Category: Previous Issues Articles

Being clear helps better direct policy and allocate resources appropriately. So ECO also wants to be clear. Paris needs to improve transparency and accountability on many different fronts: mitigation and adaptation actions and means of implementation. And to be even clearer, it does not mean additional burden.  And importantly, improved transparency and accountability will build trust.

Let’s start with guiding principles and rules to count emissions and preserve environmental integrity of commitments. We also need to assess the quality of information and scale of countries’actions, as well as a credible process to support compliance and effective implementation.

Of course, we’re not starting from scratch. Let’s build on the MRV experience of mitigation: measurement (collection of information domestically), reporting (provision of this information internationally), and verification (checking by independent experts).

It is critical to track whether the collective effort is enough to keep emission levels below the 1.5°C warming trajectory that we need to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.  Sharing information on current or planned domestic laws, standards, or other enforceable provisions also helps identify where international cooperation, support, or capacity building might be most helpful.

Without transparency, we cannot understand country pledges, avoid double-counting of efforts, or facilitate compliance. 
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Delegates, are you also hoping that soon you’ll be able to come to Bonn in super-efficient aircraft, helping to solve the problem of emissions from international aviation? ECO is guessing that the answer is a resounding: “Yes!”

Unless we take action now, that scenario is looking less and less likely. A report this week from the International Council on Clean Transportation has found that fuel-burn efficiency improvements for new aircraft have fallen to 1.1% per year, against the industry target of 2% per year. With passenger numbers increasing every year, aviation emissions are expected to grow by up to 300% by 2050. Yes, you read that right. This would be a huge blow to our efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5°C.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) needs to step up its climate efforts. Parties to ICAO must adopt a meaningful CO₂ standard for new aircraft—incredibly, none currently exist—and agree to a market-based mechanism to close the remaining gap between aircraft efficiency and passenger growth.

The situation is also dire with international shipping. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is refusing to set an emissions target at all.

The transport sector needs to get moving on mitigation. The wording in Part III of the co-chairs’ tool on ICAO and IMO taking action to reduce emissions needs to be firmly placed in the agreement. Otherwise these sectors risk undermining other efforts to reduce emissions.

All week, the expression “enabling environments” kept coming back into use during the finance sessions. Several Parties raised questions about what it actually means. ECO has a few worries of its own. Since this week has been about gathering feedback and building convergence, a bit more clarity on this term needs to be enabled.

Will developing countries need to establish some sort of “appropriate conditions” in order to attract greater flows of private finance? And what would those conditions be? Surely countries would not be required to relax their environmental or labour regulations just to allow the private sector to extract extra profit. Right?

And would the expansion of “enabling environments” reduce developed countries’ obligations to provide adequate levels of public climate finance to support extra action in vulnerable developing countries. Surely not.

These are just some of the questions that strike ECO upon hearing the echoes of “enabling environments”. It would be both a shame and slightly ironic if these concerns rang true, making the overall environments even less enabled to address the needs of affected people, ecosystems(?) and communities.

ECO totally supports the shift of overall financial flows and investments away from high-carbon to low-carbon and climate resilient activity.
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Does anyone really question whether land is central to what we’re all trying to do here in the UNFCCC? No, didn’t think so. Not only is the land sector critical to our mitigation efforts, but one of the key reasons we so urgently need to stop climate change is to still be able to use it to grow food and, um, eat, in a few decades’ time.

It’s obvious that to help us stay below 1.5°C temperature rise, some types of land must act as sinks and carbon stores. We need to do everything we can to protect, maintain and restore critical ecosystems such as natural forests, grasslands and degraded peatlands. Our survival, and most of the living species we share our planet with, depend on it. In fact, we need the work on land to come on top of everything else we can do to reduce our emissions from other sectors, particularly industry and energy. So let’s be honest; land cannot be used to lower ambition elsewhere.

At the same time, let’s not get carried away in our enthusiasm for mitigation in the land sector. Countries need to avoid any perverse incentives that conflict with food production, destroy natural ecosystems, threaten indigenous peoples’ rights, drive land grabs, increase hunger, harm animal welfare, or make life even tougher for vulnerable communities.
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FYI: ECO is highly principled, and believes that a key role of the Paris agreement will be to enshrine durable principles. Specifically for carbon markets, the following principles should be inscribed:

Real: unless the emissions reductions have actually occurred, and are not an accountancy trick, what’s the point of a market?

Supplemental: a failure of carbon markets has been the result of inadequate levels of ambition to drive the market. Only countries with targets that represent their fair share of effort towards the 1.5^oC goal should be allowed to trade, and then only for levels of ambition above that fair share.

Additional: any credits that are traded need to represent emissions reductions achieved above a credible baseline.

Internationally verifiable: for those participating in the market, confidence in the quality of the credits is paramount. Alas, only through transparency will this confidence be achieved.

Permanent emissions reductions: having the emissions reappear at a later date makes the credits a mere accountancy trick.

Avoid double counting: despite getting a Fossil on this, Brazil still does not understand that this is an issue. Counting a single credit twice as contributing towards action misses the whole point.

Deliver sustainable development co-benefits: there are many other environmental, developmental and human rights issues that at worst credits and markets should not undermine, and at best should actively contribute to improving.

Rumours are circulating that certain Parties have been shopping a less-than-precise interpretation of EU positions in Bonn. Apparently, one of the main messages has been that the EU’s proposal for 10-year commitment periods has developed into quite an obsession, with little chance of recovery. ECO begs to differ.

There is no legislation in place that would hinder the EU’s adoption of a 5-year commitment period. Even if there is political resistance from certain corners. ECO has reliable intelligence that several EU member states actually see the merit in shorter commitment periods, which capture technological and economic progress, protect against low ambition, and react more quickly to the increasingly severe consequences of the changing climate.

The EU’s decision on the length of commitment periods will be made from purely political motives. Everyone knows that political winds shift as fast as teenage crushes do, though. Champions of 5-year commitment periods should ramp up the pressure on the EU—the window of opportunity still stands. Upcoming legislation will make this shift more difficult, so now is the time to act with swift determination. ECO will be here cheering you on every step of the way!

With all the puffery at these talks, you’d think a little more hot air might not be noticed. The problem is, it’s not just a little bit of hot air, the result is sweltering.

The lack of integrity of the market mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, combined with weak targets, have created an 11 gigatonne CO₂e hot air loophole. That’s right, 11 big ones — clearing up that loophole would go a long way to closing the gigatonne gap. One important way would be to agree the KP hot air credits must be ineligible for compliance in the Paris agreement.

To ensure that we learn from the KP experience, the Paris treaty should define principles for the eligibility of use of international markets to achieve a country’s Nationally Determined Commitment. This should include how markets should reach standards that deliver real, supplemental, additional, verifiable, permanent emissions reductions, avoid double counting of effort, result in a net atmospheric benefit, and deliver sustainable development co-benefits. These principles will need to be defined in the COP decisions. Unless the core agreement specifically refers to these well-established standards, the transparency and environmental integrity of many Parties’ NDCs that depend on the use of markets cannot be assured.
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When working at a microscopic level, we know there is a danger of delegates losing perspective. In June, the presentation of the Structured Expert Dialogue (SED) results saw intensive exchanges on new science, the impacts of climate change and how to keep warming at 1.5/2°C. But the end saw Saudi Arabia and others sideline an agreement to inform the ADP on their work and conclusions.

The SED found that the ‘guardrail’ concept, in which up to 2^°C of warming is considered as relatively safe, is in fact inadequate due to the severe risks and potential irreversible impacts. Instead, the long-term goal should be defined as a ‘defence line’ and efforts should be made to put the line as low as possible. It’s important to note that more than 100 Parties already support limiting warming to 1.5^oC, a group only likely to gain members in the run-up to Paris.

From the 10 key SED messages, ECO wants to reiterate three:

1) Warming of 2°C would lead to catastrophic impacts, slow down economic growth and hinder poverty reduction efforts considerably.

2) The world is not on track for a path towards a 1.5/2°C scenario. Past and recent global GHG emissions have accelerated, the emissions gap is growing, and the current Cancun pledges are more consistent with pathways limiting global warming to 3-4°C.
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“If, and this is the case here, there is a high risk of dangerous climate change with severe and life-threatening consequences for man and the environment, the State has the obligation to protect its citizens from it by taking appropriate and effective measures.”

 The Hague District Court, 24 June 2015

You can’t have missed it: the Dutch NGO Urgenda, alongside over 900 citizens, recently won a historic climate lawsuit against the Dutch state. The Court in The Hague confirmed what scientists, the public and civil society have long known: developed countries must take more climate action, now. And if they don’t, they face being held legally liable for impacts of their inaction.

Accordingly, the Court ordered the Dutch government to reduce its emissions by a minimum of 25% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, deeming the current target of 17% wholly inadequate.

And rightly so: for a likely chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, developed countries must make much bigger cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions. In mandating a 25% target, the Court expressly provides a great deal of leeway for the Dutch state, noting that, “a reduction target of this magnitude is the absolute minimum“.

However, what might have been an opportunity for Dutch leadership and an ‘orange is the new green’ attitude has instead become a fossil-worthy fiasco.
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With severe climate impacts already harming vulnerable people and ecosystems, Parties’ attention to a global adaptation goal is essential—and long overdue.

To be strategic, visionary, and durable, a global adaptation goal should complement an ambitious long-term mitigation goal that limits global warming to 1.5°C. A global goal should advance adaptation to increase resiliency to the impacts of climate change. This should be underpinned by principles, building on those agreed in the Cancun Adaptation Framework. The pathway to achieve the goal must be dynamic, taking into account increasing warming, and scaling up disaster risk reduction to minimise residual impacts and loss and damage.

It must also be underpinned by key mechanisms. First, gradually and regularly advance an understanding of how countries are managing current and expected climate risks, and the sufficiency of those efforts. Countries will need to prepare for the expected level of warming—more than 3°C due to inadequate INDCs.

Second, regularly assessing needs in terms of support, in particular financial support based on CBDR+RC. ECO imagines that National Adaptation Plans, adaptation components of the INDCs, or those included in National Communications could inform this assessment.

Third, establishing a process for meeting public finance targets for adaptation by developed countries and others that significantly reduces the gap between needs and the support provided.
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