ECO Newsletter

It was with some optimism that ECO joined the roundtable discussion of the ADP workstream two (“workstream 2 degrees”, as one delegate was heard when entering the room). All Parties had noted the pre-2020 ambition gap with grave concern back in Durban, and after a year of little—if any—progress, Doha seems to be a good moment to get down to work.

However, that’s not quite the way that the US delegate started it. First explaining how failing to adopt domestic climate legislation – which he said would have allowed offsets to do about half of the mitigation job, somehow, constitutes a doubling of ambition – as cuts now need to be done entirely at home. Right…The problem is that while the level of domestic effort will in fact be higher, the atmosphere won’t see a single additional ton of emissions reductions.

ECO rather liked the approach by the Ethiopian delegate who sported the ambition to get the country carbon neutral by 2025 – an undertaking not seen as over-ambitious – if needed support would materialize.

ECO agrees with the developing country delegates who pointed out that there is also lots of ambition work to do outside the ADP: finalising the homework in the KP and the LCA before they close; achieving the highest possible ambition including through getting rid of the hot air for CP2 and beyond; and agreeing common accounting for non-CP2 developed country Parties (the free-riders and ship-jumpers) to ensure comparability of efforts.
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The LCA is discussing the establishment of a new market mechanism (NMM) and a Framework for Various Approaches (FVA), including the use of markets. But well into the 1st week, it is still unclear what these two work programmes could be about.

There is a common view that the FVA is supposed to give recognition to national emission reduction systems and, if Parties want to, make the emission reductions units that are achieved by these systems internationally tradable and eligible for meeting national emission reduction targets (QELROs). Under the NMM on the other hand, countries could put forward national emission reduction systems to the UNFCCC to be approved for the issuance of credits. Both work streams could end up hosting the same types of emission reduction systems, ranging from market-based instruments to renewable feed-in tariffs. ECO is therefore wondering why bother with two different work streams?!

The answer is clear if one looks at the politics. Although the same types of emission reduction systems could be hosted, the NMM requires international common standards and UNFCCC approval before credits could be issued and used for compliance. The FVA on the other hand could allow countries to develop whatever systems they want and offer the resulting emission credits for compliance without the UNFCCC taking a close look at them, something strongly wished for by Japan, New Zealand and the US.
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Having COP18 in Qatar presents a unique opportunity to move forward with mitigation and adaptation efforts for climate change in the region, as well as for climate finance. With this in mind, ECO is calling for leadership from the Arab states beyond the conference hall.

ECO supports Greenpeace’s call for east-west regional integration in the Arab world with regard to the research, financing and development of renewable energy technologies. This regional cooperation can build on the work already done by individual states in renewable energy development, while developing a new role for regional states at the forefront of clean energy technology innovation.

Renewable energy cooperation will also promote economies of scale and fraternal ties crucial to dealing with the other pressing climate impacts faced by many regional states: growing water scarcity amid shifting weather patterns and, in some, projected sea-level rises on coastal communities and aquifers.

Climate mitigation requires both regional and global efforts to switch from dirty fossil fuels to safe renewable energy sources.

ECO favours a regional approach in which economic diversification crucial to future prosperity is built on sustainable national and regional energy strategies—where renewable energy progressively takes the lead role in generation. This includes a transformation away from fossil fuel over-reliance.
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Earlier this year, ECO was delighted to read submission upon submission referencing the potential for removing fossil fuel subsidies to contribute substantially to pre-2020 mitigation ambition. In fact, it was so exciting that we counted the countries represented by these submissions. Turns out, over 110 countries supported submissions calling on fossil fuel subsidy reform to be included as an option for raising mitigation ambition.

Well, Thursday morning it seemed as though many parties had forgotten about these submissions, only a few months after they were sent in. Despite hours of discussion, fossil fuel subsidies seemed to not have made it into the morning’s ADP workstream 2 discussions.

Fortunately, not all countries have fully forgotten this issue, though, and yesterday afternoon’s ADP session provided some hope. ECO would like to thank the Philippines, Costa Rica and Switzerland for recognizing this important opportunity for additional pollution reductions. (ECO would also note rumours that the US and Mexico referred to fossil fuel subsidy reform in other sessions in recent days as well).

The IEA has told us that removing fossil fuel subsidies could close the mitigation gap by nearly one half between existing pledges and what’s needed by 2020 to put us on a path to limit global warming to 2 degrees.
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