ECO Newsletter

In case you forgot, ECO wants to remind you: the ocean, covering 70 per cent of our planet’s surface, drives global weather systems and the climate, and is the world’s largest long-term store of biological carbon. It is sucking up 20 to 30 per cent of global emissions and absorbing over 90 per cent of human-made heat. We would be cooking without it. But the ocean isn’t just a climate saviour, it is also a climate victim: marine species and ecosystems are suffering from climate change-driven rises in water temperature and from ocean acidification. Coral reef ecosystems, home to about 30 per cent of the oceans biodiversity, are one of the first global ecosystems at risk of being almost wiped out. They face a 70 to 90 per cent loss at 1.5°C global temperature increase. 

ECO is surprised that, despite its enormous contribution to life and climate regulation on the planet, the ocean is still considered a side-event of the climate negotiations. The “Blue COP” in Madrid in 2019 was a first step to change that, resulting in the SBSTA holding a first of its kind Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue in 2020. 

Now, at COP26, is the time to turn this initial exchange into an annual dialogue that improves coordination of ocean-related discussions already taking place under the UNFCCC, e.g.
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ECO was awaiting yesterday’s Open Dialogue with excitement. After all, this is a key event to “enable admitted NGO constituencies to have an open dialogue with Parties” as mandated in (FCCC/SBI/2017/7).

However, after arriving ECO had to look in the dictionary to make sure that dialogue indeed means the kind of conversation that is carried out by more than one person…as in the opposite of a monologue.

For the first hour, only observers spoke, as no party was present in the room. The European Union eventually found its way to the room for a quick intervention in the end. ECO waited patiently for the presidency of COP27, Egypt. Or any other Parties for that matter.  Maybe delegates lost their venue map and could not find the room…or maybe delegates got their fingers stuck in a bowling ball or their goldfish fell sick – ECO assumes there must have been good reasons why only the UK and the EU showed up.

That’s why all nine constituencies jointly request to repeat the meeting in week two of COP26 – this time with an actual presence from Parties. ECO looks forward to a real dialogue.

India, what happened to your “cooperative and constructive” engagement on Article 6? ECO hasn’t seen much of that lately, and was particularly struck by your comments yesterday. It’s as if you carefully read all of our previous articles and decided to promote the exact opposite of what ECO recommended.

First, you proposed to bracket (aka: delete) references to Human Rights and sustainable development in the establishment of the sustainable development mechanism! ECO would find this grotesquely funny if it wasn’t also very concerning and sad. With this, India aligned itself with Iran as the only two countries taking the floor to criticise the inclusion of Human Rights in Article 6.

ECO also heard India say that cancelling credits to deliver an overall reduction in emissions was “illogical”. But what is illogical is the idea that a mechanism, which operates as a zero-sum game, can actually increase overall ambition. Without cancellation, Article 6 will not make a meaningful contribution to climate action. It seems India supports a 100 per cent cancellation on ambition.

Additionally, it sounded as if India was promoting a review of the concept of additionality, except that, unlike many others who have contributed to this discussion, they actually seem to support weaker additionality rules compared to the Kyoto Protocol era.
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The Koronivia family has gathered many times in the last years, in person and online. Through nearly a dozen workshops we have spent time together sharing recipes, listening to experts ranging from smallholder farmers to IPCC scientists, and cooking up real solutions to feed the world and cool the planet. We’re so close to serving up a truly amazing meal of delicious, resilient and gender-responsive agroecological solutions that shift us away from polluting, industrialised farming systems. It’s starting to smell delicious!

But oh no! There are crashing sounds in the kitchen. Will this delicious meal end up on the floor, and will we be served with an empty pot? After all these years of effort?

ECO knows that when it comes to issues of agriculture, considerations of equity must be central. Adaptation is key to future food security. Efforts to reduce emissions in agriculture are essential to limit warming to 1.5°C and avert runaway climate breakdown. Parties must target the biggest and most historically responsible polluters, and not put the burden on those that have done the least to cause the climate crisis and who are already experiencing severe impacts. Navigating this pathway may be tricky, but it’s not impossible. ECO thinks that most chefs in the Koronivia kitchen would agree that we need to change large-scale polluting factory farming systems, while protecting smallholder pastoralist systems.
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If you’re squeezing through the corridors of COP26 or eternally queuing in the rain to get in (“come prepared with appropriate gear”), odds are that you’ve heard a lot of Portuguese these days. In fact, Brazil has the biggest national delegation in Glasgow: a stunning 479 people. That’s roughly twice as much as the host country, the UK. ECO smelled stale açaí in that number, so we did some further digging into the list. What we have found was that many of those precious pink badges are dangling from very strange necks.

Among Brazilian “party” or “party overflow” delegates there are members of agribusiness lobby organizations (9), industry lobby organizations (6), business (25), spin doctors (8) hired to showcase “the real Brazil” (sic) in Glasgow, and even a bartender (which might actually explain why their positions on Article 6 sound so much like drunk talk).

And while young indigenous activist Txai Suruí, the only Brazilian voice in the Leaders’ Summit, had to search far and wide for an accreditation to attend the conference, the first ladies of four states and one major city were happily added to the delegation bandwagon. Brazil really likes its double counting: one for the husband, one for the wife.
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This ECO article is directed at decision-makers at COP26. It has been co-created this week by 60 young people from all over the world, to make a unified call for climate justice. Most of us didn’t grow up speaking English and we had not met each other before. Yet in just four hours, we listened to each other, shared our experiences, and put together our vision for the future we want to inherit. If we can do this, decision makers can do it too.   

There is a Palauan proverb that says A klukuk a rkemei, which translates as ‘tomorrow is still to come’. It teaches young kids in Palau the importance of taking care of the future. Our actions today define what tomorrow looks like. Yet, these same children experience enormous loss and damage because of the current climate crisis they didn’t cause.  

We are 60 young people. We come from Burkina Faso, Burundi, Niger, the Central African Republic, Columbia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Latvia, Belgium, and Spain. We come from diverse backgrounds, but all experience the devastating effects of the climate crisis, and are united in our demands for decision makers at COP-26. 

We demand that Loss and Damage be a priority at COP26 and a permanent theme in the COPs and intersessionals that follow.
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ECO still gets goosebumps listening over and over to Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley’s powerful intervention on Monday: “Failure to provide the critical finance, and that of loss and damage is measured, my friends, in lives and livelihoods in our communities. This is immoral and it is unjust”. 

She was not the only one to call on G7 and G20 countries to acknowledge and fulfill their responsibilities: heads of states and governments from Honduras, Kenya, and Antigua and Barbuda, among others, echoed her call to action. 

ECO hopes this is the very last time that these countries feel the need to deliver such desperate statements. Now is the time for Parties to show that they have heard the message and are ready to act. 

To do so, three things need to happen at COP26:

Firstly, ECO urges the establishment of a permanent agenda item on loss and damage for UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies. Indeed, despite being the third pillar of climate action recognised in the Paris Agreement (alongside adaptation and mitigation), loss and damage (L&D) is discussed under the UNFCCC negotiations only once a year, at the technical level, through the review of the WIM Executive Committee report to the COP.
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