Category: Previous Issues Articles

We know that life on Earth is facing two interlinked emergencies – climate, and biodiversity – both of which result from human pressure on the natural world, and both of which have only a small window of time left in which we can act to solve them.

Each crisis makes the other worse. Every time we clear or log a forest, drain a wetland, dry out a peatland, bleach a coral reef, over-exploit a fish stock, trawl a seagrass bed or dam a wild river, we make things worse, whether exacerbating the climate crisis, or further damaging biodiversity; in turn, reducing ecosystem integrity and stability. Carbon, formerly safely stored in those ecosystems, is released.  Once damaged, these natural ecosystems are then more vulnerable to further loss and damage from drought, fire, acidification, deoxygenation and climate change.  All of which risks increasing the release of GHGs to the atmosphere and making the future for biodiversity on which our lives depend ever more tenuous. Indigenous peoples appreciate this more than most, often having a closer and deeper relationship with nature; yet their wisdom is ignored, their territories invaded and destroyed, and their human rights disregarded in the name of the most climate- and nature-unfriendly initiatives.
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The twin traumas of social and environmental crises are bearing down on citizens around the world, but political leaders lack the passion and ambition needed to address thelooming catastrophe. In some places, they lack even simple acknowledgement and acceptance. To get a better sense of what happens outside the walls of COP, ECO spoke with youth from Chile and Mexico, and their experiences show how stark the contrast is between the struggles of people on the ground and the attitudes of their leaders. The people in charge could learn a thing or two about working together from these youth.

What’s clear is that the climate crisis and the social crisis are two sides of the same coin, and need to be addressed together in order to fully be addressed at all.

Chileans are facing enormous challenges with their government. And because COP25 was supposed to be there instead of here, let’s hear from a Chilean youth as COP comes to a slow, unsteady end.

What the world, and even Chile’s own government, doesn’t understand is how most Chileans are alarmingly exposed to the disastrous effects of the environmental catastrophe. Because of extreme social and economic differences, the 1% live comfortably and ignore the social issues that affect the most vulnerable.
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Six long months ago CAN published a briefing on climate change and the SDGs which rightly sought to bring the discussion way beyond goal 13 on climate change. In this, it argued that efforts to achieve all the goals are dependent on efforts to respond to global heating. The clue is in the ‘sustainable’. Similarly, responding to the climate crisis depends on advances made towards the development goals.

As the IPCC 1.5ºC report said: “sustainable development supports and enables the fundamental societal and systems transitions and transformations that will help limit global warming to 1.5°C. It can achieve ambitious mitigation and adaptation in conjunction with poverty eradication and efforts to reduce inequalities”.

Several SDG themes (i.e. socio-economic sectoral categories) are addressed by numerous climate actions, indicating that there are multiple opportunities for policy coherence. This can be a major contribution of climate action to the delivery of coherent delivery of Agenda 2030.

Analysis has shown that links between existing NDCs and the SDGs are found in the areas of water, food and energy.

Despite environmental goals being represented in a bunch of the NDCs, many countries do not make explicit plans to realise potential for nature-based solutions that could help deliver SDG 14 (life below water) and 15 (life on land), as well as contributing to climate mitigation and resilience.
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ECO [welcomes] [recognizes] [notes] the publication of the triad of chapeau decisions, known to all you negotiating lovelies by the melodic monikers 1/CP.25, 1/CMP.15 and 1/CMA.2.

There are good elements in the current drafts, but there is still room for improvement in the remaining [2][3][4] days of COP.

ECO welcomes the strong thread of scientific recognition, especially in 1/CP.25. Indeed, for climate change, it is imperative for our survival that politics is led by science. It is evil for politics to play fast and loose with the facts, and the fact is, much greater mitigation action is needed. An explicit mandate for all Parties to revise and enhance their NDCs — both mitigation and adaptation intentions — by October 2020 should be included. And since the decision text includes recognition of the gap, it should also include a mandate for the secretariat to calculate the size of the gap, based on NDCs received, in time for COP26. The potential of nature for helping deliver resilience and mitigation aims is already well explored, and now should be the time to realize this potential. Regarding nature: while the importance of ocean ecosystems is well reflected in the text, it seems odd that land does not receive similar recognition. 
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Yesterday, Saudi Aramco, the Saudi state-owned oil company, floated 1.5% of its shares on the country’s stock exchange in the world’s largest Initial Public Offering. The IPO is expected to raise at least US$26 billion for the company, and potentially up to $29b – which is the largest influx of financing for fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was signed. Aramco is also the largest single corporate source of carbon emissions since 1965.

Here in Madrid, negotiators are stuck on how to finance loss and damage. So here’s a modest proposal: a [2][5]% share of proceeds levied on trading in Aramco and other oil companies’ shares to provide funding for addressing loss and damage in the most vulnerable countries. This would operationalise the Polluter Pays Principle, and directly link financing for loss and damage to the companies most responsible. This is what we call climate justice!

ECO would like to remind developed countries of the US$100 billion climate finance commitment they promised to deliver annually by 2020. We are not sure whether you have noticed that there is actually not much time left to hit the target, as 2020 is getting closer.

ECO especially worries about the slow progress on the adaptation finance share of your commitment. The climate crisis is already hitting hard on many people, especially those who are the most vulnerable. Those people rely on you to live up to your promises by 2020.  But some developed countries seem to have forgotten the fact that they promised that half of their $100b promised would be for adaptation action. The recent OECD update made us doubt that developed countries are on the right track… In 2017, adaptation finance only rose to $13.3b. What is your plan to get to at least $50b for adaptation action by 2020?

ECO would like to suggest one concrete option available: contribute to the Adaptation Fund (AF)!

The AF is effectively channelling adaptation finance to people and communities most vulnerable to climate change. With its small, localized, mainly direct access projects, it serves as an important niche in the international climate finance architecture.
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Have you ever thought about what you would do if the climate changed the place where you live? When climate impacts hit, impacting your life and livelihood, you have to decide: stay or go. In the driest corridor of Central America, it has been years since rainfall catastrophically decreased.

When the El Niño and climate change made life unsustainable, Yensi Marisela and her husband decided to move to Tegucigalpa. There he found work, and she joined a factory in a special economic zone. Some time after, the son of one of her friends was murdered in a shootout. The insecurity caused by gang activity, cost of living, and the lack of dignified work meant Yensi returned home, while her husband stayed and sent money home.

The drastic change in rain patterns have ruined the harvest in the Dry Corridor, where 60% of people already live under the poverty line and rely on subsistence agriculture. This is a humanitarian crisis aggravated by climate change in which migration is often the only viable option. Migration often occurs within country borders or towards Costa Rica and El Salvador, and more recently, there are increased migration flows towards other international destinations. 

Studies on the gendered impact of climate change show an increased flow of female migrants toward Spain and the US as housekeepers.
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Well, after already delaying a year, it looks likely that the 6-year work-plan for the Forum on the Implementation Response Measures has stalled, though discussion continues, facilitated by a pair of Ministers. 

While it sounds nice to include “recalls the imperative for a just transition,” in the draft decision, let’s be honest, there is NO action in remembering something. That is just unacceptable. 

This round of negotiations started out promisingly as countries began to discuss issues related to a fair, equitable, and just transition from a dirty fossil-fuel energy economy to a 100% clean, renewable one. But, they also demonstrated how difficult and critical these issues are, particularly if countries want to ensure (as they should) that the transition protects the rights of Indigenous communities, workers and unions, youth, women and gender constituents, people with disabilities, frontline communities, and other structurally oppressed groups. 

A just transition – if done right – will jumpstart new social and economic development with a more resilient and democratic economy, while increasing climate ambition. It is, therefore, central to every country’s effort to decarbonize. Yet, equity and justice continue to be divorced from ambition goals, NDCs, finance, and other commitments, siloed inside one single forum.
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After a frustrating series of negotiations leading to bland compromises on unblocking funds for poor countries to make plans, a toothless criticism of the committee charged with ambition, and an unseemly struggle for control over the accounts, adaptation has been stranded at this COP.

The clue is in the name: climate change. When things change, we have to adapt to the new circumstances. What could be bigger than a change in the climate? Albert Einstein once described the environment as ‘everything that isn’t me’. Change that, and I have to adapt everything I think, plan, and do.

Of course, mitigation would be best. But, where we find ourselves today, adaptation has to happen. Millions of people are already faced with fundamental challenges: more frequent droughts, flooding, and storms threaten food security, ways of life, and basic rights. US$13.3 billion in adaptation finance is far below the $50b goal. The Adaptation Finance Gap report from 2016 tells us that adaptation costs could increase up to $300b by 2030.

Without a concerted effort by international institutions like the UN, adaptation will be a piecemeal effort with insufficient resources used inefficiently and ineffectively. The Global Commission on Adaptation is a start, but 1 year of action is certainly not enough.
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Right now, the youth of Australia are not being listened to by our government, even though the impacts of the climate crisis are here now. Sydney and regional NSW are blanketed with smoke from catastrophic bushfires, with fires all across the country, and air quality 11 times what are hazardous levels.

Yet our government is trying to use an accounting trick to get out of acting on the driver of these devastating fires, climate change. Energy Minister Angus Taylor has continuously made misleading claims about the government’s reduction in emissions. Taylor claims Australia will meet its targets 7 years ahead of schedule, which is untrue.

A meaningful global target for Australia would be at least a 45% reduction. Yet Australia’s target under the Paris Agreement is 26-28% by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2050. The Morrison government wants to count surplus emission reductions credits earned as Kyoto Credits. With these credits, Australia’s expected emissions reductions will be just 16% – not at all our fair share. We need to do something about this. We need to stop countries like Australia from being able to “cheat” their way out of real action on climate change.

Climate change is causing unprecedented drought and resulting in our bushland and forests drying out like never before, even in ancient World Heritage Listed rainforests that have never been subject to bushfire.
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