Tag: Kyoto

The Great Climate Wall – ‘I will act on climate, will you?’

Submitted by Anonymous on October 4, 2010 - 7:59pm

In a gesture that signaled more urgent engagement to cool the planet, UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres opened the first international climate conference in this country by sealing the symbolic Great Climate Wall of China, a mosaic wall of 4,000 photos of people from China and around the world who are concerned about our warming planet.

The executive secretary received a traditional Chinese stamp from 13-year old Ji Mengyang of Tianjin and Chung Jahying, a Chinese youth representative of the Great Green Initiative. The stamp has the Chinese proverb: ‘With everyone’s determination, we can win anything’.

Ms. Figueres noted, ‘Addressing climate is not just about governments making the decisions they need to make, it’s about each of us individually having the determination to change our behaviour in our lives. And it’s also about all of us collectively deciding about what kind of stamp we want to leave on the wall of human history.’

This event, sponsored by the Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA), Tck tck tck and Greenpeace, showcased the latest example of art for the public interest by the Great Climate Wall’s creator, 26-year-old sculptor and fine artist Joseph Ellis.

An American raised in upstate New York, Ellis has lived and worked in Beijing for five years, during which he became the first Westerner to graduate from the Central Academy of Fine Arts’ prestigious sculpture program. Greenpeace worked with Ellis two years ago to design an hourglass presented to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton during a climate event at the US Embassy in Beijing. In 2009, Greenpeace commissioned Ellis to execute 100 life-size sculptures of children carved from ice for another climate action.

To create the Great Climate Wall of China, Greenpeace and other NGOs collected snapshot portraits, which Ellis assembled into a mosaic to form a dominant image of the real Great Wall. He printed the impressionist mosaic on fabric, fitted it to supports and assembled the display in side-by-side units to build a tall, colorful barrier with a direct message: ‘I will act on climate, will you?’

The entire project, start to finish, was completed in six days. ‘It’s amazing what you can do in China in just under a week. The people here are incredible and the resources at my disposal never cease to amaze,’ said Ellis. ‘When we combine our efforts, the chance for change is in our grasp.’

The Great Climate Wall shows just a small portion of the growing global movement of people who are ‘rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it’. The current wave of action peaks on October 10th with the 10/10/10 Global Work Party with over 7,000 events in 180 countries. This will be followed by a flurry of activities driven by the development and anti-poverty groups in the GCCA alliance.

The negotiations in Tianjin must make headway and lay the groundwork for breakthroughs on these issues in Mexico this December. So, dear negotiators, what stamp will you leave this week on the wall of
human history?

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Tianjin, China UNFCCC Session

Anonymous's blog

Les piliers de la négociation à Cancun: Résumé - Nov 2010

Submitted by MBrockley on October 3, 2010 - 10:36pm

FR-Summar-Les_piliers_a_Cancun-2.pdf

Le Réseau Action Climat- International (CAN-International)
Papier de position

Les piliers de la négociation à Cancun: les étapes-clé vers un accord juridique équitable et ambitieux

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cancun building blocks french

cancun building blocks french summary

Les piliers de la négociation à Cancun

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Stand and Deliver

Submitted by Anonymous on October 3, 2010 - 7:46pm

Next Sunday, October 10, the day after the close of the Tianjin conference, the world will take action – over 5,000 actions, to be precise, in more than 165 countries around the globe.

The 10/10/10 Global Work Day organized by 350.org and many others will highlight the public appetite for action that has only grown stronger since Copenhagen.

And herein lies one of the great ironies of our time. Public support for action on climate change is mounting in every country, and yet at exactly the same time, the climate negotiations are increasingly coloured by calls for lowering expectations and questions about the credibility of the multilateral process.

There is a climate crisis, and there is a crisis of confidence in the international process. Both require urgent action. Following the stalemate of Copenhagen, this week’s meeting and the Cancun COP are critical.

Let’s not fool ourselves – a failure to
deliver now will land the UN process in a royal mess. Failure to deliver tangible
results in Cancun could well see a repeat of the WTO experience . . . meeting after
irrelevant meeting.

The Kyoto Protocol is the first needed and legally binding response. A second commitment period for the KP is one essential building block toward a fair, ambitious and binding (FAB) deal that needs to be finalized at COP 17 in South Africa.

We hear a lot in the KP discussions about the importance of ‘the other track’. ECO has no doubt on this point: only by showing good faith in the KP can Annex B parties secure progress in the LCA. They must stop stalling and commit at Cancun to the second commitment period of the KP. It is crucial to the world’s effort to limit climate change.

Trust-building is essential. And make no mistake, developed country leadership is central to that. The current pledges by Annex B parties and existing loopholes put us on a path that far overshoots the threshold for dangerous climate change. But all countries must show their commitment to the UN process by showing political will and flexible positions.

We must learn the lessons of Copenhagen and move beyond ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’. Reverting to the pre-Copenhagen grab bag of text is a recipe for recreating the Copenhagen stalemate.

To make real progress in Cancun, it is imperative to seek convergence and reduce the wide range of options in the text to workable proportions. That will allow for political decisions to be made at Cancun, where Parties must agree a clear mandate for a full fair, ambitious and binding deal to be concluded in South Africa. It is no exaggeration: the credibility of this process and the fate of future generations are both at stake.

What are substantive examples of tangible progress? Here is a starter kit to help go further and faster.

In the area of adaptation, the insurance mechanism can be put on track; a committee can start working with the most vulnerable countries on an insurance mechanism, and regional adaptation centers can be set up.

In the area of deforestation, the level of ambition should be quantified.

On finance, the governance of the new fund with a strong relationship with the Convention can be agreed, as well as the sources and scale of funding.

On mitigation, pledges should be formalized, and in doing so, the gigatonne gap needs to be recognized, and a process launched to deal with the gap.

On technology, a work programme can be agreed that empowers the committee to deliver specific technology action programs on solar concentrated power, building efficiency, and many others.

Finally, to fulfill the mandate contained in the Bali Action Plan, a decision on the next commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol is needed. This decision should include clarity on the legal outcome to be delivered in South Africa.

This week, ECO again suggests, Parties should make offers, not demands. The purpose here in Tianjin is not to force fouls, but to use teamwork to create a safe climate.

Dear negotiators, we have said this before: you are the only team we have that can save the planet.

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Tianjin, China UNFCCC Session

Anonymous's blog

LULUCF: The Countdown Commences

Submitted by Anonymous on October 3, 2010 - 7:39pm

With Cancun looming, a push is coming to get much of LULUCF finalised here in Tianjin. ECO cannot stress enough: it is more important than ever to get strong rules for forest management accounting. Proposals in the form of projected baselines for forest management that allow countries to increase anthropogenic emissions into the future without accounting them need to be rejected.

Avid readers will recall that ECO has been calling for emissions from forest management to be measured compared to what happened in the past -- just like all other sectors – and not to uncertain futures determined by Parties. In the current text, the proposal put forward by Tuvalu is the only one that attempts to incorporate this principle, and time must be found on the agenda in Tianjin to discuss this. A methodological review, while helpful in ensuring transparency, will not bring hidden emissions back into the accounts.

Meanwhile, with so much focus on this now familiar issue, we must not lose sight of the other ways in which Parties are attempting to use accounting for their lands and forests to fiddle the system. While negotiators have been knocking heads on rules that may determine whether forest management accounting becomes mandatory (and so it must), what of the fate of the other land use activities? It remains an open question as to whether Parties will still be allowed to elect for cropland or grazing land management, or revegetation.

Additionally, crucial environmental safeguards should be maintained in accounting for natural disturbances so that when the storms come or wildfires rage, these aren’t put forward as yet another excuse for not
accounting for man-made emissions.

We are often told that LULUCF accounting with environmental integrity, while technically achievable, is not politically realistic. Dealing with dangerous climate change will be a much greater political problem than good LULUCF rules could ever be.

And locking in loopholes in the climate accounting is the last thing that should be on negotiators’ minds.

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Tianjin, China UNFCCC Session

Anonymous's blog

Presentation CANLA workshop - Negociaciones globales sobre el clima - Sep 2010

Submitted by dturnbull on September 24, 2010 - 6:40pm

Soto_-_Negociaciones_CMNUCC_Estructura_y_Funcionamiento.pdf

Negociaciones globales sobre el clima:

Estructura, Funcionamiento y Estado Actual

23 de septiembre de 2010

Presentado por:

Francisco Soto

Especialista en Cambio Climático2º Taller de Fortalecimiento de Capacidades en Cambio Climático

para organizaciones de la sociedad civil de América Latina y el Caribe

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CMNUCC

Protocolo de Kioto

Taller de fortalecimiento de capacidades de CANLA

Bases cambio climatico

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CAN-Latin America General Assembly

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Centro Alexander von Humboldt

CAN Intervention - KP Closing Plenary - 6 Aug 2010

Submitted by dturnbull on August 6, 2010 - 1:42pm

kp-interventionfinal.pdf

Kyoto Protocol: Closing Plenary
CAN intervention

6th August 2010

Distinguished Delegates,

Tuesday's workshop left no doubt that we are on the way to exceeding the dangerous
threshold of 1.5 degrees if current Annex B pledges become their commitments for the
second period and current loopholes remain.
The projected abatement shortfall is between 7 and 10 Gigatonnes.
If you want to come to a global agreement to avoid dangerous climate change, you will
take any opportunity close this gap.
We hear a lot in this working group about the importance of the other track. To the
Annex B parties assembled here our message is simple. If you wish to secure progress in
the LCA track in December, you must act here. You must commit to the second
commitment period of this hard-won Protocol. You must indicate before the next
negotiating session, your intention to do so. The effect this has on both tracks in these
negotiations will be worth it.
Only by doing so will the other outcomes you seek so intensely, and which the global
community at large seeks to intensely, be achieved.
The Kyoto Protocol is crucial to the world's efforts to successfully limit climate change.
..

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Leadership Development Program

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Bonn III 2010

CAN intervention - REDD - COP 13,

Submitted by admin on June 28, 2010 - 9:53pm

Intervention given by Paula Moreira on behalf of CAN in Bali on REDD issues

Thank you for this opportunity, my name is Paula Moreira from IPAM Brazil, The Amazon Institute for Environmental Research

The Climate Action Network International believes that:

To avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change, average global surface temperature rise needs to be stabilized as far below 2C above pre-industrial levels as possible. Keeping climate change below these levels is critical to the protection of tropical forests.
Global emissions must peak and begin to decline in the coming decade and reducing emissions from deforestation has a key role to play in achieving this goal.
The question is no longer whether deforestation should be addressed as part of the evolving global climate change regime, but rather, how this can be done most effectively and rapidly, while:

Ensuring equitable and fair incentives to Indigenous and forest people and
Protecting their land rights and customary land.

CAN’s objective is to ensure that the development of policies and mechanisms will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation at the national level; fast enough to prevent dangerous climate change.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation must:

enhance the environmental effectiveness and improve the integrity of the climate change regime;
be accompanied by deeper and additional cuts in fossil fuel emissions by developed countries after 2012.

Developed countries must provide substantial resources for capacity building and technology transfer for effective monitoring, measurement and implementation of national and conservation legislation.
It is therefore essential that the Bali Mandate includes ambition, content, process and a timetable for negotiating a mechanism that provides incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation.

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COP 13 - Bali

CAN Intervention - AWG Opening - December 3rd 2007

Submitted by admin on June 28, 2010 - 9:46pm

CAN intervention AWG Monday 3 December 2007 4:30-6 pm

Mr. Chair, excellencies, distinguished delegates, welcome to Indonesia and Bali (say also in Bahasa Indonesia). Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the over 400 member organizations of the Climate Action Network, my name is Elshinta Suyoso Marsden of WWF-Indonesia.

2007 has been a remarkable climate year already. You have a unique opportunity, indeed responsibility, to crown this year with a Bali mandate that truly delivers on the personal commitments made by almost 100 heads of state to avoid dangerous warming through a post-2012 climate deal.

Like never before, the climate crisis is now in the public spotlight and expectations are very high for this meeting.

The combination of high population density and high levels of biodiversity together with a staggering 80,000 kilometers of coastline and 17,500 islands, makes Indonesia one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The impacts are noticeable throughout our Asia-Pacific region; more frequent and severe heat waves, floods, extreme weather events and prolonged droughts will continue to lead to increased injury, illness and death. Continued warming temperatures will also increase the number of malaria and dengue fever cases and lead to an increase in other infectious diseases as a result of poor nutrition due to food production disruption.

The IPCC reports are unequivocal about the impacts the world will experience if we continue down the current path. The IPCC also shows we have the technologies and policy measures we need in order to avoid dangerous climate if, but only if, immediate action is taken.

The Climate Action Network (CAN) wishes to be quite clear in its demands, what we need from Bali is industrialized country leadership - putting warm words into cool action, and living up to commitments, old and new. We also need incentives from industrialized countries to enable developing countries to increase their contributions and do their fair share. This will require new mechanisms that substantially increase the use of low-carbon technologies in developing countries, and other mechanisms to greatly scale-up financial and technological support for adaptation.

The signal from Bali must be clear: a comprehensive negotiation must be launched. This must result, by the end of 2009, in an agreement on substantially greater emissions reductions globally, consistent with achieving the target of staying well below 2 degrees Celcius of warming from pre-industrial levels.

As to the negotiation process under the Kyoto track:
The first task of the AWG is to agree in Bali the indicative range of emissions reductions required from Annex I. CAN believes the scientific basis established by the IPCC commands the reductions will be at least within the currently proposed range of -25 to -40% of 1990 emissions by 2020.

We need to expand the workplan of the Ad-Hoc Working Group (AWG) to include, amongst others, the following important issues related to Annex I commitments beyond 2012.

deep emissions reductions in Annex I countries
fair and transparent target sharing criteria for Annex I
analysis of the existing flexible mechanisms
exploration of the scale and modes of finance, investment and technology transfer
expansion of Annex A to include emissions from shipping and aviation

The following para was not delivered but distributed to delegates as part of the printed statement, at the request of the UNFCCC.

As to the Convention track, there is a real need to formalise the Dialogue. As Brazil stated in Bonn: “Discussions in the absence of negotiations cannot prosper”. The lessons from the Dialogue must be taken up in formal negotiations under the Convention that explore how industrialized countries will incentivise the enhanced actions by developing country to decarbonise their development.

The mandate for this working group on the Bali roadmap should include, amongst others, the following important elements:

the overall level of ambition, based on a review of the best-available science, to keep global temperature increases as far below 2ºC as possible
launching negotiations to increase the contributions from developing countries
a fair and equitable process to define the fair share of each country
rapidly increasing support for the most vulnerable to adapt to unavoidable climate impacts
technology cooperation
a mechanism to guarantee reliable incentives to rapidly reduce absolute emissions from tropical deforestation and degradation in developing countries, which recognises the rights of Indigenous Peoples and the sovereignty of developing countries over their forests
an effective compliance regime.

Delivery resumed here...

Formal negotiations on both the Convention and Kyoto track should be concluded in 2009, to allow sufficient time for agreement to enter into force before the 31st of December 2012.

If global emissions are to peak by 2015, as the IPCC reports shows they should, what we agree in Bali is absolutely critical.

Do we condemn ourselves to suffer the litany of irreversible dangerous climate impacts laid out in the IPCC report, or do we embrace a sustainable future?

Negotiators, the world is looking to you to make the right decisions.

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