Tag: AWG-LCA

As Parties start to feel the effects of lack of sleep here at the COP, they might want an afternoon nap.  But ECO knows Parties won’t want to fall asleep on the job when it comes to crafting a decision on the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).  Durban needs to deliver a decision that formalizes and elaborates this process and outlines the guidelines and modalities for LDCs and other developing countries to benefit from the process, clearly articulating the role, responsibility, and functions that the UNFCCC will offer, support, and facilitate.  The process should entail such efforts as workshops, forums and expert meetings to facilitate south-south learning.

The specific form and format of national adaptation plans and strategies should be decided by each country, including whether to create a stand-alone plan or to incorporate adaptation needs and actions into existing strategic climate change or poverty alleviation and development plans. The global process should be non-prescriptive and enable country-driven, flexible, and iterative national-level planning and implementation. There are, however, a number of elements which are important when developing guidelines in order for NAPs to deliver on essential needs.

A decision on the National Adaptation Plans should include an elaboration of the guiding principles included in paragraph 12 of 1/CP.16 in order to support a country-driven, gender-sensitive, participatory and fully transparent approach that takes into account vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems.  These principles help ensure that the NAPs process and implementation will deliver assistance for the most vulnerable, for example through comprehensive vulnerability assessments to identify and prioritise the most vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems. The process should also include robust consultations and participatory approaches to meaningfully capture the needs and concerns of most vulnerable communities.  NAPs should integrate and reflect gender considerations, integrate and address ecosystems and their services, and facilitate synergies with other multilateral frameworks, such as the CBD, UNCCD and the Hyogo Framework for Action.

With regard to modalities, ECO believes a NAPs decision should enhance synergies and linkages among the different bodies involved, in particular the Least Developed Countries Expert Group, the Adaptation Committee and the Nairobi Work Programme, to enable the dissemination of knowledge, information and good practices.  Modalities should include opportunities to build national, local and civil society
capacity. 

It is important to get the technical modalities right, and it is vital not to hold this up. However, ECO would also like to remind developed country Parties that vulnerable countries and communities cannot adapt to the impacts of climate change (which they did not cause) empty-handed. They need to be able to trust in the will of developed countries to deliver funds for preparation and implementation of the NAPs.  Potential channels for funding NAPs already exist through the LDCF (for planning and projects in LDCs), the Adaptation Fund (for projects) and potentially the Green Climate Fund - they just need to be filled up.

And a well-crafted NAPs decision will be rewarded with plenty of time for catching up on sleep.

Where does Connie Hedegaard, and where does the EU, really stand?

ECO has learned that in a hidden room in the parking garage of the ICC, the European Commission is now pushing the 27 member states towards an 8-year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. What is going on? Why would the Commission so blatantly cater to corporate interests and delay action?

If it prefers an 8-year commitment period, the EU will imply a starting date no earlier than 2021 for the much needed comprehensive, legally binding agreement.

So EU, whose side are you on? Are you with those who want to delay legally binding global action to beyond 2020? What about your desired peaking year?

The vulnerable countries have rightly insisted that a 5-year commitment period is needed. The negotiating process must reflect a sense of urgency matching the climate’s fast-changing reality. ECO suggests that 2020 is an easy date to remember. But it also pushes political responsibility for hard choices far enough into the future that it will hardly matter . . . well, except to those millions for whom climate change, failing harvests or havoc-wreaking storms and floods are already a daily disaster. EU, whose side are you on!

Just in case it needs repeating: ECO fully supports the EU’s aim of launching negotiations on a legally binding treaty between all parties, to be concluded in 2015 at the latest. That agreement should become operational in 2018.  A 5-year commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol would make the EU’s demand for a mandate more credible and send a persuasive message.  And we can all hope it will allow for some others at the table to come round to understanding how highly dangerous their current low level of ambition is.

Europe must stand with the most vulnerable countries in challenging those that want to freeze mitigation for this decade. Freezing mitigation does not counter global warming, delaying ambition does not generate ambition. Last but not least, don’t repeat old mistakes by slowing down negotiations because of a lack of action by the USA. That’s an excuse the world won’t buy ever again.

We really thought thought Canada couldn’t get any worse . . .

But now credible reports are saying that before the end of the year, Canada is going to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. This can only be seen as an unacceptable breach of trust in the global climate talks, where the vast majority of the world recognizes the urgent need for meaningful action on climate change including a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

With the intention to abandon Kyoto next month, Canada is negotiating in outrageously bad faith here in Durban. Countries should be asking why Canada is sitting at the Kyoto negotiating table with a hardly-secret plan to withdraw from the protocol. They should demand to know Canada’s position, and if they really are planning to let the world down, they should immediately leave the KP negotiations.

Canada has been singled out as a global laggard on climate change in recent years, so this newest and grandest failure is not a surprise. In the midst of dire warnings about climate risk from even the International Energy Agency, Canada’s position is both dangerous and immoral.

Canada is acting on behalf of polluters, not people. It is no secret that Canada’s climate and energy policy is focused on rapidly expanding their tar sands oil production and attempting to kill clean energy policy abroad.

Yesterday, activists around the world protested against Canada’s push to open markets to dirty oil at the expense of the climate. In Canada, Greenpeace activists used LED emergency lights to write “Climate Fail” in huge letters on the lawn of Parliament -- a message that is even stronger following yesterday’s revelations.

Demonstrations also took place in capitals including Paris, Berlin, Oslo and Stockholm as well as outside of the Department of Transport in London, protesting the UK’s support for allowing tar sands oil into the EU.

Canada’s plan is a slap in the face to the international community. Canada is isolating itself even more in these talks as a country that not only is refusing to take meaningful action at home, but also one that has lost the trust and respect of the international community here in Durban and around the world.

One of the most important principles in the climate negotiations is that of common but differentiated responsibilities. CBDR means that while it is everyone’s job to reduce emissions, Annex I Parties have the lion’s share of historical emissions and therefore should demonstrate leadership with more ambitious emission reductions.

Specifically, to have a chance of keeping warming below 2° C, Annex I Parties must reduce emissions 40% or more below 1990 levels by 2020, while developing countries should begin low-carbon development that rapidly diverges from their likely business-as-usual (BAU) emissions.

How on earth, then, do Annex I Parties justify accounting for their forest industry emissions against BAU levels, and not a much more ambitious benchmark. And as you might have guessed, it’s even worse – many of these proposed BAU reference levels are inflated to hide future emissions increases, and so are worse than “real” BAU.

How is it that Annex I ministers and heads of delegation have allowed a whole sector to avoid contributing a fair share of ambition? Seriously, this isn’t some obscure technical issue. It’s a basic point about whether the forest sector is helping to solve the problem or is just a free-loader.

Furthermore, how hypocritical is it for Annex I Parties to set forest reference levels with no ambition for themselves, and then include calls for ambition in their recent submissions on the evolving REDD+ mechanism?

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!

And yet there is still time here in Durban and there are better options in the LULUCF text. These options may not be perfect, but they are better than Annex I countries’ wholly unacceptable projected BAU reference levels.

Come on, LULUCF negotiators and heads of delegations! It’s not enough to deliver a set of rules everyone can agree on. These rules must neither undermine the integrity of the KP nor set damaging precedents that could see ambition undermined in other areas. Clearly they must deliver for the climate – and time is running out!