ECO Newsletter

You’ll remember the adventures of Marty McFly travelling back in time. (Yes, ECO is talking about movies – long before Netflix took over our lives.) You’ll remember him struggling to return to his life and trying to fix the problems he had caused in the past. 

Well, at Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), like McFly, we are also facing the past to imagine the future. We are chasing the objective of fixing the climate emergency caused in part by the food systems in place. 

A proverb says, “When you don’t know where you’re going, look where you came from”. We come from years of advocacy to make the UNFCCC recognise that agriculture is part of the problem but also part of the solution, which, in 2017 finally led to a COP decision on agriculture; and so the KJWA was born. Since then we’ve had discussion on manure, livestock, soil nutrients, socioeconomic dimensions and food security; 6 workshops (and 2 extra ones), 4 COPs and have come to the understanding that we work better when everyone is included and given a voice (YES, that means observers in the room). Now, after 4 years, Koronivia’s roadmap is coming to an end and a decision on its future is expected at this COP. 
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Today is Energy Day at COP26, and ECO is expecting to see that the ‘fossil fuels’ elephant in the climate room will be eclipsed by renewables all day long. 

For ECO, ‘Energy Day’ means one thing: a full transition to sustainable renewables. This means not only increasing the renewable energy supply but also thinking about energy efficiency, reducing overconsumption, sustainable use of renewable resources, a socially just transition, and ensuring energy access for all.  

What is often overlooked is that the richer parts of the world use far more energy than they actually need, and so emit the majority of global greenhouse emissions. In richer countries, we need to power down our energy consumption, but ‘powering down’ is more than energy efficiency. It means re-thinking what we actually need to use, and how we go about using it. ECO is not convinced that using a lot more energy makes anyone a lot happier.      

Renewable energy is far more equitably distributed than fossil fuels. For example, we can use the sun to heat buildings, to heat our water and to make electricity. Renewable energy is out there and with a good spread of technologies and the right infrastructure we can make renewable energy the norm, not the exception, and we can even overcome the problem of variable energy from the sun and the wind.               
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ECO loves to be pleasantly surprised. So yesterday was a winner. As discussions started on Article 6.2, we were pleasantly surprised to hear so much seeming support for the inclusion of human rights language in the text! It was great to hear so many Parties including AILAC, EIG, LDCs, LMDC, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Antigua & Barbuda, Ecuador … all voice their support (and if we forgot anyone, apologies, and we hope you all join). 

But the devil is in the details and those details are important. ECO stands ready to provide any help we can give to Parties to ensure the protection of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

We have some immediate suggestions for how to strengthen the language for human rights safeguards in the context of article 6.4. You can do this by including it in activity design and ensuring that consultation with local holders is in line with rights such as  Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent. These elements are critical to help prevent potential harms. Oh, and make the grievance mechanism – which communities can access to seek remedy if they are harmed – independent. That’s a big human rights point that can’t be forgotten! 
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Over the past two days, world leader after world leader took to the podium to boast about their climate action. 

Many spoke about the urgent need for greater action this decade to keep 1.5°C alive. 

Yet few of them pointed to ambition’s twin sibling – accountability.  

COP26 is a crucial moment to hold world leaders’ feet to the fire and start the process of scrutinising politicians’ commitments to climate action. In Glasgow, this begins with kickstarting the Global Stocktake (GST). 

ECO doesn’t need to remind you that in Paris, governments agreed that the GST would monitor collective progress of countries over time. This provides a periodic check-in, and indication on whether, how, and where ambition needs to be adjusted in order to make sure we meet all three Paris Agreement goals.

In other words, it ensures that the Paris Agreement is fulfilling its mandate to protect people from the impacts of climate change and support them to mitigate, adapt, and address loss and damage. It is the only way to reduce the climate risks to people and nature around the world.

The GST is a key guarantor of the Paris Agreement. It will be the process where Parties, in front of the global community, have to explain their efforts, or lack thereof.
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ECO is getting a little desperate in the transparency negotiations. Parties are continuing to repeat the same lines and positions they’ve shared since June 2019, and ECO isn’t completely sure if all Parties are eager to reach consensus on a robust set of decisions. Parties are still maneuvering over the structure of the texts rather than engaging on the technical aspects. ECO knows this can be part of the negotiating strategy, but it’s beyond time to move toward consensus. 

It is baffling that after all the work and time to get here to Glasgow, Parties spent an hour yesterday arguing over the difference in status between informal notes from the May-June virtual SB and notes prepared here in Glasgow. 

ECO knows the transparency negotiations are on very technical topics: tables, outlines, and training programs. But the enhanced transparency framework (ETF) is a central element of the Paris Agreement. The ETF will be how ECO knows whether we are on track to limit warming to 1.5°C. The ETF is how we know whether countries will meet the targets they have set out in their NDCs. The ETF is how we know whether countries meet the $100 billion per annum goal. The ETF will give us information about adaptation.
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World leaders came to Glasgow to kick off COP26 – a COP that needs to begin the decisive decade for climate action; a COP that must conclude with clear responses to the devastating messages from the recent IPCC report, the UNEP Gap report, the UNFCCC Synthesis report, the IEA 2050 scenario. These reports all clearly spell out the need to raise national ambition – urgently – to keep 1.5°C in reach.

Many leaders made hearteningly strong statements on the need to stay below 1.5°C. Some countries gave us hope – such as the ambitious 2030 clean energy announcement by India      and the strong calls, from many developing and climate vulnerable countries, to most capable to raise national targets and enhance implementation.      

Adding our voice to theirs, ECO echoes the Barbados Prime Minister’s question: when will Leaders  – especially of high-responsibility and capability countries – actually lead? We like hearing Leaders detail what they are doing today, tomorrow and before COP27 to raise national climate ambition and accelerate the implementation of climate action. These early actions shall not be forgotten over 2050 targets.

ECO now wonders how the leaders’ call for global climate ambition will translate to an ambition decision that leads the world to accelerated 1.5°C-compatible implementation.
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[Hooray we have a new Article 6 text, and it’s the feast of the [brackets][options] again. It’s [nearly] all there: from the most ambitious to the [ridiculous][scary].

ECO‘s jaw dropped in happy amazement when a search for the words “Human Rights” and “Rights of Indigenous Peoples” didn’t come up blank, but reality hit again when noticing all the brackets as well as their absence from activity design and the continuing failure to have an independent grievance mechanism. Remember, [Human Rights][rights language] should never have left this text in the first place.

It’s also getting a bit tiring to remind Parties that the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are not one and the same, and that there’s no [place][role][possibility] for CERs to be carried over. No CERs can count towards a country’s first [or subsequent] NDC[s], even if [vintage][registration] cut-offs are put in place. 

Parties should stop counting brackets and start [ac]counting [for] emission reductions. Yes, we see all those [loopholes][jokes (we wish)][nonsensical propositions] in the text. Every credit must be accounted for, and that means applying corresponding adjustments for all credits, no [exception][excuses][”please look the other way while I fudge my emissions report”].

ECO urges Parties not to play games with baselines.
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