Category: Previous Issues Articles

Keeping global warming below 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels is critical for the survival of all Parties negotiating in Lima. That goes for the food and water security of all nations, as well as all our livelihoods. There can be no other conclusion from the new IPCC report.

To have a chance to stay under the 1.5 °C limit, we simply cannot delay action until 2020. Instead, we need to start the transition to a different and better energy future now.  And that means stopping the lock-in of high-carbon infrastructure so we can phase out all fossil fuel emissions and phase in 100% renewable energy by 2050 at the latest.

Parties established ADP Workstream 2 because they know that the pre-2020 mitigation gap needs to be closed. Now we need a strong decision in Lima that will enable and ramp up this work rapidly to deliver really significant additional emissions reductions.

In this pre-2020 period, developed countries must not only deliver on their past commitments but further increase them. They also need to provide the support needed for more ambitious mitigation action in developing countries.

But we seem to be slowly losing sight of these crucial parts of WS2. There used to be a reminder in the draft text that urged Parties not to forget about those elements.
... Read more ...

If ECO may be so bold, here’s a wonderful idea. The COP should take advantage of the opportunity to give guidance to the Green Climate Fund, as it aims to begin distributing money by the second half of 2015. The COP could play a most helpful role in providing the following guidance, requesting the GCF Board:

• Increase the transparency and accessibility of its proceedings by immediately implementing live webcasts of all future Board meetings.

• Adopt an exclusion list policy, as part of the Investment Framework, that clearly defines what the GCF will not finance, including any direct or indirect support for fossil fuels.

• Ensure a decision-making process in the absence of consensus that is one-person-one-vote, to maintain balanced governance of the GCF, thus rejecting any link between decision-making power and the size of contributions.

• Expedite the pilot program for enhanced direct access with an view to reaching local communities, including indigenous peoples.

• Reaffirm that contributors may not target their contributions to specific windows, in line with the Board’s discussion at its last meeting in Barbados.

• Request the Secretariat to reflect geographic and gender balance in its staffing.

It’s particularly welcome that the G77 and China are supporting webcasting of GCF Board meetings, while the US and Japan have inexplicably led a charge to block that from being included in the guidance.
... Read more ...

Yesterday in the Canadian Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called regulating the largest source of carbon emissions in the country, the oil and gas sector, “crazy” – twice!

What seems crazy to ECO is to expect that Parties would somehow not see the massive bait and switch the Canadian government is trying to pull.

In Warsaw a year ago, the environment minister promised during the High Level Segment that oil and gas emissions would be regulated in Canada.

During yesterday’s speech, this promise was forgotten and instead the main targets mentioned were HFCs. For the record, the oil and gas sector emits 25% of Canadian emissions, and growing quickly; HFCs contribute just 1%.

Canada’s independent environment watchdog has said that, without regulations on Canada’s oil and gas sector, the country’s Copenhagen target is officially out of reach.

Crazy indeed!

As everybody is getting excited about a new climate deal, let’s not forget that we still need to ratify Kyoto’s second commitment period. Negotiations on these KP issues are technical and few people have been paying attention to them.

So dear old Australia, proud winner of multiple Fossil of the Day awards here, we are watching you! And we have noticed that you would like to redefine what “emission” means to help determine your baseline under the (in)famous Doha paragraph 3.7ter. And that you are trying to convince other Parties to agree to this little accounting trick.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s do the numbers: This “little” accounting trick would get Australia an additional 80 million tonnes which it could emit. Add these to the more than 100 million tonnes Australia has left over from the first Kyoto period – and a whole bunch of LULUCF credits – and hey presto! Australia can significantly increase its emissions and still meet its Kyoto target.

May we remind Australia and everybody else once again that the atmosphere does not see
accounting tricks, only real emissions.

This is getting bizarre . . . Australia wins the Fossil of the Day Award . . .again!

  Is it lack of sleep? Is it the heat? They are making some very telling statements at this COP, statements that slip into the realm of willful ignorance.

  Here in Lima, Australia says that they don’t understand the concept of a ‘long-term
temperature limit’.

  Continuing their slapstick approach, Australia has also stated it doesn’t really understand the idea of ‘global solidarity’ either. 
  Here’s a newsflash: we live in a single biosphere and we are all in this together when it comes to climate impacts.

  We all do silly things, but not all the time. Now is the time for Australia to shape up and take these negotiations seriously – perhaps a refresher on the Cancun agreement on the global temperature threshold. Then their Prime Minister could visit some of the vulnerable islands off the coast of Australia and the drought and wildfire-stricken districts in their very own country.

The Christmas stores are open all over Lima and the trees and decorations are going up. Early yesterday morning, ECO got a taste of the Noche Buena feeling when the co-chairs delivered not one but two new texts.

So here we are, ready to check out the highlights on display and note some missing ornaments. While there is both candy and coal in ECO’s stocking, overall the new texts provide for cautious optimism.

The draft COP decision text zooms in on the INDCs and pre-2020 ambition (a more evocative phrase than “WS2”). On the latter point, the sentence urging developed countries to scale up their commitments to 2020 seems to have got lost. ECO thinks it rolled under the couch and can easily be retrieved and put back on the tree.

The text is also rather quiet on spelling out how to deliver the funds that we need to move pre-2020 ambition to action – the roadmap to scale up finance to $100 billion. That one may be stuck under an armchair cushion, but it’s within easy reach. Something nice on the tree, though, is that finance being included as part of the INDCs.

On the matter of countries doing their fair share, that is referenced but it’s not detailed enough.
... Read more ...

Unnoticed by most, a precedent was set this Saturday and Monday in Lima. Over the course of two days, the first sessions of the Cancun MRV workshops – the multilateral assessment of the first Biennial Review reports by Annex I Parties – unfolded in Plenary Cusco.

Sixteen countries and the EU bloc participated in this new transparency process, reporting progress on policies and measures in fulfilment of their Cancun pledges, and responding to questions raised by fellow negotiators.

But ECO felt a bit let down. These workshops promised to deepen the understanding of the situation of each presenting country whilst demonstrating that they are acting in good faith and working hard towards meeting their commitments.

But despite the fact that MRV primarily aims at promoting transparency and trust, the workshops were designed in something of an exclusive manner – with representatives from civil society sitting in the back of the plenary with no opportunity to contribute to the discussions.

ECO wonders who would be better placed than civil society organizations and national research institutions with relevant experience to contribute to a better collective understanding of the respective domestic circumstances and policy developments in each developed country? Yet instead of taking part in a lively dialogue over these two days, the delegates put themselves through long and technical discussions, sidelining other vital inputs.
... Read more ...

Yesterday morning, ECO was hardly awake when the much anticipated new ADP texts popped up. With glacial melting in Peru and yet another catastrophic typhoon in the Philippines, it was imperative to look at the adaptation and loss and damage section carefully. A number of good elements are still in there but also a few new ones are evident – for example, that loss and damage seems to be on equal footing with adaptation, and a separate section speaks to the reality that it goes beyond adaptation.

ECO likes the proposal to have new and additional finance for the loss and damage mechanism independent of adaptation budgets. Also good is the proposal for a clear adaptation finance figure, though the link to INDCs and adaptation needs is missing. It’s also good to see the the inclusion of adaptation in the 
INDCs in conjunction with National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), but on a different legal footing than mitigation. The decision text should speak clearly on the need of finance for the preparation and implementation of INDCs.

There are a few issues where concerns remain. For example, the mere mention of a global goal on adaptation is not enough. It needs to be 
defined as outlined here yesterday.
... Read more ...

What a drag! The Peruvian Ministry of Environment has done some impressive work as the President of COP 20.
But other elements in the government of Peru are undermining broad, national efforts to tackle climate change, and have pushed through the Ley Paquetazo which severely weakens environmental supervision –

which is why Peru gets the Fossil of the Day.

Our Filipino colleague writes:

Before leaving for Peru, I hoped I’d see progress and unity at COP – especially given Lima’s key role on the road to Paris. So far I’ve been disappointed, and to add insult to injury another typhoon is lashing through my birth country.

As I write, a million people are living in evacuation centres praying their houses and sources of income are not affected as badly as last year.  While we don’t yet know the extent of the devastation, we do know we will be counting bodies once again.

Year after year, devastating typhoons have slammed the Philippines during these negotiations. And year after year, negotiators express their sympathy and condolences – while bringing us ever closer to an unjust deal that will guarantee more extreme weather events.

And there is another perverse theme at these climate negotiations: the continued presence and impact of the fossil fuel lobby. The WHO does not allow big tobacco to even attend their meetings, yet the UNFCCC is saturated with fossil fuel
involvement. As a Filipino, this is outrageous and insulting. We pay the price for their continued influence in this process.

But as we continue to pay, we refuse to act as a poster child for devastation any longer.
... Read more ...