ECO Newsletter

FCCC/CP/1996/2…*sigh*…is a document close to ECO’s heart! While there is no denying that clear rules of procedure – finally formally adopted and adhered to – would be an important development, ECO should be forgiven for doubting the sincerity of the sudden, but independent, interest of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine in the matter.

ECO has been around since 1972 (if you forgot to send us a birthday present this year, see yesterday’s issue for some suggestions). However, one’s institutional memory need not stretch that far back. In fact, one only needed to be in Doha, to understand where our scepticism comes from. Russia, Belarus and Ukraine opposed the overwhelming consensus on a COP decision in Doha. But their reasons were completely different from those of Bolivia’s similar objections in Cancun. Bolivia objected a COP decision on the grounds that the deal on the table was not ambitious enough.

ECO notes a clear difference here. In Doha, Parties made progress on improving the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol by getting rid of some of the hot air in the system. ECO was delighted with this development as – after all – important things in this process (emissions, hot air, the gap in financing commitments) are supposed to go down and not up.
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The year is not even halfway through and we have already seen devastating floods in Argentina and the melting of Arctic sea ice being linked to not only Australia’s harshest ever summer, where they needed new colors to define “hot” on the map, but also a frozen spring in Europe. Climate impacts like these were hitting all corners of the planet, as carbon pollution in the atmosphere pushed through the landmark of 400 parts per million – levels the world has not seen for millions of years.

And here we are in Bonn again to work out how to get those levels down, not up. With as few as five sessions left before we need to agree to a comprehensive climate plan in 2015, it is high time to roll up our sleeves, put on hold short term interests and work together to refocus the planet away from burning destructive fossil fuels and onto a path to a safe future.

Delegates – you are going to have to earn your Maritim cheese sandwiches! As much remains to be done before COP19 in Warsaw. You need to continue the good work started last month by mapping out the structural and technical elements of the 2015 climate plan to be captured in a draft decision at Warsaw, whilst committing to concrete steps to increase ambition before 2020.
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FAB 2015 Protocol

(serves billions)

Take a carbon budget compatible with staying below 2°C warming (1.5°C if you want to serve all);
Make sure that the lid covers 100% of global emissions;
To raise, add a framework for equitable burden sharing;
Add two generous cups of money, one for adaptation, one for mitigation;
Bouquet of Means of Implementation (MOI);
Handful of common accounting and transparency;

Pour over 194 government representatives, let boil for two weeks in a conference centre in Paris. DO NOT OPEN DOORS UNTIL A FAIR, AMBITIOUS AGREEMENT IS REACHED. Check for loopholes and legal bindedness. Serve immediately with vigorous enforcement.

The scope, structure, and design of the 2015 agreement must keep the global temperature increase below 1.5ºC. It must contain national, legally binding targets and actions on mitigation, adaptation and finance to achieve this goal within an overall framework of ambition, accountability and equity.

There has been a lot of discussion here in Bonn on the process and timetable for developing such an agreement by COP21 in 2015. ECO suggests the following:

First, countries should agree at COP19 that mitigation action and finance will be evaluated in light of both the collective level of ambition needed to achieve the temperature limitation goal, and on the basis of a set of equity principles that helps assure the overall fairness of country efforts in relation to each other.

The Science Review starting at the next Bonn session will help guide the first part of this evaluation. At COP 19 in Warsaw, Parties need to launch a parallel process to develop an equity reference framework. See the box on page 2 for the details. The key is that equity must become an enabler of increased trust and ambition. It is also critical that, when Parties pledge their targets, they should be aware that their pledges will be reviewed both against the science as well as equity criteria.
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When the climate policy train leaves the ADP2 station in Bonn today, it moves on to Berlin at the Petersberg Dialogue. Germany and the next COP host, Poland, will serve as the conductors for this next stop. Three dozen ministers from around the world have been invited to this informal exchange of views to complement the UNFCCC process. ECO is happy to hear that ministers are finally getting together to work on the next steps after Doha. We encourage ministers to put more details to key challenges identified in the past week here in Bonn.

ECO identifies the following tasks for ministers to work on during the Petersberg Dialogue:

1. Make further progress on developing a shared understanding of how to assess individual countries’ contributions to an equitable sharing of the global mitigation effort. This should include discussions on the provision of climate finance to developing countries. A 2015 deal cannot be agreed unless the concerns around equity are resolved.

2. If you are truly serious about the 2°C commitment, you’ll need to re-double your efforts to increase ambition before 2020. Ministers at the Petersberg Dialogue should explicitly recognize that developed countries must increase their woefully inadequate mitigation pledges during 2014.
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The importance of finance to both raising pre-2020 mitigation ambition and getting a successful deal in 2015 cannot be overstated. Right now, climate finance appears to be in no man’s land.

This year should mark the start of a new finance period, given that the Fast Start Finance period ended last year. Instead, we are almost halfway through the year and we’ve seen no new finance commitments beyond the small handful of pledges made in Doha.

This is unacceptable, and ECO thinks that no developed country should be coming back to this process empty handed. Developing countries are facing escalating climate impacts and associated costs. The livelihoods, food security and survival of millions of people are at stake because of a climate crisis they did not create. There can be no justification for holding back on promised finance.

Today’s briefing on the Long Term Finance Work Programme provides delegates with an opportunity to focus on how the process can secure concrete outcomes by COP19. Linking the Work Programme to the COP Ministerial on finance (which crucially must involve finance ministers) is key.

By COP19, we need all developed countries to set out what public climate finance they will provide over the period of 2013-2015 as part of a roadmap for scaling up public finance towards the promised US$100bn per year by 2020.
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Today, it is widely understood that without a Science Review there would be no real possibility of achieving the ambition required by science. An Equity Review is imminently needed to muster sufficient political will for that needed ambition.

Such a review must be based upon the equity principles that are embodied in the Convention, most notably the principles of ambition, responsibility, capacity and developmental need.

The challenge now is to develop a set of indicators that properly express these principles, and to build them into an Equity Reference Framework. Such a Framework could help Parties to negotiate a set of pledges that are robust and fair enough to yield the breakthrough that we need in Paris.

This is not about a “formula”. Rather, an Equity Reference Framework would be a tool that the Parties – perhaps with a bit of assistance from their friends in civil society – can use to review and improve each other’s proposals in the later part of the political negotiations.

Procedurally, the key is that, when developing their pledges at the national level, Parties would be fully aware of the fact that these pledges will be evaluated against the science as well as the Convention’s equity principles.
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