Tag: Mitigation

As the road to the 2015 agreement is beginning to be paved brick by brick, ECO wants to help Parties by giving them a direction in which this road should be built. Parties will be making submissions around how to further develop and operationalise the ADP work program. Here are a few questions that Parties should address in their submissions, which will help us to get closer to a fair, ambitious and binding deal.  

Equity

How could the principles of the Convention be operationalised into objective criteria and indicators to guide countries in seeking to identify their fair and adequate contributions to the globally needed mitigation effort and adaptation support and provision of the means of implementation?

What could be the suitable timelines up to 2015 to a) identify objective ex-ante criteria to develop an agreed list of indicators for identifying each country’s fair efforts, b) for countries to submit initial mitigation and finance commitments and c) assess and revise commitments based on the ex-ante agreed list of indicators?

Mitigation

What should be the global carbon budget and subsequent long term emission pathways indicative of emission levels at 2025, 2030 and 2050?

What information should Parties include about their targets and commitments in order to allow individual and aggregate assessment against adequacy and equity, including their views about a timeline that allows for this assessment and revision of targets well before COP21?

How to raise the level of ambition for developed countries’ 2020 targets?

How to close the pre-2020 ambition gap through advancing concrete solutions?

Adaptation

How should Parties scale up public finance for adaptation and ensure at least USD 50bn international public finance annually?

How are Parties going to deal with inter-connectivity between lack of mitigation ambition and increased need for adaptation, along with addressing loss and damage?

Finance

How to assess overall financial needs, as well as the links between the scale of financial needs for adaptation, the scale of loss and damage likely to be incurred and the level of mitigation ambition?

How do Parties see progress on applying both “polluter pays” and the principle of CBDR to generate new streams of finance?

Technology

What issues related to technology support need to be addressed by the ADP and how can technology transfer best leverage increased ambition?

Listening to the ongoing discussions in the ADP Workstream 2 on short term mitigation ambition, ECO suspects that some might not have read—or have forgotten—the size of the pre-2020 mitigation ambition gap. For all the rhetoric in the room, one might be convinced that nations have forgotten that they have the power to decide whether the world will remain below the 2°C threshold  scientists maintain as critical. Technologically and economically feasible trajectories to remaining below the 2°C level have been outlined. Without acting now, they are wilfully choosing to neglect the known mitigation ambition gap science has shown, as well as the opportunities that exist to bridge it.

In this context, ECO would like to remind delegates of what India, China and others have helpfully underlined during Workstream 2 (WS2) discussions thus far: the time has come for developed countries to do their “fair share” in reducing emissions by at least 40% by 2020 (and reflecting on their consumption patterns).

The 2014 Kyoto Protocol ambition review is one opportunity for nations to reflect on the comparable upward revisiting of pledges; for instance, the EU has achieved its 20% target years ahead of schedule but with no expressed intention, yet, to step up its own ambition until 2020; or Australia, for whom, recent research shows, upping their pledge from 5% to 25% comes at essentially zero net costs.

A cornerstone in WS2, clearly, are those International Cooperative Initiatives, of which we need many, given the size of the gap - but (as suggested by a few Parties) those must lead to new ambition rather than window-dressing existing (low) ambition. Right-on! Addressing international bunkers emissions from marine and aviation transport would be two prime ICI candidates, if ECO was to suggest a few, alongside phasing-out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol, which would also allow for making use of its existing funding mechanism. Another additional initiative would be to start, in earnest, what South Africa has called for during the early days of this session: immediate phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies in developed countries. Doing so, notes ECO, would free up billions of Dollars, Euros, Pounds or Yen for climate finance, including support for developing countries to gradually shift their fossil fuel subsidies both to renewable energy and energy efficiency.

ECO continues to be pleased by the engagement of AOSIS and their pragmatic approach of a step-by-step technical process to identify best practices suitable for scaling-up, overcoming the barriers to, and creating incentives for, new action in the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Moreover, ECO commends their calls to elevate the results of the technical analysis to the ministerial level for agreeing to concrete action in 2014.

Yes, surely there are other mitigation areas to cover, too. And ECO could not agree more with the Philippines (and others) that similar approaches are needed in order to enhance pre-2020 adaptation – but ECO suggests this happens in parallel and need not stop us in advancing on other joint action. What ECO likes about the AOSIS proposal is that it could develop concrete plans to mobilise the entire UNFCCC architecture (e.g. for an action programme on renewable energy) with no new burdens for countries, yet the opportunity to participate in initiatives to expand renewable energy use. In that vein, ECO was pleased with Switzerland’s affirmation (from earlier this session, supporting India’s) that WS2 is not about shifting burdens from developed to developing countries. After all, such joint action to identify barriers and possible incentives could also help to better understand the financial and technological needs of developing countries, creating another pull for developed countries to deliver on their 100 billion per year by 2020 financing promise from Copenhagen and Cancun.

Funding, alas, remains key, as South Africa stressed yesterday once more, calling for scaled-up financing trajectories by developed countries in time for the Warsaw finance ministerial roundtable, and early and regular replenishment of the empty Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF could become a central pillar in the upward spiral of increased climate finance helping to trigger increased ambition. Meanwhile, the lack of clarity on scaling up short and mid-term climate finance is likely hampering ambition. Perhaps another theme for the upcoming Warsaw climate finance ministerial roundtable?

In yesterday’s issue, ECO outlined the process for tabling, reviewing and adopting ambitious commitments for the 2015 agreement, including setting a deadline for tabling initial commitments in 2014. ECO thinks it goes without saying that such commitments – in their various shapes and sizes – should be framed in terms of a five year commitment period.  But since SBI is still stalled and everyone has some free time, we figured we’d lay out  the full case for why that’s true.

First, shorter commitment periods encourage early action. As we all know too well, it is easier to put off action when the deadline is far away – and ECO is all about getting action. Second, your political masters are accountable on 4-6 year cycles, so 2030 targets set in 2015 would be too many election periods away, and hence candidates for “someone else’s problem”. Third, a shorter commitment period reduces concerns about locking in low levels of ambition (wonder why ECO would be worried about low levels of ambition…). Fourth, single year targets don’t give ECO or Parties any certainty over emission pathways (just see the discussions in the SBSTA work programme on developed country targets). Better to have things defined in advance. Finally, it enables targets to be set based on the best available science as that science evolves.

This last point has other design implications. While ECO wants (and the world needs) short commitment periods in order to review progress and ramp up ambition regularly, it is also necessary to know where we are aiming. Thus, a long-term temperature goal, a 2050 global emission reduction target and a carbon budget are crucial for setting the course, as are low-carbon development plans for all countries.  After all, at least three quarters of all proven fossil fuel reserves have to stay in the ground (and probably more) if the world is serious about avoiding dangerous climate change. So, get into planning mode and start charting the course of those ambitious, 5-year commitment period pledges now. ECO can’t wait until 2014 to see what you’ve come up with!

It is one thing to neither have a domestic climate policy nor to accept a legally binding target at the international level. It is certainly worse to prevent 191 other countries from discussing and advancing their own implementation plans for climate solutions.