Dear Santa Claus,
Brazil made fun of you on Saturday, but our crucial 1.5°C guardrail is on life support; negotiators and the presidency have not been able to deliver a robust mitigation work programme during week one; and the draft conclusions that were adopted do not even have conclusions. So ECO needs your help for week two to respond to the climate emergency, both in the cover decision and in the Mitigation Work Programme.
During the pre-2030 ambition high level round table, we heard consensus regarding the cover decision firmly commiting to limiting warming to 1.5°C. But some countries should be on your naughty list: USA for using 1.5°C as a political pawn in a geopolitical chess game; Brazil for arguing for no cover decision; and some parties are reportedly even pushing for 1.5°C not to be in there at all! They should all be receiving lumps of coal. Or perhaps the problem is that they already have too much coal?
Speaking of coal, keeping 1.5°C alive means a fair phase-out of all fossil fuels. Even in the most conservative scenarios modeled in the latest IEA World Energy Outlook, total fossil fuel use peaks in just a few years, and gas demand plateaus by the end of the decade. This should be reflected in the MWP’s sectoral approach. But strangely the MWP’s xmas wishlist – the annex listing more than 50 items the parties wish for the programme to deliver – does not even mention the energy sector or the need to focus on getting to 100% RE power.
We’ve said this before. To protect 1.5°C, ECO wants the MWP to last until 2030 and to have a strong link to Ministerial Roundtables. The MWP and the Ministers both need this annual checkpoint to ensure that ambition and implementation are matching.
ECO is happy to report that during the roundtables, Ministers converged around the need for a financial incentive package that includes scaled up access to finance through, notably, non-debt financial instruments and a much needed reform of the Multilateral Development Banks. Including this package in the MWP certainly would be a gift that keeps on giving.
And finally, dear Santa, ECO wishes for a cover decision that doesn’t trade off a safe and habitable home. We need accountability on the Glasgow Climate Pact and welcoming the guidance from the High-Level Expert Group on Net-Zero Pledges. And for us to keep hope about climate justice, it needs to send a strong signal that limiting warming to 1.5°C – in line with the IPCC’s 6th assessment report – will limit the devastating losses and damages we are already seeing across the world.
ECO will not just be waiting by the chimney, rather ECO will be attending every MWP meeting in Room 17 for you to make our dreams come true… All ECO wants for Christmas is… a 1.5°C-compliant COP outcome.