ECO Newsletter

We’re moving into the final lap in the drive towards a global agreement in Paris. With just 10 days of negotiations left before we arrive in Paris, governments have their work cut out for them if they are to reach key political decisions as well as ensure the necessary level of precision within the text. The ADP co-chairs’ tool segregates the various issues and elements within the Geneva Negotiating Text (GNT) into three sections: Section I contains text pertaining to the core agreement; Section II has elements to be addressed via COP decisions; and Section III contains text where there is disagreement as to whether it belongs in the legal agreement, or an accompanying COP decision.

ECO believes that Section III contains numerous key elements that are necessary for an ambitious Paris agreement, and need to be moved to either Section I or II. Some elements in Section II need to be carefully considered for placement in the core legal agreement, as they will play a key role in the ambition and fairness of the Paris agreement.

Negotiators must build on progress achieved in the previous Bonn session, working to overcome differences on key issues and move towards convergence, rather than continuing to negotiate a text where every country continues to insist on preservation of its own proposals.
... Read more ...

ECO has noticed lots of talk about “houses” as nations work to construct a new climate agreement. Just as location is important in selecting a house, Parties will be carefully considering the location of key text to be agreed in Paris: what goes in the core agreement, decision text, and supplementary instruments or lists. ECO has some advice to ensure that the right house is built.

ECO believes that a package deal with careful placement of issues is critical to a Paris outcome that safeguards ambition, accountability, and equity, while taking into account national circumstances. Amongst other things, the core legal agreement should:

Establish key principles to guide implementation, including human rights for all.

Introduce strong, durable commitments for the post-2020 climate regime, including a commitment to phase out fossil fuel emissions and phase in 100% renewables for all by 2050; and global adaptation and technology goals.

Provide a means for Parties’ to anchor Nationally Determined Contributions as legal commitments, with an introduction of 5-year commitment and review cycles for both action and support.

And as for the COP decisions? They are necessary to create the operational foundations to ensure ratification and implementation of the core agreement. And they are particularly appropriate for elements that may need to be revised over time, for operationalising high-level principles from the core agreement, and for pre-2020 work programmes, including those needed to raise pre-2020 ambition and climate finance.
... Read more ...

ECO understands the need for brevity but the 15 paragraphs on elements for the Workstream 2 decision seems to have missed the point. Surely the brief didn’t read “never mind the ambition gap” or “maintain status quo”.

The COP decision must reiterate, in the strongest possible language, that developed countries have a responsibility to raise their 2020 targets to at least 40% compared to 1990 levels, in order to meet their fair share of the collective effort to stay below 2°/1.5°C.

It must also move the Technical Examination Process (TEP) from being an exercise to facilitating action. Opportunities have been identified, and now the TEP needs to facilitate urgent implementation of climate action alongside the creation of a system that can continue to unlock additional emission reductions over time.

Let’s use this week to draft text which actually does this, including:

• ​Explicit language on closing the pre-2020 emissions gap and avoiding insufficient INDCs that would leave us with yet another gap post-2020. Closing the gap is why WS2 was established in the first place.
• ​A technical process enabling the matching of mitigation opportunities with technology, finance, implementation expertise and decision-making power, particularly with respect to renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• ​Direction and encouragement to the financial and technical bodies to prioritise action with high mitigation potential, especially renewables and energy efficiency.

Dear Developed Countries: Newsflash — Loss and damage must be in the Paris Agreement. We keep hearing some really lame arguments as to why you’re keeping it out.

Lame argument 1: We don’t need L&D in the Paris Agreement as we have the Warsaw International Mechanism for L&D and its review in 2016.

ECO responds: Despite being agreed nearly 2 years ago, the WIM has yet to make progress. Its mandate is heavily contested and some developed countries have sought to undermine the only clear mandate in the agreement, the one that deals with finance. Some vulnerable countries are concerned that the 2016 review is a thinly disguised attempt to review the WIM out of existence.  By embedding the important functions of the WIM into the Paris agreement, we can alleviate these concerns. There should be no argument against this by those who genuinely want to see the WIM succeed.

Lame argument 2: L&D is just adaptation, and that’s already in there.

ECO responds:  Adaptation to having your home, community, places of worship and livelihood destroyed in super storm Cyclone Pam or Typhoon Haiyan is not possible. These are not impacts that can be adapted to — and given inadequate mitigation, they will likely increase further in the coming years.
... Read more ...

ECO welcomes the Islamic Declaration on Climate Change that was launched in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this month. The declaration, signed by a broad spectrum of prominent scholars in the Islamic world, will form the basis of climate action from Muslims around the globe.

Coming on the heels of the Pope’s encyclical, ECO is pleased to see people of faith united in the call for the transition to a low-carbon world. The declaration urges governments to deliver a strong new international climate agreement in Paris that signals the end of the road for polluting fossil fuels. It also urges the creation of an architecture that will give us a chance of limiting global warming to no more than 2°/1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Islam has been an important motive force through much of history. The Declaration helps channel the spiritual and moral force of Islam towards building a clean energy, climate resilient future, and at the same time, calls for specific actions based on the moral imperatives laid down in Islamic teachings. It calls on oil producing nations to phase out emissions, it calls on all leaders to support the just transition to 100% renewable energy and it calls on major businesses and corporations to divest from fossil fuels.
... Read more ...

ECO congratulates governments on the adoption of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This not only provides positive momentum towards Paris but, also sends a strong message about the necessity of adopting an integrated approach to sustainable development.

The Paris outcomes should build on this momentum and promote the effective integration of human rights and gender equality into climate action. Such integration would provide three crucial benefits.

Firstly, it would ensure that climate policies contribute to the protection of the rights of local communities. Particularly those most vulnerable and do not exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities.

Secondly, it would strengthen the effectiveness of climate action, by ensuring that policies and projects benefit from local and traditional knowledge, by providing broader public support for such action, and by removing legal uncertainties. Empirical evidence demonstrates that rights-based climate policies are more effective, resilient and have a lasting impact.

Thirdly, it would contribute to the implementation of the Post-2015 sustainable development agenda.

Today’s negotiations on Section C offers Parties the opportunity to ensure that the core Paris legal agreement explicitly emphasises the necessity for climate policies to integrate human rights, including the rights of indigenous peoples, and to ensure food security, gender equality and a just transition.
... Read more ...

While ECO daydreams about cycling along the Rhine into the sunset, the EU seems confused about how cycles move us forward. On one hand, the EU supports stock-takes of mitigation ambition in 5-year cycles. But on the other, it’s against synchronising commitment periods with these 5-year cycles, and has no 2025 target.

Now, a review cycle that is not linked to a decision-making moment lacks credibility and becomes a weak mechanism to increase ambition. All cyclists know that if you want to move up a gear, you need momentum and a mechanism that works.

Common and regular target end dates create political moments. To see that others are zooming forward can drive countries to go further on new updated targets. Without 2025 targets, the EU risks locking in low ambition. A deal in Paris won’t increase ambition over time if it’s based on cycles with missing parts. Just like a bicycle without pedals, a cycle without a mechanism that obliges countries to go faster won’t accelerate decarbonisation!

Some EU leaders supported a phase-out goal at the G7 and the Petersberg Dialogue. This goal has to go in tandem with meaningful short-term cycles – particularly because the goal they have set requires faster progress down the global path to becoming 100% fossil free and phasing-in 100% renewables. In that context, 5 year commitment periods make a 2050 goal mean something.

“Laudato Si” or “Praised be You” is the title of the much anticipated encyclical from Pope Francis, which will be somewhat longer than ECO and just as devoted to the future of our planet and people.   It will talk not only about climate but broadly of the environment and human development. Anticipated for release on the 18th of June, it will explore the relationship between care for creation and concern for the poor. It will help Catholics and all people, Heads of States and governments to rediscover the spiritual roots of ecology, and it will remind us all of our common moral imperative to act and have an ambitious long-term goal to reducing emissions.

The encyclical is being released ahead of both of the key UN negotiations on sustainable development and climate. In his message to COP20 in Lima, Pope Francis noted the “clear, definitive and ineluctable ethical imperative to act.” In the event, the outcome of COP20 fell short of ECO’s expectations. Pope Francis too described the results as “nothing great” and showing a distinct lack of “political will”.

Integral ecology, as the basis for justice and development in the world, requires a new global solidarity, one in which everyone has a part to play and every action, no matter how small, can make a difference.
... Read more ...