Tag: ADP2

New focus on injecting fairness into climate talks a cause for hope

Submitted by rvoorhaar on May 3, 2013 - 7:27am

Bonn, Germany - May 3, 2013: Experts from Climate Action Network International welcomed a new, positive dynamic emerging from the year’s first UN negotiations in Bonn this week, but urged leaders to ensure that the 2015 climate plan is robust enough to save the planet.

While many countries continued to present their same hackneyed positions in the plenary sessions, there are more parties with constructive plans that ensure fair contributions to climate action by all and do more to reduce carbon pollution before 2020 injected fresh air and confidence into the talks.

Mohamed Adow from Christian Aid said previous silence on the issue of fairness had threatened to derail progress in the negotiations, but by beginning to openly tackle the problem now, confidence has been boosted among developing countries about agreeing a plan in 2015 to save the climate.

“Countries now have to move to concrete discussions to capture the new energy created around equity in Bonn this week,” Adow said. “They can do this by agreeing to review climate action against an agreed framework based on the principles of equity.”

Jan Kowalzig from Oxfam Germany welcomed a plan by the Association of Small Island States designed to have countries commit to deeper cuts in carbon emissions in the next few years.

“By the end of the year in November at Warsaw, leaders have to agree new action that will help shrink the gigaton gap between current pledges and what science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change,” Kowalzig said. “This must include developed countries increasing their pathetically low emissions reduction targets as well as boosting financial support for developing countries to fight climate change.”

Climate Action Network’s Julie-Anne Richards urged countries not to weaken the structure of the 2015 climate plan only to ensure the sign on of countries such as the US.

“We need a plan that secures us all a fair and sustainable future, not one that appeals to the lowest common denominator,” Richards said.

The press conference can be viewed here: http://unfccc4.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/adp02/templ/ovw_live.php?id_kon...

Contact:

For more information or for one-on-one interviews with the NGO experts, please contact Climate Action Network International’s communications coordinator Ria Voorhaar on +49 (0) 157 317 35568 or rvoorhaar@climatenetwork.org.

Climate Action Network (CAN) is a global network of over 800 NGOs working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels

Tags:

ADP2

Topics:

Equity/effort-sharing

Mitigation

Review

Organization:

AWG-ADP

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

From Bonn to Berlin: Ministers At the Petersberg Dialogue Take Over

Submitted by rvoorhaar on May 3, 2013 - 12:29am

When the climate policy train leaves the ADP2 station in Bonn today, it moves on to Berlin at the Petersberg Dialogue. Germany and the next COP host, Poland, will serve as the conductors for this next stop. Three dozen ministers from around the world have been invited to this informal exchange of views to complement the UNFCCC process. ECO is happy to hear that ministers are finally getting together to work on the next steps after Doha. We encourage ministers to put more details to key challenges identified in the past week here in Bonn.

ECO identifies the following tasks for ministers to work on during the Petersberg Dialogue:

1. Make further progress on developing a shared understanding of how to assess individual countries’ contributions to an equitable sharing of the global mitigation effort. This should include discussions on the provision of climate finance to developing countries. A 2015 deal cannot be agreed unless the concerns around equity are resolved.

2. If you are truly serious about the 2°C commitment, you’ll need to re-double your efforts to increase ambition before 2020. Ministers at the Petersberg Dialogue should explicitly recognize that developed countries must increase their woefully inadequate mitigation pledges during 2014. Opportunities such as the KP review cannot be missed.

3. Ministers should engage in discussions on how developed and developing countries can create an upward spiral of increasing climate finance and increasing ambition in developing countries.

4. Ministers should engage in discussions on complementary measures. Warsaw could make significant progress in closing the gigatonne gap by seeing various types of complementary measures launched – such as phasing out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol or a dedicated agenda item within Workstream 2 to develop options to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

5. Ministers should identify milestones to achieve major progress on climate finance at Warsaw. Demonstrable progress on climate finance will be an essential pre-condition for the 2015 outcome. Developed country ministers need to ensure that they can present a track record of year-by-year climate finance increases in 2015. This would lend much needed credibility to further plans for scaling up finance towards the 2020 commitment. Ministers also need to ensure that public climate finance is allocated equitably between adaptation and mitigation.

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ECO has learned that German chancellor Angela Merkel will open the Petersberg Dialogue. Attending Ministers may wish to use this opportunity to ask her about Germany’s psychological state. ECO finds it difficult to understand how Germany can claim the limelight through the proclaimed Energiewende (energy transformation) to renewable energies while at the same time failing to support recent attempts to reform the EU Emission Trading System. Does the German government realise that it is starting to look schizophrenic? Strengthening the ETS is crucial for the Energiewende and more.

Tags:

Topics:

Equity/effort-sharing

Finance

Flexible Mechanisms

Region:

Europe

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

rvoorhaar's blog

CAN Intervention on Equity at Bonn ADP2 Special Event with ADP Co-Chairs, 2 May 2013

Submitted by Sam Harris on May 2, 2013 - 9:13am

CAN Intervention at Special ADP2 Roundtable on 2 May 2013

Thank you, Co-Chairs, for this opportunity!

My name is Mohamed Adow, and I'm speaking for the Climate Action Network.

CAN is calling for an EQUITY REVIEW in parallel with the scientific and political review, by which I mean the first periodical review (2013-15).

This brief intervention will not allow me to explain in detail what I mean with the EQUITY REVIEW, but it will allow me to share this one key point – When pledging their targets, Parties will be aware that their pledges will be reviewed against equity criteria as well.

A first step towards this review would be Parties agreeing to the underlying principles – the equity principles embodied in the Convention. The four core principles, clearly, are adequacy, responsibility, capacity and development need – the principles that must necessarily underlie any DYNAMIC operationalization of CBDR & RC.

In a next step, the Secretariat would invite submissions from equity experts associated with both Parties and Observer organizations. Submissions would focus on the Convention principles, and on indicators that express those principles. It would compile and synthesize these submissions, and solicit expert assessment of their relative implications and of the best manner by which the Parties can use them.

Mr Co-chair, let me stress this point, what is needed is an Equity Reference framework which the Parties can use to review each other’s proposals in the later part of the political negotiations.

The key point is that, when developing their pledges at the national level, Parties would be fully aware of the fact that these pledges will be evaluated against, not only the science, but the Convention’s equity principles as well.

And after the evaluation of the pledges, Parties will want to scale up their pledges according to the suggestions of the scientific and equity reviews

We are calling for a process that allows a COP decision on the EQUITY REVIEW at Warsaw:

Parties and Observers should be called upon to make submissions to the ADP chairs on relevant equity principles and views on the proposed Equity Review. These submissions should be made by May 27, 2013.
The Secretariat should organize a Roundtable on equity principles and the Equity Review in June 2013.
Decisions text should be drafted during the autumn session.
A decision on the Equity Review should be made at COP19 in Warsaw.

Tags:

intervention

ADP2

Topics:

Equity/effort-sharing

Organization:

AWG-ADP

Climate Action Network

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

Closing the Gap On Aviation and Shipping

Submitted by rvoorhaar on May 2, 2013 - 12:38am

This is the year for a fresh start in addressing emissions from aviation and maritime transport – those uniquely international sectors that have generated so much discussion and so little action over the years.

This year, the Assemblies, the highest bodies of both the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are meeting for the last time before 2015. This will be their chance to make progress on these fast-growing sectors in the pre-2020 period, including by putting a price on emissions from ships and aircraft.

These sectors can make an important contribution to closing the gigatonne gap, both in the period up to 2020 and beyond. These sectors, which account for around 5% of global CO2 emissions, can contribute reductions of up to 0.5 GtCO2e. But perhaps more importantly, decisive progress in addressing these emissions can restore confidence in our multilateral institutions and demonstrate the collective global political will needed to make the transformative steps necessary to prevent a climate disaster.

What’s more, we cannot pass up the chance to use carbon pricing from these sectors as an innovative source of reliable and stable public climate finance for actions in developing countries, and in the sectors themselves, to supplement contributions from the budgets of developed countries.

A decision on a global approach to carbon pricing on aviation this year is critical. The ICAO Council has created a High Level Group on Climate Change to unlock progress and give political impetus to this discussion, in advance of the September ICAO Assembly. The Council meeting coming up later this month will be the best opportunity to assess progress in the High Level Group and find agreement on a comprehensive global approach that includes carbon pricing for international aviation emissions.

On maritime transport, the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee will also meet later this month and is likely to resume discussions of options to put a price on emissions. Decisions need to be taken that create a clear roadmap to reach an agreement on carbon pricing.

Finally, to ensure these sectors make their fair contribution to global mitigation and financing efforts, the ADP needs to put emissions from international transport firmly on its agenda in both Workstreams, and send the signal to the IMO and ICAO that action is expected in 2013.

In all of these fora, the key to progress is finding creative ways of addressing equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in workable ways appropriate to these inherently international sectors. Concerns from both developed and developing countries about setting precedents for other sectors can and should be addressed. After all, the uniquely international nature of maritime transport and aviation requires approaches tailor-made to these sectors, which cannot be seen as precedents for other sectors where emissions occur entirely on national territory.

Tags:

bunkers

ADP2

Topics:

Bunkers

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

rvoorhaar's blog

Only Fools DON’T Rush In (to a Low-Carbon Future)!

Submitted by rvoorhaar on May 1, 2013 - 12:31am

Sometimes in life it pays to be contemplative. One should do one’s research before buying a house (who wants to live in a flood zone made more vulnerable by climate change?) or getting married (imagine if s/he is secretly a climate sceptic or a bottom-up advocate!) or starting a family (OK, so maybe that doesn’t always happen, but you get ECO’s point). Considering options to increase the level of ambition, however, is NOT one of those issues. The options are clear. The task now is their immediate implementation.

The workshop on enhancing near-term ambition did highlight that many countries are moving forward with a wide variety of mitigation initiatives. This is very good. However, as we know, it is not enough. ECO was also pleased to see a number of countries referring to some very good ways to increase ambition, ranging from upping their pledges, to phasing out HFCs or fossil fuel subsidies, to reducing black carbon, enhancing energy efficiency, protecting our forests or addressing the emissions from international bunkers (hello ICAO assembly in September!). What upsets ECO is that countries have been talking about these options for a long time. ECO cannot imagine having to continue to talk about them all the way to Warsaw (and possibly beyond). It is time to get into the details of implementation – as the Marshall Islands put it, the “nuts and bolts” – so that, by the time the Warsaw COP comes around, countries are taking concrete decisions attached to tangible emissions reductions.

ECO thought it would be useful, albeit possibly repetitive, to outline what some of those concrete measures would be:

Increase those targets: EU 30%, Australia 25%, the USA – well if you agreed with so much of the discussion ECO is sure implementing those ideas can get you beyond 3%...
Announce new pledges – now that the pressure is off for our COP President and its friends, let’s formalise and build on the announcements made in Qatar. ECO is happy to help with press conferences and the like.
Start drafting that COP decision proposed by the EU to call on the Montreal Protocol to get its act together on HFCs.
Call your colleagues working with ICAO and get them prepared to commit in September.
Implement programs to address the upfront costs of renewables in order to enhance their deployment (so UK – do we have a date for the June session? ☺ )
Call your friends at the World Bank and get them to shift investment patterns to renewable energy and energy efficiency; the World Bank (like ECO) is adamant that we must avoid a 4°C world, and yet as Mali and Senegal highlighted, finance for low-carbon options identified in a country’s low-carbon plan is not always there, leaving emissions-intensive development as the default. This leads well into the next point.
SHOW US THE MONEY. That is to say, high-income countries need to support developing countries, who can do more, with more. It really is that simple.

With the numerous win-win opportunities discussed today, only fools wouldn’t rush in to a safe, clean, low-carbon future.

Tags:

Topics:

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

rvoorhaar's blog

Get To Work(shop)!

Submitted by rvoorhaar on May 1, 2013 - 12:29am

ECO is getting worked up by these workshops. On Monday, we heard several distinguished delegates mention the importance of participation. Well, ECO would like to raise your participation and call for interaction!

OK, so we’re being deliberately obtuse about what the distinguished delegate was referring to. Our “friends” from the brollies were actually setting up a dangerous dichotomy between participation and ambition, which is totally unacceptable. But for the moment ECO will let that pass (although you know we’ll come back to it!).

What surprised ECO was the re-articulation of well established positions in the initial workshop on scope and design. This is deeply disappointing. ECO urges parties to be brave; put creative ideas forward. Some will get flattened (like that frog!) but some will permeate. If you don’t ask you don’t get. ECO understands that years of disharmony make Parties nervous about revealing some of their thinking, but this is your time to shine. This is the year of conceptual ideas: we’re facing an unprecedented challenge, one that requires an unprecedented response. And in this new (to us), bright and transparent building, what better surroundings could there be for a more frank and visionary discussion?

We only have a few days here in Bonn, and ECO hopes that Parties have just been warming up before heading to the gym (i.e. Maritim). We hope to see you properly working out with each other over the course of this week's workshops; we want to see blood, sweat and tears!

Tags:

ADP2

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

rvoorhaar's blog

Raise The Bar or Stay Home

Submitted by rvoorhaar on April 30, 2013 - 12:47am

Even as CO2 concentrations are about to break the 400ppm threshold, fresh climate disasters are announced all over the planet, and carbon prices are collapsing because of lax targets on par with BAU, countries have apparently come to the UNFCCC ADP meeting in Bonn with nothing to offer.

Developed countries seem to be looking off in the distance beyond 2020, with images of universal participation and bottom-up national pledges dancing in their heads. Mundane issues like what has to change in the next 6 years and 8 months to stay below 2 degrees are apparently the farthest thing from their minds.

Parties are in Bonn to get down to work on two tasks – raise pre-2020 ambition and craft the next legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas pollution – potentially the most significant global treaty that will ever be negotiated. Delegates should be mindful of the fact that that your work this week and over the next few years will secure you a place in the history books.

Whether the legacy you leave behind is positive or abysmal depends on your creativity, commitment, negotiating skills and sheer hard craft. In short, you will have to be prepared to pull out all the stops. Our planet deserves no less.

Although negotiating a fresh climate deal for a new decade and beyond, Parties also need to address the less sexy issue of the yawning gap between the pledges that are currently on the table and the effort required to limit global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Neither objective should be ignored to the detriment of the other.

Take heart from the fact that the more we achieve in terms of closing the gap over the next 6 or so years, the lighter that workload will be. And it would augur badly indeed if Parties entered into a new climate agreement with a huge ambition deficit.

One place parties can start making progress this year is on international transport. After failing to get any text in discussions under the Bali Action Plan, this year Parties can make a fresh start, by reaching agreement under the International Maritime Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization on a fast track to implementation of market-based measures for international maritime transport and aviation that can put a price on emissions from these sectors.

The ADP must take up this issue and ensure that these sectors make their fair contribution to global efforts to control emissions and generate finance for climate action in developing countries.

Action is needed on many fronts. As yesterday's opening statement by AOSIS laid out, “this is about political will.” Developed countries must have the will to take real action on curbing the continual increase in global temperatures or, let's face it, a new global deal won’t meet our agreed goal of staying below 2°C. So, developed country Parties, best shape up or head home.

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Topics:

Related Event:

ADP Second Session 2013

rvoorhaar's blog

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