise the content of IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C to inform the Facilitative Dialogue in 2018. Key questions here will be: What path do current NDCs put us on; and how far is that from achieving the Paris goals?
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