Category: Previous Issues Articles

If ECO were in the business of writing horoscopes (we are in the business of writing quizzes though!), and if 13 and 40 were numbers to be avoided at all costs then today isn’t a good day for the Arctic.

Both the US and Nordic countries have signed the Paris Agreement and their leaders affirmed they are ready to work on implementation. In fact, at the recent US-Nordic Leaders’ Summit in Washington D.C., they declared that they will work together on managing the Arctic region with an ecosystem-based approach, balancing conservation and sustainable use of the environment.

In light of these good intentions, it was a surprise to learn that Norway has just awarded 13 companies a staggering 40 licenses for oil and gas exploration in the Barents Sea. Drilling into the Arctic could also be seen as Parties drilling holes into the commitments adopted in Paris.

This area deep in the Arctic waters is one of the world’s most fragile regions. These new licenses are in addition to existing Russian activity in their part of the Barents Sea, where oil is already being pumped offshore at a large scale.

All countries must act in accordance with their pledges from Paris and promptly phase out fossil fuels as soon as they can, especially those who are among the richest in both money and capacity.
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ECO was discouraged by a lack of ambition during Tuesday’s high-level workshop on implementing NDCs, mainly because we know that merely implementing NDCs is nowhere near enough to keep us on a 1.5°C pathway. The commitments on the table urgently need increased ambition. Let’s take a look and see which new-ish governments could take the lead by revising their commitments.

Canada is coming back, right? Prime Minister Trudeau came into office with a promise to hold a first ministers’ meeting within 90 days of COP21, aimed at forming a national climate strategy. Considering the climate horror of the Harper administration and its inadequate INDC, this would surely result in a new NDC with increased ambition, right?

Well, 160 days after adoption of the Paris Agreement, the “town halls” aren’t set to finish until mid-June. So far, Canada is sticking with its dreadful INDC. But ECO still hopes that the Trudeau government will walk the talk and put forward a new and actually ambitious NDC.

Canada, bring your ambition back up north and you’ll find sunny days!

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull let the world know he thought his predecessor’s climate policy (or lack thereof) was bullsh…we mean kangaroo dung. If taken seriously, Mr.
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To truly kickstart the transition towards 100% renewables by 2050 (at the latest), governments will need to increase global annual renewable energy investments four-fold. That means US$1.3 trillion by 2030, according to IRENA.

You might be thinking: “Whoa, that’s a lot, too much!”. But really, it’s fine — especially when the alternative is taken into account.  The annual costs of climate damages and deadly air pollution from fossil fuels would amount to $4 trillion — costs that mainly would impact the poor.

Similar investment growth is needed for energy efficiency, in all sectors. During the same period, investments in fossil fuels and nuclear need to decline by more than 50% from the present figure of almost $1 trillion. This is twice the size of the combined financing of renewables and energy efficiency.

To grow renewables to 100%, we need to start a few key things both simultaneously and immediately, well before 2020. Without further adieu, ECO presents The 7 Steps Towards The Renewable Future:

1) Governments need to regulate, legislate and incentivise the massive shift to renewables. This requires targets, steering and legislation in the financial sector.

2) Rich countries must significantly increase the support to poor countries for their own “Energiewende”.
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ECO has discovered an opportunity for new friendships! The launch in Paris of the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) was a significant outcome of COP21. AREI aims to provide universal energy access for all Africans by implementing 10GW of new renewable capacity by 2020, and doubling the continent’s electricity production through an additional 300GW of renewable capacity by 2030. At COP21, developed countries committed US$10 billion in support by 2020.

ECO has a few ideas on how to create momentum from this. For example, COP22 can extend this  ambitious initiative to a larger range of countries, including non-African LDCs, SIDs and other developing countries as another step towards a truly global renewable energy partnership. Like last year, this could become one of the most meaningful achievements of COP22.

It’s uplifting that there are indications from other developing country groupings who are eager to undertake similar efforts. Could COP22 see the launch of a new voluntary partnership involving all friends of renewables and the delivery of new support pledges?

ECO likes friendships and thinks such an initiative could strengthen action on renewables in a wider range of countries. Friends that help share experiences and lessons, enable the scaling up of finance, and assist each other in making use of existing financial resources in the GCF and elsewhere. 
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ECO would like to express its solidarity with the tens of millions of people around the world presently suffering from a super strong El Niño, on top of record breaking temperatures. These circumstances paint a bleak future for many, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalised peoples. Let us not forget, they are the least responsible for climate change.

A recent report highlights how, even at the current level of temperature increases, heat stress undermines well-being, the productivity of labour and sustaining health. And further, a growing number of nations are reaching the limits of what adaptation can do. In light of this, the reference to a 1.5°C limit, made by many Parties in their opening statements, sends a positive signal. It is also consistent with the decision made in Paris to bid farewell to the 2°C limit. The 1.5°C provision in the Paris Agreement helps the world better understand what the “well below 2 degrees” means.

Here in Bonn, governments have several opportunities to respond:

1. Make the ambition, action and support required for a 1.5°C pathway key parameters of both the 2018 preliminary -stocktake and the fullstocktake in 2023.
2. Start reviewing financial flows and scale them for a 1.5°C perspective, including phasing out subsidies for harmful fossil fuels.

ECO has observed that many people believe there’s already an ambition mechanism in place. But the disappointing reality is, we don’t have one (yet).  Though we left Paris with many useful things, that didn’t include a set of INDCs strong enough to support an real drive toward 1.5°C, nor even a clear plan for strengthening them.

A real ambition mechanism – one that can deliver 1.5°C – will need a significant number of Parties strengthening and resubmitting their INDCs before finalising them. Which is to say, before 2020, and the sooner the better. The key to ambition isn’t only in resubmission, it’s how all the mechanisms will work together to ratchet up the level of ambition. Here’s a recap of the mechanisms we already have:

• The NDC process with its bottom-up architecture, national planning and conditional NDCs, allows even poor countries to table ambitious low-carbon development plans. But they cannot, and should not, be expected to execute those plans on their own.
• The dynamic review cycle and formalised periodic process anchors and integrates a variety of iterative processes. Alongside that is the progression clause by which the Parties have agreed to avoid backsliding.
• The transparency agreement allows everyone to see what everyone is doing.

Before the SBSTA agriculture workshops, ECO wants to remind Parties that nearly 800 million people are chronically hungry. With over 75% of the world’s poor people living in rural areas and primarily reliant on agriculture, this issue needs to be higher up in the food chain of importance.

Commitments made under the new Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Decade on Nutrition, and the Paris Agreement all call for moving beyond the narrow considerations of yield. Producing more food alone will not end hunger in a changing climate: poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation are all drivers of food insecurity and vulnerability. Ensuring future food security requires agricultural strategies encapsulating environmental and socio-economic dimensions – livelihoods, land rights, animal welfare, fair and equal access to resources, decision-making and climate information, culture, and biodiversity protection.

The planned workshops must address the needs and contribution of small-scale food producers,who generate 80% of food in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Women play a dominant role, but lack equal access to critical resources, rendering them more vulnerable to climate change impacts. The workshops need to address the UNFCCC’s role in ensuring these populations can access the support they need.

Agroecological approaches not only improves soil health and water carrying capacity, but also empowers food producers, increases access to decision-making, and prioritises local knowledge.
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Here’s some good news: 2015 saw all the big international policy venues—from the Sustainable Development Goals to the Paris Agreement to the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction—commit to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment for more effective, just and inclusive climate and development policies.

The SBI in-session workshop on gender-responsive climate policy, with a focus on adaptation and capacity building, offers an opportunity to translate these principles into domestic climate actions. It is essential that a wide range of Parties and other stakeholders contribute.

To help set the direction, ECO has a few pointers on what Parties could focus on. To start, it is essential to address the discrimination women face in accessing decision-making processes and financial instruments, as well as improving their access to and control of natural resources.

Good planning and budgeting for climate action must be based on an analysis of gender and power dynamics. Parties must also broaden their understanding of what a gender-responsive approach is. It can contribute to tackling different types of inequalities—not only between women and men—and has the potential to benefit all aspects of society, both in developing and developed countries.

The outcomes from this workshop should inspire Parties to support a new decision that ensures the continuation of the Lima Work Programme on Gender after COP22.
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If governments are serious about keeping temperature increases to 1.5°C, the next step is obvious: scale up levels of ambition on energy transition. There is no time left to delay embarking on a just transition to limit irreversible and disastrous climate damages. Observed atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue skyrocketing — bad news indeed.

There are no two ways about the science. To limit temperature increases to 1.5°C, we need to have a carbon free energy sector by mid-century, if not earlier. If we continue emitting over 50Gt per year, that means significantly less than 20 years remaining of the carbon emissions budget.

The transition to 100% renewable energy over the coming decades is the single most critical move that needs to occur. To do this, we need to increase the rate at which we are shifting trillions away from subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear, and towards investing in the renewables transition. There is no turning back.

In Paris, 195 countries agreed to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C, aiming for 1.5°C. Yet, current INDCs are setting us on a pathway to around 3°C. To make matters worse, the remaining carbon budget even to stay well below 2°C might be used up by the time NDCs really begin to take effect. What we want is greater ambition now.

Parties have agreed that this issue will be high on the agenda at COP22 in Marrakech, with a high-level event on pre-2020 action and the facilitative dialogue on the implementation of pre-2020 commitments. This is all well and good, but we need to go beyond expert meetings, dialogues and events highlighting options if we are to close the mitigation and adaptation gaps. What we want is action now.

Delegates in Bonn must take the following steps:

1) Ensure that the Technical Expert Meetings focus on identifying barriers to more rapid deployment of climate-friendly technologies, as well as the actions needed to overcome those barriers.

2) Mandate the co-champions to spell out, in a scenario note, recommendations for decisions that Parties can take at COP22 to build support for the implementation of these actions.

3) Initiate a process under both the SBI and SBSTA to develop criteria for these actions, to ensure that they deliver real mitigation or adaptation change, respect human rights and food sovereignty, have environmental integrity and fully assess the potential risks associated with new technologies.
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