ECO Newsletter

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.

In the middle of widespread and growing dissatisfaction among developing countries with what can best be described as the “non-negotiating process” taking place here in Lima, there could be some encouraging developments on finance in the works.

Yesterday afternoon in the ADP, the co-chairs finally allowed Parties to see each other’s texts on the screen – a rather small step forward that makes ECO wonder what took so long.

The day also saw discussion on cooperation, support and finance; where South Africa launched a more significant initiative on behalf of the Africa Group (AG). After days of discussion on the finance and support sections, with little or no response to the many questions and challenges on process, the Africa Group put forward an alternative text for the finance section of the non-paper on elements.

ECO commends the Africa Group for this initiative, and thinks that Parties and the Co-chairs should accept the request that this text be used as a basis for negotiations on finance in the elements paper.

The paper is well-structured, concise, and covers most of the essential content on finance that needs to be in the Paris Agreement.

Some of the provisions that could make it a good starting point for negotiations on the content of the agreement include: the call for a collective quantified finance goal for the post-2020 period that includes a specific amount from public sources; consideration of a range of new sources of finance; a link to the amount of financing needed to achieve the agreed temperature goal; the need for continued scaling up beyond 2020; and primary but not exclusive responsibility of Annex I countries for providing support and finance.
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ECO welcomes Argentina’s early moves towards achieving 8% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2017, and 20% by 2025. Many civil society organisations and grassroots movements gathered outside Argentina’s National Congress to support renewable energy as this important bill was approved.

The bill proposes to accelerate the development of alternative sources of energy generation. In addition, it would create a Trust Fund for the Development of Renewable Energies (FODER) to support the financing of investment projects. Importantly, the fund would be backed by 50% of the money saved from importing fossil fuels.

ECO knows that the bill is not perfect, but it provides the opportunity for a festive and colourful campaign for public awareness toward a national strategy for renewable energies.

One thing remains clear: Argentina must show greater ambition in its national commitments and setting its targets for renewable energies – as they already have been promising this 8% since 2004.