ECO Newsletter

High-level ministers have finally arrived in Glasgow and are discussing Article 6. Hooray! Surely they’ve been paying attention to all of ECO’s asks, and will quickly agree on an extremely robust Article 6 package! Right? Except, well, that’s not quite what we’re hearing… 

Obviously it can be hard to tell what’s happening behind closed doors in ministerial discussions that observers are largely excluded from, but fear not! ECO has its ways, and has been privy to some of the deals that are currently being hashed out.

ECO would normally joke about the absurdity of some of the options on the table, but we are increasingly very worried that ministers are actually willing to compromise on grave issues… like whether corresponding adjustments should apply to all Article 6 transactions or not.

ECO really wished it wouldn’t need to spend its time explaining why double counting, including double claiming, is a monster. However, some Parties are strongly lobbying to drop corresponding adjustments from being applied to “other international mitigation purposes” (OIMP). 

ECO heard that it’s coming from you, US and Japan, and that the COP Presidency, Brazil and others are keenly embracing it. ECO hopes that’s not true. And apparently this proposal is worryingly gaining traction among ministers.
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ECO was always a fan of chemistry lessons at school. Understand the elements correctly; consider compounds, composition, structure, and you can get the reaction you are looking for on your litmus test.

And as set out in ECO first COP26 issue, finance to support addressing (including recovering from) Loss and Damage, will be ECO’s litmus test for COP26. Parties must respond to climate-induced losses and damages around the world, and deliver new and additional financial resources to address it.

But the proposed solution is not looking good. So ECO would like to remind ministers and negotiators how to get the perfect formula for addressing Loss and Damage.

Globally, we have already entered the era of Loss and Damage. ECO appreciates that, at least in the last draft cover decision ECO saw, parties reiterate the urgency of scaling up action and support, including finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, for averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage, and urge contributors and funds to provide enhanced and additional support. And that Parties also welcome agreement on functions and processes for the operationalisation of the Santiago network. The proper operationalisation of a needs-based Santiago Network will be an important catalyst for action on loss and damage.
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As we push forth in the final hours of  COP26, there is a feeling in the air of “what now? What have we accomplished? Where have we compromised? And most importantly, how do we take this story of COP26 back home? 

Sometimes it feels like you need a law degree just to follow a single negotiation item here, and the rigid structures and inaccessibility of this space are a harsh reminder that this colonial system was never designed with our participation in mind. As we follow negotiation updates under harsh fluorescent lighting, with little to no sleep, it’s easy to get caught up in the versions, the paragraph numbers, and the square brackets, soon perpetuating the same exclusive “in club” jargon we felt so excluded by on arrival. Our moods synchronise with the negotiation outcomes, and it can be hard to see beyond the disappointment of important language and references being stripped from texts.

But for Indigenous Peoples, COP26 doesn’t end on Saturday or Sunday. 

We can’t lose sight of the bigger picture, because we are here for our people back home. We have both the privilege and the pressure of representing communities who will never see the inside of a plenary hall, and so for many of us, a different kind of COP26 work begins when we leave Glasgow.
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Just as momentum was building towards agreement on 5-year Common Time Frames (CTFrs), with an end date of 2035 for the next NDCs, a new text takes us back to square one. 

The EU came around to 5 years just before the COP, and this week the China-USA statement said they would both submit, in 2025, an NDC for the period to 2035. The vast majority of countries, including AOSIS, LDCs, AILAC, and the Africa Group, all supported 5 years, and most of those wanting to keep the window open for 10 years either showed flexibility or likely had merely tactical motivations. 

A clear decision on 5-year CTFrs for NDCs from 2031 onwards appeared to be a slam dunk. 

But a new text out late-Thursday proposes that countries could opt out of submitting an NDC in the next round by 2025, while thereafter observing 5-year common time frames.

Along with exempting countries from raising their ambition by 2025, this would appear to be in violation of Article 4.9 of the Paris Agreement, which requires parties to submit an NDC every 5 years. Or at the very least, it provides no guidance for 2025.

The below version of the proposed paragraph 1 in the new text does the job nicely, and is all that is needed: 

1.
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It is bloody late for deep emissions reductions to stay on a 1.5°C trajectory. Nevertheless, this is still needed and the IPCC had made an effort this summer to quantify how to do so. In its first report of the 6th assessment cycle, focusing on the physical facts of where we stand today, the results are really sobering.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the rate of ocean surface water acidification, resulting mainly from burning fossil fuels over the past two hundred years, are the highest they have been in at least two million years. Indeed, some indicate the highest in the last 10 million years. The last time CO2 concentrations were this high, global temperatures were at least 2.5°C warmer and sea levels several meters higher. Such data clearly indicates the dangerous carbon legacy humankind is injecting into the atmosphere day by day. But the full impacts of this legacy will only be revealed in the future, because of the delayed response of the global climate and earth systems.

The world must immediately start to phase out fossil fuels; and protect and restore carbon in natural ecosystems in this decade to limit the increase of atmospheric CO2, the key driver for global warming.
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