Your Excellencies,
ECO has – like this COP – reached an age where time matters. Since 1992 we have had a great time going to COPs and talking about solving the climate problem. As our 28th COP is spinning into its final days we paused to reflect on the urgency of our task, and our “slow hurry “to actually do it.
ECO might be growing old, but ECO does not fail to realize and appreciate that the goal line at this COP is indeed significant. We are finally addressing the root cause of our common problem: getting rid of fossil fuels. ECO is all in favour (cheering from the sidelines now that the negotiations are behind closed doors).
Fossil fuels must be phased out. However, ECO can’t stop worrying about the time factor. To sort this mess, it is in this critical decade we need to urgently scale up reductions. We know this. We agreed on this. But so far we haven’t done it.
This time Eco doesn’t want another decision postponing action to happen in 2040 or 2050. This time we want action to begin NOW. We need a decision to have emissions peaking in 2025 and achieving a 43% reduction of emissions in relation to 2019 levels by 2030. That is science and, as we heard today in the Majlis, you don’t compromise with science – science is science.
Your excellencies, in honest confidence we all know that we have no experience at acting fast. To ensure we do what we say, and do what science says we must do, we will need to have check-ins on our progress at every COP and every SB session. In between, we must conduct both global and regional dialogues in order to identify what barriers are preventing renewable energy from displacing fossil fuels and work together on solutions to bridge those barriers (aka implementation, something we also need to work on while discussing ambition). And of course, if it needs to be mentioned, all of this won’t happen without the necessary means of implementation, predictable and at scale.
For this, we can build a new Dubai or Baku Work programme to follow up on the GST guidance for the next round of NDCs. And we can strengthen the Mitigation Work Programme, in which we already agreed in Glasgow and Sharm that is is with a focus on pre-2030. At this stage of the game we don’t care about the name as long as it delivers urgent reductions in this critical decade, which could be my humble contribution to “keep 1.5°C alive”.
Yours,
The Mitigation Work Programme