Submitted by MBrockley on
Credit: Adopt a Negotiator
Julie-Anne Richards, CAN-International, gives an overview of what has happened so far in the Bonn UN climate negotiations after one week on the topic of equity.
Submitted by MBrockley on
ADP Co-Chair's Special event. CAN presented ideas on observer participation in shaping the 2015 agreement including the Equity Reference Framework.
Credit: IISD
Submitted by MBrockley on
ADP Co-Chair's Special event. CAN presented ideas on observer participation in shaping the 2015 agreement including the Equity Reference Framework.
Credit: Mark Lutes
Submitted by MBrockley on
ADP Co-Chair's Special event. CAN presented ideas on observer participation in shaping the 2015 agreement including the Equity Reference Framework.
Credit: Mark Lutes
Submitted by MBrockley on
ECO was impressed by the creative moves of the delegates on the dance floor Saturday night. Now, with only 16 meeting days left this year, ECO expects to see an increasing amount of creative and ambitious Party moves inside the negotiation rooms too, to make the COP in Warsaw a success. (It is worth clarifying that this does not mean wiggling out of commitments!)
2014 - the year of ambition - is just around the corner. The foreseen KP Parties' revision of their targets next spring offers a timely moment for all countries to revise their near term targets, while Ban Ki-Moon’s leaders meeting in the autumn of 2014 presents a great opportunity for tabling new 2025 targets.
In Warsaw, Parties will need to commit to both strengthening their current targets (to bridge the 2020 gigatonne gap), as well as to putting forward new, post-2020 targets in 2014 that are fair and adequate. To ensure that the 2014 pledges will be transparent, quantified and comparable, Parties will need to agree on some guidelines in Warsaw. Equally, the Warsaw Decisions will need to give further clarity on the nature and scope of commitments for countries at different levels of responsibility, capability and development. Commitments should include mitigation and finance and be guided by an Equity Reference Framework (ERF), for which a formal process needs to be established.
While Parties have already agreed to deliver a negotiating text on the 2015 agreement before May 2015, Parties will need to adopt a work plan and milestones for producing this text in Warsaw. Specifically, Parties must agree on key elements for a structure of the 2015 deal so that subsequent sessions can build on them to move steadily towards a comprehensive final agreement, and not leave all decisions to be resolved at Paris. We all know where that leads…
All developed countries must set out – in a comparable manner - what climate finance they will be providing over 2013-2015, as part of doubling fast start funding levels for this period, and commit to a roadmap for scaling-up global public climate finance and reaching $100bn per year by 2020.
ECO would like to extend a formal invitation to Finance Ministers to take part in the Warsaw COP so that the “high-level ministerial dialogue” (yes, parties in Doha wanted it to be THAT special) actually delivers the decisions we need so urgently on finance. Parties must also pledge specific amounts of finance to the Green Climate Fund, which must be operationalised in Warsaw, and to the Adaptation Fund.
Parties must also agree on a way to ensure that international aviation and maritime transport, which are not included in national emissions targets, make a fair contribution to emissions reductions, and to financing climate actions in developing countries. These are the fastest growing emissions sectors worldwide, and their fuels are currently not taxed, unlike domestic transport sectors, which means they are not paying for their climate impacts, and have an unfair advantage over other sectors.
As should be clear by this point, dear ECO reader, there is much to do in Warsaw and afterwards. This week, the ADP should focus on its work plan from now until the COP. As time is short and ECO is completely fed up with procedural nonsense (SBI anyone?), this does not mean spending the week discussing whether to suspend or conclude the ADP (as ECO can only imagine the potential mess of trying to open another ADP session and the agenda discussion that would ensue). Rather, Parties must set a deadline for the next round of submissions and clarify the content sought. Here, views on the decisions from Warsaw including guidance on a deadline for initial pledges (2014), information on the details of those pledges and the process for review (i.e. the ERF process), as well as initial thoughts on the overall structure of the 2015 agreement, are a minimum.
Finally, you can’t spend all of your time planning. You’ve got to also be doing. So, in addition to the ADP work programme forward, ECO urges Parties to take time preparing the actual tangible outcomes for Warsaw, including in terms of 2013-2015 finance pledges, loss and damage mechanism and near-term ambition. Here’s to a productive week!
Submitted by MBrockley on
ECO was overjoyed on Saturday when a number of Parties publicly called for a process to develop an Equity Reference Framework. Such a process would be an opportunity of the first order, one that could allow us to unlock ambition, maximise participation, and ensure success in Paris.
South Africa, Kenya, Gambia on behalf of the LDCs – ECO warmly welcomes your constructive interventions on this matter. We now encourage all Parties to make submissions to the ADP co-chairs ahead of Warsaw, and to support a Party-led process with extensive expert input designed to get us to a workable framework for assessing both mitigation and finance commitments.
Singapore – ECO agrees with you on the primacy of the Convention! But let’s please be clear on one critical point: No Party proposing an Equity Reference Framework has any desire to re-write the Convention. Just the contrary. The goal here is to ensure that the Convention’s all-important equity principles can be put effectively into practice.
ECO encourages all Parties to now put forward views on indicators that simply but adequately represent these principles. With these views on the table, Parties could then define a basket of indicators that help inform and bound the discussion. Such a basket would give the Parties and Observers a standardised context within which commitments can be prepared and compared, and against which both Parties and independent experts could test the adequacy and fairness of all commitments.
US – if it’s any comfort, we can assure you that nobody believes that it will be easy to focus the diversity of views on equity into a working consensus. But it is possible, and such an effort, pursued in good faith, would yield its own benefits. The next few years will not see us agree on every detail, but we can reach a consensus that is sufficiently precise, and sufficiently robust, to allow the Parties to agree to commitments that accord with both the science and a full operationalisation of the Convention.
The 2015 accord will only be ambitious and inclusive if it is also fair. On that we can all agree. With the EU, Switzerland and other Parties also showing openness to this discussion, week one of Bonn gave us hope for genuine progress on equity. ECO looks forward to many more constructive discussions over the week ahead.
Submitted by MBrockley on
Tuesday, June 11
18:30 -20:00
In Bonn, Germany in the Ministry of Environment, room WIND
Less than 1000 days to the 2015 deadline. CAN is calling for a formal process to develop an Equity Reference Framework that embodies the Convention’s core equity principles, and is designed to maximize ambition and participation. Such an Equity Reference Framework would give us, finally, a workable framework within which a successful 2015 treaty can be agreed.
Speakers:
Christian Aid (Mohamed Adow)
Germanwatch (Rixa Schwarz)
CAN-Europe (Meera Ghani)
CAN-International (Julie-Anne Richards, Moderator)
Submitted by Sam Harris on
Equity Intervention at Special Roundtable Event, SB 38 Bonn, 8 June 2013
Thank you, co-chairs for this opportunity.
My name is Rixa Schwarz, and I’m speaking for the Climate Action Network.
As you are aware from our intervention at the previous Special Roundtable, CAN is calling for a formal process within the UNFCCC to develop an Equity Reference Framework.
It embodies the Convention’s core equity principles and identifies respective indicators, and thus becomes the framework within which the fairness and adequacy of mitigation and finance commitments can be effectively set and reviewed.
We seek working consensus on the Equity Reference Framework by Warsaw.
To respond directly to your question as to how non-state actors can help advance the work of the Parties, we would like you to know that in order to help the Parties develop a shared understanding of what is required of the formal UNFCCC process for equitable effort-sharing, CAN is in parallel investing in an informal process to give us some understanding of what is expected of the UNFCCC formal Equity Reference Framework.
At this stage, CAN is working to develop an informal Equity Reference Framework, to show how a well-defined set of equity indicators can be operationalised in a global effort-sharing regime to:
a. Establish the global emission-reduction target required for the immediate post-2020 commitment period; and
b. Set the commitments that meet both this global mitigation target and the associated financing and technology support.
Importantly, the formal Equity Reference Framework must be developed by Parties. CAN’s intention, in investing in a parallel informal process, is to help Parties understand what is required in our view to take forward the equity agenda and CAN appeals to Parties to develop their own proposals. This would be in a manner that allows them to pioneer a track to collective post-2020 emissions reductions and the associated finance and technology support for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage that are adequate and in line with the precautionary principle.
CAN believes that a standardised Equity Reference Framework can guide Parties ex ante as they formulate their commitments to ensure that they are both fair and adequate. Moreover, the framework would be useful ex post to both Parties and Observers as they evaluate commitments in equity-based and science terms, leading us to success in Paris.
Submitted by MBrockley on
The ECO Presidency is pleased to invite you to a special High-Level Observer Reception in the presence of ADP Chairs Dovland and Mauskar.
The ECO Presidency and ADP Chairs will have the pleasure of presenting you with views, creative ideas and concerns by non-governmental experts closely following negotiations here in Bonn.
The event will begin at 1.15 on Saturday the 8th of June 2013 at the Twilight Ballroom of the Maritim Grand Hotel in Bonn.
* This special event was organised in response to the numerous complaints received from delegates frustrated with the fact that NGOs are not allowed in closed meetings AND limited to short or no interventions in open meetings, due to time constraints. While we love to see delegates reading and quoting ECO, we don’t believe it makes up for these shortcomings in NGO participation under the ADP
* Cocktails will be served to delegates who write down and report on NGO views. Fossils will be distributed to delegates who do not show up to this event (courtesy of ECO).
* Dress code: black tie
Submitted by Sam Harris on
Thank you Co-Chairs. My name is Vositha Wijenayake. I’m speaking on behalf of the Climate Action Network. Good progress was made at the last Bonn session. As this is the last session of our current Co-Chairs it is crucial to continue this progress and to capture it for Warsaw. This intersessional must see pre-2020 ambition come to the front. It is essential to finish Bonn with at least draft elements of a Warsaw decision teaming concrete action on renewable energy and energy efficiency and 2014 dates for developed countries to put forward increased mitigation pledges. Increased finance is also essential to enable developing countries to enhance their NAMAs. The Technical Paper on Mitigation Ambition offers a good springboard. For workstream 1, the momentum on equity at the last intersessional provides an opportunity to establish an equity process that can drive ambition. An “Equity Reference Framework” embodying the Convention’s core equity principles, based upon objective and quantified equity indicators. This will enable Parties to formulate fair and ambitious commitments post-2020. Commitments which must be on the table in 2014 (Ban Ki-moon’s Summit offers an excellent opportunity) to allow sufficient time for both a science and an equity review of the aggregate effort. Thank you.
