ECO Newsletter

CAN hopes Australia’s independent Climate Change Authority (CCA) had a useful time in Bonn gathering perspectives from Parties, in particular on how Australia’s actions may help or hinder the road to a 2015 global deal.

With carbon pollution blasting through 400ppm and many nations preparing to ramp up their efforts, we guess you heard some stern views on the (lack of) adequacy and fairness of Australia’s unconditional 5% target for 2020. The good news? WWF earlier this week revealed Australia could bump up its target from 5% by 2020 to 25% at virtually no extra cost to its economy. A lucky country indeed! You’d be mad not to, wouldn’t you? And while the cost to your GDP would be negligible, the kudos would be priceless.

In honour of your visit, ECO revisited Australia’s conditions for moving to 15% and maintains these were comfortably satisfied by the Cancun Agreements and Durban Platform, along with new reporting requirements for developing countries and land sector rules under the Kyoto Protocol. But it’s no secret that 15% falls well short of what a country with economic capability and clean energy resources like yours should be putting in. Wouldn’t you agree? And as your own Professor Garnaut has made clear, with a coastal population, rising costs from extreme weather and shifting rainfall threatening to wreak havoc for your farmers, no developed country has a stronger national interest in keeping the global temperature rise as far below 2°C as possible.
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Mexico’s 2050 Climate Change Vision report is a welcome step in its path to a low-carbon future. Mexico has included an emission reduction goal of 50% by 2050 compared to 2000 and 30% with respect to business as usual by 2020 in its Climate Change National Strategy.

While Mexico has communicated it will do everything possible to meet these targets, according to both these documents and the General Climate Change Law, these targets are subject to the availability of international funding and support.

The measures detailed in the report include a massive deployment of public transport systems, stringent energy efficiency standards in the construction and industrial sectors and a rapid escalation of renewable energy as key elements for achieving a low-emissions economy. Despite this, the best strategies will be waylaid if funding to implement them is not available.

A substantial part of the measures included in Mexico’s 2050 Vision Strategy are shown to have the potential for significant positive impacts on the Mexican economy, and are intended to be supported through their own funding. However, there are significant actions that would incur short- and medium-term financial burdens for the country and need support from a start in the operation of the Green Climate Fund.
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ECO hopes that the ADP discussions will focus on solving the equity puzzle. The world needs an effective, science-based, fair and ambitious climate agreement. Here is an attempt by ECO to demystify the climate puzzle we are facing. The fact that atmospheric CO2 concentrations recently reached the 400 ppm mark was an ominous reminder about the urgency of substantial actions to keep temperature rise well below 2 degree C, and the ultimate goal to return it to 1.5 degree C above pre-industrial levels.

To resolve this challenge, developed countries must increase their pre-2020 pollution reductions and ramp up support for developing country actions through finance, technology and capacity building. Adaptation and loss and damage should also be given the necessary levels of support. These are the preconditions to rebuild the trust among Parties and for a successful outcome from Paris in 2015.

ECO believes that negotiations will never succeed unless Parties confront the equity challenge. More precisely, Parties need to deal with their differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, while protecting developing countries’ need to provide their citizens with sustainable living standards, as is available to citizens of any other country.

At the minimum, this means Parties need to develop a shared “Equity Reference Framework” that embodies the Convention’s core equity principles.ECO
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Based on pledges/statements made in UNFCCC…  Finland, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK were first off the blocks in making financial pledges in Doha. This was welcome. But the adequacy and the clarity of these pledges vary significantly and need to be pinned down. And then there’s the rest… ?

Australia = ?

Austria = ?

Belgium = ?

Canada = ?

EU = ?

Greece = ?

Iceland = ?

Ireland = ?

Italy = ?

Japan = ?

Luxembourg = ?

Netherlands = ?

New Zealand = ?

Portugal = ?

Spain = ?

Switzerland = ?

United States = ? 

No developed country Party should be coming back to this process empty handed! ALL developed countries need to urgently commit to what climate finance they will provide in 2013 and beyond, in a way that is transparent, comparable and makes clear how finance is new and additional.

“A little less conversation, a little more action” needs to be the soundtrack of this year’s Long Term Finance (LTF) Work Programme. The Fast Start period is behind us, and we are already starting the period that we used to call “Long Term Finance”, which makes little sense when it refers to yesterday, today and tomorrow.

We’ve had processes under the UN Secretary General, the G20, and the UNFCCC. But to date these processes have failed to result in any decisions for, or commitments to, a given level of funding from now to 2020. So this year’s work programme must be different from last year’s in one fundamental respect: concrete outcomes on scaling up.

With the LCA finance negotiations behind us, and ADP negotiations on pre-2020 ambition focused on mitigation, this year’s LTF Work Programme is the main space for making progress on finance. If not here, where? If not now, when?

So unlike last year’s work programme, this year’s needs to be firmly geared towards options for decisions in Warsaw. These options then need to be discussed and agreed at the “in-session high-level ministerial dialogue” that the Doha outcome mandated for COP19. Failure to provide concrete options for ministers to consider would likely result in a missed opportunity that developing countries cannot afford.
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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.