Category: Previous Issues Articles

To facilitate the switch towards low-carbon, climate resilient development, the provision of support to developing countries remains a key item on the agenda. This support should come in the forms of technology and capacity building, and particularly through finance.

Developed countries need to live up to past promises, with developing countries rightly calling for a roadmap that specifies how the US$100 billion goal will be reached by 2020. Developed countries should respond to this call.

Even though it’s primarily developed countries that need to provide financial support after 2020, ECO wonders if countries with comparable levels of responsibility and capability are ready to join the club of contributors, too. For the sake of predictability, ECO supports proposals laid out in the Geneva text to periodically set collective finance targets, with separate targets for mitigation and adaptation, based on support requirements of developing countries.

ECO also feels that more emphasis should be placed on setting up a process to mobilise finance from alternative sources. The balance between mitigation and adaptation needs be to improved when allocating financial support, ensuring that adaptation finance corresponds to growing adaptation needs and is prioritised to the most vulnerable countries.

It is key that Parties agree on a vision for the future. ECO would like this vision to include phasing out fossil fuel emissions, as early as possible, and no later than 2050. This vision should also include phasing in 100% renewable energy with provisions of sustainable energy for all. Such a vision will help drive ambitious action among businesses, cities and other actors by offering a clearer sense of where the international community is headed on climate change.

ECO suggests that this vision should be captured in the negotiating text coming out at the end of this intersessional.

Paris should not lock in, unacceptably and dangerously, low ambition on mitigation and finance. Periodic upward revision of ambition based on changing circumstances should be built into the text to help close the pre–2020 emissions gap. The mechanism of ratcheting up would thus help reduce the risk of locking in irreversible emission trajectories.

This mechanism should not be limited to just mitigation but should be all encompassing. It should review the respective mitigation component of INDCs and their adequacy as well as fairness in relation to others. It should also allow for the regular setting and adjusting of targets for financial support. The mechanism should also look at potential areas where various UNFCCC institutions could play a much stronger facilitative role, for example the TEC and CTCN, particularly on adequacy-guided technological innovation.

There are disparate elements of this ratcheting up mechanism within the current draft text, and ECO asks Parties to flesh these elements out and afford the issue of ratcheting up the necessary negotiating time and priority.

‘Applicability to all’ has been agreed as a key feature of the Paris agreement, meaning every country needs to step up and play its part on climate action. The issue of responsibility still needs to be addressed, however, and governments need to allow time for healthy debate on this topic in Bonn. It is clear that the world has changed since 1990, but inequality among countries—especially relating to capabilities—persists.

For the 2015 agreement to be successful, and for countries to fairly bear this common responsibility of action, ECO wants to see consideration of differentiated responsibilities, particularly on financing implementation, and on the speed of the transition toward 100% renewable energy.

There needs to be stronger recognition that the effects of climate change will necessitate increased adaptation. ECO would like to see these negotiations advance the issue of a global adaptation goal that also makes the direct link between mitigation efforts and adaptation requirements explicit. Guidance for this pillar should build on the principles—premised on the Cancun Adaptation Framework—of appropriateness, gender equitability and a rights-based approach to adaptation.

Last, but not least, loss and damage within the 2015 agreement should be placed on equal footing with adaptation, especially since loss and damage comes into play when adaptation is no longer feasible. There should be provisions within the new agreement to anchor the Warsaw mechanism on loss and damage, give it real strength, and ensure additional finance. ECO also finds that the agreement should advance the development of compensatory approaches for those suffering from loss and damage.

These Bonn talks are critical, not just in shaping the Paris agreement, but also in achieving a common understanding on a range of important issues. Governments need to start fleshing out areas of convergence within the text, and points of divergence should be discussed at length.

Negotiators should also keep in mind that these talks are not just about streamlining a text; they are about realising climate justice. Developed countries must focus on helping those most affected by, and in the weakest position to cope with, climate change, acknowledging they are part of the solution and ensuring all climate actions respect and promote human rights and gender equality.

ECO’s desired results from this session are not only a shorter text to be passed onto the next round, but also progress on the critical issues, a clearer vision for the Paris Agreement and a renewed sense of collaboration between Parties.

We get the impression that Germany likes being ahead of the curve, it appears that Germany is leading the pack when it comes to what developed countries are doing on climate finance. Last year, was the first country to pledge to the Green Climate Fund. This year, just two weeks ago, at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced to double the German climate finance  by 2020.

ECO has been told that this is no empty pledge, and it actually refers to public finance from the government budget which is currently said to be approximately €2 billion a year, and set to become €4 billion a year by 2020. And so you know, Germany, we’ll be watching you.

It’s not just Germany that we’ll be watching though. ECO is excitedly looking around for others—yes, that’s you developed countries—to take up the challenge and use what time remains before Paris to prepare for their own announcement to match that of Germany.  matching . France, the US and Japan, please, no cheeky accounting of loans, including non-concessional ones, at face value, to look bigger than you are. Remember, we’re watching.

The other thing Merkel did was to call on  developed countries to draft a roadmap of how to meet the US$100 billion promise, and an important push for its peers.
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The Geneva session ends today—step one on the road to Paris. Ten months and just three more negotiating sessions to go!  The world is eagerly awaiting an international agreement that represents a turning point and brings us significantly closer to keeping warming below 1.5°C, ensures protection for the most vulnerable by ramping up adaptation to climate change,  and helps countries cope with loss and damage — the impacts of climate change that go beyond adaptation.

ECO looks forward to continuing the collegial atmosphere here in Geneva at the next session in Bonn, building on what we are sure will be frequent formal and informal consultations, within groups and between groups, over the next three months. Of course, Parties, listening to your commitment to transparency, civil society expects to be engaged in these discussions and is ready to provide constructive input.

So how can Parties best use the time between now and Bonn?  First and foremost, they must talk to each other, so that they come to Bonn with a clearer understanding of what each others’ proposals mean, where they see options for “editorial streamlining”, and how to maximise ambition in the Paris agreement.

Differentiation

The elements text is peppered with options for differentiation, in which “developed”countries are required to do one thing and “developing” countries are required to do another.
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Test your knowledge about the legal form of the Paris agreement. Multilateral choices possible!

1. Does the legal form of the agreement matter?
   a) Yes, it ensures that all Parties will fulfil their promises.
   b) Yes, otherwise the carbon market will collapse.
   c) Yes, as long as it’s possible to achieve it.
   d) Yes, because it could help countries meet the objective of the climate convention.
2. Many Parties call for a Protocol. What is a “protocol”?
   a) An unwritten rule on how to behave, like here in Geneva or on the Internet, often referred to as ”etiquette”.
   b) An instrument tied to and often seen as extending or deepening a treaty (see Montreal Protocol to the Ozone Treaty and other well-known protocols).
   c) Something to expect in Paris, because we like the enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol.
   d) Something to expect in Paris, because we like the lack of effective compliance we have now.
3. What would “legally binding” mean for this agreement?
   a) That it is written in such a way that everyone knows what to do and what to expect.
   b) That if a polluter that has to pay, it really has to pay.
   c) That the word “shall” appears more times than “will”, “should”, “can” and “may” in the text.