ECO Newsletter

Delegates, it has been three years since we met in Bonn! ECO knows you have been looking forward to a beautiful, picturesque walk by the Rhein and some beer garden visits at what might feel a little like a class reunion.

Yet, ECO is worried: If we want to keep 1.5°C within reach, the world has just about as much time as since your last gathering in Bonn – 3 years! – to return global emissions to below 2020 levels. At the same time, millions of people around the world are already suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis at 1.1°C of global warming. This happens even as all countries promised to strengthen their 2030 targets and agreed to phase-down unabated coal and phase-out fossil fuel subsidies. Yet they keep expanding their dependence on fossil fuels, further worsening climate impacts.

Six months after Glasgow COP26, hardly any country is coming forward with increased targets or new climate finance commitments. COP27 is meant to be the implementation COP. For ECO, this means that ministers MUST fulfill their promises and, frankly, to stop lying. ECO looked for a more diplomatic word but if leaders tell a story of action at COPs and a story of excuses at home we could not come up with one.
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Celebrating 50 years since the first UN conference on the environment, Kenya and Sweden, supported by UNEP, co-hosted last week Stockholm+50 – a UN conference on how to accelerate the 2030 agenda and the SDGs.

The Stockholm+50 key recommendations should guide negotiators in Bonn. Particularly Recommendation 3, which reads: “Adopt system wide change in the way our current economic system works to contribute to a healthy planet…  phase out of fossil fuels …and recognizing the need for financial and technical support towards a just transition.”

This is a significant step forward on the COP26 outcome, recognizing all fossil fuels and the need to phase-out and not just phase-down the leading cause of the climate crisis. Parties to the UNFCCC must redouble their efforts and ensure the need to phase-out fossil fuels and phase-up just transition action is included in the decision texts, embedding the conclusions of Stockholm+50 into the UNFCCC process.

In addition, the recommendations include the need to recognize and implement the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment – shining a light on the importance of rights-based thinking.

Colleagues in Stockholm were acutely aware of the implementation gap. They were clear that we must “strengthen national implementation of existing commitments for a healthy planet … including by … scaling-up capacity support and development, access to and financing for environmentally sound technologies.”
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If someone wanted to paint a picture of the disfunctions and failure of multilateralism in preventing a climatic disaster, they would find a target-rich environment in the global efforts to control emissions for international shipping and aviation.

Contrary to popular misconception, these emissions were not left out of the Paris Agreement. In fact, emissions from international transport are an integral part of Paris climate and emissions goals. So they must be fully included in the Global Stocktake, Article 6, and all other relevant provisions of the Paris Agreement.

What makes international shipping and aviation emissions distinctive is that they occur on trips between countries and often outside national boundaries, and for this reason have not, in most cases, been included in national targets or NDCs.

Such emissions are the focus of processes under other UN bodies –  International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for aviation and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for shipping. But until now, these bodies have failed to align emissions with the Paris goals – especially to their fair share of global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.

Rather than setting an example for other sectors and putting in place measures to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve full decarbonization before mid-century, ICAO and the IMO have produced disappointing results.
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‘Transformation refers to a change in the fundamental attributes of natural and human systems’ (Source: IPCC AR6)

Everybody agrees that to deal with and respond to the climate crisis, there needs to be transformation in the systems that have led us to where we are now.

And that includes the UNFCCC. Twenty-eight years of business as usual has not gotten us very far.  The world faces warming of 2.4°C at the present trajectory. Addressing Loss & Damage has hardly got to the starting line and funding isn’t anywhere to be seen. Only now, after the strong intervention of the countries most affected, are we beginning to talk about a Global Goal for Adaptation.

But talk so far has produced little. To be serious about increasing resilience, building capacity and reducing vulnerability we must step away from the careful plodding language of diplomacy and start talking action. 

There are some good signs. COP26 set off the work programme for the Global Goal on Adaptation. At this weeks SBs the first workshop will be held. The time for a Global Stocktake is at hand and roundtables for that are also being held this week. That’s good. But there are no solid rules for workshops and roundtables.
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For the Paris Agreement’s implementation, mutual trust is a key ingredient. This holds true also with regard to commitments made by developed countries to provide climate finance to developing countries.

Now, ECO remembers well, that time last year when developed countries finally acknowledged that they had not kept their promise to ramp up climate finance to $100bn a year by 2020. A string of new pledges was to save the day for COP26, although developed countries estimated that, with those new pledges, they would reach the $100bn level three years late – in 2023.

Or will they? Among the pledges was Germany’s promise to increase climate finance budget allocations to six billion Euros a year by 2025 at the latest. Yet, federal budget negotiations for 2022 that just concluded, provide for almost no increases over 2021 planned levels of slightly above four billion Euros, and internal drafts for the 2023 budget would, as of now, even lead to a slight decrease. So, rather than gradually increasing climate finance towards the promised level for 2025, Germany, for now, looks at stagnating climate finance levels. 

 To be sure, ECO would perhaps not pick on Germany, one of the larger climate finance providers, if it were not for the SB56 taking place in Germany, and, more importantly, for Germany holding this year’s G7 presidency, putting the country under special scrutiny.
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Under the climate agreements, if you want to access climate finance to install solar panels to mitigate your greenhouse gas emissions, you can access the climate facility to purchase the panels. If your house is threatened by increased flood risk, you can access climate finance to raise your house to adapt, again paid for by the climate facility. But if your house is devastated by a massive flood, you lose your house and your belongings. You suffer huge Loss and Damage and you are on your own. You cannot access climate finance to help you rebuild.

The science is conclusive. The recent impacts report from the IPCC shows extreme climatic events have been observed in all regions. Populations with considerable development constraints, who have the highest vulnerability, and who have contributed the least to climate change, are disproportionately suffering these impacts. Simply put, those least responsible for the climate emergency are paying the highest price.

If we don’t act now, then we already know that the costs will add up. NOW is the time for increased global solidarity. NOW is the time for courage to stand up for the greater good. Lessons learned from the global pandemic demonstrate that money at scale can be mobilized when the political will exists.
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As SB56 reminds us of a fantasy world far from reality, we are reminded of a book where wizards must follow certain rules. The first rule states, “People will believe a lie because they want it to be true or because they’re afraid it might be true”. Another one: “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to oneself” because then you fall victim to the first rule.

ECO likes to think along the same lines as the wise wizard in the story. So, dear Parties, here goes truth number 1: The last two weeks have been a deliberate waste of time. Truth number 2: Your endless talking is killing people. Truth number 3: What we do here and at COP27 matters, and what we don’t do here and at COP27 also matters.

The objective of SB56 was to come up with solutions, but instead we have just been talking. Your inability to deliver has deepened distrust and has failed on our ‘check box’ of climate justice and integrity. As a reminder, here is the list of insufficiency:

The Santiago Network: While developing countries want an institution that is fit for support, developed countries only want a checkbox exercise.

Glasgow Dialogue: ECO feels that any small spirit of empathy, solidarity and collaboration displayed last Saturday has not followed through.
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A long time ago, in a conference hall far far away, COP26 saw the Scottish government put £2 million on the table – de-tabooing a tabooed issue. But since this show of solidarity, the plea of civil society and of First Minister Sturgeon has remained unanswered.

The Glasgow Dialogue must deliver a Loss & Damage Finance Facility. In the closing hours of the COP, Antigua and Barbuda reminded the Presidency of the compromise. We saw rich countries showing sympathy, but ECO felt the pain when we saw that once again they have gone back to their old ways, spending hours of the GD chatting about Avert and Minimise when what we need is to Address so people can recover from climate impacts and rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

They now want to discuss the issue next year, and ECO expects they will want to keep discussing and not paying. Such apathy towards vulnerable people and communities has consequences for people most at risk of losing their homes, farms, incomes, and lives.

As we go into an African COP -– the COP of the vulnerable – loss & damage must be on the agenda and this must lead to a Loss & Damage Finance Facility that provides needs-based, accessible support for people who are facing the climate emergency now.
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After 10 days of “intense” negotiations, delegates are tired and bored, and decided to start playing ‘Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) is lava’ in the Chamber Hall. The rules are simple: in this game, all Parties pretend that the MWP informal note is made of lava, and thus must avoid touching (agreeing to) it.

What Parties are forgetting is that tackling climate change is at the heart of the Convention and of the Paris Agreement, and that the new MWP is our chance to close the 2030 mitigation ambition and implementation gap.

The issue is tricky as some countries see this focus as inequitable and a risk of transferring more responsibility from developed to developing countries since the former have not delivered on their past promises of emissions reduction and support for the latter.

Undelivered climate action by rich countries thus stands in the way of future action by all, as developing countries demand both enhanced action from developed countries, as well as a greater sense of urgency on adaptation and the delivery of loss and damage finance before agreeing to a meaningful UNFCCC process on mitigation.

As a result, we leave Bonn with a document lacking legal standing and a long list of possible elements for a mitigation work programme.
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