Category: Previous Issues Articles

Whenever we face a situation of danger or life-threatening circumstances, and emergency, the immediate response is “save the children first.” A historical code of conduct used in shipwrecks, guided by a very basic acknowledgement of children’s vulnerability in emergency scenarios. But that is not what we have seen at the UNFCCC.

With 32 years of delay, the UNFCCC has finally addressed the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on children through a GST decision for an Expert Dialogue on Children and Climate Change. Calling on experts from around the world, the Dialogue was held at this SB60 session. However, one fundamental group of Experts was missing from this Dialogue: Children. Only one child was officially invited and two others were present during the day. On the positive side, 62 Parties were present and called for a decision to mainstream child rights in climate negotiations.

Although COP is not a fun and safe space for children (yet), we have to address the elephant in the room: – children represent one-third of the population and half of the world’s poor, with 75 % of them living in the Global South. Unicef Deputy Executive Director Kitty van der Heijden reminds us that children are not mini-adults.
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Ever felt dizzy from all the top-down climate decisions? Welcome to the UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST), where the view from the top can give you vertigo. But don’t worry, ECO has a cure: a strong bottom-up approach that keeps us grounded and ready to leap forward.

Every five years, the GST should help us collectively check how we’re doing on our climate promises and leapfrog to the next level of action to phase out fossil fuels and remain below a global temperature rise of 1.5°C. But here’s the kicker: the process has been so vertical, it’s like staring up at a towering skyscraper from the sidewalk. Time to bring this skyscraper down to a more human scale and get everyone involved.

Imagine a sprawling garden where everyone – citizens, local and Indigenous communities, small-holder farmers, frontline environmental defenders, women and gender diverse individuals – get to plant their solutions and nurture them. Meaningful participation and input, rooted in the lived experiences of people already suffering from the devastating impacts of climate change, should take precedence in the GST. Gathering valuable information on challenges and inequalities, especially from marginalised groups and people in vulnerable situations, is critical to securing a just transition and not leaving anyone behind at global level.
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ECO would like to keep this intervention brief.

ECO feels that the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) has become a house of cards. Let’s list the issues that have dividedParties:

• The lack of consensus on who will lead the mapping of the indicators of the UAE-Belem Work Programme;
• The voluntary aspect of reporting on indicators;
• The importance of data readiness for developing countries is not stressed enough;
• And the cherry on top, the failure to include indicators relevant to means of implementation (MoI).

Without the above, the GGA is wobbly, and at risk of collapsing like a house of cards at the first sign of a breeze.

ECO would like to remind all Parties of the mandate of Decision 2/CMA 5 (para 24 and 32)on the effective operationalisation of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, which depends entirely on the provision of means of implementation, specifically adaptation finance. ECO cannot help but scoff at the notion expressed by some Parties that MoI does not fall within the mandate of the framework, when in truth it is the backbone that would ensure the GGA’s feasibility. And the work programme on indicator identification and development is crucial to breaking the lax, business-as-usual approach to adaptation in the UNFCCC.
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Golden Opportunity!! 

Debt Collector Job Vacancy

Can you

– do simple maths

– keep to deadlines

– knock on doors

– travel to the Global North?

Then the NCQC Debt Management Agency would love to hear from you! 

Send your CVs to PayUp@NCQG2050.org by June 13 2024.

As the climate negotiations unfold, ECO can’t help but notice a troubling development — some negotiators are confusing ‘funds’ with ‘goals’.

Let’s break it down. There are various funds under the UNFCCC: the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Adaptation Fund (AF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), and the recently created Loss and Damage Fund. These are financial mechanisms and channels under the Convention and the Paris Agreement. They are not climate finance goals. Got it? Good.

It is absolutely essential to solidify loss and damage as the third pillar of climate action, alongside mitigation and adaptation. So it’s a first tier priority that the Loss and Damage Fund is fully operationalised and adequately capitalised – as soon as possible. The Fund is the third operating entity of the UNFCCC Financial Mechanism, which puts it on par with the GCF and the GEF in importance – although not yet in developed countries’ funding support. 

Just because we have the new fund doesn’t mean we can skip having a distinct, thematic sub-goal on Loss and Damage within the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – that would be illogical.  The true logic goes the other way. 
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Dubai gave us the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), a gig covering domestic and international cooperation to support workers and communities in multiple ways. But we left without agreeing on the band or the tunes — how the JTWP should be structured and which themes it will cover. That’s why here in Bonn we are collecting all the options to be ready for Baku and then put the full orchestra in place to have a massive party in Brazil. 

To get ready for the show, this is what ECO says you should be looking for: 

• Ensure a fully balanced and transparent choice of topics for the dialogues (for example from an agreed shortlist of themes);
• Have the next dialogue on comprehensive economy-wide just transition plans;
• Promptly develop preparatory reports before each dialogue and summary documents that capture what is discussed; 
• Agree that intersessional time is required to respond to the scale and urgency of the discussions, and agree as well that the group of experts can steer the work in-between sessions; and
• Have the JTWP provide recommendations and guidance to constituted bodies and other relevant workstreams and processes outside the UNFCCC. 

It’s time to listen to the beat, be creative, and enable the JTWP to deliver outcomes for real people in the real world by COP30 in Brazil – the Baku warmup song needs to be in sync with justice! 

It’s the start of a new week, and what better way to get our brains into gear than with a quick 

quiz?

Question: Which source has the biggest share of renewable energy in OECD countries’ primary energy mix? 

Answer: If you said bioenergy, you get an A+. In these industrialised countries, many large-scale, centralised energy generators are now burning wood to replace coal. 

ECO has been listening in to Parties showcase their efforts to meet the ambition levels identified at COP28 as they take part in the first ever Global Stocktake (GST) Dialogue. In their efforts to firm up their NDCs next year in line with the GST outcome, parties will run into para 28 and its goal to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) report last week on Tripling Renewable Capacity found that Parties are not on track to meeting these targets (see Wednesday 5 June’s ECO article, ‘Light and Shadow by the IEA – Close the 3000GW Renewables Gap’). The scramble to make the NDC enhancement deadline will see parties make some hard calculations on how to deliver this target, and investments in false solutions like centralised big biomass energy are at risk of increasing.
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With the worsening of the climate crisis, international courts have entered the arena. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) took a massive step forward in its recent advisory opinion. ITLOS leaves no doubt: States are duty-bound to protect the oceans from the drivers and impacts of the climate crisis.

For those who have hidden behind the limitations of international climate treaties, this opinion should leave no doubt whatsoever: compliance with the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement is not enough to uphold the full range of obligations under international law. If anyone thought that showing up at a conference and making pledges here and there is enough, now it’s clear: you have to actually do the work and take all necessary measures to prevent, reduce, and control the GHG emissions polluting the marine environment.

We know that protection of the global commons is a matter of life and death – not just for entire marine ecosystems, and for the coastal and island communities most directly dependent on them and at greatest risk from the climate crisis, but for all of humanity and the planet.

And that’s not all.  In addition to this amazing ITLOS opinion, two other courts are also at work.
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Is Germany’s visa process structurally racist?  African delegates have been blocked from attending the Bonn UN climate summit for no good reason. They include climate advocates as well as Ministry officials. They all had UNFCCC accreditation. Many had their flights and accommodation booked. Yet the German government refused them a visa, or simply delayed issuing one, effectively silencing them.  Once again, people of colour from the countries and communities most affected by climate change have been excluded from the deliberations and decision-making process – all while big polluters, many of them white men from the global north, are allowed to freely roam the halls of Bonn.  These reprehensible and meaningless delays get many African delegates wondering whether Germany is fit to host the UNFCCC. If it cannot honour the most basic of its responsibilities as the host, that is facilitating easy access to visa for accredited delegates, then ECO feels…. Perhaps it is not. ECO has heard some Africans suggest that perhaps the UNFCCC headquarters and the Subsidiary Bodies meetings belong in a more people-friendly country instead, in the global south maybe? These meetings are, after all, where the fate of the most affected countries and communities is being determined. It is vital that representatives from these communities are able to personally engage in the decisions made about their future.

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Are you hungry? Desperately looking for a place in Bonn where you could finally have a good, healthy meal of your choosing? Just like an incomplete meal doesn’t give you all the nutrients and nourishment you need, an NDC that doesn’t cover all elements of climate action leaves you missing opportunities to effectively address climate change. Thankfully, the GST should be able to get you started on a balanced and complete approach. The next generation of NDCs are those that can keep the Paris Agreement’s objective to limit warming to 1.5 degrees alive. They can save ecosystems, jobs, livelihoods, and cultures. They can save lives, many lives.  The GST process provides a large body of evidence to inform more ambitious NDCs, aligned with the best available, most recent science and human rights obligations. Countries need to transition away from fossil fuels, deliver adequate climate finance, protect people, forests, oceans and other ecosystems from climate catastrophes and enable adaptation and respond to impacts where they are felt.  All these elements provide opportunities on their own, but when put together they pave the way to a planet that stays below 1.5°C.  But for all of us to enjoy the successes that this path promises, the approach needs to be fair, equitable and just.

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