ECO Newsletter

The first official workshop out of four under the Glasgow – Sharm el-Sheikh (GlaSS) Work Programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) was not any sort of workshop ECO would recognize. This is despite the calls from several Parties for creative and innovative solutions in their recent submissions.

It is thus not surprising that the draft text to the SBs requests that subsequent workshops “be more interactive, involving breakout groups and round tables and contributions from experts and Non-Party Observers”. Because what happened on Wednesday and Thursday last week was far from that.

IPCC tells us that the window of opportunity to adapt is closing fast. But they also indicate how we are to plan, implement, and measure adaptation collectively with such diversity at national, sub-national, and local levels. The GGA must help in organizing adaptation evidence and to lead to faster and better actions.

However, ECO feels that committing to specific systems comes hard for Parties. Part of it is due to an ongoing misunderstanding about what the technical concepts mean in practice for them. Top-down frameworks don’t lead to effective action at the best of times, let alone for such an elusive notion as adaptation. A series of meaningless aggregated indicators is the last thing we need, and it is not helpful either to define adaptation in a global framework.
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ECO attended the World Café and the first roundtables of the Global Stocktake. While the statements of  Parties and observers were full of political expectations and wishes to engage constructively in this important component of the ambition mechanism of the Paris Agreement, there is still work to do in ensuring a successful GST.
The World Café on Friday was quite inspiring. Despite the slightly chaotic organization and the noisy environment, ECO and many participants were glad to have frank and open conversations, with representatives of Parties, NGOs, companies, and subnational authorities. The World Café avoided becoming a talk shop with just statements and no concrete action. ECO would like to see this format used in future technical dialogues, but with more time for discussion.

The thematic roundtables on mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation and support were launched last Friday, together with cross-cutting themes like loss & damage, human rights, gender equality and equity included in all three. While the roundtable on means of implementation was quite fluid, the other two were not so interactive, especially the one on mitigation. The co-facilitators encouraged participants to make concise, interactive responses to each other and to stay focused on technical topics, but most interventions were clearly prepared in advance, and there were limited reactions to what was said by others.
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First, let’s go back to the main class textbooks. The IPCC Impacts Report tells us with very high confidence that “the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming”. Our first message to you is therefore that this is not only about mitigation, but also about adaptation and loss and damage. It’s all connected, friends. The less mitigation you do, the more money you will need to spend on the adaptation and loss and damage side — and the same IPCC report has made it very clear  that there are limits to adaptation.
And now, before your astonished eyes, ECO presents the manual for the MWP:

Instruction 1: Broadening and deepening sectoral decarbonisation, including industry
The IPCC has already provided detailed sector and gas decarbonisation pathways; however, these are not fully represented in most of your NDCs to date and, all too often, your pledges and commitments are lacking accountability. So, you must urgently broaden your sectoral decarbonisation actions. No one is suggesting that countries be required to adopt binding sectoral commitments; but there is a lot that can be achieved through scaling up collaboration, reducing barriers, and providing incentives for actions to accelerate decarbonisation in every sector.
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For the last six years, ECO diligently followed and engaged in the development of the Article 6 rules leading up to their adoption in Glasgow. So imagine our surprise when, in the first post-adoption negotiation session, we heard Parties already trying to bypass said rules. It’s been a long and winding road to determine what an Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcome (ITMO) is, what will qualify as an ITMO, and what the review process will be, but not everything can be an ITMO. Going through a review and qualifying as one thing (say under the REDD+ framework) does not mean you automatically qualify under another review process (for example under Article 6.2). Getting a license to drive a car doesn’t mean you qualify to pilot a plane.

If you want to be an ITMO, you have to undergo an Article 6.2 review, full stop, no exemptions. This isn’t a double review, this isn’t an unfair burden, it’s common sense. Because rules are rules. Period.

ECO has been waiting excitedly to engage in THE hot finance ticket for week two (and practising it aloud every morning in anticipation): the second Technical Expert Dialogues for the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). ECO has also been thinking hard about the new goal, and we’ve come up with four elements, to ensure we can not only successfully say N-C-Q-G, but that the technical expert dialogue is successful. 

First up, loss and damage finance: the world has changed in the 13 years since the politically determined USD$100 billion goal was set, and the climate crisis has worsened significantly – in part because of the failure to provide much-needed funds to avert and minimize the climate crisis and its effects. Loss and damage is not a future problem but a now problem, and so loss and damage finance must be part of the NCQG. The NCQG must incorporate all elements of climate finance (mitigation, adaptation and addressing L&D), and none of them can be traded off for another.

The new goal should support systems-transformation. Anchoring elements in the goal to incentivise the right kind of innovation and deliver real shifts in the global financial system will be crucial. Delivering on Article 2.1c means climate action, but it also means supporting the right to sustainable development, shifting power and finance to the local level and the inclusive leadership of youth, women, and Indigenous Peoples.
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The all-important Long-Term Global Goal (LTGG) aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursues efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Parties have agreed to periodically review the adequacy of the LTGG as well as the progress towards achieving it. ECO has listened very carefully to the presentations made by the IPCC in the Structured Expert Dialogue and in an effort to help both the co-facilitators and the Parties with further work on the Review, wants to offer five messages on the Second Periodic Review to all Parties:

1. Climate impacts are already happening with devastating consequences for both humans and natural ecosystems, and every tenth of a degree increase in the global average temperature brings additional risks which will continue to escalate once we go beyond 1.5°C and in some cases may prove irreversible even if the overshoot is temporary. These impacts are hitting the most vulnerable the hardest, thereby increasing poverty and injustice. There is no equity in delaying climate action. The IPCC clearly showed that there are limits to adaptation and that going beyond 1.5°C will make adaptation increasingly difficult and will further increase loss and damage.
2. While emission reduction and limitation commitments have been made under the Paris Agreement, they are far from sufficient and need to be deepened and broadened.

What would you do with a partner that time and again broke their promises to you? After a while, a bad relationship must end. But what if you couldn’t leave? What if your life (or, in this case, all life on Earth) depended on making it work? This is where we stand with countries that are not fulfilling their promises to the Paris Agreement.

Some countries haven’t submitted new or updated NDCs in line with the 2020 ratchet-up cycle. On the heartbreakers list, we have Japan and Australia, who simply re-submitted their 2015 NDCs with the same goal. Others, like COP27 host Egypt, haven’t even bothered to re-submit. ECO has hope for Egypt, which finally promised a new NDC, and for Australia following its recent elections and renewed vows. But actions speak louder than words, matey! We’ll believe it when we see that beautiful piece of paper.

Those are the bad, but then there are the ugly. They not only break their promises, they lie to your face. They say they are being more ambitious as the Paris Agreement asked them to be, but in fact they are back-sliding and planning to do less than they promised seven years ago in their iNDCs.
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The Bonn session and upcoming international gatherings, such as the G7 and the Petersberg Dialogue, are critical for getting an ambitious and just outcome at COP27. Climate impacts, rising energy prices, energy insecurity and fossil-fuel related wars demonstrate the urgent need to move quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energies to bring the world in line with the goal to keep warming below 1.5°C and to address climate harm. The EU is critical for this, both in terms of domestic mitigation ambition and increasing support to developing countries.

Wednesday was a critical moment in the European Parliament (EP) for advancing climate legislation, and for implementing, and hopefully overachieving, the block’s NDC. Fossil fuel and other industry lobbyists who profit from the harmful carbon pyromania fuelling the climate crisis laid the tinder which then lit political fireworks and drama. The EP almost sold out climate protection for big polluters’ demands. After conservative and right wing Parties in the EP voted for an insufficient reduction target under the Emission Trading System (ETS) reform and a looonnnnggg (!) hand-out of emission allowances to polluting industries (to 2034), more progressive Parties had to decide: No deal now, or a bad deal? Fortunately, they said no, avoided a watered down version, and now viable compromises will be renegotiated. 
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On Tuesday ECO unexpectedly ended up in the MWP disco, an exclusive party for lovers of Mitigation Ambition and Implementation. The music was on but the room was too small and the bar was not serving drinks. The disco soon became so full that it was impossible to move and observers had to leave the room to make some space. ECO loves to dance and tried again to join the party on Wednesday. This time the disco was bigger and the music was better. But ECO saw that your dancing was uncoordinated and a little help is needed to help you synchronize, so here are some Mitigation Ambition and Implementation dance tips:

• The MWP should result in sound technical work and outputs, but this should also lead to actions and decisions which actually make a real-world difference to stay below that all important 1.5°C limit. The outcomes should reflect the principles of equity and justice, as well as common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. There should be a clear balance between ambition and implementation discussions, to ensure a focus not only on targets but also addressing policies and measures for implementation of NDCs – and going beyond NDCs.
• The objective of the work programme should be to enhance the ambition and implementation of Parties’ efforts to deliver global aggregate emissions reductions of at least 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in order to be in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.