ECO Newsletter

ECO observes that the critical missing piece of the technology transfer puzzle is technology assessment. And why? Because all kinds of technology, even those we generally like, carry some level of risk. But some are much riskier than others, and that’s the point.

Here’s a well known example. Decades ago, lead became a common additive to gasoline despite its known properties as a human toxin. Narrow commercial interests and inadequate assessment allowed the practice to become widespread. As a result a generation or more were exposed to airborne lead and experienced health effects because basic principles of technological assessment and precaution were ignored.

In pursuing technology deployment and innovation to address climate change, we should not sacrifice safety for expediency. While the exposure to lead impacted only those countries that allowed the lead additive, technologies that have global reach can impact us all.

Here’s what that means for innovative climate technologies. By mid-2013, 78 developing country Parties had prepared their Technology Needs Assessments (TNAs) reports and action plans including the technologies they need to address climate risks, and more are in the process of developing their TNAs.

This is a situation that demands technology assessment.

The first question that arises is where this should happen.
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In June this year, the Santa Rita hydropower dam in Guatemala was approved under the Clean Development Mechanism despite grave concerns about human rights violations related to the project.

Communities in the Alta Verapaz region report that all those who were consulted on the project were actually the employees of the project. Attempts for consultation by those who are affected by the project were ignored by the company. Even worse, conflict resulted in violence including the death of two children. In
August, the company responded with a repressive
operation involving more than 1500 police officers forcing indigenous families to take refuge in the mountains.

A complaint from the communities was accepted by the IFC Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, who is planning an investigation in January 2015. The
financing banks are concerned and will investigate the situation in January 2015. But the CDM – intended to mobilise clean development – does not seem to be concerned.

To address this lack of safeguards, AOSIS, supported by Uganda, proposed to establish a CDM grievance mechanism to respond to issues of concern raised by stakeholders impacted by implemented projects. A grievance mechanism is the much needed step to start implementing the Cancun decision that Parties should fully respect human rights in all climate related
actions.
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Oh, what a horrible dream! The Saudi
delegation seem to be dreaming of a world made of men, only men . . . and a stream of pollution. Saturday’s fossil went to Saudi Arabia for speaking out strongly against the recognition of gender equality in the implementation process. The European Union also fell in disgrace for supporting the withdrawal of the language. Dear, oh dear!

ECO became very dizzy from just flipping through the pages of the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report launched yesterday: even with emission cuts to keep the world below 2°C, climate change adaptation is likely to cost developing countries $150 billion a year during 2025-2030 and could climb as high as $500 billion by 2050.

Put this against the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) estimates of $22-25 billion dollars in public finance for adaptation, of which a (pathetic?) $8 billion came as support from rich countries. It’s not only that far too little gets invested in securing food production, fighting water scarcity and protecting citizens from climate-related disasters. It’s also that the longer this gap is left unattended, the bigger the losses and damages from climate change will get over time.

ECO wonders if the high-level dialogue ministerial might be a great time to reflect on this gap and what steps need to be taken to close it. Obviously, the emerging call by developing countries for a roadmap that shows how developed countries will meet their promise to ramp up support to $100 billion a year by 2020 is a very first step to closing the adaptation finance gap. Showing this pathway would create the much-needed predictability and forward-looking transparency needed, especially by the particularly vulnerable developing countries, to enhance urgent adaptation action.
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ECO is troubled by recent revelations about bilateral finance for coal-fired power plants being counted towards climate finance obligations under Fast Start Finance.

ECO is also concerned that the Green Climate Fund Board has not explicitly ruled out the possibility that the GCF might fund fossil fuel projects. It seems painfully obvious that something called the Green Climate Fund should not support coal-fired power plants, but the experience of Fast Start Finance clearly shows that strict rules are needed.

In May, over 250 movements and organisations from developing countries – representing people bearing the brunt of climate impacts – wrote a letter to the GCF Board. This letter was also supported by 80 northern NGOs. The letter urged the Board to make it an explicit policy that GCF funds will not be used, directly or indirectly, for financing fossil fuel projects or programs.

ECO urges the COP, in its guidance to the GCF, to require the GCF’s Board to adopt an exclusion list that would prevent any Green Climate Fund money from supporting fossil fuels. The GCF’s mandate for supporting a “paradigm shift” leaves no room for it to support a continued global fossil fuel addiction.

ECO is delighted to announce that the ADP draft decision text now contains the option for a proposed amendment for paragraph 9, which would read: «decides that all parties shall communicate a nationally determined mitigation contribution for 2025».

This is exactly what ECO has been calling for, and the Marshall Islands was awarded the Ray of the Day yesterday for having tabled this text. ECO now urges all Parties to communicate their support for the proposal and affirm that they shall communicate an INDC for 2025.

AILAC also was positive in proposing a 2025 date, but with an indicative 2030 one alongside, as in Brazil’s proposal. ECO strongly welcomes their support for five-year commitment periods, and their concern to ensure that mitigation commitments are not locked in for the next 16 years, as sole 2030 commitments would do. However, there are concerns that once governments set a target, even if an ‘indicative’ one, it will become locked into the national psyche as the de facto actual target.

The 2°C temperature limit, for example, was an EU position going into the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and is based on IPCC Second Assessment Review science. Despite the science demanding ever more ambition, the EU has not shifted their position in nearly twenty years.
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Imagine a country hit by three of the world’s deadliest storms of the past three years and are about to face another typhoon. No this is not the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Unfortunately this is not fiction.

Typhoon Hagupit is bearing down on the Philippines – smashing into the Eastern Samar province which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) only one year ago. In 2012 Typhoon Bopha hit the Filipino island of Mindanao and in 2011 Tropical Storm Washi killed more than a thousand people and caused massive flooding. The Philippines has had the world’s deadliest storms of the past three years. We hope and pray that Hagupit will not fit in this category of terror. But such severe storms, and other forms of loss and damage, will be a more frequent occurrence as climate change worsens.

Delegates in Lima will face a devastating political storm if they fail the people of the Philippines, and other vulnerable people facing the worst impacts of climate change, and do not make progress on the operationalisation of Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.

Two important elements — sufficient representation for vulnerable countries, and a subsidiary structure of a financial and technical facility for the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage – hang in the balance in the current SBSTA/SBI text.
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The ADP decision on INDCs will be the key to the Lima outcome. If Parties agree to solid information requirements and meaningful review mechanisms, then we’ll be on the road to success in Paris. But if Parties are not given the tools and guidance that they need to define strong, transparent, and equitable commitments, we’ll be on another road altogether, and ECO will not even speculate about its likely destination.

We need INDCs that are based on the three core equity principles of the Convention:

Adequacy: INDCs must be specified precisely, and expressible as an ambitious number of tons of mitigation. If this bottom-line information is not available, then it will be next to impossible to do even the most basic assessment of the INDCs. Including assessing if we’re on a pathway that will prevent dangerous climate change and limit global temperature increase to below 2°C that keeps the door to 1.5°C open.

CBDR+RC: INDCs must represent a level of effort that corresponds, at least roughly, to the national “fair share” of the country that tables it. This fair share is to be understood in terms of differentiated responsibility and respective capability, and every country should explain, in just these terms, why it considers its INDCs to meet the requirements of Article 3 of the Convention.
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Have you ever tried climbing out of a hole with one hand whilst digging it deeper using a giant shovel with the other? Let ECO be the first to tell you: it doesn’t work.

While GCF pledges start to finally near the US$10 billion of initial funding, new analysis out today puts these pledges in a new light. Turns out Annex II countries are spending nearly 3 times as much to support the exploration for new fossil fuel reserves…with Annex II combined support for such activities at $26.6 billion annually.

You read that right. Coming on the heels of scientific report after report telling the world that there are already some 5 times more existing fossil fuel reserves than we can afford to burn, rich coun-tries are spending billions to support making those reserves even larger…and making the carbon bubble even bigger.

Public support for fossil fuels not only goes against basic climate science, it is a waste of public money that could go towards the critical task of helping all of us climb out of our climate hole. It’s far past time countries stopped funding fossils. An obvious starting point would be to stop making our climate hole bigger by financing exploration for new fossil fuels.

Five years on from Copenhagen, we have come full circle. This week’s SBSTA negotiations on REDD+ collapsed with no outcome, ending in deadlock – or “REDDlock.” Although most Party and Observer submissions recommended further guidance on the provision of information (i.e. reporting) on how safeguards are being “addressed and respected” to ensure its “transparency, consistency, comprehensiveness and effectiveness”, Parties failed to come to agreement. In what was largely a developed vs developing country split, the G77 and China lined up to oppose any decision on safeguards. The Co-Chairs made a brave attempt to reach consensus on developing “indicative elements” for the summaries of information (safeguards reports) at SBSTA 44 in 2016, but were unable to bridge the divide.

The failure here in Lima is deeply disappointing. It is now unclear whether REDD+ will be able to safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, or protect biodiversity and natural forests. REDD+ early movers are already developing their safeguards summaries, but without any guidance on what to include, shifting the burden to civil society to fill the void.