Category: Previous Issues Articles

The dust from COP20 has (barely) settled and now with just 10 months left before COP21 in Paris, Parties need to come together on the way forward to the 2015 agreement.

In Geneva, Parties will start from where they left off the draft negotiating text that is annexed to the Lima Call for Climate Action decision. The current draft has many options on most issues, some of them highly divergent.

There are several key issues that need to be grappled with if we are to get a robust and ambitious post-2020 agreement in December. One of the most difficult is coming to a shared understanding of CBDR&RC (differentiation). This is at the heart of many of the divergent areas, and the differences were just papered over with the last-minute compromise of language in Lima. ECO believes that the earlier Parties attempt to move towards a common understanding on this issue, the easier it will become for the negotiations to make progress towards an ambitious outcome.

The need for a clear and transparent review mechanism within the Paris agreement is another issue. Even though there was no agreement in Lima to conduct a review of the first round of INDCs, an institutionalised review mechanism that not only assesses progress, but also enables countries to plug the ambition gap, is key to the environmental integrity of the agreement.
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Career coaches assert that in order to be successful, you need to have a clear goal for what you want to achieve, then develop a pathway to get you there.

Today’s negotiations on the long term goal of the Paris agreement are, therefore, critical to help define our ultimate objective. That is: to reduce carbon emissions to zero and achieve a 100% renewable-powered world by 2050.

To have a likely chance to remain within the maximum 2°C warming threshold, the IPCC has provided us with a carbon budget of 1000 gigatonnes (CO2eq). That’s it. It’s all we can spend until we achieve the magic zero by 2050. If current trends continue, we’ll have spent a full third of it by 2020.

A growing number of companies, have endorsed staying within this carbon budget, recognising that the benefits of action far outweigh the costs of climate impacts. Unilever’s CEO is just one of many calling for zero emissions by 2050.

The good news is that economics, as well as climate considerations, are already defining the end of the fossil era. China’s 2014 decline in coal use shows that with political determination and strong targets and measures, the world’s highest emitting country can peak their coal use well before 2020.
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As you, dear negotiators, tackle Section C of the elements paper today, ECO urges you to think not just about numbers and principles, but about people. There should be unifying language in the general, operational section of the draft agreement text that recognises the human dimensions of climate change. We suggest:

“Parties shall, in all climate change-related actions, respect, protect, promote and fulfil human rights for all”.

240 organisations endorsed this language in a submission to the ADP co-chairs yesterday. It’s also what each of the 76 independent experts of the UN Human Rights Council recommended in a joint statement to the UNFCCC Parties during COP20.

Looks familiar, right? Yes, yes, it’s a lot like what’s in the shared vision of the Cancun Agreements. Since Cancun, however, we have noticed that this reference hasn’t done the job of ensuring that rights are adequately considered in climate policies. This language in Section C will help ensure that these principles apply to all pillars of the Convention.

Today is the day to make sure it lives on in Paris!

Why, you ask? Well, we can’t escape the fact that climate change has human consequences. The lives and livelihoods of literally billions of people are riding on what comes out of this process, and this language is relevant to every element of the negotiating text.
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When ECO thinks of Switzerland we think of skiing, watches, neutrality, delicious chocolate and of course, the Environmental Integrity Group.

ECO appreciates that Switzerland negotiates as part of a group with the stated priority of “environmental integrity”, but we wonder about Switzerland’s own integrity when it comes to its domestic emissions and commitments?

During the Multilateral Assessment in Lima, Switzerland became very evasive when asked why it would not opt for a conditional target of negative 30% emission reductions by 2020. Perhaps it’s because the country, to date, has merely achieved stabilisation of its absolute emissions. Switzerland offers population growth as a cheesy excuse for this lack of ambition. However, there is much more that Switzerland can do—like instituting policies to switch its population off of high-emitting oil heating systems, reducing per capita car ownership, addressing the startling fact that that average Swiss citizen racks up double the annual air miles of people in neighbouring countries.

ECO hopes that Switzerland will admit it has been off piste when it comes to climate ambition, and demonstrate its integrity by delivering on its 2014 United Nations Climate Summit announcement that it will become carbon neutral.

Minister Doris Leuthard, who made that commitment in New York last September, is in a perfect position to deliver on it.
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As Lima enters the end game, ECO stresses that the INDCs and the associated upfront
information requirements are at the core of the COP20 decision. The minimum expectation of a Lima outcome (based on the core of the Warsaw mandate) is a requirement of solid information provided when the INDCs are communicated. This needs to go hand in hand with the decision on INDC scope and assessment. Let’s look in turn at these three parts of the INDCs.

The scope of the INDCs is at serious risk of being unbalanced. Mitigation and finance are the absolute must-have elements, but also Parties that want to put forward information about their adaptation activities should be encouraged to do so.  And Parties’ fair share should be considered as the sums of domestic action and provision of support.

Assessments of INDCs need to be structured so that Parties do not feel they are being asked for more than their fair share, or that others are not doing so.

Therefore, it is essential that the assessment is of the individual equity of the INDCs, along with assessment of the aggregate effort. Furthermore, assessment will be fair only if it is based on the principles of adequacy,
CBDR+RC and equitable access to sustainable development.
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Perhaps it’s not widely known, but ECO holds an honorary Ministerial post. And so it was pleasing to receive a letter from 85 civil society organizations from around the world calling for loss and damage to be recognized in the texts coming from Lima and in the 2015 Paris agreement.

The real Ministers, of course, also received the letter (but if not, we suggest checking your junk folder and your spam settings, or your staff may have put it in the reading file right behind the Daily Programme).

As the IPCC’s recent AR5 states, there are “limits to adaptation” at all levels of global average temperature increases including 1.5 and 2 °C. With the world still on a path to a 3° C increase and more, the impacts going
beyond those limits will become catastrophically worse.

The issue of loss and damage is a priority concern for vulnerable countries and for discerning Ministers (such as yours truly,
Minister ECO).

Vulnerable countries have not only done the least to contribute to the climate change crisis, they are also the ones suffering the greatest loss and the severest damage from its impacts.

An effective mechanism to provide financial and technical support to vulnerable developing countries and communities to address loss and damage is urgently needed.
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As you go about the conference on this final day, here are two key points to remember:

1. Adaptation must have a central place in the COP20 decision text for the 2015 agreement. It should also be included in the INDCs, albeit in a legally distinct manner from mitigation obligations and with a voluntary character. It is important to recognize the adaptation efforts of developing countries and assess the progress in terms of capacity as well as any funding gap. After Lima, detailing of global adaptation goals, principles and cycles needs to be done for the 2015 agreement, linking it with public finance and expected global average temperature increase levels.

2. Loss and Damage should be distinct from adaptation and be adopted as one of the key element of the 2015 agreement. Loss and damage must be seen as being in a continuum with mitigation and adaptation, acknowledging that inadequate mitigation and insufficient adaptation lead to more loss and damage. The IPCC AR5 clearly stated that “limits to adaptation” are being reached. Therefore, loss and damage must be recognized as a separate element from adaptation in the new agreement.

ECO likes to think of itself as an environmentalist with a spreadsheet. The practical kind that identifies what the biggest obstacle is standing between us and a 2 or better a 1.5 degree world, and tackles it head on. We did the sums and ran the mode, and here’s what should be top of your lists for pre-2020 action and a central part of your INDC.

And it was President Calderon himself who reminded Ministers today that we urgently need to stop burning coal. That’s the recommendation that jumps out of his New Climate Economy Report, the hefty volume found on the tables of Finance Ministers around the world. And its conclusion: rich countries need to stop building new coal-fired power stations immediately and accelerate the retirement of their old ones; whilst middle-income countries need to call a halt to new coal in 2025. And of course, coal phase-out needs to go hand in hand with a fair, managed transition for workers to a 100% renewable future.

To get the conversation going, ECO’s scorecard ranks G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) on how they are doing in the move away from coal. We looked at eight different indicators, including how much coal each country burns overall; their coal dependency; whether coal power plant capacity is being added or closed down; how much taxpayer money is being spent on coal at home and abroad; and how stringently a country’s coal-specific regulation is.
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Representatives of the world’s working people expressed outrage yesterday that the draft text in these negotiations currently excludes any reference to the need for a just transition and decent work. The Cancun and Durban COPs included that language in the decisions.

Trade unions, supported by civil society in general, explain that – in addition to requiring ambitious emissions reductions and sustainable finance – it is critical that the Paris agreement also ensures that the transition to a clean energy economy will meet the needs of working families for decent and good quality jobs and protect the livelihoods of workers in carbon-intensive sectors. ECO joins the call to restore the reference to just transition and decent work in the text.

As 400,000 marching in the streets of New York said, to change everything we need
everyone.

In 2010, transport was responsible for 23% of energy-related CO2 emissions, with about two-thirds coming from road transport. Without concerted action, this number is poised to double in the next few decades. In order to stay beneath the IPCC recommended 2 °C scenario, it is essential that climate policy and action actively include transport.

Avoid-Shift-Improve (A-S-I) strategies provide strong potential in the transport sector, through mobility solutions based on sustainable transport systems. A-S-I works by avoiding or reducing the need to travel, shifting towards more environmentally friendly forms of travel, and improving the energy efficiency of vehicle technology and transport in general.

All components of this approach have been implemented at different levels both in developed and developing countries. Actions under this approach also have the great benefit of better air quality, and less road fatalities and congestion.

For example, the bus rapid transport (BRT) system in Lima, El Metropolitano, is a classic A-S-I project, and has expanded capacity and reduced travel times and emissions in ourhost city’s overcrowded streets.

Yet, the manner in which transport is being discussed in COP20 signals that parties are either not aware of the contribution of transport to GHG emissions, or they do not recognize the potential contribution transport can make towards respecting the 2° C  limit.
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