ECO Newsletter

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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In the final edition of COP25 in Madrid, ECO looked ahead to COP26, the Scottish COP, the Glasgow COP. Back then we anticipated that the story of Glasgow and Scotland could give a new lifeline to the UNFCCC and breathe some fire into the negotiations. We had hoped that the story of Glasgow, the furnace of the industrial revolution and a city famed for reinvention and resistance, might shape a COP that finally delivered the political ambition we know the world needs to see.

You could say that the UK has tried its hardest to prevent this. Distinct from Madrid, Katowice, Marrakesh or Paris, this COP has been branded by the UK very clearly as the UK COP rather than the Glasgow COP. Union Jacks rather than Scottish saltires are plastered across the venue. Pathetically, at short notice, the rooms for COP26 (originally all named after Scottish geographical features) were changed to geographical features from the whole of the UK. Since COP25, Johnson & his government have continually tried to ensure that Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, should be excluded from the talks.

Despite this, it seems like negotiators do really know they are in Scotland. On Monday of week 1, the First Minister broke the Loss & Damage taboo, becoming the first developed nation leader to commit to finance for people who have already suffered irrevocable impacts of climate change.
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With Emissions Reductions Minister Taylor back in Australia, the role of Head of Delegation was passed onto the coffee machine in the Australian Pavilion.

Australia has shown very high ambition with its coffee game at this COP, receiving net zero complaints from the hundreds of caffeine hungry delegates stopping by the Pavilion for their daily hit. However, not all have been impressed by this new tactic of coffee diplomacy.

“Clearly the Government hopes that the quality and volume of free coffee being dispensed will distract from Australia’s woeful lack of action on climate change,” said Skippy the Kangaroo.

“We set a national target for our coffee queue to be longer than the queue to enter COP26 at 8am, and I think we achieved that ambition without loss or damage,” said an Australian Government diplomat.

Speaking earlier, the coffee machine was also able to provide some insight into the details of the Government’s new climate finance pledge, confirming that Australia plans to count the millions of dollars in free coffee towards fulfilment of its contribution to the $100bn goal. The machine is yet to be informed of the escalating impacts of climate change upon coffee production.

A spokesperson for Minister Taylor said that Australia was proud it was meeting and beating its coffee target for this COP and has been dispensing coffee at a faster rate than any other country.
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Today in Glasgow, Denmark and Costa Rica will announce a new and exciting alliance of countries and jurisdictions committing to something long a ‘verboten’ topic at the UNFCCC — an end to oil and gas expansion, and a managed and equitable phase-out of existing extraction. 

ECO welcomes the groundbreaking announcement of the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (BOGA). The science is clear that such an effort would have been even better a few decades earlier…but there’s no time like the present to commit to real climate leadership! 

The alliance is BIG news because BOGA represents the first diplomatic initiative to focus on the oil and gas production dimension of the climate equation, aligning with the strong scientific evidence from the International Energy Agency, UN Environment Programme, and others that a rapid and steep decline of fossil fuel production is essential to limit warming to 1.5ºC. Core members must have already ended new licensing, concessions or leasing rounds for oil and gas production — an essential and urgent first step to showing real leadership. 

BOGA’s launch marks a departure from decades of international climate policy in which the need to align the production of fossil fuels with global carbon budgets was largely ignored — an omission which has cost us all dearly and made the path ahead very steep.
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ECO would like to offer some observations on the cover texts and suggestions for how they can better reflect the desperate urgency for action that is needed. The texts fail to reflect the urgency being called for by the people of the world, especially those already suffering the impacts of climate change.

The texts remain worryingly unbalanced between the issues. Whereas ECO is pleased to see many mitigation elements and details on operationalizing these elements – ECO wonders whether Parties misunderstood that we are in fact experiencing increasing climate impacts as we currently move on an uncertain temperature pathway. So then if climate mitigation is not the only solution to the climate emergency – Parties should also want to address Loss and Damage Finance and Adaptation in equally detailed ways as the mitigation section! 

There is a need for more clarity on how the solidarity elements around loss and damage finance, adaptation and finance more generally are to be mobilized in time and in sufficient quantity to address existing and future needs of developing countries.

Greater precision is needed so the world can hold Parties to account, including clear time bound processes and outcomes rather, than generalized calls for more action.
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