ECO hears that text on the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) will be coming out early tomorrow. While ECO waits to see what’s in it, it seemed like a good time to remind Parties of some of the things you signed up to last year. Things that you seem to have forgotten.
In the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact (Decision 1/CMA.3) you recognized that “limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century”, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases.
Oh-oh: you also recognized that “this requires accelerated action in this critical decade, on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge and equity, reflecting common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”. Guess what: you also emphasized “the urgent need for Parties to increase their efforts to collectively reduce emissions through accelerated action and implementation of domestic mitigation measures in accordance with Article 4, paragraph 2, of the Paris Agreement”. You established a work programme to urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade, and just a few paragraphs below you decided to convene an annual high-level ministerial round table on pre-2030 ambition. This was all good. But now ECO is struggling to understand why you think the MWP and those HL Ministerial round tables are not related at all, when you were the ones who came up with all this.
ECO has heard that some parties have concerns about the MWP extending the Paris Agreement or creating new obligations for countries. For this reason, ECO will clarify its understanding of “ambition enhancement”. No, it doesn’t mean you have to go through an expensive and time-consuming exercise of elaborating a new NDC document every year (unless you didn’t do that for your updated NDC; in this case yes, you should do it again!).
In ECO’s view, ambition enhancement could be – but is not limited to:
Considering sectors not previously included in your NDC and targets (if it’s not an economy-wide NDC);
Exploring transformations of electricity supply, industry, transportation and buildings, that will also accelerate energy access and general wellbeing;
Including in your NDC voluntary commitments you have taken on, such as the Glasgow Breakthroughs, or Sectoral Commitments
Considering the contribution of non-state actors/non-party stakeholders for emissions reductions;
Improving carbon accounting methodologies and being transparent about it;
Communicating new just energy transformation plans;
Including nature-based solutions like halting deforestation and conversion of ecosystems and forest restoration.
This isn’t new advice. Our friends from the CVF came up with a similar rationale last year, remember?
ECO says fear not, friends: ambition enhancement is an opportunity, not a threat. The IPCC’s latest report has proven that the economic benefits of climate action will outweigh the costs. The Global Turning Point Report by Deloitte Economics Institute states that if we take decisive climate action now, there is potential to gain $43 trillion in net present value to the global economy by 2070, and that nearly every country and sector stands to gain through swift decarbonization. What other process is going to address the gap between where we are and where we need to be by 2030? The GST won’t do that. The GST is aimed at influencing the next round of NDCs – we can’t afford to wait that long.