ECO Newsletter

With this afternoon’s plenary, the Talanoa Dialogue will come to a close. After a year of listening to the stories, perspectives and solutions put forward by Parties and non- Parties alike, and absorbing the unsettling implications of the IPCC SR 1.5°C, ECO is convinced that the way forward is now clear.

To have any chance of staying below 1.5°C and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, Parties must significantly enhance their current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2020. With its decision the COP should provide very clear direction for countries to raise ambition.

Fortunately, as many contributors to the Talanoa Dialogue noted, the necessary actions need not be costly for countries to adopt —and in fact they can provide substantial economic and development benefits. ECO was thrilled to hear about all the solutions, benefits, and actions that are taken by non-party stakeholders on domestic, regional and international levels.

Since the original NDCs were put on the table in 2015, advances in technology, policy and finance have meant that a significant and growing array of climate solutions are cheaper and more effective than higher-carbon alternatives. These solutions can increase the overall well-being, and advance a countries’ development goals, even before climate impacts are considered.

A lot is at stake at COP24 in the last days.

The IPCC special report on 1.5°C made clear how urgent climate action is, and that impacts already occurring today require immediate measures to, in particular, protect the poorest and most vulnerable.

It is abundantly clear that more finance is needed for loss and damage. We’ve seen developing countries face impacts to the tune of 200% of their GDP in one hurricane that has been amplified by climate change.

Listening to statements by ministers yesterday, ECO feels it is clear what needs to be done to give loss and damage an appropriate reflection in the overall outcomes of this conference. The Cook Islands, for example, highlighted that “Loss and damage must be given a far greater priority. It is fundamental in the context of the IPCC SR1.5.” The Minister of Vanuatu stated that it “pains me deeply to have watched the USA and others putting red lines through any mention of loss and damage.” Tuvalu outlined that “Loss and damage should therefore be fully integrated into the Rulebook, including on transparency, capacity building, and the global stocktake.” Vanuatu’s Minister also stressed that a climate damages tax would be “a win-win option for developed and developing countries alike.

ECO is old enough to remember the forest accounting rules negotiated in 2011 for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. At the time, ECO warned the EU and other developed countries against the dangers of building their baselines on hypothetical projections that envisioned massive increases in emissions from the forest sector. Sadly, the EU and others went ahead and did it anyway.

So at a side-event this week, when it was revealed that the EU was scrambling to correct an unearned windfall on the order of 100 Mt CO2-e per year, ECO felt the tiniest twinge of smugness. If memory serves, that was just about what ECO had predicted for the EU way back in 2011.

Under Kyoto, the EU used a technique called Projected Forest Reference Levels. This involved projecting a hypothetical expectation of forest carbon emissions. You might call it a “Working Theory of the Forest”, or WTF for short. Under the WTF approach, countries could base these projections on modeled expectations, political goals, or really anything they could justify. And they just couldn’t hold back from the temptation to inflate these projections, creating the opportunity for undeserved credits.

Lo and behold, this played out just as ECO expected for the EU.

Ministers, we need to talk. I know this might sound technical, but it’s not; this concerns you. There can be no ambition with so little support for adaptation.

The Paris Agreement seeks to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation finance, as well as attending to the particular needs of least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS).

We’re not there yet. Only 26% of the USD $55 billion in provided support went to adaptation projects in 2016, (the number from multilateral development banks’ is even lower: 21%, according to figures from the Standing Committee on Finance’s (SCF) third biennial assessment report). Around half the bilateral finance provided to the LDCs and SIDS was earmarked for adaptation. That’s far from the “balance” agreed between adaptation and mitigation support.

ECO is even more concerned with the flows to vulnerable countries with less financial capacity to address adaptation and resilience efforts. 21% of finance approved by multilateral climate funds went to the LDCs. Funding directed at the LDCs represented 24% of bilateral flows, and that directed at SIDS accounted for only 2%. When developing countries say they need more support for adaptation, ECO understands why!

What’s more, according to SCF, only 9% of adaptation finance flowing through multilateral development banks was grant-based.

Monday was the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, including “the right to health” which now has a stable place in the Paris preamble. But, where is health at this COP? In spite of the significance of health to humanity, it has not been incorporated into the language of the Rulebook.

Why should the COP outcome include a reference to health? There are two reasons. First, climate change has severe impacts on our health and is likely to have increasing impacts as the Earth warms further; heat exposure resulted in 153 billion hours of labour lost around the world in 2017, an increase of more than 62 billion hours since 2000. Secondly, climate change mitigation can have a major positive impact on health. For example, air pollution currently kills 7 million people worldwide every year. It also causes significant health problems such as asthma and respiratory issues.

When countries try to avoid ambitious mitigation targets because of economic reasons, they fail to recognise the economic benefits of improved health from reducing air pollution. Mitigation pathways identified in the IPCC 1.5°C report typically show that there are significant synergies for reducing air pollution, and that these synergies increase with the stringency of the mitigation policies.