ECO Newsletter

Would you come to COP without your badge? Would you leave your house without your keys? Or your mask? These are things that you do automatically, because they are required and necessary, and doing them should be part of your muscle memory, without thinking too much. The same applies for keeping 1.5°C within reach. You can’t do it without adequate resources, without it, you will fail. Logical, isn’t it? But so far, ECO is not convinced that this has been understood. Will we leave Glasgow without a clear sign that finance will flow? 

You don’t really need to think much to understand finance is the key, and without a Glasgow package that puts solidarity and prosperity — and the necessary resources — at its heart, we won’t be able to have a successful outcome. 

So, ECO wants to be clear. For this COP to have any kind of political relevance, the only way forward is a cover decision that recognizes and pushes to overcome, with firm commitments, the inadequacies of current finance provision, so as to adequately support adaptation finance, mitigation finance and loss and damage finance. Too much money is being wasted on subsidizing the dirty fossil fuels industry. Too little is being mobilized for delivery to where it matters most.
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On Sunday, the Presidency released a first draft of the proposed elements for the Cover Decision to be adopted at the end of the week. These decisions will provide the main political signal coming out of Glasgow and will therefore be essential in assessing whether the COP ends with a vision or a cover-up. This COP had a very clear mandate to take stock of the ambition gaps and deliver a credible pathway to address them. Ahead of the intensive consultations scheduled this week; ECO is pleased to share the following checklist of critical elements for these decisions: 

Science as the starting point: A credible COP outcome requires taking the science seriously, particularly as the IPCC is delivering its Sixth Assessment Report.

• Deletion of the reckless, scientifically discredited and outdated reference to 2ºC
• Reference to the importance of cumulative emissions are what counts to keeping warming below 1.5ºC
• Recognition of the essential role of ecosystem protection and restoration in achieving a 1.5ºC pathway alongside, not instead of, rapid fossil fuel phase-out.

Most striking missing element:  Fossil Fuels – Coal, gas and oil are the elephant in the room, and must finally be acknowledged; Parties cannot deliver the requisite ambition without ending production and support for fossil fuels.
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Dear EU ministers, welcome (back) to Glasgow! Many of you have been here with your heads of states and governments less than a week ago (or have stayed on). Entering the final days of COP26, a lot is at stake to achieve an outcome which advances a fair approach to Fair for 1.5°C, and as you know the EU will be critical in achieving this. While ECO does not know yet exactly which EU ministers will take up leading roles in ministerial consultations, we expect all of you to champion ambitious and fair climate action (and not just rhetoric). 

ECO welcomes that the High Ambition Coalition Leaders’ Statement, to which many European leaders signed up to, “recognises the need to increase resources for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage.” From the many statements by climate vulnerable parties, loss and damage actions, side events, tweets and hallway conversations, ECO has learned in the first week that there is a huge need in particular for additional resources to “address” the occurring and escalating loss and damage. So the EU must champion, in support of most affected countries, people and areas, agreement of concrete steps here in Glasgow for providing new, additional and needs-based loss and damage finance and a system to deliver that finance to vulnerable developing countries, alongside a permanent agenda item on loss and damage, and the operationalisation of the Santiago Network. 
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If only it was all like Adaptation. As controversies rage around us, your ECO Adaptation correspondent sits in the calm of the sort of gentle, collaborative and determined consensus building that should characterise all climate negotiations. If only.

Adaptation is the quiet giant of the convention.  The Nairobi Work Programme, the Adaptation Fund, National Adaptation Plans, the Global Goal and the work of the Adaptation Committee to bring it all together carry on in multiple talks this week. 

That this is the first article dedicated to adaptation in seven issues of ECO indicates that things might be going pretty well 

Not that there aren’t challenges.  Parties will know that reporting on needs and progress on adaptation is difficult when there isn’t an agreed definition of adaptation. 

There are multiple difficulties – methodological, empirical, conceptual and political – in assessing the reduction of vulnerability and increase of adaptation capacity and resilience that are the Global Goals. 

And, as ever, poorer countries face insufficiency of resources and data to improve adaptation planning, and implementation obstructs everything. 

But these are challenges to be overcome, difficulties that can be resolved with some transformative thinking.

Why not measure countries’ progress by assessing the extent to which they have exercised the Global Commission’s Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, evidenced by participatory impact monitoring and evaluation?   
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The negotiations for the Global Stocktake (GST) during COP26 are now over. Congratulations! This means we are beginning the first GST process. Now we are on our way to technical dialogues, submission phases, workshops, data analysis, output production…

So we still have a lot to do. And by “we”, ECO means all possible actors at the UNFCCC. Non-state actors have to submit inputs for the GST, as well as Parties. ECO supports the inclusion of civil society in the GST process. However, this means financial and technical support for all constituencies as well as developing countries to be able to be fully part of the process. But ECO will come back another day to this issue.

Today, ECO would like to talk about the guiding questions of the GST. Now, there are 43 guiding questions proposed by the SBSTA chair. ECO thanks the chair for this work. But we think several important topics and aspects of climate policies are still missing. 

Why is this important? To ECO, the main aim of the GST should be to protect the most vulnerable from the impacts of climate change. This can’t happen without an adequate consideration of adaptation and loss and damage and the protection of ecosystems, terrestrial and marine alike, as well as keeping the planet livable for youth and future generations.
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Can you be shocked and not surprised at the same time?

It’s one thing to hear the term “climate colonialism” and it’s another to see and feel it up close. It oozes out of every plenary, every action room, nearly every side event at this COP – and is propagated by governments, corporations, and I’m sorry to say, sometimes CAN-I alike.

The tragedy is not just the continued violence against Australian First Nations Peoples at this COP – the continuation of the colonial project reinforced by the almost complete marginalisation of our voices, as bad as that is. It’s seeing so many people working so hard to find a global solution to this existential problem, when we hold the wisdom and solutions if only others would lower their voices, step back, and give us a seat at the Australian Federal Government’s table, and lead.

My First Nations brothers and sisters from around the world occupy a crowded pavilion – a space so tiny and cramped it is emblematic of the marginalisation and disrespect awarded to First Nations voices. In this tiny room, harrowing story after story of dispossession, colonisation and desecration of Country is told. The stories are the same all over the world.
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Today, it is exactly 8 years ago that super-Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, made landfall in the Philippines. As one of the deadliest Philippine typhoons on record, it killed at least 6,300 people in that country alone and led to economic damages of about US$2.2 billion in the country.

The reality of the climate crisis was pushed right into the negotiation rooms, when Filipino lead-negotiator Yeb Sano gave a very emotional speech, after his hometown was destroyed by the typhoon. He pledged to fast until climate talks showed real progress and called on Parties to “stop this madness”. It was a turning point in the UNFCCC negotiations on Loss and Damage, and we saw the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage established shortly after.

What has happened since 2013 in the real world? Science has proven beyond doubt that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change – but people on the ground don’t need scientific proof. They have felt the consequences of climate change first hand through record-breaking storms, floods, and heat waves. Climate change violates their human rights and creates a daily climate emergency for millions of people.
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The Gulf region is rich in fossil fuels, which have been the driver of its economy for decades. Fossil fuels therefore have a deep-rooted social license, and national fossil fuel companies are a source of national pride. Of course, this has contributed to climate denialism over the last three decades, despite the impacts that have heavily affected the region, from desertification and loss of biodiversity, to more frequent and intense heat waves, drought, and flash floods as well as significant impacts on agricultural yields and small farmers’ livelihoods. And these are only the tip of the iceberg, with more impacts predicted in coming decades.

Denial of the science is no longer possible for governments of the region, as awareness of the climate emergency is more deeply entrenched in the minds of the population and the impacts manifest in their lives so profoundly. Sadly, the Saudi government, which has been obstructive to climate negotiations since their onset, continues to be so. They are predicted to be the final bastion of oil production in the coming years, due to having the lowest extraction costs and “high quality” of oil, and over the last week they have reaffirmed their intent to delay the inevitable end of the era of oil as far as possible.
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