ECO Newsletter

Everybody always talks about equity, but no one ever does anything about it. In hoping that someday Parties might, ECO would like to present this quick cheat sheet.

It’s not true that “equity is in the eye of the beholder”. Sure, there’s a lot to disagree about, but the UNFCCC really does give us somewhere to stand. Three places, actually, for when all is said and done, the Convention affirms three high-level precepts: 1) Avoid dangerous climate change, 2) Divide the effort of doing so on the basis of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”, and 3) Protect “the right to sustainable development”. If it’s consistent with these 3 principles, it’s probably fair, or at least a fair enough start.

It’s CBDR+RC, not CBDR. Those last words in the second principle – “respective capabilities” – may be challenging, but they’re not any more challenging than “historical responsibility”. And in any case, they’re not going away anytime soon. Just because some Parties wish that the responsibility issue would simply fade away, that doesn’t mean that other Parties are being helpful by trying to push capabilities off the boat. Two wrongs, as they say, don’t make a right. Not even a development right.
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Once the negotiations move into a contact group, ECO can only hope that delegates will see finance as a central pillar of the 2015 package. Developed countries must show a record of year-by-year increases and projections of their continued increase towards 2020. Finance is instrumental to low global emissions and climate resilient development. A failure here will scupper any hopes for a success in Paris.

South Africa has reminded everyone that the funding gap remains huge: trillions of investment dollars need to be shifted. All Parties, developed and developing, have parts to play in setting helpful policy frameworks and in adopting fiscal measures designed to make investors think about where their money is going.

Providing public finance will remain key too, such as support for adaptation in vital sectors like food production in poorer countries and mitigation in less developed countries. Parties will also have to leverage large volumes of private finance and shift investments much larger than the promised US$100 billion a year by 2020.

The debate over finance is part of the equity and adequacy debate. ECO suggests that the first pillar for developed countries is domestic emission cuts, and the second is the provisioning of finance. ECO can’t help but think that, when developed countries prepare initial offers for their nationally determined contributions, they would be well advised to keep the funding gap in mind, and ensure that their contributions are helping to close it.
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Domestic preparations for intended nationally determined contributions may, at first glance, see an unpromising subject for an article. The issue couldn’t be more important though. The contributions that countries plan to submit, ahead of Paris, and the terms by which they’ll do so, remains firmly at the forefront of ECO’s mind. We’re quite sure that the same is true for many negotiators.

ECO could spend many pages outlining details of what countries should submit but for a change of pace, let’s talk about something that one particular country shouldn’t submit.

That’s right, we’re talking about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

As the US considers its plans to increase ambition, and as it moves (we hope) towards emissions reductions in line with the science, the only proper role for the Keystone XL pipeline is rejection.

But don’t just take ECO’s word for it. A new study by the financial analysts at the Carbon Tracker Initiative suggests that building the pipeline would incentivise growth in the Canadian tar sands production equivalent to the emissions from building some 46 new coal-fired power plants. Besides undermining American climate action, a presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline would also mean substantial emission increases in Canada, moving the maple leaf even further away from the targets committed in Copenhagen.
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We’re pacifists here at ECO, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a soft spot for a good game of competitive sport. And just like the race to a low-carbon, climate-safe future, negotiations can be a good game too – of course we expect everyone to be good sportspeople and act in good faith.

ECO remembers our mothers warning – “games ain’t fun without no rules.” It’s time that everyone took that advice to heart. For the games to really get started on the comprehensive, fair and legally binding agreement the world needs, we need rules to guide the discussion. Those rules, under UN processes require Parties to form a “contact group” before formal negotiations can begin. ECO suggests this should happen before the half-time break of this Bonn session. In a contact group (open to observers, as the Philippines on behalf of the LMDC have suggested) Parties can tackle unfair proposals and score goals for ambitious and fair solutions.

It seems the crowd of countries cheering for a contact group is wide and growing to include African, Arab, BASIC, LMDC and some of the Pacific SIDS countries. So that leaves a question as to why the Europeans and Brollies, who usually love rules, seem determined to remain stuck in an eternal warm-up of informal consultations?
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While perusing some of the recent submissions to the ADP, ECO was overcome by an unshakable sense of déjà vu. It almost seemed as though some parties might have resubmitted some of their pre-Copenhagen submissions by mistake.

China’s submission for example contained no less than 14 references to the Bali Action Plan and process. Yet not a single one to the Durban Action Plan beyond the first 3 paragraphs. And, boy oh boy, did that call for 1% of GDP from developed countries for the Green Climate Fund bring back some memories.

China must be aware that simply recycling old submissions and repeating generic principles is not an effective negotiation tactic, especially when the ADP is moving to deeper water. It will neither strengthen your negotiating position vis-à-vis developed countries, nor help developing country peers who are looking to their “big brother” to help protect their interests and rights here. Why not use the many success stories and progress in China to leverage enhanced contributions at home and by others, and to facilitate a strong 2015 global deal?

Then there’s the US with its ongoing insistence on moving past binary categories, in spite of having failed to do its part during the period when those categories actually made sense.
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