Category: Previous Issues Articles

ECO was pleased to wake up Sunday to the news that Presidents Obama and Xi had agreed to work together to combat climate change by phasing down the super greenhouse gases, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), under the Montreal Protocol. An agreement under Montreal could prevent emissions of 100 billion tonnes CO2e by 2050.

First that great party on Saturday, and then this?! For a while now, the EU has been busy pushing a COP decision at Warsaw that will urge Parties to begin this exact same process under the Montreal Protocol, and they are clearly excited to have China and the US in agreement. As Connie Hedegaard tweeted Saturday, “Welcome on board!”

All eyes are now on the next intersessional meeting of the Montreal Protocol happening in a few weeks, hoping it will turn this political arrangement into concrete, short-term action, which must not stop at phasing down, but start phasing out with appropriate finance and technology support to developing countries. HFCs are human-manufactured chemicals, primarily used in refrigeration, air conditioning and foam blowing, which were commercialised to replace the high-Global Warming Potential, ozone depleting, human manufactured chemicals phased out by the Montreal Protocol over the past 25 years.

Yet, HFCs are also extremely harmful to the climate, with global warming potentials much higher than carbon dioxide.
... Read more ...

Now that our love affair is truly over, you’ve got us singing the blues:

You never compromise anymore when we reach the limit

And there’s no commitment like before when you ratified the KP You’re trying hard to provoke us,

But comrade, comrade, I know it,

You’ve lost, that lovin’ feelin’,


Whoa, that lovin’ feelin’,


You’ve lost, that lovin’ feelin’,


Now it’s gone…gone…gone… wooooooh.

We could go on, but ECO really is not in the mode for singing anymore. You send your Top Gun here and let him strut and fret his hour upon the stage, waste two weeks of negotiating time, and for what? We understand you gave him the option to step off the stage, and he decided to continue to obstruct, just because he could. Is it just for the sake of his ego, or to try to elevate his prestige in Moscow, or just pure stubbornness?

If your excellent diplomat really has any good ideas for improving COP decision making processes, we haven’t heard them yet. So are we going to leave Bonn with a cloud the size of Siberia hanging over the negotiations? How dark will the storm clouds be over Warsaw when we arrive? Would we be better off not going?

ECO is amused by the blind belief in carbon markets the European Union maintains, while its own emission trading scheme has become a zombie. In the ADP, EU has argued that “new market mechanisms will deliver ambition”. Really? At home, Europe’s own emission trading is currently blocking ambition, and in fact encouraging a shift from gas to coal, as the emission allowance prices have crashed.

The reality is that demand for carbon market units is at an all-time low. Current prices are looming at around 0.4 Euro for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offset credits and at around 4 Euros for European allowances. The EU flagship policy is close to dead due to the reluctance of German Chancellor Merkel to fight for her legacy as a “climate chancellor”. This has allowed the conservatives in the European Parliament to block even the back loading of EU ETS (EU jargon for a temporary, short-term fix to the ETS).

Sandbag, famous for its brilliant carbon market analysis, estimated in its blog yesterday that in 2012 Europe’s emissions fell 27% below 1990 levels, once offsets surrendered into the EU ETS are factored in. This renders EU’s 20% by 2020 target irrelevant, and means that the EU’s ETS will remain useless in the foreseeable future.
... Read more ...

*By compromise, ECO mean somewhere in between what is scientifically needed and what YOU tell us is currently feasible.

The Conference of the Parties,
Recalling Article 4, paragraphs 1, 3, 4 and 5 and 7 of the Convention,

Reaffirming the unwavering commitment of parties to keep global average temperature increase well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and the continuum approach between mitigation, adaptation, loss & damage and finance that is required to ensure equity before 2020.

Reaffirming the urgency to address the current imbalance in mitigation and adaptation finance – in light of recent studies showing the adaptation and loss and damage costs in developing countries will very likely be well in excess of US$100 billion per year by 2020.

Reaffirming the need to raise mitigation ambition levels between now and 2020, and achieving emission reductions on the order of 8-13 Gigatonnes of emissions in the pre-2020 period, beyond existing commitments and actions registered under the UNFCCC.

Supporting the authoritative assessments demonstrating that staying well below 2°C will require several hundred billion of incremental finance per year and the shifting of trillions of dollars of existing private sector investments into low carbon technologies and solutions.

Emphasising that the commitment by developing countries to provide $100 billion for developing countries will be delivered in the form of new and additional public finance, through budgetary allocations from developed countries, supplemented by revenues from alternative sources of public finance

Emphasising the shortcomings of the main revenue stream for the Adaptation Fund in relation to the expected low price of CERs under the Clean Development Mechanism and the need for new and additional commitments by developed countries.
... Read more ...

ECO heard that GRULAC met yesterday and has had constructive discussions on an important issue for 2014. While ECO congratulates the region on a constructive environment for discussions, there is a lot of whispering in the corridors about it.

ECO hopes to hear officially and loudly what those whispers are ASAP so we can all get ready for it.

All Parties sign the following petition: Dear Russia, we promise not to gavel through an agreement without you being OK with it, because you are obviously more important than others, such as Bolivia, where in Cancun you gladly accepted an outcome without Bolivia being part of the consensus.

Listening to the ongoing discussions in the ADP Workstream 2 on short term mitigation ambition, ECO suspects that some might not have read—or have forgotten—the size of the pre-2020 mitigation ambition gap. For all the rhetoric in the room, one might be convinced that nations have forgotten that they have the power to decide whether the world will remain below the 2°C threshold scientists maintain as critical. Technologically and economically feasible trajectories to remaining below the 2°C level have been outlined. Without acting now, they are willfully choosing to neglect the known mitigation ambition gap science has shown, as well as the opportunities that exist to bridge it.

In this context, ECO would like to remind delegates of what India, China and others have helpfully underlined during Workstream 2 (WS2) discussions thus far: the time has come for developed countries to do their “fair share” in reducing emissions by at least 40% by 2020 (and reflecting on their consumption patterns).

The 2014 Kyoto Protocol ambition review is one opportunity for nations to reflect on the comparable upward revisiting of pledges; for instance, the EU has achieved its 20% target years ahead of schedule but with no expressed intention, yet, to step up its own ambition until 2020; or Australia, for whom, recent research shows, upping their pledge from 5% to 25% comes at essentially zero net costs.
... Read more ...

CAN Side Event

• Tuesday, June 11
• 18:30-22:00
• WIND (MoE)

Equity Reference Framework: Enabler to a successful 2015 climate treaty

Less than 1000 days to the 2015 deadline. CAN is calling for a formal process to develop an Equity Reference Framework that embodies the Convention’s core equity principles, and is designed to maximize ambition and participation. Such an Equity Reference Framework would give us, finally, a workable framework with which a successful 2015 treaty can be agreed.

Speakers:

• Christian Aid (Mohamed Adow)
• Germanwatch (Rixa Schwarz)
• CAN-Europe (Meera Ghani)
• CAN-International (Julie-Anne Richards, Moderator)

Party Respondents invited:
South Africa, Brazil, Norway, EU

It is encouraging to note that Parties were satisfied with the progress they achieved during the previous ADP session. ECO also notes that observers were allowed in the rooms and invited to provide input in several sessions and roundtables. Contrary to popular belief that observers prevent Parties from having an open dialogue, this clearly shows an absence of a correlation between the presence of observers and ability of Parties to talk to each other in a constructive manner. Far be it for us to suggest that there could also be an extremely long of list of “closed” contact groups and sessions in which Parties have failed to produce any meaningful results.

This finding is actually confirmed by a recently published scientific study suggesting that “governments interested in increasing public support for ambitious climate policies could benefit from more CSO involvement” (Bernauer, T. & Gampfer, R. (2013)). Now that we have successfully debunked this theory that our presence could possibly distract some honourable delegates, ECO would suggest that Party delegates welcome our presence and our expertise in all sessions – including roundtables, expert meetings, and informal consultations – with open arms (or at least not closed doors). When such a presence is not foreseen, the only thing standing between such a regrettable situation and an open and transparent process could be the courage of one delegate to bring this point to the attention of the facilitator of this gathering.
... Read more ...

ECO was impressed by the creative moves of the delegates on the dance floor Saturday night. Now, with only 16 meeting days left this year, ECO expects to see an increasing amount of creative and ambitious Party moves inside the negotiation rooms too, to make the COP in Warsaw a success. (It is worth clarifying that this does not mean wiggling out of commitments!)

2014 – the year of ambition – is just around the corner. The foreseen KP Parties’ revision of their targets next spring offers a timely moment for all countries to revise their near term targets, while Ban Ki-Moon’s leaders meeting in the autumn of 2014 presents a great opportunity for tabling new 2025 targets.

In Warsaw, Parties will need to commit to both strengthening their current targets (to bridge the 2020 gigatonne gap), as well as to putting forward new, post-2020 targets in 2014 that are fair and adequate. To ensure that the 2014 pledges will be transparent, quantified and comparable, Parties will need to agree on some guidelines in Warsaw. Equally, the Warsaw Decisions will need to give further clarity on the nature and scope of commitments for countries at different levels of responsibility, capability and development.
... Read more ...