Tag: Legal Issues

Robust measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) is a critical part of the Durban outcome. But 24 hours before the new text is out, with Parties hard at work, ECO is concerned that key MRV elements are at risk of falling off the table.

First, let’s review the fundamentals: The reason we’re all learning the MRV alphabet soup is to support the implementation of commitments and actions, build confidence and ensure the environmental integrity of the regime. Seems obvious, right? Yet some of the proposals on the table would seriously undermine these objectives.

In addition, MRV must respect the framing principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ and reflect differentiation between developed and developing countries while aiming for good reporting from both. ECO worries that some developed countries are trying to erase those lines. 

And finally, as critical as MRV is to the Durban outcome, it’s just one piece of the picture whose outlines were drawn by the Bali Action Plan. MRV must always be viewed as part of the bigger picture of increased mitigation,
finance, technology transfer and capacity
development commitments.

Critical MRV elements that must be in the Durban outcome include:

• Procedural transparency and meaningful stakeholder participation, including the ability to make written submissions to technical analysis experts and the SBI; pose questions in an SBI review session open to Parties and observers, and unrestricted access to all information (inputs and outputs).
• Common accounting rules on emission reductions and enhanced removals for Annex I countries.
• A process to clarify the assumptions underlying the pledges of all countries (e.g. gases, sectors, base years, assumptions on BAU) to be able to accurately assess the gigatonne gap and ensure comparability for Annex I countries. (More coming from ECO on these hot button issues.)
• MRV outputs must be timely and include enough detail to enable a meaningful first periodic review between 2013 and 2015. Biennial reports, biennial update reports, and the first international assessment and review (IAR) and international consultation and analysis (ICA) should be completed as early as possible in 2014.
  Enough detail must be provided in biennial reports (BRs) and biennial update reports (BURs) to conduct an effective global assessment, including clarity on assumptions, underlying pledges and projections until to 2050, in 10-year increments.
• The technical review teams, SBI and the COP should have the ability to comment on the status of implementation and issue recommendations in order to assist Parties in the implementation of their pledges and to improve reporting.
• A compliance process for Annex I countries, including consequences for non-compliance such as suspension from the flexible mechanisms.
• Improved MRV of finance through the adoption of a common reporting format in biennial reports and in the future revision to the guidelines for national communications.
• Enhanced support for developing countries to produce their biennial update reports and national communications, and to participate in international consultation and analysis (ICA).
• A summary of REDD+ activities, including actions, methodologies, accounting, safeguards and information systems should be included in biennial update reports and national communications.
• Time-specific provisions to revise guidelines for national communications by COP 18 and for BRs, BURs, IAR and ICA based on lessons learned, by COP 22 in 2016.

ECO has long insisted it is necessary to agree a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. All developed countries under the KP should ratify their new 5-year QEROs (quantified emission reduction obligations), base year 1990, having a level of ambition consistent with a fair share towards their agreed 2º C goal. Yet it is clear that the multilateral system will need to evolve through time toward becoming a truly adequate, fair, legally binding global agreement.

The essential complement in Durban will be extension and clarification of the mandate of the AWG-LCA for a comprehensive legally binding agreement as the agreed outcome. This mandate must enhance implementation of the Convention, not overhaul it, building explicitly on and fully respecting its principles so that Parties do indeed, in a fair framework, fulfill the promise of the ultimate objective of the Convention: “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

This mandate at a minimum must include:

(1) The result of the negotiations, specifying that Parties are building on and moving beyond the Bali Action Plan’s “agreed outcome”, showing that the world is prepared to affirm and act on the ultimate objective of the Convention by working towards a legally binding instrument with legally binding commitments.

(2) Reaffirmation and full respect of the principles of the Convention to guide the negotiations, which must include equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, as well as environmental integrity and adequacy

(3) End date. ECO repudiates the calls from some Parties that negotiations should begin in 2015. Much needs to be done to develop essential elements of finance, adaptation, technology and of course mitigation going forward towards the legal agreement. Negotiations are not yet guided by a timeline or clear agreed goal. Agreement reached in 2015 would allow time not only to build a framework analogous to the Kyoto Protocol, but that span of time would allow more effective development of content closer to that achieved over the four years of negotiations between the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol and the Marrakesh Accords. And entry into force in 2018 would allow a more rapid response to new science.

(4) The scope, building on the Bali Action Plan, Cancun Agreement, and the Kyoto Protocol acquis.

(5) The process to fulfill the mandate.

ECO expects the Chair to address these principles in the draft legal decision text to come out of Friday’s ‘informal informal’ under the ‘principles’ bullet.

Ambition can and must be ratcheted up massively, in particular by developed countries, to jointly achieve real emissions reductions of at least 40% by 2020. A legally binding instrument under the AWG-LCA is needed to secure full participation by the US, which has repudiated the KP, the only existing international legally binding instrument to reduce emissions and ensure that responsibilities for  technology and financing support for developing countries are made legally binding.

The mandate will also show that all Parties are taking action under common rules and guidelines that can showcase successes. The world must respond in a clear and unambiguous way to the urgency from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). A mandate is needed here in Durban to provide a common framework for these principles and dramatically scaled up response to our climate crisis.